ARIZ 3
ESTB 2 25
MERRI OK
SEE ARIZ2
SEE KIRK 6
see valley fever fungal
---
BAK:
918 age of trump arpaio
see main for older (sb 1070 show papers eg)
no merri
goldwater inst stinktank
see kari lake
SEE KIRK
see water
state gop wacko in az and texas?
see cyber ninja fraudit
latino? going purple?
an 7 26 mirror
Republican voters in Arizona sent a litany of election deniers to the November ballot, chief among them the nominees for the top three statewide offices. But they’re far from the only ones who advanced to the general election.
The Grand Canyon State has long been at the center of the election conspiracy theories that have become a tenet of the modern Republican Party under President Donald Trump, who has been doggedly focused on false claims of election fraud over the past decade.
As the belief that elections are rife with fraud — at least when Democrats win — has transformed from fringe online discourse into a GOP article of faith, adherents and promoters of election conspiracy theories have been gaining more elected power.
But those views are growing more unpopular among voters, as issues such as affordability and the war in Iran take center stage.
“It is not sustainable, and people do not have an appetite for it. People want to have our elections be a process that helps us pick our leaders and then they want our leaders to lead for us,” Alex Gulotta, All Voting is Local Action’s Arizona state director, told the Arizona Mirror. “It is not winning people’s hearts and minds.”
Despite that, a growing number of election deniers are running for office in Arizona and across the country, according to Kelly Rader, research director at States United Action, a nonpartisan nonprofit that supports state officials protecting elections and has been tracking election deniers since 2022.
Arizona is one of four states — along with Colorado, Wisconsin and Tennessee — that have three or more election deniers running for statewide office, according to their analysis.
Nationally, nearly 75% of the states have an election denier running for a statewide or congressional office, Rader’s research found. That is 139 candidates across the country, among them 21 candidates for governor, nine running for secretary of state and eight running for attorney general, according to the data.
“Election denial is a comprehensive strategy to undermine trust in our elections so that Trump and his allies can challenge election results they don’t like,” Rader said. “As we move through the primaries and sprint toward the fall, we expect that Trump will continue pushing the same old election conspiracy theories. And we are closely watching which election denier candidates echo those claims in the months to come.”
Gulotta echoed those sentiments, adding that Trump’s continued denialism of the results of the 2020 election has helped fuel the fire for candidates to use the same rhetoric.
“I think as long as the president of the United States and his cronies are acting in a way that seeks to prevent voting and is really focused on denying the results of elections, we will continue to see this,” he said. “I am hoping we will grow out of it soon, hopefully another cycle or two.”
Rader said the corrosive effect of lies about election results has far-reaching effects, but was optimistic about the work being done by the nation’s election administrators to educate people and counter the conspiracies.
“Efforts to undermine confidence in legitimate election outcomes don’t just threaten individual races; they erode voter confidence and threaten one of the most important limits on presidential power,” she said. “The good news is that election officials across the country are educating voters, rebuilding trust, and working to ensure another free and fair election this year.”
It isn’t just election denialism that is on the ballot, either.
This year’s batch of conspiracy-minded candidates ranges from QAnon adherents to former “audit” workers. Some of them may be well known to most Arizonans, while others are newcomers to electoral politics.
The old guard
The top of the ticket in Arizona will be a who’s who of people who have been involved in election related conspiracy activities since 2020.
U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs won the Republican party primary for Governor where he will square off against Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs in November.
After Trump lost his 2020 re-election bid to Joe Biden, Biggs was front and center in Arizona and Congress trying to “Stop the Steal.” He joined fellow Arizona GOP Congressman Paul Gosar in spreading doubt about the results of the 2020 election and made claims of voter disenfranchisement that were not backed up by evidence.
Former Arizona Speaker of the House Rusty Bowers said Biggs called him the morning of January 6 asking him to sign onto a letter calling for the decertification of Arizona electors. Biggs, who voted to reject electoral votes for Biden from Arizona and other battleground states, would later allegedly seek a pardon from Trump for his involvement.
Two other prominent election deniers will also be at the top of the Arizona ticket.
State Rep. Alexander Kolodin, who won the GOP primary for secretary of state, has long pushed unfounded claims around the state’s elections.
Kolodin was one of the key attorneys for Trump’s campaign who challenged the 2020 election results in the state and has represented a number of prominent election deniers. Kolodin was sanctioned by the Arizona State Bar in 2023 for his part in lawsuits challenging the 2020 election that made implausible and evidence-free claims of massive election fraud. He represented Trump’s campaign in the so-called “kraken” lawsuit in Arizona that was based on claims made by people with no actual knowledge of the elections.
In his time in the legislature, Kolodin has pushed for sweeping changes to Arizona election laws largely based on election conspiracy theories.
Then there’s GOP attorney general nominee Warren Petersen, who currently serves as president of the Arizona Senate. He, along with former Senate President Karen Fann, oversaw the partisan “audit” that the Senate conducted in 2021 to scour for fraud in Maricopa County’s election the year before. It found no evidence of fraud, and actually concluded that Biden won the election in the state’s largest county.
Earlier this year, he handed over material from that election review to the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice.
Other prominent election deniers also won their primaries, including Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff. On top of believing the 2020 election was fraudulent, Rogers has also engaged with white nationalists and other extremists.
She’ll also likely be joined in the Senate again by Sen. David Farnsworth, R-Mesa, who has openly embraced QAnon and spread conspiracy theories about the Department of Child Safety.
In its simplest form, QAnon is a conspiracy theory that alleges that a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles are running a global sex-trafficking ring, control world governments and are trying to bring down President Donald Trump — who is himself single-handedly dismantling the cabal.
Farnsworth and Rogers also will be joined by the QAnon-posting and January-6-insurrection-attending Sen. Janae Shamp, who ran uncontested in her primary.
Another prominent election denier who won their primary is former Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb.
Lamb worked with other far-right sheriffs and a group that was involved with the widely debunked film “2000 Mules” to police polling locations in 2022. Lamb won his primary despite lurid allegations about his sex life and the release of a racist chat he had with a border vigilante.
If he wins his election — which is likely, as his district is deep red — he’ll join fellow election denier U.S. Rep. Abe Hamadeh, who unsuccessfully tried to claim election fraud led to his 280-vote loss to Kris Mayes in the 2022 contest for attorney general.
The new class
Among the well-known pushers of conspiracy theories in the state are some new faces that are seeking political power.
For instance, Michelle Altherr is seeking to unseat Democratic Sen. Brian Fernandez in the Democrat-leaning Legislative District 23.
Altherr worked at the partisan election “audit,” citing it as one of the main reasons she has gotten into politics. She has long been a presence at Maricopa County Board of Supervisors meetings, where she has spread unfounded claims of election fraud.
Another new face is James Rogers, who won his primary for the state House of Representatives in Legislative District 10. Rogers has represented Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap, a known election denier, as part of the America First Legal law firm, which was started by top Trump advisor Stephen Miller.
The law firm was also behind a failed lawsuit that attempted to change how Arizona counties use drop boxes and maintain voter rolls.
Then there’s Mylie Biggs, Andy Biggs’ daughter, who won an uncontested race to represent Legislative District 14 in the state Senate.
Last year, during an appearance on The Matt MacCurdy program, she said that she doesn’t believe women should hold public office. On that same podcast, the younger Biggs said she has a fondness for conspiracy theories, telling the host to not get her “started on 9/11.”
