A new caucus has been formed within the U.S. House of Representatives to champion the conservation and humane treatment of wild horses. The aptly named ‘Congressional Wild Horse Caucus’ announced Thursday, will be co-chaired by Republican Congressmen David Schweikert and Juan Ciscomani of Arizona and Democrat Reps. Dina Titus of Nevada and Steve Cohen of Tennessee. The caucus will pursue reforms to conservation laws and regulations.
Schweikert spoke of his formative experiences on Arizona ranches and farms in a statement saying, “Growing up, I had the blessing of spending much time on several ranches and farms in Arizona. These experiences have led me to serve as an advocate for humane treatment and protection of these majestic species. I’m looking forward to the conservation initiatives that will come out of the formation of this caucus.”
Breaking!: Reps Dina Titus, Juan Ciscomani, David Schweikert, and Steve Cohen today launched the first-ever Congressional Wild Horse Caucus, dedicated to keeping America's wild horses wild! Ask your member of Congress to join the caucus, here: https://t.co/bE6xc5BtoHpic.twitter.com/k5W4CQ1Tav
— American Wild Horse Conservation (@FreeWildHorses) May 8, 2025
Congressman Ciscomani reflected on the wild horses of Arizona as well as the burros that are also found in the state’s deserts. “Wild horses and burros embody the spirit and heritage of the West and deserve to be protected and treated humanely. For too long, these animals have been subject to cruel and costly roundups that, at best, remove them from their natural habitat to be housed in warehouses, and at worse, result in the death of the animal.“
He added, “Caring for wild horses and burros is not a partisan issue, which is why I am proud to be named as Co-Chair of the bipartisan Congressional Wild Horse Caucus to promote humane policies, such as fertility control and habitat preservation, to manage and care for these iconic animals.”
The newly formed bipartisan caucus is supported by non-profit organizations including the American Wild Horse Conservation (AWHC) and the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI). Senior figures from both organizations expressed the importance of the Caucus’ work.
Suzanne Roy, executive director of AWHC, called the creation of the caucus “an important step toward reforming a broken system.” She added, “For too long, federal wild horse policy has relied on costly and inhumane roundups that remove animals from the range only to warehouse them in holding facilities. We commend the leaders of the Wild Horse Caucus for recognizing that there’s a better way to manage our wild herds that is rooted in humane treatment, science, and fiscal responsibility.”
Dr. Joanna Grossman, Ph.D., AWI’s equine program director and senior policy advisor, said, “Protecting America’s wild horses and burros has always been a bipartisan issue, in large part because these iconic animals hold an important place in our country’s history and because, for countless Americans, they continue to embody the spirit of freedom and resilience.”
She concluded, “We are grateful to Representatives Titus, Ciscomani, Schweikert, and Cohen for their outstanding leadership on this issue. The Congressional Wild Horse Caucus will help ensure these beloved animals will be protected for generations to come.”
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has made it clear that it is targeting the congressional districts of Congressmen David Schweikert (AZ-01), Eli Crane (AZ-02), and Juan Ciscomani (AZ-06) in 2026.
On Wednesday the Arizona Democratic Party said it is “focused on winning these critical seats, paving the way for a Democratic House majority in 2026.” The release referred to the three Republican Congressmen as “vulnerable,” and their districts as “competitive.”
Arizona Democratic Party Chairman Robert E. Branscomb, II claimed, “Arizonans are tired of David Schweikert, Eli Crane, Juan Ciscomani and other MAGA-cronies playing politics with the issues that impact their ability to make ends meet. As a Party, we will stop at nothing to hold them accountable and to finally elect leaders who will move Arizona forward.” However, the state of play in each district doesn’t seem to be that simple.
Schweikert and Ciscomani both won their 2024 elections with 2-3% margins with Schweikert serving as Ciscomani’s CD6 predecessor before moving to CD1 with redistricting. Each of these constituencies are competitive by their nature and by design, according to the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission (AIRC). The 2021 commission held District 1 competitiveness at a 2.6% vote spread and District 6 at a 2.4% spread, both of which proved accurate in the 2024 race.
