The Trump administration’s recent deployment of National Guard troops and federal resources to major U.S. cities reflects a growing majority of Americans who are fed up with inaction on public safety. After years of unchecked violence and open-air drug use, many see these moves not as overreach but as long overdue.
Fueling much of this primordial decay is a Fentanyl epidemic, which is now the leading cause of death for Americans under 50. Meanwhile, other rampant street drugs like meth and bath salts are inducing or worsening levels of psychosis, unlike anything in history. The result has been broken people, broken homes, broken cities, and unspeakable violence. Tents and waste sprawl across once beautiful urban centers while needles litter children’s playgrounds, and women avoid pumping their own gas after dark.
The United States’ rate of violent crime, such as rape, robbery, and assault, is nearly three times higher than Europe’s. And the homicide rate? That’s seven times higher. Worse still, an alarming number of these crimes are perpetrated by repeat offenders. Our criminal justice system is failing to carry out the duties of its most basic requirement: to protect the public from career criminals. A quick glance at any morning paper on any given day in any city across America will tell the story.
In Charlotte, NC, Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska survived war only to be brutally stabbed to death on a train by a career criminal who never should have been free. The video of this horrific tragedy plays back in our nightmares over and again. We have seen enough.
The Cicero Institute’s new national poll puts numbers to this sadness and frustration:
82% support life in prison or the death penalty for aggravated murder, even when mental illness is involved.
63% want lenient judges removed from the bench.
75% support electronically monitoring transient sex offenders.
60% want automatic federal investigations into states that repeatedly release violent criminals, something the White House is already looking into.
But nothing captures the stakes more vividly than the testimonies of those who have to live with the consequences of failed policy. Stephen Federico, father of 22-year-old Logan Federico, gave emotional testimony before a House Judiciary subcommittee in Charlotte. He recounted how his daughter was “executed … on her knees begging for her life … begging for her hero, her father. Me. And I could not protect her.” He did not lean on political ideology. He called out a broken system that allowed a man with at least 39 arrests and 25 felonies to remain on the streets, serving little time despite a decade of violent and property crime. “There is only one thing that would have kept my daughter alive,” he said. “Putting a career criminal in prison.”
And if you think it ends there, it doesn’t.
In Kentucky, the anguish of one father has come to embody a nation’s rage. Years after his six-year-old little boy was stabbed to death by a man deemed “criminally insane,” that man was granted parole “good behavior.” Dean Tipton has vowed that if the system will not deliver justice for his son, he will. His words are not a threat born of malice, but of despair. Thankfully, proactive law enforcement officials in Florida picked up the murderer on a parole violation, sparing Mr. Tipton further trauma.
But Americans should not have to wait for a technicality to get violent predators off the street. The voice of America is saying, “Enough.”
While we face rising crime, record overdose deaths, and exploding homelessness, bickering and posturing dominate from the local to the federal level by those who are content with the status quo of death, disease, and despair. The average family does not care about partisan brinkmanship. They care about being safe in their own neighborhoods.
In Athens, GA, Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student, was dragged off her morning jog, beaten, and murdered by an illegal alien who had already been arrested in the U.S. and released back onto our streets. This was not an accident or a tragedy of circumstance. It was the predictable result of a government that refuses to protect its citizens, releasing violent men again and again until they finally kill one of our daughters. Riley’s blood, like Iryna’s and Logan’s, cries out against a broken system that values ideology and excuses over human life.
Yet instead of focusing on these failures, Leftists consumed by political theater are eager to offer aid to our enemy rather than save our cities from this terror. America is not asking for cruelty but for safety. Voters are not asking the government to shrug at addiction or mental illness. They want public spaces reclaimed for families and small businesses, not surrendered to chaos.
That is what the poll numbers capture: a public demand for strong consequences that bring peace to our streets. People want dangerous offenders confined and controlled, drug dealers punished, transient sex offenders tracked, and public spaces cleared of disorder.
The new federal deployments mark a turning point. From state houses to our national capital, citizens are signaling to their elected officials that the duty of government is to protect them. And if current leaders cannot find the gumption to deliver security and justice, they should resign and make way for those who will.
Americans have seen enough. The public’s patience has expired. They are eager to support leaders who will match words with courageous action.
