Three of Arizona’s Republican Congressional delegation have called for accountability from the FBI over the rapidly evolving scandal around the ‘Durham Annex,’ a cache of recently released records exposed by FBI Director Kash Patel and Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard.
Following the initial release, Congressmen Abe Hamadeh, Eli Crane, and Andy Biggs all offered comments via X, along with media interviews uniformly calling for accountability from the Department of Justice for the monumental scandal, which President Donald Trump described as “a FAILED coup.”
NEW: Whistleblower reveals how they were threatened by a supervisor to go along with the Obama-directed Russia hoax “intelligence” assessment, even though they knew it was not credible or accurate. The Whistleblower refused.
Gabbard started the proverbial ball rolling with a post to X, saying, “Whistleblower reveals how they were threatened by a supervisor to go along with the Obama-directed Russia hoax ‘intelligence’ assessment, even though they knew it was not credible or accurate. The Whistleblower refused.
“Yesterday we released the Whistleblower’s firsthand account of what happened in the crafting of the January 2017 ICA, their yearslong efforts to expose the egregious manipulation and manufacturing of intelligence carried out at the highest levels of government and the IC (detailed in our previous releases) and how they were repeatedly ignored.”
The releases by DNI Gabbard and FBI Director Patel indicated that the Hillary Clinton campaign allegedly approved a plan to falsely link President Donald Trump to Russia as a distraction from her email scandal, with the FBI failing to adequately investigate or disclose key information, including misleading the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The document highlights U.S. intelligence assessments of Russian intercepts suggesting Clinton’s involvement in stirring up a scandal. Later email releases showed clear ties from the Clinton Campaign to Leonard Benardo, Senior Vice President of billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.
Congressman Crane made several posts to X over the course of the day, calling for accountability. He quoted Leading Report’s note that said, “Declassified files show Hillary Clinton personally signed off on plan to link Trump to Russia in 2016, ” and he wrote, “And the swamp went along with it. We the People expect ACCOUNTABILITY.”
Sharing the whistleblower account Crane added, “This is a MASSIVE scandal. There has to be accountability.”
Responding to a report from John Solomon, Crane commented, “A historic scandal. And it’ll likely be ignored by the very mainstream media figures that perpetuated the hoax in the first place.”
In response to additional subsequent releases from FBI Director Patel, he wrote “Keep releasing. Then we have to hold them accountable.”
A historic scandal.
And it’ll likely be ignored by the very mainstream media figures that perpetuated the hoax in the first place. https://t.co/afklh1nX6X
Congressman and Arizona Gubernatorial candidate Andy Biggs similarly demanded “consequences for everyone who conspired against the American people.”
He wrote, “It was planned from the start. Americans were manipulated by the Left and the media for years. Those of us who called out the stench from the start were painted as conspiracy theorists. There must be severe consequences for everyone who conspired against the American people.”
It was planned from the start.
Americans were manipulated by the Left and the media for years. Those of us who called out the stench from the start were painted as conspiracy theorists.
There must be severe consequences for everyone who conspired against the American people. https://t.co/fw9Mai2eet
In an interview with Garret Lewis of The Afternoon Addiction on 550 KFYI, Rep. Abe Hamadeh was clear: “There has to be justice. There has to be accountability. People need to be locked up.”
"There has to be justice. There has to be accountability. People need to be locked up."
— Office of Congressman Abe Hamadeh (@RepAbeHamadeh) August 3, 2025
“It is the biggest scandal in American history, and that’s why President Trump won back in November,” Hamadeh added. “Because this is a repudiation of the corrupt cabal that has held a chokehold on our country for so long.”
This year, the tax cuts from the Trump Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 were set to expire. Failing to extend the cuts would have resulted in a 22% tax hike for the average taxpayer. For Arizonans, it would have meant an average tax increase of $2,824. And there would have been an even larger tax increase for Arizona small businesses. Thankfully, earlier this summer Congress finally passed Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB), not only extending the personal income tax cuts from 2017 but making them permanent.
The OBBB also included several new tax provisions as well, such as no tax on tips and overtime, an increase in the standard deduction, full expensing and special depreciation for business, just to name a few. This assortment of changes to federal tax law now leaves states like Arizona with a big decision to make: provide partial conformity tax relief, full tax relief, or do nothing and provide no conformity tax relief at all.
