America is a country founded on the principle that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. For almost 250 years, these rights, freedoms, and values have shaped our nation into the world’s foremost superpower, a beacon of light and liberty to millions of onlookers, and extremely prosperous and generous.
None of these rights could have been sustained, passed down, or protected without the men and women who have served in the branches of our military for more than two centuries.
This week, we again honor the service and sacrifice of all those who have answered the call of duty to defend and preserve the United States of America for future generations. Since 1775, when the Continental Army was formed in our nation’s war for independence against England, over 40 million individuals are believed to have served in our military. Currently, there are more than two million men and women who serve either on active duty or in the reserve components. Each one of these people understood the gravity of their decision, and many have—and continue to say—they would serve again if given the opportunity.
While the vast majority of jobs in this country require a ‘clock in and clock out’ mindset, service to America in uniform requires an incredible degree of love, devotion, and a recognition of sacrifice. People serving in the military love this country and her citizens, and they will do anything to defend the Constitution and ideals that have made her the greatest in world history. They are devoted to country above self, understanding they are engaged in a higher purpose they may not comprehend in this life. And they recognize they will be called to sacrifice for the good of the nation. This sacrifice is observed in several ways, including lengthy deployments, injuries and psychological issues, and even death. When a man or woman volunteers for service to the United States military, they do so knowing they may be called upon to give their lives for the cause of freedom.
The level of love, devotion, and willingness to sacrifice from members of the military is very unique to the United States. Many countries around the world coerce individuals to serve and die in war. Other nations do not have the luxury of established militaries, inviting unrest within their borders. However, the American military is the most powerful in the world, keeping countless threats at bay, and comprised of individuals who voluntarily choose to serve in the defense of their country. Even during periods of our nation’s history when there was a military draft, those who stepped forward had a superior understanding of the nature of the dangers facing the world and the United States and were willing to do whatever it took to eradicate the evils around them. This is why the history books call those who fought in World War Two, “The Greatest Generation.” Perhaps Claudia Pemberton, an author and member of the Military Writers Society of America, put it best, when she said, “America without her soldiers would be like God without his angels.”
It’s easy to live in a country such as ours and take what we have for granted because we enjoy so much around us. But these freedoms and values did not simply appear, and they are not guaranteed to last. There is definitely a complacency that has crept in our communities and exponentially grown throughout the years and generations. Our children are not being raised in a country that appreciates or values our veterans and their service as it once has or ought.
We must, however, recognize that these liberties and our way of life did not appear out of nowhere, and that it has not been easy to retain our freedoms. Millions have fought and served under our flag to ensure that American liberty is passed from generation to generation. They do so without expectation of thanks or praise, but these reactions to their service cannot become secondhand or muted. On the contrary, we should redouble our efforts to honor and celebrate our veterans and what they have done to defend our great nation.
Thus, the importance of Veterans Day cannot be overstated. It is not just another special date on the calendar we can take for granted. It is a day when our nation must rally together in unity to help kindle appreciation for our military veterans in the next generation. President Abraham Lincoln correctly noted, “Any nation that does not honor its heroes will not long endure.” If we are to keep the flame of the United States of America burning for another 250 years, Veterans Day must be cherished by all Americans. Thank you to all the men and women who have served in the United States military. Your service and heroism is greatly appreciated.
Warren Petersen is the President of the Arizona State Senate and represents Legislative District 14.
Last week, Congressman Abe Hamadeh joined his fellow Republicans in passing the FY26 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) with a bipartisan vote of 231-196 in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The landmark legislation delivers critical support for Arizona’s military communities, service members, and defense industry. Hamadeh’s vote reflects his commitment to strengthening national security and prioritizing the needs of his constituents in Arizona’s 8th Congressional District.
“I am proud of the work we have done on the FY26 National Defense Authorization Act to support military families through a pay raise, restore America’s fighting forces, and secure our border,” said Congressman Hamadeh. “This legislation will get our service members what they need, when they need it, while supporting America’s manufacturers and workers.”
Congressman Hamadeh understands that Border Security is National Security, which is why he supports the FY26 NDAA to secure America’s borders.
This means it fully funds the deployment of troops to the border and authorizes nearly $1 billion to combat drug traffickers. pic.twitter.com/UYwP9GgzDh
In a post to X, Hamadeh’s office wrote, “Congressman Hamadeh understands that Border Security is National Security, which is why he supports the FY26 NDAA to secure America’s borders. This means it fully funds the deployment of troops to the border and authorizes nearly $1 billion to combat drug traffickers.”
The FY26 NDAA, shaped through bipartisan collaboration, streamlines military procurement processes, delivering over $20 billion in savings while ensuring critical investments in Arizona’s military installations and defense innovation. Congressman Hamadeh’s leadership secured several key provisions that directly benefit Arizona’s service members, military bases, and defense industry.
