A couple weeks ago, after Mayor Gallego did her interviews and headed home from the City Council meeting on September 6, she posted a photo on X of her pouring milk from a $7 half-gallon carton into an empty bowl next to a knife. (Because what normal person doesn’t enjoy eating cereal with a knife?)
While Gallego says she is not banning meat, there is no meat in the photo.
There’s been a lot of false info about my work to make PHX more sustainable.
What I’m not doing: ❌ banning meat or milk
What I am doing: ✅ increasing housing options ✅ improving walkability and transit ✅ reducing emissions and energy bills ✅ enjoying cereal pic.twitter.com/ZzViZ3bT0O
What made her post this image with these self-righteous campaign slogans under her Official X account?
The power of Public Comment.
Earlier that day, about a dozen Grassroots citizens attended the Phoenix City Council meeting and told the mayor they do not support policies banning meat.
A constant factor was brought up by multiple public speakers: Gallego is the Vice-Chair of the C40 Cities. According to the C40 Cities website, “C40 is a global network of mayors of the world’s leading cities that are united in action to confront the climate crisis.” C40 has many documents outlining the organization’s desire to reduce and abolish the consumption of meat.
And the citizens don’t want it!
The troubling fact is, on March 4, 2020, Gallego and the Council passed the 2025 Phoenix Food Action Plan. In Strategy 2, under Goal 1, the fifth “Progress on Action” creates a new policy for the Office of Environmental Programs (OEP) at the City of Phoenix to enter a contract with Arizona State University to “establish an AgriFood Tech Incubator in 2023 to accelerate ventures in sustainable food systems…”
But this is nothing new. The City of Phoenix has multiple policies for sustainable food systems in the 2020 Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory report conducted by ASU. And Gallego also has many policies tied to ASU. In fact, she is funding and has teamed up with the college for multiple environmental and sustainable projects. What type of environmentally sustainable policies does ASU believe in?
Let’s check out their degrees in “Sustainable Food Systems.” The Bachelor of Science degree states, “Students become effective agents of change” and “Students are engaged in an active community collectively working to achieve the 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.” The degree for Online Master of Science in Sustainable Food Systems lists Kathleen Merrigan as the leader of the degree program.
According to ASU’s biography page for Merrigan, she is the Kelly and Brian Swette Professor in the School of Sustainability and executive director of the Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems. She was listed as one of Time magazine’s Top 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2010. And she is a partner in Astanor Ventures along with being an advisor to S2G Ventures—two firms investing in ag-tech innovation. Merrigan also holds a PhD in Public Policy and Environmental Planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In an article titled, “In Light of Climate Change Debates, ASU Continues Sustainability Efforts,” Merrigan is quoted as saying, “Get rid of the plastic water bottles, eat less meat…” to make ASU more sustainable. Furthermore, ASU has a research program that is teamed up with Merrigan and the Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems. The program states it is ASU’s desire to find out how to implement “dietary shifts towards plant-based diets” through “interventions.” Peoples’ eating habits in reaction to COVID-19 lockdowns, a major intervention on society, are listed in this document.
Now, consider one major food intervention taken by Mayor Gallego. Just two weeks after passing the 2025 Phoenix Food Action Plan, she decided to lock Phoenix down due to COVID. After the lockdown began, the Medical Director for Disease Control with the Maricopa County Department of Public Health, Dr. Sunenshine, gave public testimony at the March 23, 2020 Phoenix City Council meeting. Dr Sunenshine stated that the Mayor shut the city down without reaching out to her office first. Dr. Sunenshine also said she would have recommended staying open.
Locking down the city implemented the most direct intervention on eating habits we have seen in our lifetime. Shutting down restaurants cut off 50% of our food supply because the government prevents restaurant food from being sold in grocery stores. The lockdown drastically constrained supply, damaged the supply chain for food, and helped lead to the astronomical food prices we see today.
While Gallego is able to say she is not literally banning meat, she is implementing policies that make meat more expensive and will lead to major reductions of meat consumption in the future. Dare I suggest by 2030?
Just to demonstrate that Gallego is implementing an ideology and that this is not isolated to only Phoenix, consider this. On April 24, 2023, Gallego posted a video with Mayor Quinton Lucas from Kansas City celebrating his “first fully-autonomous ride with Waymo.” Does Kansas City have a plan to reduce meat consumption?
Of course, they do! Under Lucas, Kansas City passed its Climate Action Plan in September 2022. Kansas City’s Climate Action Plan Food section in each division of Kansas City lists promoting plant-based diets!
