by Staff Reporter | Oct 22, 2025 | News
By Staff Reporter |
It pays to know the guys making the laws from the highest offices in the land.
Senator Ruben Gallego used his voting power to protect the business interests of a longtime friend — fellow Harvard University graduate and prominent Democratic donor and activist Joe Sanberg — interests which would turn out to be fraudulent.
In August, Sanberg pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud perpetrated through his online financial services company, Aspiration Partners. Sanberg admitted to defrauding over $248 million.
Senator Ruben Gallego fought for the success of Sanberg’s company while in Congress.
When he was still a congressman in 2023, Gallego voted to protect against environmental, social, and governance (ESG) limitations that would have impacted Aspiration Partners. The financial services company was uniquely focused on progressive environmental and social causes, including investing in fossil fuel alternatives and selling carbon credits.
Months before that vote, Sanberg gave Gallego a positive endorsement in The Hill. FEC records show Sanberg donated just over $13,000 to Gallego’s campaign from 2014 to 2017.
“The thing about Ruben is he knows exactly who he is,” said Sanberg. “This campaign isn’t about any individual personality.”
In 2015, the two men also launched a political action committee to help elect progressive Latino candidates — LLEGO-PAC, short for Latino Leaders for Equality, Growth, Opportunity, Progressive Action and Change.
Gallego praised Sanberg as “a thought leader” and “progressive leader from day one,” and credited the financial services CEO for being the one who “recruited” him into the Democratic Party. The senator was even a part of Sanberg’s wedding in 2021, per social media posts reported on by Fox News.
“He convinced me to get more involved in politics, and has been a good guiding post for me since then,” said Gallego.
Just a few years ago, Sanberg was shopping himself around to the media as a potential Democratic candidate for president. The Atlantic published one such feature of Sanberg in 2019.
In 2021, Aspiration disclosed in its annual Securities and Exchange Commission filing that 70 percent of its revenue came from ESG services.
Senator Gallego began banking with Aspiration in 2017 and then acquired a non-public stock in the company in 2019.
However, Gallego failed to report that purchase for three years, per Fox News reporting.
Aspiration came on the progressive venture capital scene in 2013 as an “environmental” bank with a “conscience,” the brainchild of co-founders Sanberg and Andrei Cherny, the latter Arizona’s former Democratic Party chairman, congressional candidate, and a Clinton administration speechwriter.
Cherny left Aspiration in mid-October 2022, two years after Sanberg later admitted to prosecutors the company turned fraudulent.
In 2021, Sanberg went into talks with the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team about a four-year, $48 million endorsement deal to sponsor one of their players, Kawhi Leonard.
Many have come to view the endorsement deal as a workaround to the NBA salary cap — a view bolstered by comments from those within Aspiration — though the Clippers have denied this speculation.
Following Sanberg’s arrest and pleading, Aspiration rebranded as GreenFi.
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by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Apr 30, 2025 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
For the past decade, our organization has been fighting the Green New Deal agenda in Arizona, working to score a decisive victory for reliable and affordable energy. Thanks to President Trump, that decisive victory now appears within reach.
Earlier this month, President Trump released three new executive orders and one proclamation, all aimed at unleashing American energy abundance. These executive actions are all part of a coordinated White House effort to initiate a tidal shift in the ever-steady march toward the Net Zero nightmare being pursued by radical environmentalists, the green industrial complex, and public utilities across the nation.
For years, energy regulators have forewarned of the impending grid crisis due to the overreliance on costly renewable energy, yet the previous administration only accelerated the catastrophe. The new Trump Executive Orders, coupled with his declaration of a National Energy Emergency, will directly address this crisis by ending the regulatory discrimination against coal, empowering the domestic mining of coal resources, encouraging the development of coal energy generation, and allowing for these activities to take place on federal lands.
Reigniting the American coal industry couldn’t happen soon enough. While China and India are building new coal plants at unprecedented rates to power their economic growth, we have been aggressively shutting our plants down…
>>> CONTINUE READING >>>
by Daniel Stefanski | Nov 18, 2024 | News
By Daniel Stefanski |
Another Arizona governing body has intervened in a critical issue in place of the state’s attorney general.
Last week, the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) intervened in a matter at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), protesting BlackRock, Inc.’s Request for Reauthorization and Extension of Blanket Authorizations to own utilities. The Environmental Social Governance (ESG) – related filing was led by a coalition of state attorneys general from around the nation and the ACC.
The coalition requested that FERC decline to approve BlackRock’s application unless the following four conditions are met:
- “The Commission must require that Applicants, including all affiliates and subsidiaries, limit their collective ownership to 20% or less of the shares of each FPA-covered utility.
- “Applicants must function only as passive investors.
- “Applicants must hold the shares subject to their fiduciary duties to their investors, including the duty to act in the sole financial interest of the investors.
