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Arcadia Mayor Resigns, Pleads Guilty to Foreign Agent Charge

5/14/2026

25 5 Full Breakdown

Summary

Story summary

Arcadia Mayor Eileen Wang resigned and will plead guilty to a foreign-agent charge for China.
City officials said there was no city involvement and that the council will pick a new mayor.
Eileen Wang and Yaoning “Mike” Sun ran U.S. News Center website 2020-2022, spreading propaganda, posting Xinjiang genocide denial praised by a Chinese official.
Yaoning “Mike” Sun is serving a four-year federal sentence after pleading guilty in October 2025.

History

Historical Context

In 2011 the U.S. Central Command worked with HBGary to build software for covert social-media personas, an early government propaganda tool. The Department of Defense later ran hundreds of fake accounts in 2020-21 to discredit Chinese COVID-19 vaccines in the Philippines. The 2025 guilty plea of Arcadia Mayor Eileen Wang for unregistered foreign-agent activity shows the continued relevance of those disinformation-countering efforts.

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Story summary

Arcadia Mayor Eileen Wang resigned and will plead guilty to a foreign-agent charge for China.
City officials said there was no city involvement and that the council will pick a new mayor.
Eileen Wang and Yaoning “Mike” Sun ran U.S. News Center website 2020-2022, spreading propaganda, posting Xinjiang genocide denial praised by a Chinese official.
Yaoning “Mike” Sun is serving a four-year federal sentence after pleading guilty in October 2025.

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