An announcement on Tuesday from the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona (USAO-AZ) revealed that U.S. Attorney Gary M. Restaino was terminated by order of President Donald Trump. U.S. Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the sitting President and are subject to removal at their discretion.
Restaino was appointed to the USAO-AZ by former President Joe Biden in 2021.
According to a press release from the USAO-AZ, Restaino was informed by the White House on Monday that he has completed his service to the Department of Justice effective immediately, thanking him for his service to the nation.
Restaino released a statement saying, “Getting the opportunity to lead an Office in which I have worked for many years has been energizing. I am grateful to President Biden for the appointment, to Senators Kelly and Sinema for their support of my nomination, and to Attorney General Garland for his stewardship of the Department of Justice. And most of all I am thankful for our people here in Arizona – the dedicated prosecutors, victim advocates and administrative professionals at the United States Attorney’s Office, as well as the agents, analysts, and accountants at our federal law enforcement agencies – who work collaboratively and collegially with state and local partners and leaders of underserved communities to make Arizona a better and safer place.”
The potential motives behind Restaino’s replacement have not been indicated by the White House or DOJ.
The former recorder for Maricopa County, Stephen Richer, is again headlining a “Principles First” summit this weekend.
Principles First, the nonprofit behind the annual D.C.-based summit, proposes a medley of libertarian and progressive values as the true basis of conservatism.
In his panel, Richer will host a “keynote conversation” with former Congressman Adam Kinzinger on the last day of the conference. Kinzinger now works as a commentator for CNN.
Richer also participated in panels during last year’s Principles First summit, themed around defending elections. Richer’s panel focused on improving voter sentiments concerning election integrity.
“We can’t cede the territory [in politics]. We can’t just have it be people who don’t believe in democracy and Democrats, because that’s not a healthy system,” said Richer.
Principles First advocated for the election of Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race.
Like others frequently involved with Principles First, Richer voted for Harris last year.
Principles First launched in 2019 as an alternative to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), founded by corporate lawyer Heath Mayo. Mayo voted for former President Joe Biden in 2020 and independent candidate Evan McMullin in 2016. Mayo planned on voting for Biden again prior to the former president dropping out of the race last year.
“Donald Trump represents an existential threat not just to the Republican Party, but to the constitutional principles that shape our country,” said Mayo in a Washington Examiner interview last June. “So, I personally would be voting for Biden.”
Other headliners for the summit this year can be classified as Democrats, centrist or left-leaning Republicans, or Republicans-turned-Democrats: entrepreneur Mark Cuban, Colorado Governor Jared Polis, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, former Congresswoman Barbara Comstock, lawyer John Conway, former Fifth Circuit Judge J. Michael Luttig, former Lieutenant Governor of Georgia Geoff Duncan, former Lieutenant Governor of Maryland Michael Steele, former Defense Press Secretary Alyssa Farah, chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, former congressman and former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, former United Nations ambassador and National Security advisor John Bolton, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, political commentator and The Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell, author and political candidate Harry Dunn, political commentator and former consultant Tim Miller, political analyst Michael Fanone, and journalist Steve Hayes.
Participant organizations include Unite America, The Bulwark, The Dispatch, Protect Democracy, Afghan American Veterans Alliance, American Values Coalition, Grumpy Combat Veteran, Veterans for All Voters, ESC, Country First, Leaving MAGA, Nate Gowdy Photography, Rank the Vote, Ranked Choice Voting Maryland, UpVote Virginia, The Concord Coalition, Citizens’ Climate Lobby, An Accountable America, Welcome Democracy Institute, Bright America, and Center for Collaborative Democracy Grand Bargain Project.
Past donors to Principles First included Defending Democracy Together, which gave the nonprofit over $600,000 per 2023 tax records.