Stefani E. Buhajla is a pollster, political strategist, and Sr. Director of Communications at the Cicero Institute.
Nothing undermines confidence in elections quite like discovering they can be compromised by foreign billionaires or botched altogether through complex schemes like ranked-choice voting.
This year, legislatures across the country took aim at both of these urgent threats to election integrity, as outlined by a recent report from Honest Elections Project. Altogether, eight states closed a critical legal loophole allowing foreign billionaires to flood ballot measure campaigns with foreign dark money. Meanwhile, six more states banned ranked-choice voting, the most legislative bans in a single year. In other words, conservative states have made 2025 a banner year for election reform.
Most Americans would be shocked to learn how vulnerable our elections are to foreign influence. Federal law forbids foreign nationals from donating to candidates or political parties yet offers no such protection for state or local ballot measures. This means that a foreign billionaire cannot influence a particular race, but he can spend millions to pass a constitutional amendment that rewrites the rules of the entire election system.
That loophole has been a gift to Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss. According to the watchdog group Americans for Public Trust, Wyss has directed roughly $280 million into the Sixteen Thirty Fund, which has simultaneously spent more than $130 million in foreign-tied funds into ballot campaigns in 26 states. As shocking as these figures are, they likely represent the tip of the iceberg. After all, the same loophole can just as easily be abused by foreign nationals doing the bidding of China and Russia.
Fortunately, conservative states are taking action to ensure that ballot measures are no longer a Trojan Horse for foreign interference. After Ohio led the way in 2024, eight states this year—Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Tennessee, and Wyoming—enacted new laws to ban foreign nationals and the groups they finance from funding ballot measure campaigns. Even Kentucky’s Democratic governor signed the bill into law, proof that defending elections from foreign influence should not be a partisan proposition.
That hasn’t stopped many on the left from fighting to keep these loopholes open for purely partisan gain. Marc Elias, Democrats’ top election lawyer, went to court in Ohio in 2024 and again in Kansas this year to block these bans. He lost both times, once in front of an Obama-appointed judge. States clearly have the authority to ban foreign funding, and every state should.
The same is true of ranked-choice voting, and 2025 was an incredible year in the ongoing fight to stop its spread.
Under ranked-choice voting, voters are asked to rank multiple candidates. Ballots are counted in rounds as losing candidates are eliminated and votes are redistributed. If a voter fails to rank enough candidates, the ballot is “exhausted” and thrown out. Candidates can win the most first-place votes but lose the election. Delays are inevitable; Alaska’s ranked-choice voting tabulation does not even begin until 15 days after Election Day. In California, a tabulation error once led to the wrong candidate being certified. Ranked-choice voting turns what should be a straightforward election into a complicated black box.
Fortunately, the public has seen the problems with this system from the start. In 2024, ranked-choice voting advocates spent nearly $100 million dollars on ballot measures promoting the scheme in six states. All failed. Only the District of Columbia adopted it, which is hardly a ringing endorsement.
Between 2022 and 2024, 11 states banned ranked-choice voting. And this year, six more – Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, North Dakota, West Virginia, and Wyoming – acted to make the scheme illegal. And in Utah, lawmakers allowed a failed pilot program to expire, meaning ranked-choice voting will come to an end there, too.
As extraordinary as this progress is, conservatives must not become complacent. States like Michigan, Florida, Nebraska, North Carolina, Montana, and Arizona have all seen significant amounts of foreign-tied money pumped into ballot issue campaigns, but so far have not acted. And progressives remain committed to pushing ranked-choice voting, especially after witnessing the scheme elevate a Democratic Socialist in New York. Ranked-choice voting lobbyists are working legislatures nationwide, and activists are already gathering signatures for another ballot measure in the presidential battleground of Michigan.
That should serve as a warning. When it comes to securing our elections, the job is never done. This was a banner year for election integrity. Conservative leaders must keep the momentum going in 2026 and beyond.
Evidence of voter fraud has been discovered in Arizona and seven other states, allegedly.
The secretary of state of Ohio, Frank LaRose, announced Tuesday he had discovered and submitted evidence of voter fraud in Arizona as well as Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Ohio, South Carolina, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.
The alleged voter fraud consisted of noncitizen voter registration and double votes. LaRose discovered the alleged voter fraud during reviews of the Ohio Voter Registration Database by their Public Integrity Division.
