Newly obtained evidence reveals the pornographic and violent past of a Democratic leader in Tucson.
The posts, advocating for the harming and murdering of his political opponents and promotion of his pornography, came from Rocque Anthony Perez: an appointed Tucson City Council member (Ward 5) and, until joining the council in recent months, an executive director for Congresswoman-elect Adelita Grijalva’s Metropolitan Education Commission (MEC) nonprofit.
MEC advises and makes recommendations on K-12 education for Tucson as well as all of Pima County.
The California Globepublished copies of since-deleted social media posts they received as a reflection of Perez’s recent past as a creator and disseminator of pornography, and an advocate of political violence.
In addition to the trove obtained by the Globe,AZ Free News recovered archived posts by Perez detailing his consistent advocacy for the harming and murdering of his political opponents.
The incriminating posts recovered occurredunder two accounts: “@rocqueperez” and “@localanthony.”From the former, Perez posted his controversial political posts, and from the latter, Perez posted his pornographic posts.
From 2019 to 2020, Perez had served as Student Body Senator at the University of Arizona. He also led Tucson’s Pride Festival in 2019.
Throughout 2020, Perez advocated for the assault and murder of his political opponents.
In a June 2020 post, Perez told a friend to murder his conservative family members after the friend complained that living with them was unbearable.
“So kill them, do your duty baby girl,” said Perez.
In July 2020, Perez retweeted a picture of Ivanka Trump posing with a can of Goya beans with the following caption:
“Someone throw this b***h off the capitol building roof please,” said Perez.
Perez asked for someone to assault conservative activist and pundit Kaitlin Bennett in a January 2020 post.
“How has she not gotten beat yet? Like… hath no one the bravery to literally hurt her cause…?” said Perez.
“Roses are red, violets are blue, vote for Joe Biden, or I’ll cut you,” posted Perez in one post, with a picture of him pointing scissors at the camera.
“This vapid white girl is defending Trump[’s] response to COVID in my Zoom public relations class, do I end her or do I end her,” said Perez.
Perez expressed his hope, multiple times, that President Donald Trump would contract COVID-19 and die.
“PLEASE give Trump the Coronavirus please lordt, he is an at risk PLEASE,” posted Perez in March 2020.
In October, when then-President Donald Trump announced that he and then-First Lady Melania Trump tested positive for COVID-19, Perez advocated for the president’s death.
“Take his life baby! Get him!” said Perez.
“Honestly I would take one for the team and knock him out if I could,” said Perez in a repost of a July post from Trump.
In an August 2020 post, Perez made a post about how he and the purportedly haunted Annabelle doll (who, at the time, was the subject of a viral rumor of having escaped the museum housing it) should kill the president.
“Annabelle escaped and I’m like, hey bb girl we got some people you should meet, don’t be shy, go say hell [knife emoji],” said Perez.
In July 2020, Perez expressed hope that COVID-19 would infect and eliminate multiple elderly Republican voters and members of the Arizona Republican Party leadership, including then-chair Kelli Ward, then-Sen. Martha McSally, and Rep. Paul Gosar.
“A lot of old white people in one place, it’d be a shame if [COVID] got em,” said Perez.
In March 2021, Perez asked in a post on X whether he should fight then-Governor Doug Ducey.
“Just saw Doug Ducey, do I square up or do I square up,” posted Perez.
Under his @localanthony handle, Perez posted pornographic videos and pictures to promote his Only Fans account.
Despite his numerous posts advocating for harm and death to his political opponents and his publicized OnlyFans content, Perez maintained his post as the public relations lead, then marketing and communications strategist for the University of Arizona, his alma mater. He would maintain that latter job through 2022 before joining Arizona State University as their communications manager.
ASU hired him, though Perez posted “F**k Arizona State University Bro” on his page in early January 2020.
Perez’s term on the Tucson City Council ends in December.
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At a recent Senate hearing, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said something I never thought I’d hear from a top federal health official: “I don’t think people should be taking medical advice from me.”
That wasn’t a dodge. That was honesty. And, frankly, it’s a breath of fresh air.