This should be an easy choice, as choosing the non-conformity option would leave Arizona taxpayers with one big ugly tax bill to pay.
The Trump administration is gearing up to try to revoke one of the most overreaching, unscientific regulatory edifices ever erected: the EPA’s 2009 “endangerment finding.” News broke this week that the Environmental Protection Agency has drafted a plan to rescind this cornerstone of federal climate policy, which declared that greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane pose a danger to human health and welfare.
If this move succeeds, it would limit the federal government’s ability to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from cars, power plants, and industries—a prospect that has the climate alarmist crowd clutching their pearls. And frankly, it’s about time someone challenged this rank absurdity.
Let’s take a walk down memory lane to 2009, when the Obama-era EPA, emboldened by the 2007 Supreme Court ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA, decided to anoint itself the arbiter of America’s energy future. The endangerment finding was born, asserting that CO2 – literally plant food, and the fundamental building block for all life on planet Earth – is actually a “pollutant” that “endangers public health” as defined under the Clean Air Act.
This vast expansion of the regulatory state wasn’t based on some groundbreaking scientific discovery but rather on a political agenda dressed up in green rhetoric. The finding has since provided the legal foundation for a slew of regulations, from tailpipe emissions standards to power plant rules, all designed to choke the fossil fuel industry and push the U.S. toward a so-called “clean energy” utopia that exists only in the fever dreams of climate activists.
Now, the Trump EPA, led by Administrator Lee Zeldin, appears poised to dismantle this house of cards. Zeldin’s draft proposal argues that the EPA overstepped its authority by issuing such a sweeping determination.
The plan focuses on a legal argument that the EPA’s administrator lacks the power to make broad proclamations about greenhouse gases without specific congressional authorization. This is a direct jab at the 2007 Supreme Court decision, a judicial overreach that gave unelected bureaucrats a blank check to regulate the economy. It is key to also remember that that decision came at a time when the Chevron Deference, which the Court did away with a year ago, was still in effect.
Adopted in 1984, the Chevron Deference held that courts must defer to the judgment of regulators when interpreting the congressional intent of federal statutes. But the Clean Air Act was never designed to regulate CO2, a point even the late Rep. John Dingell, a co-author of the law, made clear.
Of course, the climate alarm lobby will drag this fight into the courts, so overturning the finding will not be easy. The EPA must navigate a minefield of procedural requirements under the Administrative Procedure Act, and the alarmists will try to overwhelm the courts with claims that climate change has only grown since 2009, asserting that every extreme weather event somehow proves their case.
But the Trump administration isn’t denying climate change outright; it’s questioning whether the EPA has the legal authority to act as America’s climate czar. This is a fight worth having, because if the agency can regulate CO2 without clear congressional approval, what’s stopping it from declaring water vapor a pollutant next?
The bigger picture here illustrates the absurdity of the energy transition itself. The endangerment finding has been a cudgel to force a shift away from reliable, affordable fossil fuels toward a fantasy of windmills and solar panels that can’t power a modern economy. The U.S. is the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases globally, but even if we zeroed out emissions tomorrow, global temperatures would barely budge without similar action from China and India.
Meanwhile, Americans bear the brunt of higher energy costs and a less reliable grid. Rescinding the endangerment finding could free up the economy to innovate without the EPA’s heavy hand, letting market forces—not bureaucrats—drive energy and climate solutions.
This move is a bold step toward dismantling the regulatory state’s stranglehold on American energy. It won’t be quick or easy, and the climate zealots will fight tooth and nail. But if the Trump administration can pull it off, it’ll be a victory for common sense over green dogma, a win for innovation over regulation. A long, hard fight lies ahead, but it is one worth having, and which is long overdue.
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.
Following President Trump’s directive to scrub divisive Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs, practices, and language from public institutions, the U.S. Department of Education sent a letter to the Arizona Department of Education (DOE) to ensure that schools comply with these requirements.
The Arizona DOE notified every school district and charter public school that they must submit a completed certification confirming compliance with the federal civil rights law. A public website was developed to track which districts and schools have completed the certification and which have not. Though the majority of schools are listed as “in compliance,” the question remains: have they all truly purged their websites and learning environments of DEI practices? A quick review and some basic research suggest that not all these schools are fully committed to the removal of this woke material.