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President Trump’s historic victory in the November election gave him a clear mandate from the American people. And so far, he hasn’t wasted any time getting to work. In his first month back in office, Trump signed 45 Executive Orders (EO) in an effort to put America first and undo much of the damage created by the Biden administration. And that’s especially true with his executive actions to unleash American energy.
Ending the Net Zero Climate Cult Fantasy
For four years under President Biden, the American people were forced to endure an administration that was hellbent on pursuing a net zero agenda. Across the country, they pushed these radical and costly climate action plans to fundamentally transform and restrict the energy options available to consumers. Along with this came calls from the Left to ban gas stoves, gas cars, gas-powered lawn equipment, and hundreds of other draconian ideas to limit the freedom of the American people.
If the high cost of these plans wasn’t enough, they have also proven to be unreliable. States and countries that have committed to energy sources like solar and wind as part of this net zero fantasy have experienced rolling blackouts, continually demand that their customers use less, and eventually have to make haste to open reliable sources of generation they had closed down. Isn’t that right, California?
But Trump’s Executive Order 14154 unleashes fossil fuel production and use in America while unwinding much of the damage caused by the Biden administration…
President-elect Donald Trump has a big job ahead of him in restoring common sense and sanity to federal energy policy when he takes office on January 20. The last four years in this realm can more accurately be characterized as a series of ill-considered, irrational scams than as any sort of coherent, productive set of policies. It has been four years of bad policies — largely based on crass crony capitalism principles — that has done severe damage to America’s level of energy security.
There is no doubt that cleaning up this mess left behind by President Joe Biden and his appointees will take the full four years of Trump’s second term. But the new president will be able to take some fast actions to jump-start the process as part of his first 100 days agenda.
With respect, here is a list of 10 quick common-sense actions Trump can take to begin to restore America’s energy security:
1 — Rescind Biden’s ridiculous permitting “pause” on LNG export infrastructure. Of all the Biden energy policy scams, this was perhaps the most heinous and unjustified of all. Terminate it immediately and get this American growth industry back on track.
2 — Terminate U.S. participation in the Paris Climate Agreement and in any future annual COP conferences sponsored by the United Nations. Halt the spending of federal dollars related to any and all goals and commitments related to either of these wasteful processes.
3 — Terminate the office of Senior Advisor to the President for International Climate Policy, aka “the Climate Envoy,” currently occupied by John Podesta and eliminate its budget.
4 — Turnabout being fair play, Trump should invoke a “pause” of his own related to permits and subsidies going to Biden’s pet offshore wind boondoggle. The pause would be justified by the need to conduct a truly thorough study on the potential impacts of those massive developments on marine mammals, seabirds, and the commercial fishing industry. Invoke the “precautionary principle” that has been ignored by Biden regulators related to these costly and possibly deadly projects.
5 — Order the Interior Department to immediately and aggressively restart the moribund oil-and-gas leasing program on federal lands and waters. Direct the Interior Department Inspector General to investigate the Biden-era manipulations of these programs for potential criminal violations.
6 — Form an interagency task force to recommend ways the executive branch of government can act to streamline permitting processes for energy projects that do not require congressional action. Congress has proven several times now that it is incapable of passing legislation in this arena.
7 — Place an immediate hold on all green energy subsidies pending a full compliance review. This should include any and all subsidy programs that were part of the IRA or the 2021 Infrastructure law. This review should also include suggested reforms to qualification requirements for these subsidy programs in light of the high percentage of bankruptcy filings by unsustainable companies that have benefited from these subsidies.
8 — In light of the Supreme Court’s recent recission of the Chevron Deference, order the Environmental Protection Agency to review the rationale for regulating atmospheric carbon dioxide, aka “plant food,” as a pollutant under the provisions of the Clean Air Act.
9 — Order an interagency review of the U.S. power grid and transmission infrastructure as they relate to national security concerns. Include a special focus on the current, growing trend of major tech firms locking up power generation assets for their own specific needs (AI, data centers, etc.) which might deny generation capacity that would otherwise be dedicated to the public grid.