Early voting for the general election starts on Sept. 19 for military and overseas voters and early voting for everyone else begins on Oct. 7. The last day voters can register to vote and apply for an early ballot is Oct. 5. Voters can find more information and register to vote at this link.
RWW MISC
07/21/2026
Judd Legum @ Popular Information: ICE is lying about body cams. These documents prove it.
In February 2026, months after ICE’s $75 billion windfall, Acting Director Todd Lyons said that only 3,000 of ICE’s 13,000 officers wore body cams. ICE was avoiding compliance with the policy by simply not ordering many body cams.
Robert Reich @ Substack: Trump’s Two Killing Fields
In the Trump manosphere, violence is seen as a sign of virility. When that virility is challenged, the automatic response is to escalate the violence.
Yunior Rivers @ Democracy Docket: Trump’s DOJ launched a new ‘election integrity’ website. It’s riddled with errors
The errors would be embarrassing on any federal website. On this one, they also appear to serve an ideological purpose.
Hannah Knowles @ The Washington Post: A religious sect is at the heart of an old fight getting attention in a GOP race
Rep. Andy Biggs, the party’s likely nominee for Arizona governor, faced criticism from fellow Republicans over his handling of a small police force more than a decade ago.
David Edwards @ Raw Story: Turning Point silences GOP whistleblowers invited to speak against Trump-backed candidate
Allies of Turning Point USA blocked two people with sexual misconduct allegations against a Trump-backed Arizona congressional candidate from speaking at a Republican district meeting. The candidate is former Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, who is running for Arizona's 5th Congressional District on a platform of "God, family, and freedom" with President Donald Trump's endorsement.
Spencer MacNaughton and Sean Robinson @ Uncloseted Media: ‘Hand Jobs, Oral Sex and Anal’: Pete Hegseth's Pastor Wants Gay Men Prosecuted for These Acts
Doug Wilson believes the U.S. should become a Christian theocracy, married women shouldn’t have the right to vote and gay sex should be illegal.
mark lamb primary sexting 7 26
https://www.politico.com › news › 2026 › 07 › 21 › lamb-wins-arizona-house-primary-01007464
Mark Lamb wins Arizona House primary despite sex scandals
TodayMark Lamb, the former Pinal County sheriff, overcame a late push from self-funding candidate Daniel Keenan in Arizona's 5th District.
AN 7 26 CAND FOR GOV?
Arizona was once a deep-red state known for the conservative GOP politics of Sen. Barry Goldwater and his successor, John McCain. But these days, Arizona is a swing state that has a Democratic governor (Katie Hobbs) and two Democratic U.S. senators (Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego) yet went to Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election. According to New York Times reporters Reis Thebault and Kellen Browning, Arizona Republicans are having a heated debate over two competing visions for their party — one that finds far-right MAGA culture warriors up against the type of traditional conservatives who dominated Arizona politics for decades.
"The bombastic, culture-war brand of politics embraced by Mr. Trump's most vocal allies in Arizona has proved a poor fit with the moderate Arizona voters who often decide statewide contests," Thebault and Browning report in the Times. "They have repeatedly passed over Republican firebrands, including Kari Lake and Blake Masters, in favor of Democrats they see as less extreme.
Some Republicans fear the party is poised to repeat its mistake this year by nominating (Rep. Andy) Biggs in Tuesday's GOP primary to face Gov. Katie Hobbs, a vulnerable Democratic incumbent, in November. Seeking to alleviate those concerns, Mr. Biggs has spent much of his campaign attempting to persuade voters that he is more electable than Ms. Lake, whose polarizing comments and baseless claims of election fraud alienated independents and even some Republicans during her unsuccessful bids for governor and Senate."
Biggs, who formerly chaired the House Freedom Caucus, is known for being a far-right Trump ally. But according to Thebault and Browning, he is trying to appear more moderate as he competes for Arizona's 2026 GOP gubernatorial nomination.
"On the debate stage last month in Arizona," the Times reporters note, "Rep. Andy Biggs, the leading candidate in the state's Republican primary for governor, did not try to convince voters that he was the most conservative candidate in the race. He did not tout his Freedom Caucus bona fides, nor his push to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Instead, he styled himself as a bipartisan dealmaker who has worked with Democrats, including Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona. 'Here's the bottom line: I know how to reach across the aisle,' Mr. Biggs said during the debate."
Arizona Republicans, according to Thebault and Browning, "have been at war with one another up and down the ballot, from the governor's contest to lower-profile races." Turning Point USA, the right-wing group founded by the late Charlie Kirk, has been heavily involved in Arizona GOP primaries — and the Times reporters note that the group's "heavy hand has begun to draw backlash."
Veteran GOP strategist/pollster Paul Bentz told the Times, "The dominant force in the primary at this point is the MAGA wing. It's a contest to see who can be the most MAGA."
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AN 5 26
The Republicans running for governor in their respective states on election denier platforms include Minnesota's Mike Lindell, who founded MyPillow; Arizona's Rep. Andy Biggs;
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AN 4 26
A Green Party candidate for governor in Arizona appears to have many Republican financial supporters, observed The Phoenix *New Times*.
A report this week found candidate Risa Lombardo had no real affiliation with the Green Party. She's required to be a Green Party member to run as one, but The New Times hasn't been able to find out when she signed up.
"Instead, Lombardo may be a 'sham' or 'stealth MAGA' candidate who is in fact a member of a local independent conservative group," said the report.
It's an observation that the Green Party noticed as well in December.
“We do not know these candidates and they have never been involved in the AZGP,” the party wrote on X. The party also said that those working to gather signatures for Lombardo's candidacy were calling such candidates "independents.
"There are just more than 5,000 registered Green Party members in the state, according to the Arizona Secretary of State," said the New Times. "But Green Party candidates can draw far more votes than that, albeit not enough to actually win many elections. Two years ago, Eduardo Quintana, the party’s ultimate candidate for the Senate, topped 75,000 votes. Sen. Ruben Gallego won that race by just more than 80,000 votes, and plenty of other recent contests have been much closer."
The other curious candidates are fellow gubernatorial candidate Lisa Castillo, who failed to secure enough signatures to get on the ballot, and Secretary of State candidate Duwayne Collier.
Well-known Green Party candidate William Pounds IV is also listed as a write-in candidate.
There isn't much public information available about Lombardo, the report said. She's shown as being 65 and having lived in the state for 35 years. There's no campaign website and there are no campaign donations. There isn't even a photo provided in the Secretary of State's filing. The phone number listed on the campaign documents goes to an unanswered Google Voice number owned by someone else, the report said.
In a statement of candidacy featured on the Secretary of State's website, Lombardo claims, “I am part of the Green party because my personal values resonate with its mission statement.”
A longtime Green Party member, Gary Swing, called it “about as vague as it can be.”
“It’s just a blanket silhouette of a person,” Swing told New Times.
Arizona Green Party Secretary John Ralston refused to comment.
The report explained that it isn't the first time someone has tried “hijacking the Green Party’s ballot line for their own purposes,” Swing added. He said that the goal is to “try to take votes away from the Democrats of those offices and help to elect Republicans by splitting the vote.”
In 2024, candidates Mike Norton and Arturo Hernandez filed to run for the U.S. Senate. Party members hadn't heard of them either. They alleged that the man were "outside interests of meddling in the party’s primary elections for political gain," said the report.
