Perspectives; Thoughts; Comments; Opinions; Discussions

Posts tagged ‘Arizona’

‘We Became a Hotel’: AZ Hospital Pushed to the Limit Because of Illegal Immigrants

By: Julio Rosas | February 27, 2023 3:00 PM

YUMA, Ariz. — GOP members on the House Judiciary Committee met with the leadership of the Yuma Regional Medical Center on Thursday to hear how medical services have been impacted over the significant influx of illegal immigrants into the region.

Dr. Robert Trenschel, president and CEO of the medical center, told the delegation that his hospital has around $26 million in unpaid bills for services rendered to illegal immigrants. Trenschel said the priority of who gets seen depends on how severe their illness or injuries are, no matter what their legal status is. This has caused medical services to be prioritized towards the illegal immigrants, as their illnesses and injuries are significant following their journey across the border.

Yuma’s population is just under 100,000, with several nearby towns adding roughly 38,000 people. The medical center was built up to accommodate that population size. Since the surge of illegal immigration that started in their area in December of 2021, over 300,000 people have illegally crossed into the region.

“We have to see them. Any one of those that needs a hospital visit and we’ve done that. We do it with pride…But what we need is a payer source for those individuals because we have nobody to bill. They have no resources and they’ve just continued to come in,” Trenschel explained.

“We’ve had people in our ICUs for over 60 days…They’ve needed dialysis, heart surgery, cardiac catheterization, I mean, they’re sick when they come over. Not all of them but many and some come in with minor bumps and bruises, things like that…and we have no payer source for that care and that’s our biggest issue. For a hospital like us, it prevents us from doing other things we normally do for our community,” he continued.

Though it is not on the brink of collapse, Trenschel said the hospital system losing out on $26 million in a such a short amount of time has made a severe impact on its operations.

“Really, the community is the one that suffers,” he added.

One of the biggest examples of their services being strained is the hospital’s maternity ward having to care for the mothers and newborn babies for much longer than U.S. citizens because the staff has to ensure they are healthy enough to be discharged since most of the time it was unknown when the next time they would see a doctor.

Trenschel said the hospital has had to postpone planned inductions for mothers who were U.S. citizens “and we had to say, ‘Sorry, we’re just full in our maternity unit.'”

Dorie Rush, the director of women and children services, told GOP lawmakers that the hospital staff has plenty of Spanish speakers. But, many of the illegal immigrants coming in for treatment do not speak Spanish, as they came from other countries, like Haiti. Due to this, the hospital system has purchased multiple translation tablets in order to communicate with the patients.

“We had our walls lined with Border Patrol and Customs agents because when they first were bringing the patients in, they would stay with the patients…There was one day when we had five agents from five different locations bring five different patients at the same time into our triage area, and it’s only seven beds,” Rush recalled.

“So as you can imagine, our general population of patients that were here sitting in the waiting room, lined up, backed up, not being able to get everybody, obviously at the same time, caused a lot of

frustration with our communities,” she added.

Rush said even after people were technically discharged, they still had to keep them there because the hospital is required to ensure they have access to follow up care, which many of the patients had no such guarantee, and to ensure they are able to get to their next location.

“We became a hotel. We did. Up on our pediatric unit, we have a set amount of rooms that we set aside for these patients when they are discharged so that we could keep them here until they could get to the appropriate location,” she said, noting staff still had to check up on the patients in the “hotel” since they were still in the hospital’s care. Rush also had to go out into town to buy every single carseat for babies in order to give to the migrant mothers once they were discharged since they are required by law to not allow babies to leave their care unless there is a carseat.

“Weird question, did they seem grateful? Did they seem overwhelmed from where the world they came from?” Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ) asked.

“I would say a lot of them were grateful. Some of them expected us, I had one tell me, ‘You will help me get to Florida. You will pay for this.’ I explained nicely that we will work with your family, but that will come from your family, not from us,” a hospital staff answered.

Rush revealed actual hotels in the area stopped accepting the illegal immigrants because of “issues” pertaining to their behavior while staying at their locations.