The reviews yielded evidence indicating 11 individuals voted in the seven states and Washington, D.C.
LaRose passed along the findings to Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, along with the attorneys general of the other affected states and Washington, D.C.
“We must send a clear message that election fraud won’t be tolerated,” said LaRose. “Through the investigations of our Public Integrity Division’s Election Integrity Unit, we are rooting out lawbreakers so we can bring accountability and justice.”
In a press release, LaRose reminded voters that every single vote counted.
“Critics of Ohio’s election integrity efforts may try to minimize the significance of these referrals, as though some small amount of election crime is acceptable,” stated LaRose in a letter to Ohio Attorney General Yost. “Even one illegal vote can spoil the outcome of an election for the citizenry at large, whether it be a school levy, majority control of a legislative chamber, or even a statewide election contest.”
We must send a clear message that election fraud won’t be tolerated.
Through the investigations of our Public Integrity Division’s Election Integrity Unit, we are rooting out lawbreakers so we can bring accountability and justice. https://t.co/d4iwB4UCR2
During her campaign for attorney general, Mayes dismissed claims of widespread voter fraud occurring in Arizona.
“Know what has been debunked repeatedly? Any indication of widespread, systemic voter fraud,” posted Mayes on X during her campaign run in 2022. “Many of us find the continuation of lies about that ‘truly appalling.’”
Know what has been debunked repeatedly? Any indication of widespread, systemic voter fraud. Many of us find the continuation of lies about that “truly appalling.” Have a lovely evening, “war room.” pic.twitter.com/BhE9Pa25fw
Mayes was declared the winner of the 2022 attorney general race, despite questions remaining of over 9,000 uncounted provisional ballots and their potential effect on her slim margin of victory over now-Congressman Abe Hamadeh. Mayes’ already-slim lead of over 500 votes dropped to under 300 after uncounted votes were discovered in Pinal County during a recount.
As of this report, Mayes hasn’t indicated whether she will act on the referral to her office for investigation or prosecution.
Mayes’ focus on election-related prosecution has largely concerned securing criminal convictions for President Donald Trump’s 2020 electors — a group she refers to as the “fake electors.” All of Mayes’ efforts to coordinate a plan of prosecution (with the help of a Washington, D.C. advocacy organization) and secure the indictments were for naught.
Late last month, the Maricopa County Superior Court ruled that Mayes must redo her entire case against the electors, citing her failure to instruct the grand jury on applicable provisions of the Electoral Count Act of 1887.
A state grand jury, made up of everyday, regular Arizonans, has handed down felony indictments in the ongoing investigation into the fake elector scheme in Arizona. pic.twitter.com/Nu8GcD4ZqJ
— AZ Attorney General Kris Mayes (@AZAGMayes) April 24, 2024
More recently, Mayes unsuccessfully attempted to prevent Cochise County from carrying out its plans for a new jail district election. The election was deemed necessary in court due to the 2023 election on the issue being invalid — nearly 11,000 eligible voters were left without ballots. Mayes pushed in court to have the county abide by the results of the flawed 2023 election.
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A partisan effort to make it harder for fossil fuel-based energy companies to obtain bank financing and banking services prompted a warning letter to the U.S. banking industry on Nov. 22 from the top financial officers of several states, including Arizona.
“Denying banking services to traditional, reliable energy production industries simply to advance radical, socialist policies from the White House, is both immoral and goes against the very free market principles that our country was founded upon,” said Arizona Treasurer Kimberly Yee in announcing the letter. “In this case, they are picking the energy industry as the losers and that goes against the free marketplace in America.”
Yee joined the financial officers of Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming in signing the letter, cautioning the banking industry of potential consequences for allowing itself to be used as a political pawn against law-abiding companies in the coal, oil, and natural gas industries.
According to the letter, the Biden Administration is “pressuring U.S. banks and financial institutions to limit, encumber, or outright refuse financing for traditional energy production companies.” The White House is also supporting an end to American financial support for traditional energy production projects in developing countries around the world, “likely ceding future development and exploration to Chinese interests,” the letter states.
“We believe, as almost all Americans do, that the free market should remain free and not be manipulated to advance social agendas,” the letter states. “We are not asking for special treatment of the fossil fuel industries. To the contrary, we simply want financial institutions to assess fossil fuel businesses as other legal businesses – without prejudice or preference.”