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an 4 26
Critics say Erika Kirk’s Turning Point USA (TPUSA) has gone toxic in red-state Arizona, possibly to the point of derailing races it sticks its nose in.
“Turning Point USA has been blamed by a senior Arizona Democrat after conservative‑backed candidates fell short in a closely watched election for control of the Salt River Project (SRP) board, which oversees the state’s largest public utility,” reports Newsweek.
The races involve the critical Salt River Project board, which makes decisions over access and pricing for resources, and it sets the economic structure of the state and some of its neighbors. But Newsweek reports Arizona House Democratic Leader Oscar De Los Santos saying the conservative activist group’s heavy involvement in the race mobilized opposition voters and gave his own party an unintended boost toward clean‑energy aligned candidates.
“TPUSA pumped an unprecedented amount of money into this election,” De Los Santos wrote on X. “Voters came out in droves against TPUSA. Turnout was more than 400 percent of 2024 turnout.”
Turning Point USA worked arm-in-arm with the brand of President Donald Trump, at least until TPUSA factions began opposing Trump’s invasion of Iran. But the two appear to still smell enough alike to make a vote against one a vote against both.
“Leadership elections for the Salt River Project are usually sleepy affairs, but this year’s races were unusually high-profile,” reported the Phoenix New Times. “That’s because Turning Point Action, the political arm of the Charlie Kirk-founded Turning Point USA, decided to flex its financial and organizational might in the battle to control the massive public utility, which serves 2 million customers throughout much of the East Valley. Turning Point spent gobs of money advertising for a pro-industry slate of candidates and even sent an army of employees and volunteers to harvest ballots — a legal practice in SRP elections — in hopes of fending off a progressive slate called the Clean Energy Team.”
“For all that effort, Turning Point’s toxic brand may have worked against it,” the Times said.
The Clean Energy Team flipped two seats on the 14-member district board, shifting control of the body to clean-energy-friendly board members more open to renewable energy investment and more skeptical of fossil fuels and data centers. But team also “gained several seats on the district’s 30-member advisory council,” said The Times. “In fact, in 13 head-to-head races for district leadership — including races for president and vice president — Clean Energy Team candidates won 11 of the matchups.”
re
hugh c
Turning Point USA (TPUSA) has been blamed by a senior Arizona Democrat after conservative‑backed candidates fell short in a closely watched election for control of the Salt River Project (SRP) board, which oversees the state’s largest public utility.
Newsweek has contacted Turning Point Action, TPUSA's advocacy and campaign arm, through its website for comment.
Why It Matters
The SRP is one of the most critical water and power systems in the Southwest, providing water to hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland as well as electricity to millions of residents. The composition of its board therefore shapes decisions over access and pricing for these resources, while also influencing the state’s economic structure and that of the wider region.
What To Know
Arizona House Democratic Leader Oscar De Los Santos said the conservative activist group’s heavy involvement in the race mobilized opposition voters and helped tip the balance toward clean‑energy aligned candidates.
“TPUSA pumped an unprecedented amount of money into this election,” De Los Santos wrote on X. “Voters came out in droves against TPUSA. Turnout was more than 400 percent of 2024 turnout.”
^Read ^More
News
[
Charlie Kirk Ally Says He’d Back Trump Impeachment Under This Circumstance](https://www.newsweek.com/charlie-kirk-ally-trump-impeachment-andrew-kolvet-11799764)
Elections were held this week for control of the SRP board, pitting a group of conservative-backed candidates against clean-energy advocates.
According to unofficial results published on the SRP website, several TPUSA-backed candidates were successful, including President Chris Dobson and Vice President Barry Paceley. However, their opponents have secured an eight-to-six majority on the board, per reporting from The New York Times and The Arizona Republic.
Early voting for the utility board election began in March, with the race quickly shaping into a contest by between clean-energy candidates and those backed by Turning Point USA, the group founded by the late activist Charlie Kirk.
Turning Point Action chief operating officer Tyler Bowyer said that the race, and the group’s involvement, could set the stage for other upcoming elections in the state, telling E&E News: “The SRP territories, they’re pretty blue. If we can get turnout and activate the toughest place in the state for us right now, that could play a huge role for us later on in November.”
According to The Arizona Republic, citing a spokesperson for the SRP, around four times as many ballots were cast in this year’s race as in 2024.
And those on the clean-energy slate were able to make sizable gains, flipping a number of board seats—and taking control of the board—while securing victories in advisory council elections, doubling their representation from four to eight out of 30 seats, The Arizona Republicreported on Wednesday.
However, as well as the presidency and vice presidency, traditional SRP candidates maintained control of the water board—results Turning Point celebrated as denying clean-energy advocates full control of the project.
What People Are Saying
Arizona House Democratic Leader Oscar De Los Santos posted to X:“MONUMENTAL ELECTION EARTHQUAKE IN ARIZONA TONIGHT: Consumer advocates & clean energy candidates defeated Turning Point USA in a huge utility election and FLIPPED the majority of the utility board. SRP will be the largest utility in the country with a clean energy majority.”
“After the massive Democratic victories we’ve seen across the country, the blue wave has now hit Arizona,” he wrote in a separate post. “Just wait until November: TPUSA is going to get crushed at the ballot box. Mark my words.”
SRP vice president Barry Paceley told The Arizona Republic:“We will strive to keep the most affordable rates, highest reliability, and seek the most economic and clean energy generation. We are saddened that several of our highly qualified candidates were not elected who would've been instrumental in the future success of Salt River Project."
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an 4 26
Arizona’s legislative leaders can’t dismantle a new national monument near the Grand Canyon that they claimed would harm both the state and local governments, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
In the memorandum ruling, a three-judge panel on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously agreed with a lower court ruling made more than a year ago. Both courts ruled that Republican legislative leaders lacked standing to bring the lawsuit because all of the harms they claimed the monument would cause were speculative.
Republicans in the Arizona Legislature have criticized the creation of the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni — Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument since President Joe Biden designated it in 2023. That designation effectively barred mining on the roughly one million acres of land near Grand Canyon National Park that make up the monument.
Mining on the land within the monument is already barred until at least 2032, but the new designation will ban it indefinitely.
Senate President Warren Petersen and former House Speaker Ben Toma, both Republicans, filed a lawsuit in 2024, asking the court to declare the creation of the monument unlawful and to set aside its designation.
Joining in the suit were State Treasurer Kimberly Yee, who is also a Republican, Mohave County, Colorado City and the town of Fredonia.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, alongside Gov. Katie Hobbs, both Democrats, intervened in the lawsuit to argue for the preservation of the monument.
Mayes celebrated the win on Wednesday.
“Today’s ruling is a victory for the people of Arizona and for the Indigenous communities whose ancestral homelands are protected by this monument,” Mayes said in a statement. “The court rejected every argument Senate President Warren Petersen, Speaker of the House Steve Montenegro, and Treasurer Kimberly Yee put forward. I am proud to have stood up to defend these sacred and important lands.”
Biden created the monument in response to advocacy from the Native American communities whose ancestral homelands are located in and near the Grand Canyon and who still rely on the canyon for natural and cultural resources that are significant and sacred to their communities.
In the unsigned memorandum, Judges Consuelo Callahan, John Owens and Michelle Friedland wrote that the Arizona Legislature couldn’t base its arguments for dismantling the monument on its “fears of hypothetical future harm.”