Alhambra Elementary School District in Phoenix has a subcommittee titled “Culture, Conditions, & Climate” with a stated need to “increase its Diversity, Equity, Inclusion capacity to ensure it is an inclusive environment.” The district plans to achieve this by subjecting staff to DEI trainings designed to establish that these adults teaching your children become anti-racist activists.
Recently, Scottsdale Unified School District has been the center of controversy surrounding their adoption of new textbooks that teach about George Floyd, Black Lives Matter, and anti-law enforcement rhetoric. Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne has spoken out against this anti-American, DEI-infested curriculum, emphasizing that schools must steer clear of promoting an “unbalanced political agenda.”
In Glendale, the Washington Elementary School District has published a “Statement of Commitment to Educational Equity,” in which it outlines how DEI principles are integrated into its educational framework.
In an application for federal charter school start-up grants for 2024-2028, Desert Sage High School in Tucson declares its commitment to “diversity, equity, inclusion, anti-bias education, and social justice.” Among its goals is increasing the percentage of Hispanic and Native American students—an effort aimed more at virtue signaling just to demonstrate how unbiased they really are.
America’s carmakers face an uncertain future in the wake of President Donald Trump’s signing of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) into law on July 4.
The new law ends the $7,500 credit for new electric vehicles ($4,000 for used units) which was enacted as part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act as of September 30, seven years earlier than originally planned.
The promise of that big credit lasting for a full decade did not just improve finances for Tesla and other pure-play EV companies: It also served as a major motivator for integrated carmakers like Ford, GM, and Stellantis to invest billions of dollars in capital into new, EV-specific plants, equipment, and supply chains, and expand their EV model offerings. But now, with the big subsidy about to expire, the question becomes whether the U.S. EV business can survive in an unsubsidized market? Carmakers across the EV spectrum are about to find out, and the outlook for most will not be rosy.
These carmakers will be entering into a brave new world in which the market for their cars had already turned somewhat sour even with the subsidies in place. Sales of EVs stalled during the fourth quarter of 2024 and then collapsed by more than 18% from December to January. Tesla, already negatively impacted by founder and CEO Elon Musk’s increased political activities in addition to the stagnant market, decided to slash prices in an attempt to maintain sales momentum, forcing its competitors to follow suit.
But the record number of EV-specific incentives now being offered by U.S. dealers has done little to halt the drop in sales, as the Wall Street Journal reports that the most recent data shows EV sales falling in each of the three months from April through June. Ford said its own sales had fallen by more than 30% across those three months, with Hyundai and Kia also reporting big drops. GM was the big winner in the second quarter, overtaking Ford and moving into 2nd place behind Tesla in total sales. But its ability to continue such growth absent the big subsidy edge over traditional ICE cars now falls into doubt.
The removal of the per-unit subsidies also calls into question whether the buildout of new public charging infrastructure, which has accelerated dramatically in the past three years, will continue as the market moves into a time of uncertainty. Recognizing that consumer concern, Ford, Hyundai, BMW and others included free home charging kits as part of their current suites of incentives. But of course, that only works if the buyer owns a home with a garage and is willing to pay the higher cost of insurance that now often comes with parking an EV inside.
Decisions, decisions.
As the year dawned, few really expected the narrow Republican congressional majorities would show the political will and unity to move so aggressively to cancel the big IRA EV subsidies. But, as awareness rose in Congress about the true magnitude of the budgetary cost of those provisions over the next 10 years, the benefit of getting rid of them ultimately subsumed concerns about the possible political cost of doing so.
So now, here we are, with an EV industry that seems largely unprepared to survive in a market with a levelized playing field. Even Tesla, which remains far and away the leader in total EV sales despite its recent struggles, seems caught more than a little off-guard despite Musk’s having been heavily involved in the early months of the second Trump presidency.
Musk’s response to his disapproval of the OBBBA was to announce the creation of a third political party he dubbed the American Party. It seems doubtful this new vanity project was the response to a looming challenge that members of Tesla’s board of directors would have preferred. But it does seem appropriately emblematic of an industry that is undeniably limping into uncharted territory with no clear plan for how to escape from existential danger.
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.
