Over the past couple of months, the nation’s eyes have (rightfully) been turned to the State of Minnesota, as concerned citizens have unearthed what appears to be significant abuses of taxpayer dollars going to seemingly fraudulent daycare and healthcare centers run by Somali immigrants. These discoveries have exposed Minnesota Democrat officials, who have (at the least) looked the other way as this fraud was ongoing and escalating.
Minnesota isn’t the only state where we are seeing this rampant misuse of hard-earned taxpayer dollars.
Over the past three years, Arizona has been governed by a Democrat Governor and Attorney General, Katie Hobbs and Kris Mayes. These two have combined to cultivate a culture of corruption in the Grand Canyon State that rivals the illegal shenanigans from Minnesota. There have been several instances of this abuse and chicanery from the Governor’s Office that the Attorney General’s Office has clearly provided cover for during this term in office.
Whether in Minnesota or Arizona or any other state or jurisdiction across the country, American taxpayers deserve honest, transparent public servants, who are committed to putting the interests of citizens above the political elite. Thankfully, for the people of Arizona, the Republican-led state legislature has worked to hold these lawless Democrats accountable to the rule of law, though Hobbs and Mayes continue to stonewall our efforts and perpetrate new avenues of corruption.
Likely the most egregious action of Hobbs’ administration to-date, the alleged pay-to-play scandal will define the culture of corruption surrounding her administration. Almost two years ago, The Arizona Republic reported that a for-profit, state-contracted group home operator, Sunshine Residential Homes, received a significant rate increase approval from the Hobbs-led Department of Child Services (DCS). Leading up to this rate increase, the group donated to Hobbs’ inaugural fund – after its request for a rate increase had been denied by the outgoing Republican administration. The reporting showed that Hobbs had not approved rate increases to any other group homes, nor were the rate averages for these group homes comparable with Sunshine Residential Homes. Additionally, DCS ended state contracts with 16 group homes, making the arrangement with Sunshine all the more suspicious.
Attorney General Kris Mayes did go through the motions of announcing an investigation into this alleged pay-to-play, but she attempted to order Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell and the Arizona Auditor General off the case – despite those offices being asked to investigate the uncovered scheme by state legislators. Mayes was soundly rebuked by Arizona Treasurer Kimberly Yee, who also requested that the Maricopa County and State Auditor General investigations continue. The Democrat Attorney General was also accused of a conflict of interest in that she was again shielding her same-party official from the full weight of accountability under the law. There have been no updates from Mayes’ office into the status of this investigation in almost two years, leading credence to the idea that this was a cover-up meant to protect Hobbs and her administration. Compounding the shady behavior from her administration, Hobbs vetoed a bill during last year’s legislative session meant to fool-proof future executives from exploiting any perceived loopholes to perpetuate this kind of abuse.
SNAP
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) program doles out almost $100 billion annually to Americans to purchase food. However, like many government programs, this one is rife with fraud and theft. According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, there were over $320 million in stolen benefits between October 2022 and December 2024. Additionally, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported in 2023 (during the Biden administration) that approximately twelve percent of these benefits were fraudulent. The politics and policies of this bloated program aside, it is undeniable that SNAP needs more oversight and guardrails to ensure that taxpayer dollars are being stewarded appropriately.
Hobbs and Mayes disagree. Mayes sued the Trump administration over its commonsense efforts to request more information from states on SNAP beneficiaries. Hobbs, for her part, refused to acquiesce to the administration’s data requests. These two are politicizing an issue that should enjoy consensus across party lines. No government official should be standing in the way of efforts to root out fraud in any public program, where taxpayer dollars are at risk for abuse. Every taxpayer dollar should be protected to the highest level. Unfortunately, for Arizona, Katie Hobbs and Kris Mayes don’t want the federal government – and the taxpayer – to find out exactly how much fraud is in our state; and that’s a shame.
Late last year, a top official in Mayes’ State Government Division was arrested for “controlling and trafficking stolen property.” Mayes’ office had been warned by the City of Peoria nearly two years earlier about serious allegations against this official – including fraud, conversion, and breach of fiduciary duty – yet Mayes kept her in a position of authority leading up to her arrest.