Callahan was appointed to the Ninth Circuit by President George W. Bush, while Owens and Friedland were appointed by President Barack Obama.
“It’s sad to see the Ninth Circuit kicked the can down the road,” Petersen said in a statement to the Arizona Mirror.
Petersen said he was disappointed that the court decided the challenge “came too soon” and failed to address the legislature’s claim that Biden lacked the authority to create the monument in the first place.
“Arizona families should not have to wait years while our land and economic opportunities remain locked up,” he said. “We will continue fighting to protect Arizona’s economy, jobs, and state sovereignty from this expansive federal land lock-up, including through any available avenues at the federal level. We are actively working with the Trump administration to undo this illegal land grab.”
In the challenge, the Arizona Legislature argued that the Antiquities Act of 1906, which Biden used to designate the monument, didn’t actually give him the power to do so.
Instead of addressing that claim, the courts ruled that none of the entities that brought the challenge could establish a concrete injury upon which they could base their case.
“Their alleged loss of future tax revenue depends on uranium prices being sufficiently high in 2032 (or whenever the pre-existing protections expire) such that third-party companies would choose to begin mining,” the appellate judges wrote. “But it is speculative whether the right economic conditions and incentives for uranium mining will exist so far into the future.”
The courts agreed that claims from the government entities that the creation of the monument was losing them tax revenue on geothermal and mineral leasing were also speculative.
“Plaintiffs fail to allege that any entity has ever sought to engage in ‘mineral or geothermal leasing,’ or that the monument land even contains those resources,” the judges wrote.
The Ninth Circuit found Colorado City’s argument that the creation of the monument endangered its future water supply equally unconvincing. Colorado City claimed that because its water was supplied from an aquifer beneath the monument, the federal government might decide to restrict access to that water in the future.
The judges wrote that Biden’s proclamation doesn’t alter existing water rights and “there is otherwise no reason to speculate that the federal government will ‘reduce Colorado City’s water supply,’ as Colorado City fears.”
The Ninth Circuit also disagreed with the Arizona Legislature’s claim that the creation of the monument strips it of its power to sell, lease and set royalty rates for state land surrounded by the monument. The judges wrote that the legislature could “continue to manage and dispose of state land as it sees fit.”
The court similarly shot down the Arizona Legislature’s claim that the monument designation harmed the state by forcing it to channel time and money to “passing laws, holding hearings, and publicly commenting” on issues caused by the monument.
“A plaintiff may not ‘manufacture’ an injury by ‘simply choosing to spend money,’” the Ninth Circuit wrote.
The judges wrote that the legislature had failed to show that it would have suffered any harm if it hadn’t passed laws, held hearings or made public comments relating to the monument.
The judges also dismissed the legislature’s claim that it, and the other plaintiffs, might lose money in the future due to increases in energy prices caused by the ban on uranium mining within the monument.
“Future energy prices depend on many unknown variables and the ‘unfettered choices’ of innumerable third parties,” the judges wrote. “Any future economic harm from higher energy prices caused by the Proclamation is accordingly far too speculative to support standing.”
The tribal nations with ancestral lands within the monument include the Havasupai Tribe, Hopi Tribe, Hualapai Tribe, Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians, Las Vegas Paiute Tribe, Moapa Band of Paiutes, Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, Navajo Nation, San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe, Yavapai-Apache Nation, Pueblo of Zuni, and the Colorado River Indian Tribes.
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AN 2 26
OMFG VOTER SUPPRESS ICE
Former Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer is sounding the alarm.
Speaking to CNN on Thursday, Richer said that if SB 1570 becomes law, it "would prove a significant disruption."
The law would require federal immigration officials to be on hand at every polling location in the state during the 2026 election. It would also require local officials to arrange for ICE agents to be present, reported AZFamily.com. It does promise that federal officials "shall not interfere with the casting or depositing of ballots except as otherwise authorized by law" and cannot "question, detain or arrest a voter solely for the purpose of determining voter eligibility, except as otherwise allowed under state or federal law."
"And it doesn't even really make sense because ICE, as I understand it, is about naturalization, about whether or not you're a United States citizen, but you don't have to bring proof of citizenship when you show up to vote," said Richer.
Republicans at the federal level have attempted to change that, too, however. The SAVE America Act, which stands for Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE) America Act. It's a law that the Brennan Center for Justice has called “the most restrictive voting bill ever.”
The new successor claimed that they reviewed 60,000 registered voters in Arizona and found 137 were not U.S. citizens and 60 had voted in previous elections.
Richer said it's important to understand the context. Maricopa County has about 2.6 million registered voters in it. So, he wanted to know more to understand what the new recorder was referencing.
"Every year, we would review our voter rolls, and we would make sure that there were no irregularities and we would forward any cases that deserve more investigation to the county attorney's office and to the attorney general," Richer said.
That has changed, however, he noted.
"Since I left office ... the federal government has unrolled its saved database that purports to allow states to upload their voter registration rolls to see if there are any non-citizens," he explained. "The problem with that, as reported by ProPublica in recent weeks, is that it returns quite a few false positives."
He said that while it can lead to further investigation, "registrants should not be taken off of the rolls simply because they are pinged by the database, and I trust that the county recorder's office under my successor will do further investigation on those voters."
CNN host Boris Sanchez noted that the federal government is also seeking driver's license information, partial Social Security numbers, and other data to connect to voter databases. Sanchez asked Richer what the federal government wanted with that data.
By and large, I think the federal government has sued, now, about 28 states. States are resisting because they feel that it violates both state law and federal law to give up their entire voter registration databases, which include personal identifying information like your Social Security number or your driver's license.
He noted that in all of those cases, so far, the federal government has lost.
"I don't think it's an appropriate request from the federal government. I am, however, sympathetic to wanting to do list maintenance. I'm sympathetic to wanting to make sure that non-citizens aren't participating in our elections," Richer added.
Richer commented that, given the governor of Arizona is the former secretary of state, she is well-informed on voting rights. If SB 1570 passes the legislature, he doesn't believe she will sign it. It's unclear whether there are the votes to override such a veto.
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an vb 11 25
A video circulating on social media of Pima County election workers emptying an overfilled ballot drop box prompted threats against them that county officials have reported to law enforcement, county officials said.
Pima County Recorder Gabriella Cázares-Kelly said she reported the threats this week to Tucson police and the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center. Cázares-Kelly also said the workers followed all laws and required procedures.
“I’m surprised people didn’t quit on the spot,” she said in an interview with Votebeat Arizona Thursday.
The video was shot Tuesday as a bipartisan team of two workers and a supervisor began unloading the drop box, which has a capacity of 1,500 ballot envelopes but at the time had 3,000 stuffed into it, Cázares-Kelly said.
The 42-second video shows the workers pulling out ballot envelopes and placing them into a transfer bag. It also shows one of the workers telling a woman that the box is full, and she can instead place her ballot envelope directly into the transfer bag. The video was reposted by some social media accounts with large followings, though Votebeat couldn’t immediately determine the initial source of the video.
Cázares-Kelly said the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center — which says it is a joint effort between the Arizona Department of Public Safety, Arizona Department of Homeland Security, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and other agencies — initially alerted her to the posts about the video late Tuesday.
Cázares-Kelly said she became aware Wednesday of threats posted on social media, some of which she said have since been removed. She read some to Votebeat, including one that said, “Shoot them, shoot them. Why are people just standing there and filming rather than stopping them?”