Another city recently popped up in the news cycle. Chicago is possibly going to open city-owned grocery stores, so I looked up their action plans. In 2021, Chicago began reducing red meat from its schools, juvenile detention center, and Chicago Park District menus. The same document identifying Chicago reducing meat claims Chicago wants “to foster more racially and socially equitable supply chains across the region.” They are saying the quiet part out loud! They want to disrupt the supply chain to reduce meat consumption. Now, if Chicago does end up opening city-owned grocery stores, do you think they will sell meat? Absolutely not!
But let’s get back to Mayor Gallego’s post from a little over a week ago. Her claim of reducing energy costs is another bold-faced lie. Gallego teamed up with the “Climate Mayors” from across the country to release an op-ed on September 10, 2023 claiming the implementation of green energy plans have reduced the cost of energy!
But mayors cannot claim they are reducing energy costs! The cost of energy is set by Corporation Commissions with utilities providers. Mayors have nothing to do with the cost of energy.
But let’s pretend they do. The Federal Reserve states that the cost of energy for the Greater Phoenix Area is skyrocketing! It’s higher than any point over the past five years!
The policies Mayor Gallego is implementing are detrimental to our well-being and set to a radical left agenda. They should not be accepted, and they should not be tolerated.
That’s why it’s critical for the people of Phoenix to stand up, speak up, give public comments, and more. It’s the best way to stop these radical policies that price people out of being able to afford meat, interrupt the supply chain of meat, and make energy costs skyrocket.
Jeff Caldwell currently helps with operations at EZAZ.org. He is also a Precinct Captain, State Committeeman, and Precinct Committeeman in Legislative District 2. Jeff is a huge baseball fan who enjoys camping and exploring new, tasty restaurants! You can follow him on X here.
Rep. Greg Stanton (D-AZ-04) and Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego will host a re-election campaign fundraiser for President Joe Biden later this month.
The reception will take place Sept. 28 through the Biden Victory Fund. Tickets range from a $3,300 minimum to $100,000. The location of the event is confidential, for attendees only.
The fundraiser will occur the day after the first Republican Party presidential debate in Simi Valley, California.
The contact for the event, Guicela Sandoval-Lopez, is a political consultant with the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Susie T. Buell Foundation.
Gallego told reporters that she’s confident Arizona will remain a blue state in 2024.
The pair are also on the campaign trail defending their incumbency. Though Stanton entertained a challenge to Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ), he announced at the start of the year that he intended on remaining in the House.
The mayor and her council — along with her former husband and Stanton’s fellow congressman, Ruben Gallego (D-AZ-03) — have been petitioning for the Biden administration to declare the desert heat as an emergency. Such a declaration would ensure a consistent and ample source of federal funding for various municipal projects.
The Biden administration appears to be heeding that request. In July, Biden issued several heat relief directives in a joint call with Gallego and San Antonio, Texas Mayor Ron Nirenberg.
Biden’s directives resulted in a Heat Hazard Alert outlining federal heat-related protections, as well as increased enforcement mechanisms by the Labor Department.
Despite those actions and the administration’s estimation of $50 billion in funding to counter heat due to climate change, Gallego told Biden that Phoenix needed more.
“We would love it if Congress would give you the ability to declare heat a disaster,” said Gallego. “We think that could really save additional aid, and that would even more multiply the impact of FEMA Hazard Mitigation Assistance and Building Resistant — Resilience Infrastructure — the BRIC programs, which are a good start to building long-term solutions, such as energy redundancy for cooling centers.”
The Phoenix mayor has remained a steadfast supporter of the president. She helped his initial campaign as well.
Happening tomorrow: Join @DNC Chair @TomPerez and me in north Phoenix as the Biden Bus rolls into town!
Come grab some literature and help us deliver it to neighborhoods, then grab signs to show your @JoeBiden & @KamalaHarris pride.
In 2021, Gallego was one of eight mayors invited to the White House to weigh in on proposed infrastructure funding, some of which reportedly went to combating climate change.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
For local governments—and councils of governments—in Arizona, it appears that creating a climate action plan has become all the rage. Maybe that’s because it pays well.
The latest group to bow down at the altar of the Biden administration’s climate change agenda is the Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG). Back in August, MAG received a $1 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Climate Pollution Reduction Grant Program to serve as the lead planning organization for the Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler metro area. The grant requires MAG to develop a priority climate action plan by next March, a comprehensive climate action plan by 2025, and a status report in 2027 after the four-year grant period expires.
But this $1 million grant isn’t the only way MAG stands to benefit…
Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego is at the forefront of a globalist effort to ban meat, dairy, and private cars by 2030.
Gallego sits on the steering committee of C40 Cities: the globalist climate coalition of over 100 cities globally planning and coordinating a centralized system controlling consumer consumption. She is the only American on the 13-member steering committee, and was elected as its vice chair in 2021.