Arizona has long been known for its rugged independence and spirit of doing the right thing. Unfortunately for our state and its proud history, that reputation is being shattered by the culture of corruption from Hobbs and Mayes. Democrats across the country – from Arizona to Minnesota – have proven themselves incapable of governing our states – the laboratories of democracy – as the people rightly expect and deserve. It will be up to the voters to course correct this November and usher in legislators and executives who can – and will – steward the peoples’ money as it was intended.
Warren Petersen is the President of the Arizona State Senate and represents Legislative District 14.
Climate activists, frustrated by unsuccessful climate lawsuits, have increasingly turned to “climate superfund” legislation as a new tool to make oil and gas companies pay for climate damages.
Notably, these state-level bills seek to impose hefty fees or fines on energy producers for the costs of climate change, a punitive measure for energy producers for decades-old, lawful activities. But this punishing dynamic backfired when confronted with reality. In multiple states, climate superfund proposals have run ashore amid bipartisan concern that they would do more harm than good, particularly by driving up energy costs for consumers.
As of early 2026, only Vermont and New York have actually enacted climate superfund laws, both in 2024, with a dozen other states introducing similar bills, including California, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Virginia, to name a few. However, about half of these attempts have stalled or died in state legislatures.
New Jersey’s experience is a prime example. Lawmakers there introduced an ambitious Climate Superfund Act in 2025, but even some initial supporters grew uneasy once they considered the practical impacts.
In a Senate Budget Committee hearing on the bill in January 2026, legislators from both parties openly questioned the premise of punishing companies for past legal emissions and warned the costs would simply be passed on to New Jersey residents . “Each and every one of us… [is] relying on [fossil fuels] in one way or another in your everyday life,” noted Democratic Sen. Paul Sarlo, highlighting the irony that the state itself remains dependent on the very fuels it was seeking to penalize.
Sarlo, the committee chair, reluctantly advanced the bill out of committee but bluntly warned he would vote “no” on final passage unless major changes were made. Republican Sen. Declan O’Scanlon was even more direct, blasting the retroactive fines as “unfair” and cautioning that “New Jerseyans themselves would end up paying the price at the pump or for their utility bills” if the state tries to punish energy producers.
In the end, New Jersey’s proposal never made it to a floor vote before the legislative session ended in January 2026, effectively killing the bill (for now).
New Jersey is hardly alone. In California, two “Polluters Pay Climate Superfund” bills (SB 684 and AB 1243) garnered significant attention in early 2025 but were quietly shelved after initial committee hearings, as lawmakers grew wary of the potential economic fallout. Connecticut’s climate superfund bill got a public hearing in March 2025 but then died in committee without a vote. In Hawaii, a proposed superfund never advanced at all before the 2025 session ended. Virginia’s attempt was “immediately rejected” after a bipartisan subcommittee vote to table the bill, effectively killing it. And in Maryland, lawmakers introduced an ambitious Climate Superfund-style bill (the RENEW Act) only to strip it down to a mere study of climate costs, with all polluter-pays provisions removed.
Taken together, these failures underscore how even in climate-conscious states, many policymakers got cold feet when confronted with the legal risks, economic trade-offs, and voter backlash potentially involved.
If this is the case, are climate superfund schemes really aligned with what the public wants policymakers to focus on?
Activists insist that making Big Oil pay billions is a matter of justice and necessary to fund climate resilience. But for most Americans, the more immediate priority is relief from high energy prices, not new climate-linked taxes that could raise those costs further.
A national poll of likely voters in late 2025 showed 83% reported that their energy bills had gone up in recent years, with a majority saying costs had increased “a lot.” Affordability is clearly top of mind. This doesn’t mean Americans don’t care about climate change at all; it means they aren’t willing to bear exorbitant direct costs for symbolic climate policies, especially when those policies won’t tangibly improve their day-to-day lives or might simply shuffle money to government coffers with little accountability.
Ultimately, the failure of these climate superfund proposals underscores a reality that many in the energy industry have long argued: energy policy must be grounded in economic and energy reality, as well as the needs of everyday Americans.