In a statement and a subsequent interview, Cázares-Kelly, a Democrat, stressed that the workers, who were making an emergency pickup because the box was overfilled, were following all laws and protocols. They wore lanyards with identification badges and were putting the ballot envelopes into transfer bags, which they subsequently sealed with zip ties and logged according to chain-of-custody procedures, she said. One of the workers is holding the zip ties as she moves envelopes from the box to the bag in the video.
In the statement, the Pima County Recorder’s Office said the team followed all necessary protocols, including taking the ballots to the ballot processing center “in a rental car clearly marked as an Official Election vehicle,” notifying the main office of arrival and departure times, and completing required transfer documentation.
The drop box was at a county recorder building, and in the video, a surveillance camera can be seen on the wall.
Arizona Republican Party Chair Gina Swoboda, who is also a certified elections officer in Arizona, said she saw the video and also saw nothing wrong.
“What I see is three election workers doing their job,” Swoboda said. “They open the drop box and it’s full and that’s the sign of a good turnout.”
Swoboda said she tried calling the Pima County Recorder’s Office after seeing the video and the social media response, but the lines were jammed. Swoboda said the posts on the social media platform X mischaracterizing the video are part of a pattern in which innocent people are endangered by posts inaccurately suggesting they are doing something wrong. She said this trend is dangerous amid rising political violence.
Among those reposting the video Tuesday was state Sen. Jake Hoffman, a Republican, who wrote, “Well this looks super duper secure,” adding a frowning emoji. Reached for comment about whether he had done due diligence before reposting the video and told of the threats, Hoffman, a Republican, said the questions show why people don’t trust the media.
“What did I say that would lead to them getting death threats?” he asked.
Hoffman and others, including state Rep. Alexander Kolodin, a Republican who is running for secretary of state, also posted on Election Day citing reports that Cázares-Kelly’s office was turning away political party observers at polling places. But there were no polling places, since the election in Pima County was a mail-only election. The observers were turned away from ballot-replacement centers.
The state Republican Party account, controlled by Swoboda, tweeted that there is no legal requirement to allow observers into a ballot replacement center, and that Pima County has never allowed them there.
Hoffman said Swoboda “sounds more like a Democrat these days.” Kolodin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Cázares-Kelly said people should call her office for verification when they see social media posts accusing election workers of wrongdoing.
“I really hope that people can recognize the impact this is having on the security of our elections and our democracy,” Cázares-Kelly said. “Our elections are secure, they’re transparent, and I want to say that they’re safe, but right now I can’t say that with this type of activity.”
*Contact Votebeat at az.tips@votebeat.org.
Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.
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an sn 10 25
A Politico article about a leaked group chat of Young Republican leaders from across the country making racist, homophobic and misogynistic comments includes two people from Arizona, one of whom has documented ties to the white nationalist groyper movement.
The group chat of top officials in Young Republican Federation chapters from across the country, dubbed “RESTOREYR,” was leaked to Politico, which reported on a litany of comments made by participants. Offensive comments included making racist remarks about Black people, talking about putting Democrats in gas chambers, forcibly raping their enemies and more. The chat includes more than 250 slurs and one person saying “I love Hitler,” according to Politico.
One of the members of the chat was Arizona Young Republican Chairman Luke Mosiman, 25, who was alleged to have made racially charged comments about Black people and even floated an idea of linking their opponents in an election over control of the Young Republican National Federation to white supremacist groups — before saying it could backfire because it could result in the Young Republicans they needed to win the elections instead backing their opponent.
The Young Republican National Federation released a statement following the Politico report condemning the comments and calling for those involved to resign “from all positions within their state and local Young Republican organizations.”
In Kansas, the chairman of the state’s Republican Party announced that their Young Republicans chapter, which was involved in the chat leaks, was shut down. And he Arizona Republican Party came out strongly against the “disturbing language” used by Young Republican leaders in a statement released shortly after the story was published Tuesday
But Mosiman and the Arizona Young Republicans resisted the call that he and Rachel Hope, whose comments in the group chat were also mentioned in Politico’s story, resign. In a written statement released late Wednesday, the group instead cast Mosiman and Hope, who is the organization’s events chair, as victims, saying they “firmly reject any involvement in the ongoing political witch hunt targeting fellow Young Republican members.”
Their statement called it “disheartening” to “witness the double standard” displayed by their opponents within the conservative movement. They also lashed out at critics, saying some have failed to condemn violent texts by Virginia Democratic Attorney General candidate Jay Jones or social media posts celebrating the death of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk, who was killed last month.
However, the group did condemn “Nazi ideology,” though its statement fell short of acknowledging what was said or apologizing for it.
“We express our sincere regret and unequivocally condemn any rhetoric that could be interpreted as sympathetic to Nazi ideology,” the statement says. The lengthy statement also says that the group has concerns over the way the messages were obtained and their validity.
Far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos has claimed online, posting a sworn affidavit, that the chats were leaked by Gavin Wax, a staffer in Trump’s State Department who formerly led the New York Young Republican club, whose own problematic chats were revealed in 2023.
Mosiman has been viewed by some as a rising star in Arizona conservative politics, but he also has close ties with the far-right and had courted controversy long before the group chat.
Hitler’s birthday
In April 2022, U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar was listed as a “special guest” at an event in Tempe scheduled for April 20, a date that is revered by white supremacists and neo-Nazis because it is Adolf Hitler’s birthday.
The event had been organized by the American Populist Union, a white nationalist group that is closely aligned with groypers, the name for a group of young, male white nationalists who strive for their ideas to become a part of the Republican mainstream and are largely followers of white nationalist Nick Fuentes. In 2021, Gosar was the first elected official to speak at Fuentes’ America First Political Action Conference.
After the Mirror reported on Gosar’s promotion and anticipated attendance at the event and spurred national media coverage, Gosar pulled out. His office said he was never planning to attend, even though he promoted it on his social media accounts.
Mosiman attended, and was later featured in photos posted by APU and in
. Mosiman also follows a number of accounts connected to the groyper movement on his X account.
“Like it or not, Nick Fuentes is becoming a force in the GOP, you all need to understand that,” Mosiman said in a March 2021 tweet. “Stop acting like it’s a few nut cases, it’s not. Ignoring it isn’t working.”
Mosiman went on to say that he wasn’t a Fuentes supporter but he had watched his “Afpac speech” and it “was not bad.”
In that 2021 AFPAC speech, Fuentes called the Jan. 6 insurrection, where seven people died, “lighthearted mischief” and stressed white nationalist talking points. Mosiman was also photographed in September 2021 protesting U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly by the groyper-aligned Arizona College Republicans United. The photograph was posted in Instagram with the caption “CRU executed a protest with Groypers against Senator Mark Kelly.”
Far-right YouTuber John Doyle, one of the featured speakers at the April 2022 APU event, organized a “Stop the Steal” rally in Michigan with Fuentes and has posted highly misogynistic content, such as saying that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Doyle, along with other members of APU, were also in attendance at the first 76Fest, which one of its organizers dubbed “Hitler Youth, without the Hitler.”
Mosiman also promoted an event in December 2021 that he called “one of the most based events of the year” which was being put on by Republicans for National Renewal, which has ties to ethno-nationalism, and co-hosted by APU.