Hamadeh’s office emphasized the key wins for Arizona in the FY26 NDAA. They highlighted two provisions impacting Luke Air Force Base in particular. The first is a provision requiring the Secretary of the Air Force to produce a detailed report on the operational impacts, workforce demands, and costs before any downgrade of leadership at major bases like Luke Air Force Base. This will ensure the base, a critical hub for training and operations, retains its one-star general leadership. The second provision addresses HVAC issues at the West Valley Air Force Base.
In broader moves for his district, Hamadeh worked with Rep. Don Davis (D-NC) to secure a provision eliminating burdensome regulations that required license holders to “babysit” machine guns during fitment and testing. This change will save Arizona’s defense industry, particularly in Congressional District 8, significant costs while boosting efficiency.
Hamadeh added additional provisions as well to invest in cutting-edge gyroscopes produced in Congressional District 8, enhancing intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance satellite imagery, fast-tracking the customization of jet engine production in Phoenix for use in collaborative combat aircraft, and increasing the acquisition of dump trucks for the Arizona Army National Guard.
Working in bipartisan cooperation alongside Reps. Andy Biggs (R-AZ-05) and Greg Stanton (D-AZ-04), Hamadeh also secured an order for three additional conversions of AH-64D to AH-64E Apache helicopters, saving jobs at Mesa’s remanufactured Apache production line, which had been at risk of shutting down. In collaboration with Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Hamadeh included a provision requiring the Secretary of Defense to report on suicide prevention resources under The Brandon Act, named after Congressional District 8 service member Brandon Caserta, who tragically died by suicide.
Hamadeh emphasized the collaborative nature of the NDAA, stating, “I am grateful to my colleagues for their bipartisan support of Arizona’s military installations and innovators.”
The Scottsdale Unified School District (SUSD) is under criticism from parents and community members over a BrainPOP lesson taught to elementary students that compares the struggles of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first African American military aviators, to those of LGBTQ+ service members.
The lesson, part of BrainPOP’s supplemental curriculum, has sparked significant backlash due to its inclusion of a call to action and a cartoon depiction of a newspaper headline reading “LGBT Welcome in the Military,” showing protestors with a rainbow banner outside the White House.
In the video, it states, “Thanks to pioneers like the Red Tails, the armed services integrated shortly after the war. It was an early victory for the budding Civil Rights movement. In the decades to come, the federal government would expand its role in protecting the rights of African Americans and the rights of other marginalized groups. Injustice never ends overnight. It takes brave people to challenge it and show everyone else that there’s another way.”
People in the community have raised an alarm about SUSD’s approval of hundreds of supplemental resources, like BrainPOP, without any committee review or community input.
The online nature of these platforms allows publishers to update content at any time, limiting transparency. For example, in a course given to 2nd graders, a search for “gender” on BrainPOP yields topics such as Pride Month, personal pronouns, sex determination, women’s suffrage, and feminism, which push ideological agendas over academic focus.
BrainPOP, hosting over 1,000 animated films for K-8 students, has been controversial since introducing LGBTQ+ content in 2017 following the Pulse nightclub shooting.
Additional concerns stem from lessons like “Black Lives Matter Protests,” which discuss racism and cite the deaths of George Floyd, Trayvon Martin, and Michael Brown, ignoring essential facts, such as the reality that each of the men acted as the main aggressor in the events leading to their deaths. The character in this lesson speaks on the Black Lives Matter Movement, saying, “The protests we’re seeing today aren’t really about that sort of thing. They are about structural racism in our society. A built-in system of bias that makes life easier for white people and more difficult for black people and other people of color. It puts them at greater risk for poverty, unemployment, and disease.”
The growing dissatisfaction with these lessons taught to K-8 students has led to the creation of the Empower Hotline, a platform for reporting lessons that deviate from academic standards by focusing on race, ethnicity, gender ideology, social-emotional learning, or inappropriate sexual content.
The hotline’s goal is to empower parents to ensure education prioritizes individual merit and academic rigor.
Arizona law prohibits sex education before fifth grade, and the 2025 Supreme Court ruling in Mahmoud v. Taylor mandates parental notifications for materials addressing gender identity or sexual orientation.
Ethan Faverino is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
A heartwarming scene unfolded in Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport over the weekend.
The Cisneros family of Phoenix welcomed home their loved one after six months at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina: Marine Corporal Josue Cisneros. The young Marine was able to return home in time for a Memorial Day gathering with family, as well as his sister’s graduation and his own birthday.
The nonprofit organization Miles for Military made the reunion possible. This Massachusetts-based nonprofit covers the cost of flights home to the most junior service members in exchange for volunteer hours with 501c3 charities. These flights home enable service members to be home for the moments that matter most: holidays, family celebrations, and emergencies.
Cisneros expressed how great of an honor it is to wear the uniform and serve his country, and his gratitude for Miles for Military. Along with his family and friends, Cisneros told Fox 10 he planned to save some quality time for man’s best friend: his loyal dog.
“My family, they mean the world to me. It’s really great to be honest,” said Cisneros. “If it wasn’t for Miles for Military I would not be able to be here for the next two weeks, so I’m really grateful for the opportunity they gave me.”
