Exclusive: Red states funneled $148 billion in corporate welfare to entities targeting conservative communities



Some Republicans have mastered the art of the bad deal, suggests a new State Leadership Initiative report exclusively given to Blaze News.

State Leadership Initiative’s new "Corporate Welfare" report suggests that corporate subsidies inadvertently fund “cultural and economic campaigns designed to destroy conservative communities.” Republican-run states have spent at least $148 billion on corporate subsidies since 2015, according to Good Jobs First.

'Red states are writing the biggest checks to their biggest enemies.'

“Many of the largest subsidy recipients actively undermine the communities and industries that subsidize them — through ESG mandates, replacement of domestic labor with H-1B workers, DEI regimes, supply-chain favoritism toward China, and open hostility,” according to the report.

Some of those subsidies are going to banks and asset management firms. These firms employ environmental, social, and governance standards that emphasize climate metrics when deciding where to invest.

“Major banks and investment firms that receive state deposits and tax incentives have implemented lending policies that strangle coal, oil, and natural gas projects,” the report states. “JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Citigroup — all recipients of various state incentives — have committed to ‘net-zero’ financing that effectively blacklists fossil fuel development.”

JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Citigroup were all previously members of the United Nations-backed Net-Zero Banking Alliance. The banks quietly departed the coalition after President Donald Trump’s 2024 re-election.

“Tech companies impose ESG requirements on their supply chains that penalize manufacturers, agriculture, and energy producers in red states,” the report states. “Amazon, Google, and Microsoft — all major subsidy recipients — demand carbon accounting and ‘sustainable’ practices from suppliers that make it harder for red-state businesses to compete.”

Outlining its climate goals through 2030, Microsoft’s 2025 Environmental Sustainability Report touts that its “large-scale ... suppliers are required to transition to 100% carbon-free electricity for their delivered goods and services.”

'They use their market power to export California climate policy into states that explicitly rejected it.'

“The corporate welfare in our energy industry means taxpayers end up getting screwed twice. Federal and state dollars incentivize the financing and installation of crappy Chinese wind and solar, so corporations go out of their way to get the free money,” Power the Future Executive Director Daniel Turner told Blaze News.

“Politicians create a problem, spend your money to fix said problem, make everything worse, and then have the nerve to ask you to re-elect them. We fought a revolution over less.”

RELATED: The GOP's 2028 ticket math is already brutal

David Ryder/Getty Images

Over 57,000 Amazon positions have been affected by layoffs or restructuring since 2022, according to CNBC.

The Seattle-based giant had over 13,500 H-1B visa petitions approved in 2025.

An H-1B visa is often the first step for someone pursuing permanent residency in the United States. Once secured, an employer may begin the Program Electronic Review Management process on the employee’s behalf. If successful, the employee is granted permanent labor certification and a green card.

“[Amazon] has mastered the art of gaming the Department of Labor’s PERM process — posting job advertisements deliberately designed to exclude qualified Americans, ensuring they can claim no domestic workers are available and justify importing cheaper foreign replacements,” according to State Leadership Initiative VP and report author Thomas Murray. “Texas handed Amazon hundreds of millions in subsidies. Amazon responded by laying off thousands of Texas workers while filing for tens of thousands of H-1B visas to import cheaper foreign labor.”

“Before sponsoring a foreign worker for permanent residency, an employer must test the labor market — advertise the role, run specific recruitment steps, and certify that no qualified, willing U.S. worker was available,” Murray told Blaze News. “The gaming happens when a company designs that recruitment to be technically compliant while ensuring few or no Americans actually apply.”

In an April press release, Amazon stated that it "had more than 86,000 full- and part-time employees [in Texas] and supported more than 90,000 indirect jobs in 2025."

Apple and Meta were both previously pursued by the Department of Justice for similar alleged citizenship-status discrimination. The DOJ claimed that Apple required physical rather than electronic applications for PERM jobs to hide them from public view and keep them off its hiring websites.

In November 2023, Apple paid $25 million to settle DOJ allegations that it violated the Immigration and Nationality Act’s anti-discrimination statutes. Meta paid $14.25 million in 2021 following a similar DOJ investigation.