That event brought local politicians face to face with a host of far-right extremists, including a number of prominent groypers.
APU has denied ties to white nationalism or knowledge of the significance of the date of its 4/20 event.
TPUSA and Arizona lawmakers
But Mosiman’s involvement in Arizona politics goes beyond the groyper movement.
Online, Mosiman often interacted with many local politicians, and in recent years started coming to the defense of conservative youth organization Turning Point USA.
“I used to be not a huge fan of TPUSA, but after seeing hard working and effective conservatives like (Austin Smith) and (Tyler Bowyer), I changed my mind,” Mosiman wrote on X in 2022, referring to two of the Arizona-based group’s leaders.
Both Smith and Bowyer are listed as members of the advisory team for the Arizona Young Republicans chapter that Mosiman leads. TPUSA did not respond to a request for comment for this story. Neither did Nancy Cottle, Republican state Rep. Matt Gress and GOP state Sen. Jake Hoffman, who were also listed as advisory board members.
The website for the Arizona Young Republicans went offline on Wednesday, but archived snapshots were still online.
“Without a doubt, Turning Point Action had the most meaningful grassroots impact on Arizona,” Mosiman wrote on X on Nov. 11, 2024, shortly after last year’s election. “Hats off to (Tyler Bowyer) and his phenomenal staff.”
Bowyer is the Chief Operating Officer of Turning Point Action, the political action arm of Turning Point USA.
TPUSA has long been a target of the groyper movement ,but in recent years has seen itself move farther to the right and courting controversy for hiring racists.
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an 9 25
The Arizona Court of Appeals on Monday declined to take up Attorney General Kris Mayes’ appeal of a lower court’s decision to send the Arizona fake electors case back to a grand jury.
In the order, signed by Chief Judge Kent Cattani, the court said the decision was made based on the judges’ discretion.
In April 2024, an Arizona grand jury indicted 18 people for their involvement in efforts to fraudulently overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election after Democrat Joe Biden won the state by around 10,000 votes.
All of the fake electors involved in the scheme were indicted, including Arizona Sen. Jake Hoffman, leader of the Arizona Freedom Caucus, former Arizona Sen. Anthony Kern, member of the Arizona Freedom Caucus and Tyler Bowyer, Turning Point USA CEO.
But in May, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sam Myers agreed with arguments from attorneys representing the fake electors that prosecutors had failed to disclose the full text of the Electoral Count Act to the members of the grand jury prior to the indictment. Myers ruled that Mayes would have to convene a new grand jury and share the text of the act in its entirety if she wanted to move forward with the case.
Instead, Mayes appealed the decision to the Arizona Court of Appeals. Now that the appellate court has declined the case, Mayes’ next steps are either to petition the Arizona Supreme Court to reverse the trial court’s decision or to take the case back to a grand jury.
In response to the Appeals Court’s decision, the Arizona Republican Party issued a statement reiterating a claim from many of the indicted that the case was politically motivated.
“Arizona families deserve an Attorney General who prosecutes criminals, not political opponents,” AZGOP Chairwoman Gina Swoboda said in the statement. “Five years later, Kris Mayes is still fixated on 2020 while violent crime, fentanyl trafficking, and border chaos threaten our communities every single day. This obsession is not justice — it’s politics.”
Also among the indicted were Kelli Ward, who led the AZGOP at the time, Gregory Safsten, who was the AZGOP’s executive director, and former Trump staffers and campaign members including Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows and Christina Bobb.
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AN 9 25
House refuses to investigate 'vile' profanity-laden comments from AZ Republican
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PC vouch 8 25
https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/376-how-democracies-fail 1:07 is not full?
mayfair london uberrich shell corps own houses
putin dep mayor stole $ smuggled abroad w help of banksters in west;
jordan weaponization performative 53 min diresta sio
maricopa az election guy had to quit bc threat?
excerpt scholarship offered
https://samharris.substack.com/p/making-sense-429-the-new-world-order
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ggl
Feb 19, 2024For Clint Hickman, an official who helped lead Arizona's largest country through some of the most difficult moments of the pandemic and the 2020 election, the current moment in American life feels like the right one to quit.
Alternet.org
https://www.alternet.org › top-arizona-election-official-resign
Top Arizona election official forced to resign as threats get 'worse ...
Feb 18, 2024Top Arizona election official forced to resign as threats get 'worse and worse': report Maricopa County Supervisor Clint Hickman, Image via AZ Family/Arizona News.
PressReader.com
https://www.pressreader.com › usa › the-guardian-usa › 20240219 › 281625310227917
Top Maricopa county official quits as election looms: 'All I do is play ...
Feb 19, 2024For Clint Hickman, an official who helped lead Arizona's largest country through some of the most difficult moments of the pandemic and the 2020 election, the current moment in American life feels like the right one to quit.
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Oficina del Registrador del Condado de Maricopa
Recorder Heap Refuses to Back Down in the Face of Unprecedented Attack ...
1 day agoMore than 60 percent of Arizona's population lives in Maricopa County, and the stakes could not be higher for the integrity of Arizona's elections. The Board of Supervisors' sabotage has dealt a serious blow to Maricopa County's elections, creating a ticking time bomb that threatens the voting rights of millions of Americans.
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The Independent
Arizona official resigning after secret recording released
A recording that emerged of a Republican elected Arizona official criticizing his GOP colleagues for opposing a partisan review of the 2020 election result in Maricopa County led him to announce ...
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MarketWatch
Arizona official resigns after secret recording reveals criticism of ...
PHOENIX (AP) — A Republican official in Arizona resigned Tuesday from the board overseeing Maricopa County after a recording emerged of him criticizing his GOP colleagues for opposing a review ...
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AP News
Arizona Republican resigns after secret recording released
PHOENIX (AP) — A Republican official in Arizona resigned Tuesday from the board overseeing Maricopa County after a recording emerged of him criticizing his GOP colleagues for opposing a review of the 2020 election.
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POLITICO
https://www.politico.com › news › 2023 › 06 › 01 › key-arizona-election-official-step-down-00099752
Bill Gates, key Arizona election official, won't run for reelection ...
Jun 1, 2023Key Arizona election official to step down amid harassment and conspiracy theories A Maricopa County board of supervisors member said he won't run again in 2024.
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Yahoo
https://www.yahoo.com › news › arizona-elections-official-quits-accusing-085554348.html
Arizona Elections Official Quits, Accusing Co-Workers Of ... - Yahoo
An Arizona county elections director quit on Tuesday after accusing local officials of politicizing her department and embracing "irrational, extremist political party views." Geraldine Roll ...
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azcentral.com
Steve Chucri will resign after election-related recordings surface
Maricopa County Supervisor Steve Chucri will resign after recordings surfaced of him talking critically about his colleagues and the 2020 election.
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Axios
https://www.axios.com › 2022 › 07 › 03 › arizona-election-officials-resign-threats
Arizona election officials resign over threats about 2020 - Axios
Two Arizona elections officials announced their resignation on Friday over threats that began after the 2020 election, according to Fox 10 Pheonix. Why it matters: The news comes nearly two years after the election that former President Donald Trump baselessly told supporters was "stolen" because of fraud.
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The Epoch Times
Arizona County Elections Director Quits, Accusing Officials of ...
Oct 25, 2024An Arizona county elections director resigned from her position on Tuesday after accusing officials of politicizing elections and creating a harmful work environment.