David Blackmon is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation, an energy writer, and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
Governor Katie Hobbs rolled out her budget last month and, unsurprisingly, it doesn’t add up.
Not only because her “solutions” don’t match the problems she claims to be solving, like suggesting we can make goods and services more affordable by piling on new taxes and fees, but because her budget quite literally just doesn’t add up.
Hobbs’ budget is a $17.7B spending plan ($100M more than last year) that leaves a meager $37.8M balance at the end of FY27. That means her revenue projections leave very little room for error. Yet one of the more obvious facts about her budget is just how likely error-prone these projections are, a fact that Republicans during a joint appropriations hearing were sure to point out.
One of the most speculative assumptions Hobbs is making in her budget proposal is relying on $760 million of “reimbursements” from the federal government for expenditures the state has made for border security since 2021. That is a good chunk of change, and her budget is unworkable without it.
The problem is it is actually way more likely than not that even if the state receives something in the way of reimbursement, it will not be the full amount, and who knows on what timeline. Regardless, it is irresponsible tocommit money out the front door that may never come in.
This is nothing new for Hobbs. Just last year she continued a COVID-era program that neither had legislative authorization to continue nor the ongoing financial allocations to support it. That wound up blowing a $122M fiscal hole in the previous year’s budget mid-session that Republicans had to mop up.
The Governor’s budget also depends on tapping the State Land trust for another $1.5 Billion. Setting aside whether its a good idea to raid the land trust set up for various beneficiaries (K-12, Universities, deaf and blind, etc), changing the formula for trust land distributions requires a constitutional amendment that would need to be approved by voters in November.
Hobbs’ “Affordability” Plan is Really a Chaotic Tax-And-Spend Plan
Hobbs wants to brand her budget as improving affordability, but it does just the opposite. Every idea in her plan is built around $1B in new taxes and fees and the hope that the bureaucracy can “manage” the cost of living while literally contributing to its inflation…
Energy Secretary Chris Wright says high electricity costs are a political choice in the United States today. The evidence at hand indicates the Secretary isn’t wrong.
“If you have expensive energy in your state…it’s because politicians and regulators chose to do that,” Wright said in a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal. “It is not bad luck, it is not marketplace…there is no reason to have these rapid increases in electricity prices – no reason, but politics.”
This is correct, and the disparity that exists in electricity bills in red states and blue states can be easily seen in a national map published by the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA), along with its supporting data.
EIA’s data shows the states with the highest rates include Democratic strongholds like California, New York, Hawaii, and the New England states. Meanwhile, the states with the lowest utility bills include the reddest of red states like Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, North Dakota, and Iowa. This all ties directly in with the findings in a recent study by the Institute for Energy Research that I wrote about in January.
There is no real mystery here: Democrats seek to exploit the “affordability” issue in the upcoming midterm elections, but the truth is their policies created that issue to begin with. In his interview, Wright provides the proof points:
Electricity prices were up 6.7% year over year in December, nearly 40% since 2020. That is due to the United States adopting “UK-style” energy policies under the Biden and Obama presidencies, like forcing coal plant closures and wind/solar mandates.
Utility rates rose two times the rate of inflation in Democrat-governed states over the last five years, in GOP states, only half the inflation rate.
States with Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) have 50% higher prices than those without; 28 states enforce them, driving costs up.
Biden’s $5 trillion stimulus (for a $1.5T GDP gap) fueled inflation across the board but is now fixable via policy reversals like the ones Wright and other Trump officials are now pursuing.
“We’ve had a tailwind of these things to drive up our own energy prices,” Wright says, “And so that’s a battleship we’re stopping and turning back.”
Turning a policy battleship in the middle of an ocean takes time, but Wright’s efforts produced results during the recent major winter storm. In several regions, coal-fired power plants for which Wright acted to delay scheduled premature retirements generated needed baseload power to avoid blackout conditions as wind and solar failed to perform. Keeping many of those coal plants – and natural gas plants also scheduled for premature retirements under absurd RPS mandates – running will be crucial to maintaining integrity and reliability on grids from coast to coast in the years to come.
