The Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has agreed to take up a case that would have an impact on Gov. Katie Hobbs’ past censorship activities.
The case, Murthy v. Missouri, focuses on the alleged coordinated campaign by government officials and social media companies to suppress and censor certain speech on major public issues, specifically the COVID-19 lab leak theory, pandemic lockdowns, vaccine side effects, election fraud, and the Hunter Biden laptop story. Hobbs, while secretary of state and during her gubernatorial campaign, coordinated with social media companies to remove certain speech online.
Hobbs’ then-chief of staff and former assistant secretary of state, Allie Bones, said in a statement prior to Hobbs’ inauguration that it was the job of governments to purge the public square of perceived misinformation and disinformation.
“One of the ways we [make sure that voters are informed] is by working to counter disinformation online that can confuse voters,” stated Bones. “This is yet another example of conspiracy theorists trying to create chaos and confusion by casting doubt on our election system. It’s unfair to Arizona voters and it’s harmful to our democracy.”
Although SCOTUS accepted consideration of Murthy v. Missouri, they didn’t accept a lower court’s injunction preventing government officials from continuing their coordination with social media companies to moderate online speech. Justices John Roberts, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Ketanji Brown Jackson together granted the Biden administration’s petition to remove the injunction, effectively permitting the government to engage in censorship online.
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the SCOTUS majority’s suspension of the injunction was “disturbing,” and that any censorship of private speech is antithetical to democracy. Alito dismissed the Biden administration’s argument that an injunction against coordinating with social media companies to control citizens’ speech was the same as preventing government officials from speaking on a matter.
“The injunction applies only when the Government crosses the line and begins to coerce or control others’ exercise of their free-speech rights,” said Alito. “Does the Government think that the First Amendment allows Executive Branch officials to engage in such conduct? Does it have plans for this to occur between now and the time when the case is decided?”
Alito further declared that SCOTUS had effectively ruled to allow the Biden administration to continue with its First Amendment violations identified by the lower courts.
“At this time in the history of our country, what the Court has done, I fear, will be seen by some as giving the Government a green light to use heavy-handed tactics to skew the presentation of views on the medium that increasingly dominates the dissemination of news,” said Alito. “That is most unfortunate.”
Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch joined Alito in his dissent.
Gov. Hobbs issued an emergency heat declaration with an expired enforcement date the day after additional emails revealing her coordinated censorship efforts were released. Hobbs dismissed the emails as a “sideshow,” but didn’t deny allegations of maintaining unscrupulous relationships with major social media companies.
Hobbs’ past coordination with social media companies prompted the House to establish an interim ad hoc committee on Oversight, Accountability, and Big Tech. The committee first convened in September and met once more earlier this month.
While SCOTUS contemplates the case, Hobbs already has defense provided by the state’s chief legal officer.
In August, Attorney General Kris Mayes joined a 21-state coalition of Democratic attorneys general opposing the then-active federal injunction. Mayes declared that control over free speech is paramount to public safety, implying that governmental interest in safety outweighs the constitutional right of free speech.
“Social media companies and government officials must have open communication in order to ensure the safety of Americans online,” said Mayes. “A pillar of the U.S. government is to ensure the safety and wellbeing of its citizens. The lower court’s decision impedes on this protection and means federal, state and local officials cannot contact social media companies about dangerous online content.”
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes is facing a lawsuit over the use of unstaffed drop boxes to collect mail-in ballots.
Arizona Free Enterprise Club (AFEC) filed the lawsuit on Tuesday in the Yavapai County Superior Court.
AFEC argued that Arizona law requires drop boxes for mail-in ballots — or, early voted ballots — must be located at polling places and monitored by election workers. Based on that reading of statute, AFEC declared that the current Election Procedures Manual (EPM), enacted in 2019 by the former secretary of state and now-Gov. Katie Hobbs, and Fontes’ draft EPM unlawfully allowed unstaffed drop boxes.
“With no basis in statute, and supported by nothing more than executive fiat, the Secretary has authorized election officials throughout the state to employ unstaffed drop-boxes as another manner by which voters may cast their votes early,” said AFEC.
AFEC noted that the EPM provisions on the drop boxes contained zero citations to Arizona law, although the EPM issued over 1,000 citations across its pages elsewhere. AFEC said the omission was purposeful.
“The EPM’s omission of citations to Arizona’s statutes was surely not an oversight. When a statute supports an EPM regulation, the EPM cites it,” said AFEC. “Apparently, though, the EPM’s authors could find no enabling statute supporting unstaffed drop-boxes.”