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Arizona Capitol Times
Rep. Biggs promises to eliminate income tax and create speedy elections as governor
If Andy Biggs is elected governor, he wants to eliminate income taxes, further secure the border and help Republican state lawmakers advance...
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an 5 25
PHOENIX — As an Arizona bill to block people from using government aid to buy soda headed to the governor’s desk in April, the nation’s top health official joined Arizona lawmakers in the state Capitol to celebrate its passage.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said to applause that the legislation was just the start and that he wanted to prevent federal funding from paying for other unhealthy foods.
“We’re not going to do that overnight,” Kennedy said. “We’re going to do that in the next four years.”
Those words of caution proved prescient when Arizona’s Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, vetoed the bill a week later. Nevertheless, state legislation to restrict what low-income people can buy using Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits is gaining momentum, boosted by Kennedy’s touting it as part of his “Make America Healthy Again” platform. At least 14 states have considered bills this year with similar SNAP restrictions on specific unhealthy foods such as candy, with Idaho and Utah passing such legislation as of mid-April.
Healthy food itself isn’t largely a partisan issue, and those who study nutrition tend to agree that reducing the amount of sugary food people eat is a good idea to avoid health consequences such as heart disease. But the question over the government’s role in deciding who can buy what has become political.
The organization largely behind SNAP restriction legislation is the Foundation for Government Accountability, a conservative policy think tank out of Florida, and its affiliated lobbying arm, which has used the name Opportunity Solutions Project.
FGA has worked for more than a decade to reshape the nation’s public assistance programs. That includes SNAP, which federal data shows helps an average of 42 million people afford food each month. It also advocates for ways to cut Medicaid, the federal-state program that connects 71 million people to subsidized health care, including efforts in Idaho and Montana this year.
FGA’s proposals often seek to limit who taps into that aid and the help they receive. Those backing the group’s mission say the goal is to save tax dollars and help people lift themselves out of poverty. Critics argue that FGA’s proposals are a backdoor way to cut off aid to people who need it and that making healthy food and health care more affordable is a better fix.
Now, FGA sees more room for change under the Trump administration and the Kennedy-led health department, calling 2025 a “window of opportunity for major reform,” according to its latest annual report.
A Vision for Limiting Government Benefits
Tarren Bragdon, a former Maine legislator, founded FGA in 2011 to promote policies to “free millions from government dependency and open the doors for them to chase their own American Dream,” he said in a statement on FGA’s website. The main foundation started out as a staff of three with about $60,000 in the bank. As of 2023, it had a budget of more than $15 million and a team of roughly 64, according to the latest available tax documents, and that’s not counting the lobbying arm.
The foundation got early funding from a grant from the State Policy Network, which has long backed right-leaning think tanks with ties to conservative activists including brothers Charles and David Koch.
FGA declined several interview requests for this article.
In recent years, the nonprofit helped draft a 2017 Mississippi law, the Jackson Free Press found, which intensified eligibility checks for public aid that made it more difficult for some applicants to qualify. It successfully pushed a 2023 effort in Idaho to impose work requirements for food benefits that health care advocates said led some recipients to lose access.
The same year, the group helped pass SNAP restrictions affecting eligibility in Iowa. Since those restrictions have taken effect, the Food Bank of Iowa has seen a record number of people show up at its pantries amid rising grocery prices and a scaling back of covid pandemic-era federal support, said Annette Hacker, a vice president at the nonprofit.
Part of the group’s strategy is to pass legislation state by state, with the idea that the crush of new laws will increase pressure on the federal government. For example, states can’t limit what food is purchased through SNAP without federal approval through a waiver process. And in the past, some of FGA’s efforts have stalled because states never got that approval.
Kennedy’s agenda now echoes some of FGA’s key messages, and he has said states can expect approval of their waivers. Meanwhile, congressional leaders are eyeing nationwide Medicaid cuts and work requirements, which FGA considers among its major issues. The foundation also has a connection working inside the administration: Its former policy director, Sam Adolphsen, was tapped to advise President Donald Trump on domestic matters.
“We’re excited to fight from Topeka to Washington, D.C., as opposed to Washington, D.C., to Topeka,” Roy Lenardson, FGA’s state government affairs director, told Kansas lawmakers in February when testifying in support of SNAP legislation there.
Shaping State Policies
In the states, FGA has become known as a conservative “thought leader,” said Brian Colby, vice president of public policy for Missouri Budget Project, a progressive nonprofit that provides analysis of state policy issues.
“Conservatives used to try to chop away at the federal budget,” Colby said. “These guys are doing it at the state level.”
In its 14 years, FGA has created a playbook to shape state policy discussions around public benefits behind the scenes. In Montana, retired Republican legislator Cary Smith, who worked with FGA, said not all of the think tank’s ideas split along party lines.
“They offer a buffet of options,” he said. “Their agenda is making government accountable; it’s in the name.”
He said besides drafting legislation, FGA provides talking points and data to help policymakers support their arguments. “They would go in and would say, ‘This is what Medicaid fraud is costing us,’” Smith said. “That would be the number you’d want to use in your bill.”In January, FGA released a memo for states to “stop taxpayer-funded junk food.” In February, Stateline reported that Wyoming Republican state Rep. Jacob Wasserburger said the group asked him to sponsor a SNAP restriction bill. The state sponsor of similar legislation in Missouri has repeated at least one of FGA’s talking points, as reported by the Missouri Independent. In Arizona, Republican Rep. Leo Biasiucci, who sponsored the SNAP legislation there, told KFF Health News FGA was behind that bill as well.
Opponents of such bills argue the proposals are not as simple as they sound. Amid debate on a SNAP bill in Montana, Kiera Condon, with the Montana Food Bank Network, testified the legislation would force grocery store workers to sort through what counts as soda or candy, “which could result in retailers not participating in SNAP at all.”
State lawmakers tabled the Montana bill in April.
Montana legislators also easily passed a bill to extend the state’s Medicaid expansion program even after FGA began publishing a series of papers that asserted the program was “breaking” Montana’s budget. FGA had presented data saying most Montanans on the program don’t work, which state data refutes.
Ed Bolen, who leads food aid strategies at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities think tank, said FGA has a pattern of proposing technical changes to existing laws and “unworkable work requirements” that cause people to lose benefits.
After working with policymakers in Kansas for a decade, FGA helped pass legislation that limited how long people can access cash assistance, added work requirements to SNAP, and banned the state from spending federal or state funds to promote public aid. Many of those changes came through 2015 legislation known as the “HOPE Act” drafted by FGA, The Washington Post reported.
Analysis from Kansas Appleseed, an advocacy organization for low-income Kansans, found the SNAP caseload sharply declined after the bill was enacted because of the new hurdles, dropping from 140,000 households in January 2014 to 90,000 as of January 2020.
“It’s death by a thousand cuts,” said Karen Siebert, an adviser for Harvesters, a community food bank network in Kansas and Missouri. “Some of these FGA proposals are such complex policies, it’s hard to argue against and to explain the ripple effects.”
In 2024, the foundation produced more than two dozen videos featuring state politicians from across the nation touting the organization’s goals and dozens of research papers arguing public benefits are wrecking state budgets. FGA also has its own polling team to produce data out of the states it’s working to influence.
The organization released a list of 14 states it labeled as “redder and better” places to exert more influence. That included Idaho, where the group has four registered lobbyists in the state Capitol.