The good news for Americans is that this country enjoys an incredible abundance of all the natural resources and raw materials needed to restore sanity and reliability to our power grid. All that’s really needed is the political will to get it done while keeping electricity bills affordable.
Wright and the red states on EIA’s map have shown us the way. That’s true even in Texas, one of the few red states that maintains an RPS of its own. There, policymakers fell asleep at the wheel about the need to maintain a needed fleet of dispatchable reserve capacity, a mistake for which Texans dearly paid during 2021’s Winter Storm Uri.
But, in contrast to their peers in many blue states, Texas policymakers showed a capacity to learn from their mistakes, enacting a series of effective reforms over the last five years that vastly improved grid reliability.
In the recent Winter Storm Fern, the ERCOT-managed Texas grid, which proved to be the national poster child for grid failure in 2021, came through as a shining object lesson on how to fix past mistakes while remaining one of the 10 states with the lowest utility rates.
If you live in a state where power bills are too high, that is a choice your political leaders have made for you to endure. You should factor that reality into your thinking next time those politicians are up for re-election.
David Blackmon is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation, an energy writer, and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
Arizona is debating SB 1018, a bill that defines Sharia law as “foreign law” for purposes of Arizona statute. For many people, this raises understandable questions. Is this necessary? Is it constitutional? Is it fair? And is it really about Islam?
Those questions deserve serious answers, not slogans.
At its core, this debate turns on a simple but critical distinction: Does the law regulate belief, or does it regulate what our courts will enforce? The Constitution protects belief absolutely. It does not require the state to enforce religious rules as civil law.
That line has long been recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Antonin Scalia summarized it plainly when he wrote that religious belief does not excuse individuals from compliance with neutral laws of general applicability. In other words, you are free to practice your religion, but the law applies equally to everyone.
SB 1018 does not criminalize prayer, worship, charity, fasting, or personal religious observance. Muslims in Arizona, like people of all faiths, remain fully protected in how they live and practice their religion. What the bill addresses instead is jurisdiction: whether Arizona courts should ever recognize or excuse conduct under a foreign legal system when that conduct violates Arizona law or constitutional rights.
Opponents often argue that raising this issue is “Islamophobic.” But that claim deserves closer examination. A phobia is an irrational fear. What is being discussed here is not fear. It is documented legal outcomes. International human-rights organizations, including the United Nations, have repeatedly documented that in many Sharia-based legal systems, women and children face outcomes that would be unacceptable under American law: forced or underage marriage, unequal legal status, discriminatory custody rules, and punishments that violate basic standards of bodily integrity and due process.
This is not a statement about Muslims as people or about Islam as a faith. It is a statement about how certain legal systems operate when religious doctrine is treated as enforceable law. Unlike personal religious observance, Sharia has historically functioned in many countries as a comprehensive civil and family law system, governing marriage, divorce, custody, inheritance, and punishment.
Why should Arizona hesitate to say—clearly and without apology—that practices such as honor-based violence, female genital mutilation, and child marriage are not welcome here, regardless of where they may be accepted elsewhere? These are not abstract concerns. They are real harms, and the primary victims are overwhelmingly Muslim women and girls. Protecting them is not bigotry; it is basic human decency.
In several countries that apply Sharia-based family law, custody and guardianship rules subordinate the best interests of the child to rigid doctrinal standards, often disadvantaging mothers in divorce. Arizona’s refusal to recognize or excuse such outcomes is not hostility toward faith; it is solidarity with women and children whose rights deserve protection everywhere.
This is where some well-meaning voices hesitate. They worry that naming Sharia law singles out a religion. That concern should be taken seriously, but it should also be addressed honestly. The purpose of SB 1018 is not to judge theology. It is to make clear that Arizona recognizes only one system of enforceable law: the Constitution and the laws enacted under it.
Courts already do this in practice. They refuse to enforce contracts obtained through coercion. They reject foreign judgments that violate public policy. They do not excuse violence, abuse, or the denial of equal protection because someone claims a cultural or religious justification. SB 1018 seeks to clarify that principle, not invent it.