10 — In light of recent reports of Biden regulators steering billions of dollars of IRA and other green energy funds to NGOs to provide funding for anti-fossil fuel propaganda, lawfare, and other abuses of the legal system, order an immediate freeze on all such spending pending a formal review.
In reality, this list could consist of hundreds of high priority items for the new administration to undertake. Such is the level of damage that has been wrought on American energy security by the outgoing administration.
But executing these ten items in the early days of his second term would represent a good start and place the country on a path to recovery. We wish Trump and his appointees the best of luck in restoring U.S. energy security.
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.
Recognizing that voters are increasingly skeptical of extreme climate regulations, dark money groups have stepped in with millions of dollars to alter the conversation.
The goal of these groups, as reported in recent news, is to help climate activists “talk like humans” and present their ideas in a way that doesn’t alienate voters.
Essentially, these groups advise activists on how to sound less radical by softening the rhetoric and framing their climate agenda as more palatable and less divisive. But there’s an obvious catch: this is a messaging campaign, not a policy shift.
If you must teach someone to talk like a human, the message is probably not the problem — it’s the policy, isn’t it?
Beginning with the mythical “new ice age” predicted in the 1970s, the climate alarmists have tried for half a century now to convince us that humans are negatively impacting the climate and that the only solution is for us to diminish the very things — food, energy, and transportation, to name a few — that have brought progress not just to the United States but everywhere around the globe.
The problem is that folks just aren’t buying it, or at least aren’t buying the radical solutions proposed by far-left government officials, out-of-work politicians desperate to make a buck, and the NGOs and think tanks that provide financial backing to them all.
Now, since voters aren’t buying what they’re selling, they want dark money groups to help activists disguise their radical agenda by using softer language, subbing out phrases like “climate change” and “warming” to “extreme weather” and “overheating.”
It seems more than a little ironic that the same voices on the left who accuse energy companies of peddling “fake news” and “climate denialism” to protect their profits are now using a web of dark money to fund a communications strategy that relies on concealment and manipulation. Talk about hypocrisy.
Their problem, of course, lies in the reality that their policy “solutions” do not resonate with the public and do not deliver as advertised. Solutions that actually work and are truly affordable wouldn’t require these kinds of deceptive tactics to gain public support. But their approach is the furthest thing from in touch with what an endless numbers of pre-election surveys and exit polls showed is voters’ most pressing concern today — the economy.
Just look at the adverse economic consequences that came from President Joe Biden’s radical energy policies.
Within hours of assuming office, Biden canceled the Keystone Pipeline, killing thousands of union jobs. He conducted a regulatory assault on energy companies, limited drilling permits and access, supplied nearly $500 billion in tax dollars to green energy initiatives, and pushed policies that made fossil fuel production more difficult and expensive. Gas prices spiked, and utility bills soared for millions of Americans, hitting the middle class especially hard.
And that’s not all. Of course, nearly every good purchased or consumed is shipped by trucks and trains which run on fossil fuels. Driving up the cost of fuels drives up the price of shipping, which, in turn, drives up the prices of the goods being shipped. That is exactly what Biden’s radical energy policies did. Add to that the fact that, even as fuel prices moderated in recent months, prices for consumer goods have remained stubbornly high, and it’s no wonder the Biden policies became so unpopular.
While the administration justified these policies as steps toward a cleaner, greener future, the main effect felt by average American families was a squeeze on their household budgets and a heightened sense of financial instability.
No amount of dark money will bring the climate alarm movement’s views into line with the mainstream, and no amount of softer language will allow them to change the conversation in a manner that convinces the public to give up their gasoline-powered cars and gas stoves.
There is a fundamental disconnect between the radical Biden policies and the needs of average Americans living out here in “flyover country.” Until they can address the true economic consequences of their climate agenda, they will continue to lose elections and legislative policy battles. And that’s welcome news for us all.
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.