Meta, Apple, and Microsoft did not respond to requests for comment from Blaze News.

Murray noted the distinctions between Apple and Amazon’s alleged PERM strategy.

“Public DOL disclosure data shows Amazon filing tens of thousands of PERM applications across its entities, a large share at entry-level prevailing-wage tiers that are hard to square with a ‘no qualified Americans’ claim — and using the same recruitment patterns (generic ads, mail-in-only, roles never posted to its own careers site) that DOJ has already penalized at Apple and Facebook,” Murray told Blaze News. “Amazon hasn't yet been sued over this.”

According to Good Jobs First, Amazon has received at least $18 million in tax incentives in Texas since Gov. Greg Abbott (R) took office in 2015. Most Texas tax breaks are managed at the municipal level and are not required to disclose valuations, according to the state’s Local Government Code.

State Leadership Initiative’s report calls for subsidies over $25,000 to be included in a mandatory disclosure database.

“Texas uses performance-based incentives to attract major investments and create jobs for Texans. The governor’s focus is on expanding opportunity and good-paying jobs for Texas workers and families,” Abbott press secretary Andrew Mahaleris told Blaze News. “In January, he directed all Texas state agencies and public universities to immediately freeze new H-1B visa petitions and review current usage to ensure taxpayer-funded jobs go to Texans first.”

Todd Kirkland/Getty Images

Abbott’s action follows Trump’s September 2025 "Restriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers" proclamation, which applied a $100,000 fee to new H-1B applications.

“It’s a fairly common practice for governments to use incentive agreements to encourage companies to create jobs in their communities that generate tax revenue and drive economic activity,” Amazon Vice President of Economic Development Holly Sullivan told Blaze News. “And if we enter into an agreement like that, we take it seriously and work hard to create every job we projected. The way these agreements are structured means that we only receive benefits from them if we do our part.”

Clauses tying benefits to performance — often referred to as "clawback" clauses — are common for incentive agreements, though typically enforced at state or local government discretion.

State Leadership Initiative recommends Republican-run states expand the scope of their clawback provisions to safeguard their independence and economies.

“We’ve invested more than $1.8 trillion in the U.S. since 2010 and employ more than one million people across the country —no U.S. company has created more jobs than Amazon in the last decade,” Sullivan said.

Penalizing energy production via lending and supply-chain restrictions would automatically nullify incentive agreements under the proposed policy from State Leadership Initiative.

Scaling H-1B visa filings or outsourcing by 10% amid layoffs of 100 or more U.S. employees would also cancel state-level agreements should the report’s recommendations be adopted.

“The current crisis in red states demands we recognize that the problem has evolved beyond what traditional economic analysis anticipated,” the report concludes. “The corporations now receiving the largest subsidies take taxpayer dollars and use them to replace American workers, destroy American industries, and assault American culture.”

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Roth: Deliberately lessening America's energy is self-destruction, period.



Air conditioning is one of the most American things I can think of, other than perhaps ice cubes, which accomplish a related function. While people throughout Europe and other developed and emerging countries sweat and suffer through sweltering hot — and sometimes mildly hot — days and drink warm water and carbonated beverages, Americans have the freedom to choose not to do so.

Which is why it is all the more outrageous that some Americans are being asked to ration their air conditioning and other energy use — the energy that keeps Americans cool, productive, and happy, while also serving an important function in preventing illness and death from excessive heat.

The progressive central planning obsession with energy is fraught with fantasy outweighing reality. Now Americans are being asked, and in some cases forced, to sacrifice their individual health and well-being for this fantasy.

Across the country, natural gas and coal power sources have been shut down, lessening the supply of energy, which becomes very apparent during times of heavy energy demand, such as very hot days. Wind and solar power are both intermittent (that is, not generating power when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining), and we have not scaled batteries or other storage in a way that makes these viable substitutes. And that doesn’t even account for their inherent downsides, either.

In California, the California Independent System Operator, which is the manager of the state’s electric power grid, has issued a voluntary call for energy conservation during the hours of 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. — you know, the hours when people are home from work and school and want to relax and enjoy time with the family. Suggestions to conserve energy include not running the air conditioning and major appliances.