Since the EPM doesn’t require these unstaffed drop boxes to be located at or near an election official’s building, they have been established at locations like churches, elementary schools, restaurants, humane societies, libraries, fire departments, and community centers. It also doesn’t place any restraints on the number or geographic distribution of the drop boxes per county.
According to AFEC, state law only allows two destinations and two entities for ballot submissions: the office of a designated election official, usually the county recorder, or a polling place, and a federal postal worker or voter’s designated agent. AFEC said that unstaffed drop boxes were therefore an impermissible intermediary in the chain of custody.
Unlike U.S. Postal Service (USPS) mail collection boxes, unstaffed drop boxes don’t have federal legal protections that impart prison sentences for crimes such as obstruction of mail passage, destruction of mail, and vandalism of a mailbox. Unstaffed drop boxes also don’t enjoy a specialized law enforcement division dedicated to investigating postal crimes, like the USPS.
Additionally, unstaffed drop boxes aren’t required to have locks: they may be secured with a “tamper-evident seal.”
Unlike the USPS, which requires the swearing-in of mail carriers, any individual designated by election officials as a “ballot retriever” may transport the contents of unstaffed drop boxes. Also, drop box contents aren’t scanned, counted, or entered into a record of sorts like their USPS counterparts.
AFEC also argued that USPS mailboxes offer an additional level of security through the untold diversity of their contents, whereas election drop boxes are clearly known to contain only ballots and theoretically become susceptible to bad actors.
“A USPS mailbox is further likely to contain different varieties of mail at any given time. From the outside, it is impossible to determine whether a particular mailbox contains early voted ballots,” said AFEC. “By contrast, an unstaffed drop-box contains only completed ballots. From the outside, one can know with certainty that the contents of a ballot drop-box are completed ballots, likely a significant number of them.”
Additionally, AFEC claimed that unstaffed drop boxes increased the likelihood of voter intimidation by independent actors seeking to prevent illegal ballot submissions.
AFEC President Scott Mussi said in a statement that unstaffed drop boxes jeopardize the safety and security of elections.
“Our lawsuit contends that state statute limits the use of drop boxes to locations that are monitored by election workers, which can include existing polling locations and the county elections office. Despite this limitation, election officials and the existing election procedure manual are ignoring statute and have been setting up unmanned drop boxes all throughout the state,” said Mussi. “We believe the use of drop boxes must be in accordance with state law, and we are hopeful that our lawsuit will result in election officials ending their use at illegal locations for the 2024 election.”
An expansive interpretation of state law concerning elections wouldn’t be an unusual trait of the Hobbs EPM. In September, the Yavapai County Superior Court ruled that Fontes was perpetuating an incorrect interpretation of “registration record.” AFEC also sued in that case.
Fontes had argued that the term “registration record” in voter signature verification law meant that other documents in a voter’s record besides the registration form could be used to verify signatures. The court invalidated the expansive interpretation of the term, thereby invalidating the corresponding portion of the Hobbs EPM.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
The Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) is refusing to ban the implementation of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) policies in monopoly utilities operating in the state, claiming that they lack the authority to do so.
The ACC issued its declaration in response to several letters petitioning a prohibition against ESG implementation by utilities under its purview. Two of those letters came from the Arizona Free Enterprise Club (AFEC), and one came from former ACC commissioner Justin Olson.
In AFEC’s first letter, issued in late August, AFEC President Scot Mussi made the case that ESG goals and initiatives would result in unreliable services and increased costs for ratepayers. The Arizona Constitution requires the ACC to ensure utilities have “just and reasonable rates” as well as practices that result in the “convenience, comfort, and safety, and the preservation of the health” of users.
“The truth is that a forced ‘transition’ to these resources, as required by ESG, would cost ratepayers $6 billion,” stated Mussi. “This fact alone should require the Commission to prohibit it, as this body is constitutionally obligated to ensure just and reasonable rates.”
In 2021, the ACC rejected a proposed mandate for utilities to generate their resources entirely from renewables such as wind and solar following an independent study estimating the cost to ratepayers at $6 billion. Even without the ACC mandate, the state’s utilities have committed to realizing Net Zero by 2050: a goal to eliminate all carbon emissions by 2050 by transitioning entirely to renewables.
In addition to the Environmental aspect of ESG, Mussi contended that the Social and Governance policies enacted by the monopoly utilities would impact the affordability and reliability of their services. Specifically, Mussi expressed concerns with the unforetold consequences of utilities’ deprioritization of merit and cost in decision-making and prioritization of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in contracts, corporate structure, board leadership, and hiring.