Historically, the area that is now District 6 has seen six Republican victories and only three for the Democrats in the in the past nine statewide elections, making District 1 truly the most “competitive” with a more even split of 5 GOP victories to 4 losses per the AIRC.
The same day the Arizona Democratic Party issued their press release, both Reps. Ciscomani and Crane held telephone town hall meetings with their constituents.
The DCCC’s calculus seems to fall short with Rep. Eli Crane’s District 2 seat though, which has seen historically zero Democrat wins in the last nine races and was designed to hold a 7.2% vote spread competitively. That spread Crane decisively beat in his 9-point victory over Democrat Jonathan Nez last year.
As AZ Free Newsreported in February when a Democrat SuperPAC bankrolled by leftist billionaires announced they would target his seat, Crane’s response was blunt. He wrote in a post to X, “The great thing about #AZ02 is they see through phony attacks by coastal elites. Bring it.”
Given the historic makeup of these districts: two of them designed to give Democrats a chance and a third that appears nearly unassailable, the AZDems assessment of the three Congressmen as “vulnerable,” and their districts as “more “competitive than normal” seems questionable at best.
In a speech on the House floor earlier this week, Arizona Republican Congressman David Schweikert (R-AZ-01) blasted leftist activists and vandals who allegedly affixed a swastika to his wife’s Tesla.
Schweikert expressed exasperation speaking to the House saying, “It’s not, ‘Hey David, we’re concerned about Medicaid. Here are ideas for how you could deal with debt and deficits so we have the resources.’ No, because [instead], it’s this really high-brow intellectual conversation from our brothers and sisters on the other side: Stick Nazi things on people’s cars. This is what you’ve come down to? This is what’s going on?”
The congressman reflected that when his wife bought a Tesla a few years back, they were teased by fellow conservatives. Then, he excoriated the leftists resorting to “stick[ing] Nazi signs on people’s cars.”
“The wheels are coming off, and instead, the brain trust of some of these folks… okay, I accept that the tonal quality from some of the folks out of the White House isn’t warm and cuddly, but [is the answer really to] go around neighborhoods and offices and stick Nazi signs on people’s cars?“
The congressman, a well known critic of out-of-control government spending, explained, “Over the next 10 years, we’re going to spend $86 trillion. We’re talking about at best on the house budget resolution cutting $2 trillion over those 10 years. That’s 2.3%. Oh, god, dear heaven, you’re butchering government. 2.3%. You’re telling me if we didn’t grind through government, look at our programs, look at all the reports the GAO gives us of waste and fraud and programs that haven’t been authorized in decades, you couldn’t find 2.3%? But it’s easier to stick this sort of crap on my wife’s windshield than to do the intellectual work of saying, ‘I think we have more elegant ways to spend and make it better, faster, cheaper for the American people.’ No, we’d rather burn things down. Are we all proud of ourselves?”
As reported by the Fountain Hills Times, protesters marched on Schweikert’s Scottsdale District Office as recently as Sunday. Ten days prior, protesters delivered a petition to the Congressman’s office demanding he conduct a townhall meeting with 30 protesters holding signs outside of the building at Northsight Boulevard and Raintree Drive.
Congressman David Schweikert (R-AZ-01) raised an alarm about what he believes is the oncoming fiscal demise of the U.S. in a speech from the House floor.
Schweikert explained that a simple series of calculations “point to a shrinking labor force, and lack of young people in our society, and the reality that in 8 years, the United States will have MORE deaths than births,” citing the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
"The fact of the matter is, and @RayDalio said it himself, there's a shortage of borrowable money in the world. We've run out of global savings. Our goal is stability, not collapse." – Chairman @RepDavidhttps://t.co/2dkQCJcYIG
— Joint Economic Committee Republicans (@JECRepublicans) March 26, 2025
The congressman’s speech coincided with the release of a devastating report from the CBO, which warned that the federal government’s capacity to borrow through “extraordinary measures” will be exhausted by the end of August or September.