This is because the state does not have enough energy production. Nor does the country. And there isn’t enough energy production because of an irresponsible movement away from traditional energy sources without a viable alternative to meet demand. Period.

It’s not as though California has had to enact forced blackouts in prior years to deal with demand and couldn’t have seen this coming (sarcasm intended).

But it’s not just California. Even in Texas, calls for rationing are happening. This summer, Tesla asked customers not to charge their electric vehicles during peak energy demand hours (between 3 p.m. and 8 p.m.) amids concerns over an energy emergency.

Well, that seems to bode well for the coordinated push for more electric vehicles (again, sarcasm intended). It’s almost as though a whole lot of people want to deny how most electricity in the U.S. is powered.

Across the pond, Europeans are faring worse and are likely facing a winter filled with heavy rationing of energy — or worse. In Germany, it was reported by Insider that landlords have already begun rationing hot water. This may become another instance where lives are at stake, especially if heat gets rationed.

This is self-destruction, plain and simple, and we should not be following suit.

The United States fought and won a few wars so that we don't have to listen to the whims and directives of those residing across the pond. Whether it is other European countries’ bad economic ideas or the rantings of Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum, we should be rejecting their lunacy and remembering why America has been the most powerful and broadly admired country in the world. Yet, over time, we have been turning into Europe. More socialism, more progressive nonsense, and a bigger government and ruling class with more central planning have been to our detriment.

While we listen to and ally with the European lunacy, the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) are continuing to follow their own path, becoming more powerful and potentially allying, to our future detriment. Our own foolhardy decisions are handing them more and more opportunities.

It’s time to return to American principles, American ingenuity, and American energy. The people who want to embrace the socialist trappings of Europe have plenty of choices across the pond in which to do so. Leave America alone and let America prosper.
Biden and the Democrats are Sabotaging Our Nation
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Biden and the Democrats are Sabotaging Our Nation

Yes, Biden’s War On The Oil And Gas Industry Is Driving Shortages And High Prices

Destructive policies and rhetoric have caused producers and investors to approach new oil and gas projects with extreme caution.

The Biden administration resumes oil and gas leases on federal land but in a reduced capacity and with steeper fees



This past Friday, the Biden administration announced that it would resume granting lease sales for the drilling of oil and natural gas on federal lands.

However, as the Washington Examiner reported, the Biden administration intends to drastically decrease the amount of federal land available for drilling and plans to increase the royalty it charges companies to produce oil on federal lands.

In a recently released press release, the Department of the Interior said that it will make 144,000 acres of federal lands available for drilling. This is an 80% reduction in acreage that was originally designated for natural gas production. The department will also begin charging companies drilling royalties of 18.75% instead of 12.5%.

The release said, “The [Bureau of Land Management] will issue final environmental assessments and sale notices of upcoming oil and gas leases that reflect this strategic approach.”

“The lease sales will incorporate many of the recommendations in the Department’s report,” the release continued. “Including ensuring Tribal consultation and broad community input, reliance of the best available science including analysis of GHG emissions, and a first-ever increase in the royalty rate for new competitive leases to 18.75 percent, to ensure fair return for the American taxpayers and on par with rates charged by states and private landowners.”

It continued, “The BLM assessed potentially available and eligible acreage in Alabama, Colorado, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming. It began analyzing 646 parcels on roughly 733,000 acres that had been previously nominated for leasing by energy companies. As a result of robust environmental review, engagement with Tribes and communities, and prioritizing the American people’s broad interests in public lands, the final sale notices will offer approximately 173 parcels on roughly 144,000 acres, an 80 percent reduction from the acreage originally nominated.”

This move by the Department of the Interior comes as the Biden administration begins to acknowledge the importance of increasing domestic energy production amid soaring energy prices.

Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, called the department’s new plan an overdue “reset’ of the leasing program.

She said, “For too long, the federal oil and gas leasing programs have prioritized the wants of extractive industries above local communities, the natural environment, the impact on our air and water, the needs of Tribal Nations, and, moreover, other uses of our shared public lands.”'

In response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Western nations issued thoroughgoing sanctions on the Russian economy. The U.S. was quick to stop importing Russian oil, and since the Biden administration ended American energy independence, American energy prices drastically rose as there was suddenly less oil being imported.