“Just as corporations have a fiduciary duty to their investors and stakeholders, so too do utilities have a duty to ratepayers to provide cost effective and reliable energy. That is the lens through which RFPs should be evaluated, not ideological commitments such as DEI,” stated Mussi. “[T]his potentially unconstitutional discrimination in the workforce could subject them to litigation, the costs for which utilities will try to recover from ratepayers in subsequent rate cases.”
With no response given to the first letter, AFEC issued a follow-up letter earlier this month. Mussi reiterated that utility resource portfolios based primarily on ESG goals rather than affordability and reliability triggered ACC’s regulatory authority. Mussi claimed that ESG bans wouldn’t impair utilities’ ability to obtain investments, arguing that lenders prefer the reliability of grids based on gas and oil rather than renewables. He cited famed venture capitalist Kevin O’Leary, best known for his role on the “Shark Tank” reality show.
“The Commission should not allow foreign banks and investors to hold Arizona’s ratepayers hostage, undermining our energy independence which threatens our state’s security,” said Mussi. “[W]ell-known investors are willing to spend $14 billion to open a new oil refinery, despite the growing ‘green’ political agenda […] because ultimately it makes good policy sense and it makes good financial sense.”
Former commissioner Olson’s letter echoed those sentiments, and noted that the ACC had set a regulatory precedent by prohibiting COVID-19 vaccine mandates for utility employees.
“The Commission’s constitutional obligation is to protect ratepayers by ensuring just and reasonable rates, but the adoption of ESG is incompatible with this requirement,” said Olson. “If the Commission does not proactively prohibit the utilities from pursuing these initiatives, utilities will continue to come back to recover the costs associated with them. It will impact resource planning, every future rate case, and the reliability of our power grid.”
Yet, in the ACC response letter issued Tuesday, Commissioner Nick Myers said that the ACC couldn’t regulate the internal affairs of parent companies from which the public service corporations receive their ESG goals and initiatives. Myers agreed that clean energy mandates resulting in higher rates and unreliability of services were problematic.
“Generally, the Commission has the authority to control rates but not the authority to control the utility itself, particularly its internal affairs,” said Myers. “This is especially the case when regulated utilities implement goals and initiatives handed down from parent companies, which are not public service corporations and which the Commission does not regulate. That being said, I agree that clean energy mandates or self-imposed clean energy goals that unreasonably drive up rates for customers or jeopardize reliability are problematic.”
Myers noted in his letter that the ACC could only address ESG policy impact on rates and reliability through the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) process. The IRP process allows parties to intervene and introduce evidence proposing the implementation or discontinuation of utility programs, especially those impacting rates and reliability. Myers encouraged AFEC to intervene in future rate cases by engaging in the IRP process.
“The IRP process and rate cases are therefore the best venues to address utility goals and initiatives that may be driving up costs for ratepayers and jeopardizing safe and reliable service,” said Myers.
Myers declined to address the social and governance issues presented by AFEC, declaring that these were outside of ACC purview.
AFEC President Scott Mussi replied to Myers in a response letter on Thursday. He noted that AFEC has been involved in the IRP process, which he contended was “controlled by the utilities” and lacking the ability to counter ESG impact.
“[U]nless ESG is prohibited by the Commission upstream, every downstream policy and ratemaking decision at the Commission will be shaped by it,” said Mussi. “The failure with [Myers’] approach is that it guarantees that all future resource plans will be ESG resource plans and all future rate hikes will be ESG rate hikes.”
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
On Wednesday, the Arizona Department of Education (ADE) unveiled a new program using off-duty cops to supplement the shortage of safety officers on campus.
Under this new program, ADE filled its school resource officer (SRO) force from 190 to 301 positions — despite the statewide officer shortage. Superintendent Horne said in Wednesday’s press conference announcing the new program that an increase to SROs was one of his main priorities.
Horne said that the state’s police officer shortage initially posed a problem to the SRO increase. That meant that the fully-funded SRO positions had no officers to fill them. To work around this issue, Horne explained that the ADE contracted with Off Duty Management (ODM), which enables law enforcement to pick up off-duty shifts.
Horne credited Mike Kurtenbach, head of ADE’s school safety division and former Phoenix Police Department assistant chief, for the idea. Horne noted that their arrangement with ODM ensures full coverage at schools.
“We don’t involve partial coverage. The nightmare is that some maniac walks into a school and kills 20 kids — this has happened in other states and could happen here — and there’s no one there to protect the kids,” said Horne.
ODM President Bryan Manley thanked ADE for engaging in an “innovative” approach, the first of its kind in the state. ODM traditionally works security for businesses or venues, such as movie theaters.