Google reviews left on Yuma Regional Medical Center’s page within the past few months frequently say the long wait times are a major factor for giving the low ratings.

None of the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee were in Yuma to take part of the tours or the hearing that later took place at city hall. Border Patrol agents in the Yuma Sector voiced their displeasure to Townhall over Democrats not bothering to show up to an official hearing.

Category:

Crime, Political

Tagged with:

McCarthy Begins to Build Case for Mayorkas Impeachment

BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | FEBRUARY 17, 2023

Kevin McCarthy speaks at border press conference in Arizona — **‘This has got to stop,’ McCarthy said. ‘And it starts with the secretary of Homeland.’**

Author Tristan Justice profile

TRISTAN JUSTICE

VISIT ON TWITTER@JUSTICETRISTAN

TUCSON, Ariz. — Kevin McCarthy began to build the case for Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ impeachment this week with the California lawmaker’s first trip to the border as House speaker. Talking to reporters, with the southeast Arizona border wall serving as his backdrop, McCarthy outlined the myriad crises plaguing the nation due to unchecked migration and charged the DHS secretary with lying to the public.

“Our border, we don’t even have operational control of it anymore,” McCarthy said. “This is why I will continue to investigate what has gone wrong here and we will hold people accountable. And that includes Secretary Mayorkas.”

In an exclusive interview with The Federalist after the press conference, McCarthy offered no timeline for a potential impeachment inquiry and maintained that the process depends on what lawmakers find over the coming weeks.

“You never do impeachment for political purposes,” McCarthy said. “If something rises to that level,” he explained, “we will follow it wherever it goes.”

McCarthy led the congressional delegation with four GOP freshman, kicking off what will be a top priority for the new Republican majority under the second half of President Joe Biden’s term. Every House committee is expected to visit the southwest border in the ensuing months. Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., already introduced an article of impeachment against the DHS chief on Feb. 1.

In November, McCarthy demanded that Mayorkas resign over the border crisis or face impeachment in the lower chamber once Republicans took over. Mayorkas has remained defiant while the cartels run rampant. A coalition of 21 attorneys general sent a letter to the Biden administration last week demanding that Mexican drug cartels be designated as terrorist organizations.

Days before the speaker’s border trip this week, DHS staffed up to face House impeachment proceedings, entering a multimillion-dollar contract with a liberal law firm that has a history of left-wing donations.

“You cannot tell us this is secure when more than 42 percent of gottaways come through here,” McCarthy said on Thursday. “You cannot tell us this border’s secure when now there is enough fentanyl in this country to kill every single American more than 20 times over.”

“This has got to stop,” the speaker added. “And it starts with the secretary of Homeland. Stop lying to the American public. Tell them the truth [about] what’s happening and change back the regulation that we had before so our border can be secure.”

The White House hit McCarthy’s border trip as a partisan publicity stunt with a Wednesday statement. “Solutions are what President Biden is focused on, and his is plan working,” said Ian Sams, a White House spokesman. “House Republicans would be wise to join him to work together to strengthen our immigration system and fund border security.”

Biden’s first border visit was a sanitized tour in January, with officials clearing the camps in El Paso before the president’s arrival. Biden proceeded to call on Congress to pass immigration reform at his annual State of the Union last week and claimed his border measures were working.

“We’ve launched a new border plan last month. Unlawful migration from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela has come down 97 percent as a consequence of that,” Biden said. “But American border problems won’t be fixed until Congress acts.”

ACTS ON WHAT????????? Fund what???????? The Wall has been funded since Clinton. Finish the Wall. We’ve got the materials. Put it up.

Contrary to his claims the border is secure, data from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) shows otherwise.

Law enforcement reported more than 156,000 migrant encounters in January. While lower than the record of nearly 252,000 encounters in December, 156,000 is still higher than the almost 155,000 in January last year and the 78,000 the same month in 2021 — and way higher than the less than 37,000 in FY 2020. In fact, it’s an all-time high for the coldest month of the year. Even bundled-up reporters shivered under cloudless skies in the high desert winds when lawmakers ran late on Thursday.