C40 Cities first announced their consumption reduction plan in 2019, a year before Gallego had Phoenix join C40 Cities. The coalition declared that consumption in high-income cities needed to be reduced by two-thirds to avert a climate crisis. The prediction was based on a research report connecting consumption and emissions, “The Future of Urban Consumption in a 1.5 C World,” produced by C40 Cities, Arup, and the University of Leeds.
The report established these “ambitious target(s)” for influencing global supply chains to control consumption by 2030, dubbed “consumption interventions”: eliminating all meat and dairy consumption; eliminating all household food waste; slashing supply chain food waste by 75 percent; getting rid of all cars; requiring a 50-year lifetime for vehicles; 50 percent reduction in use of metal and plastic materials in vehicles; limiting people to three new clothing pieces annually; restricting flights to one per person every three years; achieving 100 percent sustainable (or low carbon) aviation fuel; reducing steel and cement use in buildings by 35 percent and 56 percent respectively; reducing new building demands by 20 percent; building 90 percent of residential and 70 percent of commercial buildings with timber; replacing 61 percent of cement with low-carbon alternatives; reducing virgin metal and petrochemical-based materials by 22 percent; and requiring a seven-year optimum lifetime of laptops and other electronic devices.
The report also offered “progressive target(s)” that scaled back the ambitious targets.
It appears Gallego has committed to implementing the consumption control plan proposals, as well as the greater missions of C40 Cities. The same year that the coalition named Gallego to its steering committee, Phoenix approved an updated Climate Action Plan reflecting the C40 Cities’ goal of a 50 percent emissions reduction by 2030 and zero emissions by 2050. Among the city’s Office of Environmental Programs initiatives, Gallego’s administration is rolling out a food waste and composting program, the Reinventing Cities initiative to decarbonize infrastructure, and electrification of its government vehicles.
The C40 Cities report noted that food served as the biggest sources of urban consumption-based emissions (13 percent), with animal-based foods representing 75 percent of that total compared to plant-based foods’ 25 percent. Elsewhere, C40 Cities cited the Planetary Health Diet as a model, which reflects their report’s progressive target of limiting meat intake to 35 pounds annually (just over half of a pound a week, or about 1.5 ounces daily).
The coalition hailed the Planetary Health Diet as part of “The Great Food Transformation,” advocated for by the EAT/Lancet Commission. The EAT Initiative is a project of the Stockholm Resilience Center, Professor Johan Rockstrom, and Wellcome Trust (one of the key funders of C40 Cities) under the Strawberry Foundation (formerly the Stordalen Foundation) to transform the world’s food system to XYZZ. Their partners include Nestle, World Resources Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), University of College London, Harvard Global Equity Initiative and T.H. Chan School of Public Health, University of California Berkeley Food Institute, and New York Academy of Sciences.
EAT leadership consists of nearly 60 individuals with professional ties to the mainstream media outlets, publications, and technology companies including Forbes, the Lancet, and Google; progressive globalist organizations including the World Health Organization (WHO), World Economic Forum (WEF), United Nations (UN); the highest levels of domestic and foreign governance, including the Obamas and Clintons, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), United Arab Emirates, China, Norway, Italy, and Sweden; major universities including Tufts University and University of Miami, as well as those listed above; and a slew of nonprofits and organizations with leftist billionaire support.
In 2020, the United Nations (UN) tasked EAT with “a wide mandate to build a broad, multistakeholder [sic] coalition” to move people into “sustainable consumption patterns.”
The report also proposed limiting people to an average of 2,500 calories daily, and reducing household food waste by 50 percent through government publicity campaigns and regulations on food retailers.
In March, C40 Cities published a renewed commitment to their consumption control plan. Although the coalition insisted that the report represented an analysis rather than plan, C40 Cities leadership has characterized the report as a blueprint of sorts for achieving a halving of emissions by 2030, as noted by The Expose.
Similar to EAT, C40 Cities leveraged the COVID-19 pandemic to implement 15-minute cities, within four months of the U.S. pandemic emergency declaration. The coalition championed the same slogan used by President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign and other progressive globalist leaders: “Build Back Better.”
The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, was one of the first to implement 15-minute cities in 2020; she was elected the C40 Cities steering committee vice chair last month. Under Gallego, Phoenix is undergoing changes to reorient itself as a 15-minute city through policy changes as outlined in Vision Zero and ordinances like the parking space reduction for apartments.
Citing C40 Cities, Gallego has also been installing “cool pavement” throughout Phoenix which, contrary to the implications of its name, makes people hotter rather than cooler.
C40 launched in 2005 as “C20” under London, England’s then-Mayor Ken Livingstone. In 2006, C20 merged with former President Bill Clinton’s Climate Initiative to form C40 Cities. The Clinton Foundation remains one of C40 Cities’ key partners.