For too long, health bureaucrats in Washington have believed their job is to dictate Americans’ medical decisions. That mindset led to lockdowns, mandates, censorship, and the sidelining of safe, effective tools that were widely distributed earlier in the pandemic, such as monoclonal antibodies (mAbs). Secretary Kennedy’s testimony suggests a different view: the role of government is not to play doctor, but to protect the freedom of every American to decide what’s best for their own health.
That’s the right idea and the essence of true healthcare choice.
Contrast this with the last administration. Under President Joe Biden, Americans were forced to choose between a vaccine they didn’t want — with a plethora of boosters — and continued restrictions on their liberties.
Biden didn’t promote vaccine choice. He aggressively pushed vaccines and boosters as the primary defense from COVID. Meanwhile, monoclonal antibodies — preventive and therapeutic tools that cut the risk of hospitalization and death as high as 74% and 84% in high-risk patients — were pushed aside. The administration significantly scaled back their distribution even though mAbs successfully treated President Donald Trump and were backed by countless doctors who called for broader access.
Why? Because the Biden White House chose to prioritize vaccination above all else. It preferred to micromanage Americans’ care rather than empower families to make informed decisions.
That wasn’t science, it was politics. And Americans paid the price.
As my son Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, also a medical doctor, said countless times, some patients were even denied mAbs due to what he described as “partisan political games” — namely, the politically-charged FDA guidance that many hospitals felt pressured to follow throughout the pandemic. Five years later, the FDA still hasn’t fully approved a monoclonal antibody product.
That’s not “following the science” or respecting the people’s right and ability to make their own health care decisions. That’s the worst type of government overreach — micromanaging your medical decisions by erecting regulatory roadblocks designed to limit your options by and control what treatments and preventatives you can access. When Washington dictates what care you’re allowed to pursue, what opinions you’re allowed to hear, and what shots you’re required to take, you’re no longer living in a free country.
Now, under a new administration and with Secretary Kennedy at the helm of HHS, there’s an opportunity to chart a new course — one rooted in freedom, not fear.
Americans should have access to vaccines if they want them, but they should also have access to alternatives like mAbs. They should be allowed to hear all sides of a medical debate, not just the one approved by government “experts.” And they should be trusted to make informed choices for themselves and their families.
Secretary Kennedy’s comments may not have pleased the political class, but they honored the principle this country was founded on: government serves the people, not the other way around.
Real health policy doesn’t come from control. It comes from having confidence in the American people to make their own choices. At this early stage, I’m so glad that Secretary Kennedy seems to understand as much.
Last Tuesday night, the Scottsdale Unified School District (SUSD) Governing Board held what could only be described as a marathon meeting, lasting six and a half hours, including the executive session. The agenda was packed with items, but one issue drew the most attention: the proposed adoption of a new Social Science curriculum.
Eighteen individuals participated in the public comment portion of the meeting. All but one focused on the curriculum. A significant majority urged the Board not to adopt it, citing deep concerns. Opponents argued that the curriculum was saturated with DEI narratives, anti-law enforcement bias, gender ideology, climate activism, misleading COVID-19 claims, and advocacy for student activism over academic learning. Their primary concern: the curriculum fosters political indoctrination, not education.
Despite their differences, both supporters and critics of the curriculum appeared to agree on two points: students need to be taught the truth about current events, and they must learn to think critically. The debate centers on what constitutes the truth and how critical thinking should be developed.
Those supporting the curriculum’s adoption argued that it presents an honest, if uncomfortable, portrayal of America, especially regarding race and law enforcement. The curriculum cites examples like the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. It emphasizes that Brown, an unarmed Black teenager, was shot six times and killed by a white police officer, and points to the incident as emblematic of systemic racism.
The curriculum also discusses the rise of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and its evolution from protesting police brutality to addressing broader systemic issues like housing, healthcare, and employment disparities for Black Americans.
Additional content includes explanations about gender identity, stating individuals can identify as male, female, both, or neither. The curriculum also addresses the COVID-19 pandemic, stating that the FDA approved two highly effective vaccines and suggesting that lockdowns saved lives. It frames the environmental benefits of lockdowns as evidence of climate change and the need for continued action.