A Deadly Crisis

While the Biden administration tries to argue there’s nothing to see on the southern border, Alex Espinosa, the director of a funeral home 15 miles east of McCarthy’s press conference, says otherwise.

“During Trump’s administration, I picked up four border crossers,” Espinosa told The Federalist in his conference room overlooking the border wall. “Right now, I can’t even tell you how many. There’s more deaths. Way more deaths.”

Most, Espinosa said, die from exposure to the elements or fentanyl. He explained the numbers picked up “right after Biden won.”

“Never, never, never, ever have I seen it this bad,” Espinosa told The Federalist. “I’ve probably buried 40 kids.”

A reformed ex-convict himself, Espinosa, 61, served time behind bars for drug smuggling 30 years ago. He now hands out free Narcan, a medication known to save lives in the case of opioid overdose, at services, saying it has become a hot commodity. The local health department replenished his stockpile after it ran out during a single funeral for a recent 23-year-old who overdosed. His own son has also struggled with opioid addiction.

In Naco, a town on the border five miles south of Espinosa’s funeral home, locals were shy about the crisis. A ranch hand working in a field with a pair of day laborers from across the border offered only his first name, Greg, and said he often sees helicopter activity but described the overall area as tame. Another pair of women operating a local nonprofit in the community denied the area even faced issues.

Espinosa, however, who conducts the funerals for the border crisis victims, said locals often feel too intimidated to speak openly about the dangers their neighborhoods face. Despite his Mexican heritage, Espinosa has been tarred as a racist, and his truck was burned after he challenged the mayor of Douglas over the leader’s plans to declare the border town a sanctuary city.

“They need to finish the wall,” Espinosa said frankly, warning that until then, the area would not be safe to walk around at night.

McCarthy told The Federalist on Thursday at the conclusion of his congressional tour that DHS needs to complete the wall with modern technology as originally planned.

“You gotta finish this,” McCarthy said, pointing at the wall. “Finish the technology you haven’t hooked up — the lights, the sensors. There’s places in the wall that’s not done yet.”

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Two States Now Have Universal School Choice — And Yours Could Be Next

BY: KERI INGRAHAM | JANUARY 27, 2023

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signing a document — **On Tuesday, Iowa became the second state in the country to pass universal school choice. Several red states are looking to follow suit.**

KERI INGRAHAM

On Tuesday, Iowa became the second state in the country to pass universal school choice, directly providing families with funds to support their children’s education. Arizona was the trendsetter for this new wave of educational freedom after Gov. Doug Ducey signed universal school choice into law on July 7, 2022.

Now the race is on to advance educational freedom, with several red states looking to follow suit. The significance of these developments can hardly be overstated. What was once a pipe dream for many education reformers — the enabling of school choice at scale during their lifetimes — is now becoming a reality.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, true to her word, wasted no time in the 2023 legislative session by introducing the Students First Act in her Condition of the State address on Jan. 10. Within two weeks, the bill was signed into law. It took less than 24 hours for debate in the House and Senate, followed by Reynolds’ signing. The education savings account (ESA) program will provide parents with approximately $7,600 annually to allocate toward approved educational avenues. Most families are eligible in years one and two, and the benefit will be extended to all families statewide in year three.

Of course, powers beholden to leftist teachers unions should not be expected to go down without a fight. Even in pioneering state Arizona, new Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs seeks to undo its universal school voucher expansion law in her 2023 budget proposal. With Republicans controlling both state legislative bodies, her proposal will likely go down with the same fate as her massively failed veto referendum that sought to stop the law from taking effect while she was secretary of state last fall. For a politician, Hobbs is remarkably insensitive to the views of Arizona voters, 67 percent of whom support the state’s ESA program (the number jumps to 77 percent of Arizona parents of school-aged children).