The letter also says the states have a compelling government interest “to select financial institutions that are not engaged in tactics to harm the very people whose money they are handling.”
Each state will undertake its own actions to counter the “undue pressure” being placed on the banking industry, according to the letter. Yee has not outlined what steps her office might take if financial institutions which do business with the state engage in efforts to deny services to the energy industry.
This past week in Kentucky, HB 574 was signed into law. Despite the Kentucky legislature consisting of Republican supermajorities in both the House and Senate, the account for Democratic Governors tweeted, “While Republicans like @BrianKempGA are implementing Jim Crow 2.0, yet another Democratic governor just expanded voting rights…”
And the corporate media picked up this talking point with headlines such as “Kentucky Gov. Beshear signs into law bipartisan elections bill expanding voting access” from CNN, “Why Kentucky Just Became the Only Red State to Expand Voting Rights” from the New York Times, and “Democratic Governor in deep-red Kentucky signs bill to expand voting, bucking national trend” from the Washington Post.
Meanwhile, here in Arizona the headlines read “Arizona Republican lawmakers join GOP efforts to target voting, with nearly two dozen restrictive voting measures” under a bold “Voting Rights Under Attack” from CNN, “The next Georgia: Texas and Arizona emerge as voting rights battlegrounds” from the Guardian, and “23 voter suppression bills in Arizona legislature” from KOLD.
Let’s take a look at what the left and liberal media consider “Jim Crow 2.0” in Arizona compared to what they applaud as “expanding voting access” in Kentucky.
Early Voting
In Arizona, early voting begins 27 days before an election.
Under the Kentucky bill, early voting is limited to a mere 3 days: Thursday, Friday, and Saturday during normal business hours (Section 11).
Ballot Harvesting
In 2016, HB2023, which prohibited ballot harvesting, was signed into Arizona law. The Democrat party sued the state over it, claiming it has a disparate impact on minority voters. The case is currently in the Supreme Court.
Under the Kentucky bill, ballot harvesting is prohibited (Section 6).
Vote By Mail/SB1485
In Arizona, no excuse is required to vote by mail and voters can register to automatically receive a ballot for every single election, without having to reapply. SB1485 would remove a voter from this list only after the voter failed to vote in four consecutive elections and fails to respond to a notice. The voter would still be registered, they would just no longer receive a ballot in the mail automatically.
Under the Kentucky bill, an excuse is required to vote absentee and voters must apply within a short window of no earlier than 45 days before an election and no later than 14 days before an election (Section 11).
SB1003
In Arizona, SB1003 clarifies that if a ballot does not have a signature, the county must attempt to contact the voter and if a signature is not obtained by 7PM on election day, it is rejected.
Under the Kentucky bill, an absentee ballot must immediately be rejected if it has no signature (Section 14).
Voter Registration/SB1106
In Arizona, SB1106 would require a county recorder to cancel a voter’s registration upon confirmation the voter has registered in another county or state.
Under the Kentucky bill, a voter’s registration must immediately be canceled upon notification the voter has registered in another county or state (Section 5).
Voter ID/SB1713
In Arizona, voters on the early voter list automatically receive a ballot by mail for every election and do not have to reapply every time. SB1713 requires voters to write their date of birth and either their Arizona driver’s license or voter registration number on their ballot affidavit.
Under the Kentucky bill, a photo ID is required for voting in person and must be provided in the application for an absentee ballot, an application that must be made before every election (Section 41).
Catching the theme? All of these provisions leave Kentucky with a more restrictive election system than Arizona. If proposals in the Arizona Legislature are “Jim Crow 2.0” in the eyes of the democrats and media, then Kentucky would surely be “Jim Crow on steroids.”
If we have learned anything from Kentucky’s passage of HB574, it is that according to the leftist media, election integrity reforms are racist and disenfranchisement when Republicans pass them, but an “expansion of voter access” when a Democrat Governor signs on.
In reality, all of the bills Arizona is considering leave intact the many accessible options available to voters with modest reforms to ensure the integrity of each. They ensure it is simple to register, easy to vote, and hard to cheat, priorities Kentucky’s new law also ensure.