Speaking to the House, Schweikert laid out the dire projections of the CBO report, as well as the remarkable insufficiency of the metrics the government is using, in the face of three unassailable facts: “debt, deficits and demographics:“
“I’m going to walk you through just how dangerous the game we are playing right now, because when you look at these charts — and this is online. Go on C.B.O. from last Friday. It’s not a hard read. Why are my brothers and sisters so terrified to tell the truth to the public? You have a country that — and I’m going to show the charts, that in 7 1/2 years we have more deaths than births. You have a country that, when we get out of the extraordinary measures…remember right now we are borrowing from different funds because we are up against the debt ceiling, we may be borrowing almost $70,000 every second of every day. For those of you who turn to me and say, ‘David, I demand you balance the budget.’ I could do it tomorrow. Lets’ see…if I use the 2024 numbers for every dollar we took in tax collections, we spend $1.39.
“Tell me the 39 cents you want me to cut. And the problem with that math is that when you look at the charts, you see what’s in blue. That’s everything a member of Congress gets to vote on, defense and nondefense. The only problem is. it’s 26% of the spending. So, if you ask a member of Congress right now to balance the budget, we can do it, we can do it. Gotta get rid of all defense, all non-defense, discretionary. That’s basically the park service, the EPA, all the agencies. And then tell me what portion…because you have to pay your interest or you blow up the world economy.
“Tell me what portion of social security, medicare, medicaid, other things you want to hack away at. The reality of it is, in this fiscal year, our projection is…for every dollar we take in tax collections, we are going to spend functionally $1.36.
“Do you understand how screwed—excuse me, yeah that’s the technical economic term— how SCREWED WE ARE when we don’t tell the truth about the math?
“And it is not fixable, but it is possible to stabilize. We can stabilize this. We just have to think and do things that are hard. So often around here, the thinking part is complex and it’s hard and we have to go home and tell our constituents the truth about math.
But remember, the math will win. How many have you heard about how people are protesting and terrified there are going to be cuts? Ok, let’s actually have a moment of truth about math. This was baseline. Over the next 10 years, we are going to spend $86 trillion. Next 10 years, CBO baseline, we are going to spend $86 trillion. The reconciliation budget had $1.3 trillion in cuts, and if we get lucky, we’ll get to $2 trillion over 10 years on $86 trillion of spending.
That’s what the left over here is losing their minds over because they need something. They have lost the working middle class. They’ve lost so much, and American voters no longer trust them because the spent decades not telling them the truth about the math. And it’s not hard, except the problem is 30% of that is borrowed. 30% of that is borrowed. And people are losing their mind that we are trying to cut $2 trillion on $86 trillion of spending. That’s what this place has become. This place has become a clown show of math.
“Think about this. We are functioning and going to spend about $7 trillion this fiscal year. We’re going to take in about $5 trillion. And this is in a time when the economy is good. We’re not in a pandemic. We’re not in a war. We’re not in a recession. And understand when you take some of these charts of interest exposure into the future, one of my charts, it shows in nine budget years interest, just interest is over $2 trillion a year. Just interest. Why aren’t we running around terrified here? If you care about your retirement or someone that’s crazy like my wife and I, we are older parents. I have a 2 1/2-year-old and a 9-year-old. You do realize for my 2 1/2-year-old, when he turns like 24 or 23, 25, every tax in the United States has to have been doubled just to maintain baseline services. This is the morality of this place.