Likely voters overwhelmingly think Biden should make boosting US energy production a priority: Poll



According to a recent Trafalgar Group poll, a whopping 77.3% of likely general election voters think that in the wake of the Russian incursion into Ukraine, President Joe Biden should make boosting U.S. energy production a priority. Just 9.3% did not think so, while 13.5% were unsure.

While 88.6% of Republicans thought the president should prioritize boosting the nation's energy production, just 67% of Democrats felt that way, according to the poll.

The poll was carried out March 7 to March 11 amid the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Our new @trafalgar_group/@COSProject poll (3/7-11) shows more than 3/4 of Americans believe #Biden should make domestic energy production a priority: \n\n77.3% Yes\n9.3% No\n13.5% Not sure\n\nBipartisan agreement:\n\n67% #Dems\n88.6% #GOP\n77.6% #Inds\n\nSee Report: https://www.thetrafalgargroup.org/news/nat-issues-us-energy-0313/\u00a0\u2026pic.twitter.com/UCv0sCRFSn
— The Trafalgar Group (@The Trafalgar Group) 1647397751

Americans, who have already been facing high gas prices, have recently been hit by even higher prices — according to AAA, the national average for a gallon of regular gas as of Wednesday is $4.305.

Last week, Biden issued an executive order to ban the importation of crude oil and other products into the U.S. from Russia.

High gas prices not only impact drivers, they also raise the cost of transporting goods at a time when Americans have already been getting hammered by rising prices — according to consumer price index data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the all items index increased by 7.9% over a one-year period.

Some have been critical of the Biden administration's green energy push, including the move last year to revoke a permit related to the Keystone XL Pipeline project.

Democrats block bill that would restart Keystone pipeline, boost US energy production



House Democrats this week blocked a motion to consider a Republican bill that would reauthorize construction of the TransCanada Keystone pipeline and restart the federal oil leasing program, among other things, in an effort to boost domestic energy production amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the Daily Caller reported.

The legislation — called the American Energy Independence from Russia Act — was introduced in the House by Energy and Commerce Committee ranking member Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) and Natural Resources Committee ranking member Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) on Feb. 28. The bicameral bill was also introduced in the Senate by Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) on March 3.

It comes at a time when gas prices are skyrocketing in the U.S. due to private-sector boycotts and a public-sector embargo on imports of Russian oil in response to the country's invasion of Ukraine. The global energy supply disruption has exposed the West's reliance on Russian energy sources and thus renewed calls to bolster American energy independence.

Republicans have argued for years that the U.S. should seek energy independence as a matter of national security, and the current conflict with Russia has undoubtedly served to strengthen the argument.

Yet, according to the Daily Caller, on Wednesday evening, 219 Democrats in the House voted down a motion to consider the legislation. The Epoch Times reported that a motion to consider the bill was also shot down by Democrats on March 1.

The legislation would immediately reauthorize the construction of the Keystone pipeline from Canada to Montana and restart oil and gas leasing on federal lands and waters, both of which were suspended by the Biden administration last year.

It would also require the Biden administration to submit an energy security plan to Congress within 30 days that would grow America’s oil and natural gas production to offset Russian imports.

In a joint statement to introduce the legislation, Reps. McMorris Rodgers and Westerman said, "Putin and Russia’s economy are dependent upon dominating energy production and exporting to other nations. He gains power by doing so, and it’s what funds his military and aggressive behavior. To counter Putin, our bill flips the switch to promote American energy jobs, production, and exports."

The president was torched on social media this week after he begged foreign despots and dictators to increase their oil production in response to the global energy crisis rather than unleashing America's energy resources.

In a floor speech in support of the bill Wednesday, Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw (Texas) slammed President Joe Biden for his energy policies.

"This week our president — our American president — asked Venezuela and Saudi Arabia to increase oil production, asked them to boost their output so that American consumers wouldn’t see a spike in gas prices," Crenshaw said.

He added, "Surely, [Biden] knows we can also boost domestic production right here at home. Surely he knows that domestic production supports American jobs, and surely he knows that domestic production is cleaner, by far, than foreign production."

Dan Crenshaw Speaks on the American Energy Independence From Russia Act www.youtube.com