Marine mother Maureen Byrne founded Miles for Military in 2021 after discovering many of her son’s fellow Marines couldn’t afford to fly home.
Cisneros is part of a storied legacy of Arizonans who take up the noble cause of serving their country, knowing they will potentially make the ultimate sacrifice.
While Cisneros was able to return home to his family this Memorial Day, we acknowledge and remember those who never came home.
Approximately 25,000 American soldiers died during the Revolutionary War — the first to give their lives in defense of America.
Over the next century, more war would challenge the resolve of the fledgling nation: approximately 2,400 American soldiers died in the War of 1812; over 13,000 soldiers died in the Mexican-American War; and over 2,400 soldiers died in the Spanish-American War. Then, America endured what remains the bloodiest conflict in her young history.
An estimated 360,000 Union soldiers and 250,000 Confederate soldiers died during the Civil War. Some of those residing in the Arizona territory ultimately joined the Confederacy.
The Civil War would inspire the first recognition of a Memorial Day in 1868, initially known as Decoration Day.
Of course, Arizona wouldn’t come to be a state until 1912 — just two years before the breakout of the first World War, and five years before the U.S. joined the conflict.
According to the best available data, the following are the total numbers of Arizonans who gave the ultimate sacrifice across the wars of the last and present century: over 300 during World War I, over 1,600 during World War II, over 200 during the Korean War, over 600 during the Vietnam War, five during the Persian Gulf War, and over 150 across the recent conflicts throughout the Iraq War and War in Afghanistan.
AZ Free News is your #1 source for Arizona news and politics. You can send us news tips using this link.
One of, if not the, highlights of President Donald Trump’s first months in office has been the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), headed by entrepreneur (and the world’s richest man) Elon Musk. Under Musk’s leadership, DOGE has not just exposed wasteful spending— but worked to reduce spending by eliminating entire agencies and even cabinet departments.
For example, DOGE pulled back the curtain on the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Before DOGE exposed it, most Americans thought of USAID (if they thought of it at all) as an agency that provided humanitarian aid and development assistance to impoverished people in other countries. DOGE revealed that USAID’s humanitarian work was a cover for their true mission: making political and cultural change overseas. This is why USAID has spent millions on absurd “development” projects like transgender plays in Colombia, DEI schemes in Serbia and electric car subsidies in Vietnam.
Eliminating USAID would not mean the end of overseas development and humanitarian aid. It would mean that the aid would come from private charities. These charities can do a better job of providing aid than a government bureaucracy. As outrageous as USAID’s spending is, it is a drop in the bucket compared to the Pentagon’s over $800 billion (and on track to exceed $2 trillion by 2033) budget.
The “defense” budget is the third largest item in the federal budget, behind Social Security and Medicare. Few politicians will risk the wrath of senior citizens by voting to make any changes to these programs unless the changes are phased in such a way as to not affect those currently on, or close to, relying on the programs. Thus, any serious plan to reduce spending and debt must cut the bloated “defense” budget. Savings from reductions in military spending can be used to help support those dependent on federal programs as Congress unwinds the welfare state. Cutting military spending would be politically popular as most polls show a majority of Americans— including Republicans—support reducing America’s military commitments.
The poster child for wasteful Pentagon spending, which is thankfully already in Elon Musk’s crosshairs, is the F-35 —a $1.7 trillion disaster of delays, breakdowns and runaway costs. The plane, the most expensive military program ever, often sits grounded. The F-35 may be the most obvious example of wasteful Pentagon spending, but it is hardly alone. After all, this is the agency that brought us the $500 toilet seat. Shutting down boondoggles like the F-35 could provide revenue to help pay down the debt and protect those currently dependent on federal programs. It could also help ensure the forthcoming tax bill does not further increase the deficit.
DOGE is not the first effort to identify and eliminate wasteful spending. President Ronald Reagan had the Grace Commission, a sort of DOGE 1.0 that unearthed billions in waste—from the Department of Energy to the IRS. Their findings were buried by entrenched interests and a cowardly Congress. The lesson of the Grace Commission is that reducing even the most obvious wasteful spending requires the courage to stand up to the entrenched interests in both parties that benefit from the current system.
Trump and Musk may have the necessary convictions to make serious changes in the ways Washington works. However, they need to be prepared for the swamp to fight back. Democrats and their allies are already waging war against DOGE. To them, trying to identify and eliminate wasteful spending or even asking federal employees what they actually do is an assault on democracy. Most Democrats will join hawkish Republicans in seeking to protect the Pentagon’s budget. It would not be surprising if Congress’s bipartisan military-industrial complex caucus smeared those advocating cuts in the bloated military budget as “Putin’s puppets.”
The federal debt is growing by approximately $1 trillion every three months. To put that in perspective, consider that the federal debt did not reach the $1 trillion mark until 1981. Unless action is taken soon to reduce spending, pay down the federal debt and roll back the welfare-warfare state—America will face a serious economic crisis. Therefore, it is important that everyone who understands the stakes do what they can to support Trump and Musk’s efforts.