States with a Republican governor and GOP majorities in both their House and Senate, on the other hand, are leading the charge across the United States to empower parents with options. The goal is universal school choice — through ESAs — to provide flexibility for families to select their desired educational avenue. Funds can be spent on school tuition, homeschool expenses, online learning, tutoring, special needs therapy, learning materials, and other education-related expenses.

ESA programs not only afford parents options outside of government-run, union-controlled public schools, but they save the state money because typically only a portion of the student state funding is provided. For example, in Arizona, instead of upwards of $12,000 spent per student within the public system, the ESA provided to families is only $7,000.

As the race to pass universal school choice picks up speed, several states could be heading to the home stretch in the coming weeks and months.

Utah is positioned extremely well to join the universal school choice ranks as the House and
Senate have both passed the “Utah Fits All Act” as of January 26. If signed into law by Gov.
Spencer Cox, families would have access to roughly $8,000 each year for educational expenses.
Florida is historically a national leader in school choice, with almost half its students learning in an option outside of their assigned traditional public school. Current legislation is calling for
universal school choice. With Republican lawmakers holding supermajorities in both the House
and Senate, and Gov. Ron DeSantis at the helm, it’s only a matter of time.
Oklahoma is a contender in the educational freedom race. The Education Freedom Act is currently in the Senate, which has a 40-8 Republican supermajority. The House has an 81-20 supermajority. Once the bill hits educational freedom champion Gov. Kevin Stitt’s desk, it will be signed into law. It will grant all families statewide access to an ESA based on the state’s per-pupil education expense. State Superintendent Ryan Walters is a fierce supporter of empowering Oklahoma families with educational freedom to select the schools that will best serve their children.
Texas, traditionally lagging behind other red states on school choice, is not to be counted out this session in advancing ESAs. In May 2022, Gov. Greg Abbott urged lawmakers to empower parents through state funding following students. As the months passed, the groundwork was laid, including debunking the notion that school choice does not benefit rural areas or that it hurts rural school districts.
West Virginia was the national leader prior to Arizona passing universal school choice in 2022. In West Virginia, roughly 93 percent of students have access to the Hope Scholarship to date. There is the possibility to expand it to 100 percent of the state’s children within the next three years. Despite the state’s families having negligible educational freedom options until 2019, West Virginia is now among the leaders.
Indiana has efforts underway to expand the state’s existing ESA program to all students statewide while also increasing the grant amount from 90 percent of the per-student state funding to 100 percent. That would translate to an average of $7,500 allocated per student for educational expenses of the parents’ choosing.
Arkansas shouldn’t be overlooked this session. Newly elected Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has stated her support for plans to “empower parents with more choices … so no child is ever trapped in a failing school.”

The tide is turning, and the implications are tremendous. No longer will families be at the mercy of government-run, union-controlled traditional public schools. Parents in an increasing number of states will be empowered as decision-makers in their children’s education.

The question is: Which state will be next to achieve universal educational freedom?

Dr. Keri D. Ingraham is a Fellow at Discovery Institute, Director of the American Center for Transforming Education, and a Visiting Fellow at Independent Women’s Forum.

Category:

Education, Family, Political

Tagged with:

With 25,000 Mysterious Votes and Missing Documents, Maricopa’s 2022 Election Process Marked by Chaos and Uncertainty

BY: VICTORIA MARSHALL | JANUARY 18, 2023

ballot drop box — **Arizona law requires the county recorder to show the origins of and chain-of-custody documents for every drop box ballot obtained.**

Author Victoria Marshall profile

VICTORIA MARSHALL

VISIT ON TWITTER@VEMRSHLL

While the GOP and conservative media have largely moved on from Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and the systemic failures that occurred in Maricopa County on Nov. 8, court testimony and eyewitness reports from the Lake trial include allegations that Arizona’s largest county violated state law by failing to implement chain-of-custody documentation for Election Day ballots, resulting in a mysterious 25,000 extra votes added to Maricopa County’s official tally within a 24-hour period — more than the margin of victory between Lake and gubernatorial victor Katie Hobbs.