One speaker supporting the curriculum even admitted that for those questioning these narratives, “I don’t know what to say.”
Critics, however, challenged these representations as incomplete or misleading. Regarding the Michael Brown case, there is no mention that the Department of Justice’s investigation found Brown was attacking the officer and trying to take his weapon—his DNA was found on the gun—and that the claim he had his hands up saying “don’t shoot” was debunked in court. By omitting these critical facts, the curriculum pushes a one-sided narrative that paints law enforcement as inherently racist.
If the goal were truly critical thinking, the curriculum would also include studies like that of a Harvard professor, who, despite his preconceived belief that there is racial bias in policing, found no racial bias in police shootings after analyzing hundreds of cases. An honest and open discussion would allow students to examine why Black Americans commit crimes at a rate disproportionate to their population, not just claim they are victims of systemic racism. Perhaps the high rate of crimes being committed by young Blacks might explain their high rate of involvement with the police. But with this curriculum, it is doubtful the students will ever have such a discussion.
Law enforcement professionals also voiced concerns. The President of the Maricopa County Colleges Police Officers Association, a former Scottsdale police officer, and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office both criticized the curriculum’s anti-police tone. They warned that such content erodes trust between youth and law enforcement—trust, they say, is essential for community safety.
Rather than comparing the BLM movement to the civil rights movement and implying BLM has done great things for Blacks in America, why not tell the truth that the leaders of BLM stole money and bought houses for themselves? Or that several of the local chapters said nothing has been done by BLM to help Blacks in their communities.
Critics also took issue with how the curriculum handles topics like climate change and COVID-19. The omission of data showing that Antarctica has gained ice in recent years, information that contradicts climate change alarmism, is concerning. While skeptics of the climate narratives are called “science deniers,” the curriculum promotes the idea that there are more than two genders and that gender is fluid is a fact, when it’s really a denial of biological science.
On COVID-19, the curriculum claims the vaccines were effective at preventing infection but fails to acknowledge how the scientific narrative evolved. Initial claims about vaccine efficacy were later revised, with experts clarifying that while vaccines may not prevent infection, they can reduce the severity of symptoms. The curriculum also omits discussion of the high survival rate of COVID-19, 99%, particularly in children, and the long-term educational harm caused by prolonged school closures. There is no mention of the fact that the government actively blocked any negative discussion about the vaccine, including reporting on the severe negative side effects many people experienced.
One especially controversial element of the curriculum encourages students to take political action, such as organizing protests or social media campaigns, in support of transgender rights, or creating NGOs, leading critics to argue that it turns students into political activists.
Questions were also raised about how the curriculum was reviewed and recommended. Supporters of the adoption process claimed the committee’s work was “thorough and inclusive,” but the review committee was composed mostly of teachers, with only one community member, who happened to be the spouse of a former Board member, and no parents on the committee. One supporter of the curriculum told the Board members it was their responsibility to approve the committee’s recommendation, apparently without considering the curriculum themselves and just rubber-stamping the committee’s work. I don’t think so.
There are financial implications, too. Because the curriculum includes DEI and gender identity material, the SUSD risks losing funding—not just from government sources but also due to declining enrollment—as some families opt out of SUSD altogether. This ongoing trend of declining enrollment tracks with Dr. Menzel’s leadership of SUSD. Not only are students leaving, but critical, experienced staff and teachers are leaving. At this time, only about 50% of the eligible students attend SUSD—a dismal number, but reflective of just how well SUSD is perceived in the community.
On May 13th, board members Pittinsky, Sharkey and Lewis voted to defy Superintendent Menzel's "NO DEI" pledge and committed YOUR tax dollars for the purchase of DEI-filled curriculum.
— Scottsdale Unites for Educational Integrity (@ScottsdaleUnite) May 16, 2025
Keep in mind that indoctrination aims to instill a specific set of beliefs or ideas without allowing for critical thinking or questioning, whereas education encourages exploration, curiosity, and independent thought, fostering a deeper understanding through evidence and critical analysis.
