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.” Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!