It was about 10:00 on election night when Maricopa County’s ballot tabulation vendor, Runbeck Election Services, received its first truckload of Election Day drop box ballots. While Runbeck received seven truckloads total (the last was completed about 5 a.m. the following morning), Runbeck staff thought it odd the deliveries did not come earlier throughout the day. But that wasn’t the only glitch. There were no chain-of-custody forms delivered with the ballots, a stark departure from typical procedure.

According to Runbeck employee Denise Marie, prior to Nov. 8, drop box ballots were “delivered in red bins with a chain of custody form” from the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center (MCTEC), which listed how many ballots were delivered.

But on election night, “instead of receiving the ballots in red bins, the ballots from the drop boxes had been placed in mail trays and loaded onto mail cages. MCTEC did not include the Maricopa County Delivery Receipt forms with any of the Election Day drop box ballot deliveries. There were no chain of custody forms with the ballots and no count of the number of ballots that were delivered,” Marie wrote in a sworn affidavit.

Maricopa County Co-Director of Elections Reynaldo Valenzuela even testified that while the county’s election workers count drop box ballots and record the counts on documents as required by law prior to Election Day, they did not count the ballots retrieved from drop boxes on Election Day itself. During the Lake trial, Valenzuela was asked whether Maricopa County election officials know the precise number of drop box ballots on Election Day, and he told the court, “On Election Day, no, because we’re not doing drop box courier process at that time. It’s a different process for Election Day.”

According to Lake attorney Kurt Olsen, this is in direct violation of Arizona state statute, which requires the county recorder to maintain records that log the chain of custody for ballots “during early voting through the completion of provisional voting tabulation.”

Per Arizona’s Election Procedures Manual, when ballots are taken from drop boxes, they must either be counted at the local vote center or be placed in secure ballot transport containers to be taken back to the county for tabulation. When the county recorder or elections official opens the container, he or she must count the number of ballots inside and note it on a retrieval form.

Because Maricopa County tabulators received more Election Day drop box ballots than they had ever received before, as County Recorder Stephen Richer testified, they removed the ballots from the ballot transport containers without counting or recording the number on a retrieval form for each drop box, as witnessed by Republican poll watcher Leslie White. This is a violation of the chain-of-custody requirements the county recorder is tasked with implementing.

The ballots were then put in mail trays and loaded onto mail cages, which were then put on trucks and delivered to Runbeck to be scanned and counted, according to supply-chain auditor and Lake trial witness Heather Honey. And notably, according to Marie’s sworn affidavit, this loading of ballots into the trucks also occurred without any documentation or record of the number of ballots on each.

Since Maricopa County failed to create its own chain-of-custody documents for the Election Day drop box ballots, Runbeck made its own (called “MC Inbound Receipt of Delivery Forms“), which logged the seven truckloads of drop box ballots on election night. On the delivery forms, Runbeck estimated the total number of Election Day drop box ballots to be 263,379 by multiplying the maximum number of ballots a mail tray can hold by the number of trays received, as Honey explained to The Federalist.

Runbeck CEO Jeff Ellington gave his staff a similar estimate of the number of ballots received via an email on Nov. 9, saying, “we started getting mail packets dropped off from Maricopa around 10pm last night and received mail packets about every hour through sunrise this morning. Likely between 250 and 275K packets were dropped off at the polls yesterday.”

At a press conference that evening, Richer affirmed Runbeck’s estimate by saying the county had received an unprecedented 275,000 drop-off ballots on Election Day. That same day, Maricopa County reported the total number of ballots cast in the 2022 general election to the Arizona Department of State: 1,136,849 ballots, with 407,664 ballots left to count — 1,544,513 ballots total.

However, on that same day, around 5:30 p.m., Maricopa County asked Runbeck to calculate the total number of Election Day drop-off ballots received, according to Marie, who was tasked with running the tabulation herself. Marie found that Runbeck’s records showed 298,942 drop box ballots had been received and scanned on Election Day.