In 2023, FGA helped present and successfully lobby for legislation there to require people receiving food aid to work at least 80 hours a month. The organization called the resulting law “landmark welfare reform” years in the making.
And this year, Idaho lawmakers passed more requirements for people enrolled in Medicaid who can work. FGA staffers worked with one of the co-sponsors of the legislation on a similar bill last year that failed, then again this year. A compromise bill passed with FGA’s backing, marking another victory for the foundation.
David Lehman, a lobbyist for the Idaho Association of Community Providers, which represents health organizations that have opposed FGA bills, said Idaho illustrates how FGA works with sympathetic lawmakers in conservative states to gain more ground.
“They’re pushing an already rolling rock downhill,” he said.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom
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Arizona Republicans remove requirements from their own jobs
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‘Jesus is better than a psychologist’: AZ GOP wants chaplains to be in public schools
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Arizona's political climate is radically different from what it was 40 or 50 years ago.
Once a deep red state that was synonymous with the old-school GOP conservatism of Sens. Barry Goldwater and John McCain, Arizona is now a swing state with a Democratic governor (Katie Hobbs), two Democratic U.S. senators (Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego) and a Democratic state attorney general (Kris Mayes). President Donald Trump carried Arizona in 2024 but lost it to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020.
Many traditional Goldwater and McCain conservatives are frustrated by the gains that MAGA conspiracy theorists have made in Arizona. And another source of frustration for them is the presence of far-right militia groups in their state.
READ MORE:'We are starting to worry': Economist sounds alarm on 'near-term downside' of 1 million DOGE layoffs
In an article published on February 25, Phoenix News Times reporter T.J. L'Heureux describes seven of the "most concerning" far-right groups with a strong Arizona presence — including the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, Arizona Border Recon, Veterans on Patrol, Mayhem Solutions Group, Patriot Front, and the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association.
L'Heureux explains, "Suffice it to say that hate groups and anti-government extremists have always been attracted to Trump. Now that their man, and Elon Musk, is back in power and dismantling the federal government with reckless abandon, experts who track extremist groups are acutely concerned they will feel emboldened to leave the shadows and operate openly. Those experts have their eyes on Arizona."
L'Heureux notes, however, that while "neo-Nazi, white supremacist, anti-immigrant, (and) anti-Muslim" groups "dominate the extremist landscape in the American South and Northeast, they play a secondary role in the Southwest."
Extremism expert Kristofer Goldsmith told the Phoenix New Times, "In Arizona, anti-government groups tend to be the most active."
READ MORE:Federal employees told to assume 'malign foreign actors' are reading e-mails to Musk
Rachel Goldwasser of the Southern Poverty Law Center, told the Phoenix New Times, "Arizona is a hotbed…. As long as we've determined they're actually out there pushing their propaganda and are recruiting or engaging people and are trying to or successfully radicalizing people, we define that as activity. The groups we look at can be very different in terms of their activities, even if their ideologies are similar."
READ MORE:'May never result in charges': Trump’s top prosecutor won’t sign arrest warrant for GOP rep
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'Less expensive to do': Arizona Republicans advance firing squad execution proposal
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A top Arizona Republican is hoping the Trump administration will do what a federal court wouldn’t: overturn a national monument protecting lands around the Grand Canyon so that mining companies can extract uranium and other valuable minerals from the land.
Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen sent a letter to the U.S. Department of the Interior on Feb. 7 requesting a meeting with Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum to discuss ending the “government overreach” of the national monument and ban on uranium mining in the area.
At issue is the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument, which President Joe Biden created in 2023. Petersen and Ben Toma, who was at the time the speaker of the state House of Representatives, sued to have the designation revoked.
The GOP’s lawsuit argued that Biden did not have the power to create the monument, which spans 917,618 acres the federal government already managed. They also claimed it harms both the state and local communities by permanently barring uranium mining — limiting the state’s potential future revenue — and complicating land development.
On Jan. 27, Judge Stephen McNamee ruled that the Arizona Legislature and the other plaintiffs did not have standing to sue and dismissed the case.
The Grand Canyon is the ancestral homeland of multiple tribal nations across the Southwest, and tribes still rely on the canyon for natural and cultural resources that are significant and sacred to their communities.
The monument protects thousands of historical and scientific objects, sacred sites, vital water sources and the ancestral homelands of many Indigenous communities.
The monument’s name comes from the Indigenous names the Havasupai and Hopi gave to the area. In the Havasupai language, Baaj Nwaavjo means “where Indigenous peoples roam,” while I’tah Kukveni means “our ancestral footprints” in the Hopi language.
The monument restricts new mining within the area, but any mining rights in place before the designation have not been impacted.
Petersen called the Biden administration’s designation of Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni a “land grab,” and said keeping it in place contributes to high energy costs and the United States’ reliance on foreign powers.
“Ending the federal government’s hold of this piece of land falls in line with the Trump Administration’s goals of energy independence, job creation, and lower costs for Americans,” he said in a written statement.
Petersen said that government scientists believe that there is more than 300 million pounds of uranium is buried near the Grand Canyon.
“The energy that could be produced from this mineral is astronomical,” he said.
“I look forward to working with Secretary Burgum on this matter of importance for Arizona and the entire nation,” he added.
Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com.
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this article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.
WILLCOX, Ariz. — Peggy Judd knew exactly what she needed to do.
Judd, a Republican on the board of supervisors in Cochise County, Arizona, had to vote yes Wednesday on whether to certify the county’s presidential election results. If she didn’t, she would be not only breaking the law, but also violating the terms of her plea agreement.
That’s because, two years ago, after the 2022 midterms, she made a different choice. She and another Republican supervisor voted to delay the certification of that election past the legal deadline.
That decision made her one of a handful of local Republican officials around the country who unsuccessfully tried to halt or delay certification of an election. It also upended Judd’s life.
As she prepares to leave public office at the end of the year, she’s still reckoning with the consequences. And the county, a rural region in the southeastern corner of the state along the Mexican border, is still working through the distrust, turmoil, and national attention that came with Judd’s vote.
After the vote to delay, State Attorney General Kris Mayes launched an investigation into Judd and fellow Supervisor Tom Crosby. A grand jury later charged them with two felonies — conspiracy and interference with an election officer.
Judd initially fought the charges, and amassed $70,000 in legal bills, she told Votebeat in an interview Tuesday. She collected contributions to help pay the tab, including, she acknowledged for the first time, $5,000 wired from the Legal Offense Fund of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who has promoted false theories about elections.
But despite promises from GOP activists and leaders to help anyone who bucked the system, most of the burden fell on her.
Judd, 62, signed a plea agreement last month admitting that she failed to certify the election as required by law. She was sentenced to 90 days of unsupervised probation.
That means that if she didn’t certify this election on time, she could be jailed.
Crosby, for his part, has pleaded not guilty, and his trial is scheduled for January.
Feeling betrayed: ‘I don’t want to be a Republican anymore’
Judd, a former state representative, is preparing to sell her house to her daughter, mostly because she needs money to pay her legal bills. Judd moved in with her mother this summer.
She said the local Republican Party she had helped nurture since the Tea Party movement began in 2008 has turned against her. She doesn’t feel welcome at the local GOP meetings now, she said, and has faced criticism for not going all the way on the effort to hand-count ballots and block certification. She said she plans to unregister as a Republican “soon.”...