After doing your research, ask yourself: Is this curriculum indoctrination or education? Which do you want for your child?
The current Board makeup makes any substantial changes in SUSD unlikely. Dr. Menzel’s apparent security in his position of “leadership” means we can expect him to continue his destruction of SUSD. I expect to see more 3–2 votes going forward and remain skeptical about the Board’s willingness or ability to restore trust and balance in SUSD and the classroom.
As this school year comes to an end, talk to your kids about what has gone on in their classrooms. What have they learned? Go to the SUSD website and look at the materials they will be using next year. If the information you are seeking is not available, use the Let’s Talk feature to question the staff and Dr. Menzel. If you find something objectionable, exercise your rights under Arizona law and opt your kid out of lessons.
Go to the Arizona Department of Education website and check the academic performance of your child’s school, or the new one they will be attending next year. Don’t fall for the SUSD hype of having so many A+ schools; rather, compare that rating to the academic performance of your schools. Does it meet your definition of A+? You just might be surprised at what you find.
Not every parent can take their child out of SUSD. Many will return next year, but despite the challenges, we must continue to strive for change in SUSD. Get involved. Go to Board meetings. Email the Board with your thoughts and concerns. Talk to the teachers. I know everyone is busy, but you can’t sit idly by and expect others to do the work by themselves. The number of people involved matters.
It’s your kid’s future we are talking about.
Mike Bengert is a husband, father, grandfather, and Scottsdale resident advocating for quality education in SUSD for over 30 years.
Vaccines may not be the most spectacular of all the miracles of modern medicine, but they are arguably the most beneficial. They have virtually eliminated the infectious diseases of childhood, including measles, diphtheria, mumps, rubella, smallpox, and polio that were once the sources of unimaginable worry and grief for parents everywhere.
Vaccines are estimated to have saved over 150 million lives in the last five decades, cutting infant mortality by 40% globally and over 50% in Africa. Closer to home, of all babies born in the U.S. in 2001 alone, a 2005 study showed that vaccines prevented 33,000 deaths and 14 million illnesses. Vaccines are also the most cost effective of all medical interventions, easily yielding the greatest amount of benefit received per dollar spent.
Like all medical treatments, vaccinations have side effects and risks, but they are rare and mostly insignificant, like a sore shoulder. There was for some time a concern that vaccines or the mercury in them caused autism, understandably so because autism was becoming much more frequently diagnosed just as vaccine use was expanding worldwide.
The scientific community took the threat seriously. Today, many exhaustive studies involving hundreds of thousands of children have all shown the same thing: vaccines don’t cause autism.
Yet in spite of the record of success and all the lives and dollars saved, experiences with COVID have led Americans to become less trusting of vaccines. Before COVID, America was a world leader in vaccination rates with 95% coverage. Since 2020, though, the percentage of children receiving the recommended vaccines has declined by 2% or about 70,000 children.
The result has been a resurgence of childhood diseases once considered vestiges of the past. Measles was considered to be entirely eliminated in 2020, yet last year multiple outbreaks sickened hundreds of children. Cases of chickenpox, whooping cough, and pneumonia are all on the rise. Trend lines don’t look good.
Clearly, millions of Americans have become skeptical of medical authority, especially that coming from government. What happened to cause Americans to adopt behaviors that re-introduced these diseases into the population and caused needless suffering?
The answer is that our public health establishment became politicized, shilling for approved government policy rather than acting as honest, reasonably humble stewards of the public good. The bonds of trust were broken because we were often manipulated rather than informed. We were proselytized rather than respected. Vaccines were rushed to market and their benefits oversold.
Fairly or not, the bulk of criticism has centered on Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Chief Medical Adviser to the President on COVID. Dr. Fauci was a respected, competent public health physician until he became a celebrity. Signature prayer candles, action figures, and other trappings apparently caused him to lose his way.
For example, Dr. Fauci early on warned against dependence on mask wearing, citing “unintended consequences” and noting that they didn’t provide much protection. Yet he later repeatedly overstated the known benefits of masks and never disavowed his previous declarations, leading many to conclude that his counsel seemed rooted more in shifting public perceptions than actual evidence.