As a result of such a discrepancy between the estimate and the official tally, Maricopa County sent a new vote tally to the Arizona secretary of state’s office on Nov. 10 (earlier that day, Richer had sent an email to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors admitting he could not reconcile the differences between the county’s numbers and the secretary of state’s listing, demonstrating that even the supposed expert official in charge of the counting process couldn’t figure out where the extra ballots came from). Instead of the original 1,544,513 total ballots reported for the 2022 general election in Maricopa County, the secretary of state’s website now listed 1,569,603, a more than 25,000-vote discrepancy with no explanation. That same day, Maricopa County gave another press conference, stating it had received 292,000 Election Day drop box ballots without batting an eye.

What This Means

Arizona law requires the county recorder to show the origins and chain-of-custody documents for every drop box ballot obtained. According to Runbeck employee Denise Marie and Maricopa County Co-Director of Elections Reynaldo Valenzuela, Maricopa County violated state law by failing to create any chain-of-custody documentation for the drop box ballots received on Election Day. Because of this failure, no records exist to dispute or reconcile the discrepancy between the number of ballots Runbeck first reported (263,379) and its final tally (298,942), a more than 35,000-vote change. As Olsen remarked in his closing argument for the Lake trail, “If you don’t have a count from MCTEC when those ballots are being transported to Runbeck, how do you know whether that count is secure?”

Nor do there appear to be chain-of-custody documents, a violation of Arizona law, showing how Maricopa County was able to add more than 25,000 ballots to its final tally. That addition is more than Hobbs’ margin of victory, which was about 17,000 votes.

“On November 9th, the reported count is 25,000 ballots less, which is beyond the margin here, than on November 10th,” Olsen said. “So the day after the election, they put out what the count is and then magically 25,000 ballots appear on November 10th, and well, hey, that’s the race.”

While part of the argument Lake’s attorneys used in their lawsuit seeking to challenge Arizona’s gubernatorial election was that Maricopa County violated its own Election Procedural Manual by failing to implement chain-of-custody documentation, Arizona Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson rejected the claim due to the county’s assertion that such chain-of-custody documents exist, even though it failed to produce them. At the time of the trial, Maricopa County hadn’t fulfilled a public records request for the documents.

But while such documents do exist for drop box ballots counted prior to Election Day, no such chain-of-custody paperwork exists for the Election Day drop box ballots themselves, Honey reiterated to The Federalist. The judge did not consider this alleged violation of state law and ruled against Lake’s challenge, saying she failed to present clear and convincing evidence of widespread misconduct.

Arizona has an impossibly high bar for overturning elections on the grounds of misconduct, as the judge himself noted. Lake not only had to allege misconduct but intentional misconduct, such to affect the outcome of the election. Lake has since filed two appeals — one with an appeals court, the other with the Arizona Supreme Court. The appeals court agreed to expedite her case.

When asked about its alleged failure to implement chain-of-custody documentation for the Nov. 8 election, Communications Manager for the Maricopa County Elections Department Matthew Roberts told The Federalist: “There are robust tracking and security procedures in place to document and ensure proper chain-of-custody of early ballots on Election Day. These policies and procedures were followed on Election Day, as well as throughout the early voting period. At no point during the process were chain of custody policies broken or procedures not followed and documented.”

The Maricopa County Elections Department did not respond to The Federalist’s request for documentation of the chain-of-custody process for the Election Day drop box ballots.

Victoria Marshall is a staff writer at The Federalist. Her writing has been featured in the New York Post, National Review, and Townhall. She graduated from Hillsdale College in May 2021 with a major in politics and a minor in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @vemrshll.

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Scrutinizing Arizona’s Election Administration Does Not Make Kari Lake An ‘Election Denier’

BY: AUGUSTE MEYRAT | NOVEMBER 21, 2022

Kari Lake clapping standing outside at campaign event — **The media’s ‘election denier’ smear is an attempt to silence Americans concerned about election integrity.**

Author Auguste Meyrat profile

AUGUSTE MEYRAT

VISIT ON TWITTER@MEYRATAUGUSTE

Even though the Arizona governor’s race has been called in favor of Katie Hobbs, Hobbs’ opponent Kari Lake has not conceded and vote counting and vote correcting are still happening. As has been reported (in mainly conservative media), many voters were turned away on Election Day because of broken printers or given provisional ballots that wouldn’t be counted. Furthermore, many ballots were not counted because of a non-matching signature or some mistake in filling out the ballot. This means voters are being contacted about their ballot being rejected and given a chance to correct or “cure” it. The window for doing this just ended on Nov. 17.