Traditionally, SROs are fully-dedicated officers to a school that receive a minimum of 40 hours of training to work in schools. These ODM-deployed officers will be armed off-duty officers that receive a foundational 8 hours of specialized training from ADE for working in schools, on top of the 650 hours minimum of basic training to work in a police department, as well as field and on-the-job training.
Horne noted that the city of Phoenix has declined to participate in the SRO arrangement. Phoenix police force shrank last week to 2,561, according to Kurtenbach. As such, law enforcement from surrounding areas like Peoria will have ODM-deployed officers for Phoenix-area schools.
In response to reporter queries about parental concerns of increased arrests or intimidation of students, Horne said that the officers would provide order and a feeling of security — not fear. The superintendent said that those upset that some students may be arrested on campus were perpetuating the idea that “it’s okay to break the law without consequence.”
“This will allow us to provide a safe environment for more of our schools,” said Horne. “People should not be afraid of the police officers. The police officers are there to protect us. Without the police officers, we would have no civilization.”
Horne paraphrased 17th-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes to supplement his claim, noting that civilized societies have a healthy and appreciative relationship with their law enforcement.
“Life becomes ‘solitary, nasty, brutish, and short’ if we don’t have police officers to protect civilization. It’s a very bad attitude to have a negative attitude toward police officers,” said Horne.
Recent student shooting threats have concerned students who have brought guns to campuses at Bostrom High School, Linda Abril Educational Academy, Maryvale High School, and North High School (Phoenix Union High School District); Kyrene de la Estrella Elementary School (Kyrene School District); and Desert Ridge High School (Gilbert Public Schools).
John Croteau, Dysart Unified School District superintendent, expressed gratitude for the ADE’s “creative” expansion of SROs.
“Safety is one of the most important things, if not the most important thing we can provide in education,” said Croteau. “We know that our students won’t learn if our students don’t feel safe, and that goes for the employees and staff [as well].”
Troy Bales, Paradise Valley Unified School District superintendent, added that he looked forward to the further expansion of the SRO presence on campus through the new program.
Watch the full press conference here:
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-AZ-08) announced Tuesday that she won’t be seeking re-election in 2024.
In a press release, Lesko cited family as her main reason for retiring from the job.
“I want to spend more time with my husband, my 94-year-old mother, my three children, and my five grandchildren,” said Lesko. “Spending, on average, three weeks out of every month away from my family and traveling back and forth to Washington, D.C. almost every weekend is difficult.”
Lesko also cited the increased difficulty of passing legislation, declaring the nation’s capital to be broken.
Lesko assumed office in 2018, succeeding the retired former Rep. Trent Franks in a special election. Of the 102 bills she introduced, two became law.
One was HR 6400, which directed U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to submit to the congressional homeland security and tax committees a threat and operational analysis of U.S. air, land, and sea ports of entry.
The other law was HR 6016, naming a U.S. Postal Service facility in Surprise as the “Marc Lee Memorial Post Office Building.”
The Heritage Foundation, one of the biggest conservative activist organizations, rates Lesko at a 100 percent conservative voting record. Lesko is a member of the House Freedom Caucus.
Lesko will serve through the end of her term in 2025.
As one of her recent major acts in Congress, Lesko has backed Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH-04) in the contentious House Speaker race. Jordan failed a second time to receive enough votes for the speakership on Wednesday.
22 voted against Jordan: Reps. Don Bacon (NE), Vern Buchanan (FL), Ken Buck (CO), Lori Chavez-Ramer (OR), Anthony D’Esposito (NY), Mario Diaz-Balart (FL), Jake Ellzy (FL), Drew Ferguson (GA), Andrew Garbarino (NY), Carlos Gimenez (FL), Tony Gonzales (TX), Kay Granger (TX), John James (MI), Mike Kelly (PA), Jennifer Kiggans (VA), Nick LaLota (NY), Michael Lawler (NY), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA), John Rutherford (FL), Michael Simpson (ID), Pete Stauber (MN), and Steve Womack (AR).
All Democrats voted for their minority leader, New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries.
I voted for @Jim_jordan yesterday in the GOP conference and plan to vote for him next week if Jim decides to take the vote to the House floor. https://t.co/xazOa9pSnY
Several hours after Lesko issued her announcement, Republican attorney general candidate Abe Hamadeh announced his candidacy to replace Lesko. Hamadeh cited former President and 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump as his main reason for running.
“President Trump is under attack,” said Hamadeh. “He needs back up — and I’m ready to help him Make America Great Again.”
Our country is in desperate need of courageous fighters, and that’s why I’m proud to announce I’m running for Congress in Arizona’s 8th District.