In 2007, New York’s then-mayor, Michael Bloomberg, joined C40 Cities and hosted the coalition’s second annual conference. Bloomberg remains one of the highest funders for C40 Cities, along with Oak Foundation, ClimateWorks Foundation, Google, the Wellcome Fund, the European Climate Foundation, and George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.
In 2015, then-President Barack Obama and then-Vice President Joe Biden issued a call to action for cities to join C40’s Compact of Mayors. In April, the Biden administration gave $1 million to C40 Cities to address “climate migration” in Latin American cities; that same week, the president signed an executive order to prioritize environmental justice in federal agencies, with a C40 Cities representative there to witness.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
A majority of heat deaths in Maricopa County are attributable to methamphetamine, according to the latest Maricopa County Department of Public Health heat deaths report.
53 percent of heat deaths involved meth last year, or 226 deaths. 67 percent of deaths involved some type of substance abuse. The county noted that the proportion of heat deaths involving drug use has increased over the years.
The homeless make up the largest class of all heat deaths: 178 met that characterization (150 were classified as having “unknown” living situations). Nearly 70 percent of all heat deaths last year occurred in urban areas.
Although the homeless made up the most heat deaths last year and in 2020, that wasn’t the case from 2012 to 2019. More non-homeless individuals suffered heat deaths during those years than the homeless.
Phoenix had the most heat deaths last year, 245, followed far behind by Mesa at 36 deaths and then Glendale at 22 deaths. Scottsdale and Tempe both had 10 deaths, Avondale and Peoria both had 8 deaths, Chandler had 7 deaths, and Gilbert had 6 deaths.
Phoenix also holds the vast majority of the homeless population in the county. The Maricopa Association of Governments reported a 36% increase in homeless individuals in the county from 2019 to last year. That increase was most greatly felt at the very heart of downtown Phoenix, evident in the mass homeless encampment called “The Zone.”
Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego has used heat deaths to bolster her campaign to declare The Valley’s regular summer heat as a federal emergency. Such a declaration would result in the awarding of federal relief funds.
Heat relief teams like @HeatReadyPHX are working tirelessly to support residents during this heat wave, and additional federal resources could multiply our impact.
During her annual state of the city address in April, Mayor Gallego petitioned the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to qualify extreme heat as a disaster by adding the regular seasonal occurrence to its national emergency declarations categorization.
A FEMA recognition would bring in more federal funding. The city has a number of heat mitigation projects that would likely benefit from such funding, like the manufactured shade and drinking water access areas known as “cool corridors,” which are determined on an equity basis, and the special sunlight absorption streets known as “cool pavement.” Those initiatives were unique creations under Mayor Gallego’s administration.
Mayor Gallego was also responsible for the creation of one of the first heat mitigation offices within city government: the Office of Heat Response and Mitigation (OHRM). The city established the office with $2.8 million in 2021, with the explicit attempt to combat “urban heat”: the theory that urbanization causes higher temperatures.
Presently, the OHRM doles out COVID-19 relief federal funding provided by the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) for annual heat relief grants. These grants are earmarked for nonprofit, charitable, small business, and faith-based organizations existing within the city-recognized Maricopa Association of Governments Heat Relief Network that claim negative impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic. OHRM will give out a maximum of $450,000 total, with each recipient receiving anywhere from $10,000 to $25,000.
A major focus of the OHRM is providing heat respite for the homeless. The latest update from OHRM, issued last summer, announced initiatives costing millions to increase the comfort of the homeless residing within the The Zone: the creation of seven new shade structures; distribution of insulated and reusable water bottles, hats, sunscreen, personal misters, towels, ice chests with water; and hundreds of shelter beds for 24/7 heat respite.
The first and current OHRM director is Arizona State University (ASU) professor David Hondula, who teaches within the Global Institute of Sustainability. Hondula was named director of the office overseeing the pavement initiative within weeks of publication of a joint study on the city’s “cool pavement” infrastructure, which the city knew ahead of expansion would make people hotter.
Although FEMA hasn’t heeded Gallego’s call, her Congressman ex-husband did. Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ-03) introduced the Extreme Heat Emergency Act last month.
When it gets dangerously hot in Arizona, our leaders should have the ability to call on FEMA to deploy the necessary resources to save lives.
Per the latest county heat deaths report, fatalities decreased from 2012 to 2014. 2012 totaled about one-fourth of last year’s deaths and 2014 reached a low of 61 deaths. Deaths then increased from 84 in 2015 to 199 in 2019, spiking to 323 in 2020 and steadily increasing since then.
The county report also revealed that African American and Native American individuals made up the most heat deaths: 13 per 100,000 and 9 per 100,000, respectively. White individuals followed closely behind at nearly 8 per 100,000 deaths.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