Considering how laughably convoluted this process is, along with its many vulnerabilities to fraud and error, it’s more than understandable to see why Lake, someone projected to win big and who faced a meek candidate who refused to debate her or even do much campaigning, refuses to give up. The glacially slow counting, the numerous malfunctioning printers and ballot machines, and the recent history of gross irregularities from the previous election all give ample reason for suspicion. There’s also the added wrinkle of Hobbs refusing to recuse herself from the role of supervising the election — somehow this didn’t constitute a conflict of interest.

And yet, for all this, the corporate media are blasting Lake for daring to challenge the election result, living up to her reputation as a dirty, rotten “election denier.” Here’s just a small sampling of headlines: “Election denier Kari Lake refuses to concede Arizona governor race she lost” in The Guardian, “Katie Hobbs elected Arizona’s 5th female governor, defeating election denier Kari Lake” in the Arizona Republic, “Kari Lake Is Denying Her Election Loss” in New York Magazine, and “Democrat Katie Hobbs defeats election denier Kari Lake for Arizona governor, AP projects” in Yahoo News.

As David Harsanyi has argued, this charge of election denier — that is, a person who questions and/or challenges elections — is a ridiculous criticism that stigmatizes perfectly rational behavior in a democracy. Furthermore, it’s a label that applies far more to Democrats despite being exclusively directed at Republicans. This insult (coupled with “the big lie”) became popular in 2020 after Donald Trump and many of his supporters claimed the presidential election was stolen.

It’s no secret that the left continues to call its opponents election deniers because it has been an effective tool to silence dissent. It casts people like Trump and Lake as unhinged losers who are ready to smash the whole system because they didn’t win. Thus, to give even the slightest credence to their objections is tantamount to undermining “Our Democracy.” And if anyone thinks that is an exaggeration, they should know that hundreds of Jan. 6 protesters have been thrown in prison and denied bail because they were “election deniers” who ostensibly posed a threat to the country.

However, the more successful it is to slander people as “election deniers,” the more destructive it becomes. First, it is an accusation that immediately groups the accused with every crackpot imaginable. Even though Lake has plenty of reasons to question her election, she is nonetheless associated with the QAnon Shaman and other disturbed crackpots who had their own theories about fraudulent elections and the deep state. This in turn pushes away her supporters and other conservatives who want to be taken seriously.

If the claim that an election is rigged is false, it should be easy enough for the left to simply prove it instead of delaying vote counting. But even if they can, the guilt-by-association still does more harm to conservatives who will start fighting one another instead of working together on getting accurate election results. This can be seen as Lake and her team toil away at curing votes and rooting out errors while her fellow Republicans have given up and have instead complained about candidate quality and messaging.

This attempt to move on not only demoralizes all efforts to challenge elections, but it also leads to faulty analysis. It’s completely useless to criticize the direction and composition of the GOP and its leadership when so many elections might very well be rigged. If Democratic candidates are stuffing ballot boxes and throwing out Republican ballots with impunity, it doesn’t matter who’s running for office, what they say, or even who’s voting. At the very minimum, Democrats’ relentless demands for mail-in ballots and remote voting, which are particularly susceptible to fraud, are a major threat to the integrity of our elections.

Second, and more importantly, the election denier accusation increasingly removes all recourse for justice. If an election is fraudulent, laws were broken, and large swaths of the electorate are effectively disenfranchised, there is nowhere they can turn because the well has been poisoned. As was shown in 2020, no judge, not even the U.S. Supreme Court, will dare hear the case and examine the evidence, and few conservative writers or pundits will bother talking about it. Rather, they will demand proof, knowing quite well that no amount of evidence will change their mind or any election outcome. Over time, it becomes an unprovable claim that guarantees political anathema to the conservative who makes it.