Fauci also had the exasperating habit of changing his estimate regarding the percentage of the population needing to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity, the point at which protection effectively extends to all, vaccinated or not. He finally admitted that he changed his statements based only on his assessment of what the public was ready to hear.
He recommended mandating six feet of distance from others in public, although he later admitted it was nothing more than a personal guesstimate. He initially was an enthusiastic supporter of gain-of-function research in China’s Wuhan lab, but later evaded questions and denied involvement when the consequences of the catastrophic lab leak became known.
What Fauci left unsaid was equally harmful. He neglected to point out that participating in a George Floyd riot was as unhealthy as mingling in any other crowd in 2020 and that there was no evidence supporting school shutdowns.
Fauci indignantly informed his critics that “I am the science.” But the days of authority-based science are past. Fauci’s self-serving deceptions broke the trust relationship with the American people. We may be reaping the consequences for years to come.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
Shortly before his death in 2006, I had the privilege of interviewing Milton Friedman over dinner in San Francisco. The last question I asked him was: What are the three things we had to do to make America more prosperous?
His answer I have never forgotten: “First, allow universal school choice; second, expand free trade; third and most importantly, cut government spending.” That was long before Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden came along.
There are not too many problems in America that cannot be traced back to the growth of big and incompetent government.
It is notable that the two big bursts of inflation during modern times both occurred when government spending exploded. The first was the gigantic expansion of the LBJ “war on poverty” welfare state in the 1970s with prices nearly doubling, and then the post-COVID era spending blitz in the last year of Trump and then the Biden $6 trillion spending spree with the CPI sprinting from 1.5% to 9.1%.
Coincidence? Maybe. But I doubt it.
The connection between government flab and the decline in the purchasing power of the dollar is obvious. In both cases the Washington spending blitz was funded by Federal Reserve money printing. The helicopter money caused prices to surge. (I still find it laughable that 11 Nobel prize-winning economists wrote in the New York Times in 2021: Don’t worry, the Biden multi-trillion-dollar spending spree won’t cause inflation.)
The avalanche of federal spending hasn’t stopped even though COVID ended more than three years ago. We are three months into the 2025 fiscal year and on pace to spend an all-time high $7 trillion and borrow $2 trillion. If we stay on this course, the federal budget could reach $10 trillion over the next decade.
This road to financial perdition cannot stand. It risks blowing up the Trump presidency.
Upon entering office, Trump should on day one call for a package of up to $500 billion of rescissions — money that the last Congress appropriated but has not been spent yet. Cancelling the green energy subsidies alone could save nearly $100 billion. Why are we still spending money on COVID?
We could save tens of billions by ending corporate welfare programs — such as the wheel barrels full of tax dollars thrown at companies like Intel in the CHIPS Act. The Elon Musk Department of Government Efficiency is already identifying low hanging fruit that needs to be cut from the tree.
Along with extending the Trump tax cut of 2017, this erasure of bloated federal spending is critical for economic revival and for reversing the income losses to the middle class under Biden.
This is especially urgent because the curse of inflation is NOT over. Since the Fed started cutting interest rates in October, commodity prices are up nearly 5% and the mortgage rates have again hit 7% — in part because the combination of cheap money and government expansion is a toxic economic brew — as history teaches us.
Nothing could suck the oxygen and excitement out of the new Trump presidency more than a resumption of inflation at the grocery store and the gas pump. Trump’s record-high approval rating will sink overnight if the cost of everything starts rising again.
Cutting spending won’t be easy. The resistance won’t just come from Bernie Sanders Democrats. Trump will have to convince lawmakers in his own party — many of whom are already defending green-new-deal pork projects in their districts.
This is why Trump should make the case in his inaugural address that downsizing government is the moral equivalent of war. Borrow a line from Nancy Reagan: just say no — to runaway government spending. Say yes to what Friedman titled his famous book: “Capitalism and Freedom.”
Stephen Moore is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation and a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. His new book, coauthored with Arthur Laffer, is “The Trump Economic Miracle.”