“The United States and other countries are binging on debt. The United States borrows about 40% of all the world capital that goes into sovereign loans. His argument is, your problem is, there’s not enough savings in the world. We are consuming more money. China, Europe, now Germany’s going into the debt markets as they’re raising their spending caps. What happens in a world when there’s a shortage of borrowable money? Remember, every day when we borrow, what, $6 billion a day, functionally that debt has to be sold. Most of it’s actually financed domestically. You know, it’s in this pension, it’s in this bank…And then foreigners, except the foreigners have been lowering their U.S. Debt because they’re having to finance their own governments. And you start to look at our interest payments, and there’s this concept called a term premium. When we make the bond markets nervous, we pay a higher interest rate.”
Congressman Schweikert summarized the fiscal nightmare scenario saying, “And you look at the next 10 years, it’s the point I’m trying to make. Is, ok, here’s the growth. 24% of the growth in spending over the next 10 years is interest. 31% of the growth of spending over the next 10 years is Social Security and disability. 28% of the growth of spending over the next 10 years is Medicare. Other mandatory and discretionary growth, about 13%. But a portion of that is actually you think defense and other things in that. The fact of the matter is your government is an insurance company with an army.”
Congressmen David Schweikert (R-AZ), Tim Burchett (R-TN), and Steve Cohen (R-TN), co-sponsors of the Justice for Kennedy (JFK) Act, hailed the release of over 1,100 PDF files of documents pertinent to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in a statement released Tuesday.
Social media and news outlets have been abuzz examining the files, many of which are being seen in unredacted form for the first time, having been previously released with key segments withheld.
The files, which total over 80,000 pages, were released with Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard stating, “President Donald J. Trump promised maximum transparency and a commitment to rebuild the trust of the American people in the Intelligence Community (IC) and federal agencies. Part of that promise was to fully release previously-classified records related to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”
One file that has garnered significant attention from July 19, 1967, refers to a CIA employee named Gary Underhill who was reportedly found dead after he claimed that the agency was responsible for the assassination of the president. “The day after the assassination, Gary Underhill left Washington in a hurry. Late in the evening he showed up at the home of friends in New Jersey. He was very agitated,” the document states. “A small clique within the CIA was responsible for the assassination, he confided, and he was afraid for his life and probably would have to leave the country. Less than six months later Underhill was found shot to death in his Washington apartment. The coroner ruled it suicide.”
Newly released JFK files tell a story about how Gary Underhill, who worked for the CIA, was found dead after he revealed to friends that the CIA was responsible for JFK’s assassination.
“The day after the assassination, Gary Underhill left Washington in a hurry. Late in the… pic.twitter.com/psZkYQ5COi
“It’s been 61 years since the tragic murder of President John F. Kennedy. A truly functioning republic ensures Americans have access to information, and this moment symbolizes the long-awaited restoration of the people’s trust in the federal government,” Congressman Schweikert said in a statement.
“I applaud the Trump Administration for following suit with our Justice for Kennedy Act and requiring all assassination records be unclassified and unredacted.”
Jeff Morley, a former Washington Post reporter and Co-Founder & Editor of JFK Facts, commented on the release saying, “Today’s release needs to include removing the many unnecessary redactions in the JFK files current held at the National Archives. I appreciate Congressman Schweikert’s years of work pushing Administrations of both parties to provide more government transparency on the Assassination of President Kennedy, especially from the CIA.”
More records are expected to become available according to the National Archives who wrote on its JFK Assassination webpage, “As of March 18, 2025, the records are available to access either online at this page or in person, via hard copy or on analog media formats, at the National Archives at College Park, Maryland. As the records continue to be digitized, they will be posted to this page.”
“I am happy that after decades of questions from the public and government cover-ups that the American people finally may have answers to the JFK assassination. President Trump is once again showing his commitment to having the most transparent administration this country has ever seen,” said Congressman Burchett.
“It’s too soon to know whether there’s much in the documents released today, but it is a good sign that some progress toward the goal of full disclosure is under way,” said Congressman Cohen. “The assassinations of the 1960s need to be understood in their full historical context and the documents being released may help us get there.”