- “The Commission should require specific reports by Applicants of every instance when the asset managers voted contrary to the recommendation of utility management on a shareholder proposal or board of director nomination, as well as an explanation of how such votes were consistent with the asset manager’s commitments to FERC.”
Freshman Commissioner Kevin Thompson, who pushed hard for the commission to join the legal protest, told AZ Free News, “We need utilities to make decisions based on what makes the most sense for ratepayers and the integrity of our grid, not the policy goals of ESG-minded asset management cartels. This Commission is taking a more proactive role in federal matters that impact Arizona ratepayers and our grid because FERC and other federal agencies have rapidly been exerting their influence in matters that should be left up to state regulators and our utilities.”
Joining the Arizona Corporation Commission on the filing were the States of Utah, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wyoming.
The Corporation Commission’s involvement with this coalition mirrors the Arizona Legislature’s repeated efforts the past two years to join with other state officers in attempts to defend laws and protect the interests of their constituents. Both the Commission and the Legislature have been forced into acting as the state’s defacto attorney general due to Arizona’s top prosecutor, a Democrat, being unwilling to stand against certain infractions or questions of legality for state and federal laws.
The intervention into the ESG-related matter marks another instance of leadership by Arizona Republicans on this issue. The ESG movement has sought to advance an environmental agenda to bring an end to traditional and reliable energy investments across the country and world, and many have challenged the legality of such efforts in various industries. Before the current Democrat administration, the state had a Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich, who led a handful of early ESG skirmishes. Arizona Treasurer Kimberly Yee has also joined other state financial officers over the years to oppose pro-ESG actions.
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
by Corinne Murdock | Feb 7, 2024 | News
By Corinne Murdock |
A coalition of grassroots advocacy groups is asking the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) to reject Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) efforts by energy companies, citing the impact to consumer well-being.
In a letter sent last week, representatives of Heritage Action for America, EZAZ, and Heartland Impact, led by the Arizona Free Enterprise Club (AFEC), expressed concern for the impact on utility rates and energy reliability that ESG implementation poses under plans submitted by APS, TEP, and UNS. The grassroots claimed that the three companies have deprioritized cost and efficiency in pursuit of voluntary climate goals.
“The Commission has a constitutional obligation to ensure just and reasonable rates and a statutory duty to ensure adequate provision of service,” stated the organizations. “That means ensuring reliable, affordable, and plentiful energy in the state, which should be the mission of this Commission. But these ideological environmental commitments do the opposite, and for that reason, they should be rejected.”
The grassroots leaders also expressed concern with the relationship between ESG and a greater political agenda to achieve “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050. In order to achieve net zero, companies would have to drastically reduce, if not eliminate totally, usage of coal, gas, and oil in exchange for renewable energies such as solar and wind.
In their letter, the organizations pointed out the intermittency — and therefore unreliability — of renewable energies. They referenced the power failures and high rates experienced by states and countries further along in their net zero journey, citing specifically California, Texas, and Germany.
The grassroots leaders maintained that ACC has the authority to prevent energy companies from quitting traditional energies and using ratepayer funds to subsidize renewables.
Utility companies previously rejected an increased reliance on renewable energies as recently as 2018, the letter noted, over concerns that such a move would greatly increase costs for ratepayers. They also cited 2021 ACC cost analysis, which found in part that a total transition to renewables could incur a $6 billion cost to ratepayers, averaging hundreds of dollars more a month, by 2050.
Last year, AFEC issued an analysis comparing the energy mandates of the 10 states with the highest electricity rates and 10 states with the lowest electricity rates. Per that report, nine of the 10 states with the highest rates had some form of mandates requiring renewable energy usage, while seven of the 10 states with the lowest rates had no mandates at all.
The report estimated that states with renewable energy mandates paid, on average, close to double what their peers in mandate-free states paid.
In a press release, AFEC President Scot Mussi blamed leftist politicians for the ESG push.
“Liberal activists and politicians in Arizona are seeking to harm our energy future, freedoms, and choices by forcing their radical and failed ESG policies on consumers,” said Mussi.
As AZ Free News reported last November, the executives overseeing those three companies have financial incentives to meet ESG criteria.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Nov 10, 2023 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
For several years, Arizonans have faced a threat of radical renewable energy mandates being imposed on our grid. In 2018, the voters overwhelmingly rejected a measure that would have required utilities to generate 50% of their energy with “renewables” by 2030. Then, in 2021, the Arizona Corporation Commission considered, and rejected, a 100% renewable mandate completely banning fossil fuel generation by 2050. But now, the utilities have voluntarily committed themselves to these goals, known as “Net Zero by 2050”, under the broader requirements of their Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) commitments.
But a new study commissioned by the Arizona Free Enterprise Club, and authored by esteemed economist Stephen Moore, makes clear the high cost of pursuing ESG…
>>> CONTINUE READING >>>