The cautionary example often cited is Oklahoma’s 2010 “Save Our State” ballot measure, which was struck down by the courts. That case matters, but it is frequently misunderstood. Oklahoma’s measure failed because it appeared to condemn a religion itself, rather than focusing on harm or enforceability. The lesson is not that states lack authority to protect constitutional supremacy. The lesson is that laws must be carefully drafted, neutral in application, and focused on conduct, not belief.
Arizona can do better by learning from that history.
No statute can reach into private rooms or compel victims to come forward. That is true of laws against child abuse, domestic violence, and human trafficking. But the fact that wrongdoing can be hidden has never been a reason to leave the law ambiguous about what the state will tolerate or excuse when harm does surface. This law does not end religious practice; it ensures that when harm occurs, no religious or cultural rule, of any kind, can be used to justify it.
This debate should not be about fear, and it should not be about faith. It should be about clarity.
Arizona can affirm two truths at once: that religious freedom is a foundational American value, and that no one’s rights, safety, or bodily integrity are negotiable under the law.
For those reasons, SB 1018 deserves support as a clear, careful affirmation of equal justice. Arizona should set the rhetoric aside and stand with those who bear the real-world consequences.
Shiry Sapir serves as the First Vice Chair of the Republican Party of Arizona.
Jan. 24 marked the 20th anniversary of the release of Al Gore’s alarmist global warming movie “An Inconvenient Truth.” Gore has surfed the movie and climate alarmism to a net worth estimated at $300 million and a Nobel Peace Prize.
But the rest of us have been saddled with: (1) a hoax that has debased the field of science; (2) an energy scam that has cost the world more than $10-20 trillion dollars and threatens our national security; and (3) a political power grab that has reduced our freedoms.
Gore’s movie was junk from the get-go. I attended a meeting in early January 2006 where Gore presented the slide show that was the basis for the movie to a group of conservatives at a weekly meeting sponsored by Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform. After the presentation, I approached Gore and asked if he was interested in participating in some sort of debate about his claims. Although he said he was interested, his staff later declined.
The movie premiered weeks later at the Sundance Film Festival, and the rest is history. And here’s what that history is.
The “documentary” was initially a hit, grossing $50 million in theaters. Problematically, though, the film soon became part of many secondary school curriculums. Its credibility took a major hit in 2007 when a British court ruled that the movie could not be shown to school children with a warning label about its factual errors.
As I noted in a FOX news column at the time, the judge ruled that Gore’s claims about global warming drying up Lake Chad, causing polar bears to drown while being forced to swim farther for food; and shutting down the Gulf Stream were false and/or impossible. Based on the judge’s ruling, I estimated that “the footage that ought to be excised adds up to about 25 minutes or so out of the 98-minute film. What’s left is largely Gore personal drama and cinematic fluff that has nothing to do with the science of climate change.”
Despite the embarrassing ruling, Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize that December. His acceptance speech doubled down on the movie claims and added a few more. None of his predictions came true.
His most well-known prediction was that the Arctic might be ice-free during the summer of 2014. But at its 2025 summer minimum, the Arctic still had more than 5 million square kilometers of sea ice — about the same as in 2007. His lesser known but equally erroneous predictions relate to global temperature, drought and glaciers, agriculture, wildfires, hurricanes, deforestation, and species extinction.
Al Gore inspired former-Marxist-turned-normal-person film director Martin Durkin to produce a counter to “An Inconvenient Truth” called “The Great Global Warming Swindle” that I also reviewed in a FOX News column. Though Gore dodged my debate challenge, I was able to make him “debate” by splicing together clips from Gore’s movie with opposing experts from Durkin’s film. Though now blocked for copyright claims, this “debate” can still be found on YouTube.
After all these years, the one thing Gore has been partially correct about is this: At the beginning of the United Nation’s COP-27 meeting in Egypt in 2022, Gore said “We have a credibility problem, all of us: We’re talking and we’re starting to act, but we’re not doing enough.” He’s correct about his credibility problem. It’s never gone away.