While Lake might not be able to overturn the result of her election, she should be commended for trying. Far from threatening the legitimacy of the election, she is breathing life into it, giving a voice to people who rightly want answers and accountability. Rather than being election deniers, they should be recognized as election defenders, putting their faith in the voters and the American political system.

Auguste Meyrat is an English teacher in the Dallas area. He holds an MA in humanities and an MEd in educational leadership. He is the senior editor of The Everyman and has written essays for The Federalist, The American Conservative, and The Imaginative Conservative, as well as the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. Follow him on Twitter.

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Kari Lake Fires Off Biting One-Line Statement After Outlets Call Race for Katie Hobbs

By Jack Davis November 15, 2022 at 6:49am

Republican Kari Lake is not wilting after projections emerged Monday that she will lose the Arizona governor’s race to Democrat Katie Hobbs.

“Arizonans know BS when they see it,” Lake said on Twitter.

Arizonans know BS when they see it.
— Kari Lake (@KariLake) November 15, 2022

During the campaign, she had frequently questioned the integrity of the 2020 election that led to Joe Biden’s presidency, and last month she had told ABC News that she would concede the gubernatorial race only if “it’s fair, honest and transparent.”

“When I first started voting back in the ’80s, we had Election Day,” Lake said in that interview. “Our Constitution says Election Day. It doesn’t say election season, election month, and we’ve watched as our Election Day has turned into election week and election weeks and now election month. And the longer you drag that out, the more fraud with problems there are.”

On Monday, nearly a week after the midterm elections, ABC News projected Hobbs to be the winner of the Arizona race, concluding that her election was part of “a stunning rejection of election deniers in midterm contests.”

CNN also projected the Democrat to win, saying she was “defeating one of the most prominent defenders of former President Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.”

Fox News joined the chorus declaring Lake had been defeated but noted that according to Arizona’s rules, the contest might face a recount.

The Associated Press explained its call for Hobbs by saying “the latest round of vote releases gave her a big enough lead that the AP determined she would not relinquish it.”
“The AP concluded that, even though Lake had been posting increasingly larger margins in vote updates from Maricopa County, she was not gaining a big enough share to overtake Hobbs and was running out of remaining votes,” the wire service said.

AP numbers posted in The New York Times on Monday night gave Hobbs a margin of about 20,000 votes out of the roughly 2.5 million votes cast with 95 percent reported.

Hobbs issued a statement after media outlets proclaimed her to have won.

“I want to thank the voters for entrusting me with this immense responsibility. It is truly an honor of a lifetime, and I will do everything in my power to make you proud. I want to thank my family, our volunteers, and campaign staff. Without all of your hard work, passion, and sacrifice this night would not be possible. Thank you from the bottom of my heart,” she said.

“For the Arizonans who did not vote for me, I will work just as hard for you – because even in this moment of division, I believe there is so much more that connects us,” she said, adding, “Let’s get to work.”

Democracy is worth the wait.

Thank you, Arizona.

I am so honored and so proud to be your next Governor. pic.twitter.com/O6ZFSHbIBe
— Katie Hobbs (@katiehobbs) November 15, 2022

During the campaign, Hobbs had labeled Lake an “election-denying, media-hating, conspiracy-loving, chaos-causing opponent.”

Journalist Kyle Becker offered his thoughts that denying an election was fair does not mean one wears the media label of “election denier.”

Anyone who has attacked @KariLake as an "election denier" needs to realize one simple fact: Katie Hobbs just proved Kari Lake's point.
— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) November 15, 2022

Just like you can reject Covid mRNA shots and not be an 'anti-vaxxer,' you can recognize an election is run in a corrupt manner and not be an 'election denier.'

Democrats throw around lazy personal attacks that are meant to avoid debating the issues or solving the problems.
— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) November 15, 2022

It implies that anything Democrats say is a free, fair, transparent & legitimate election must be one & anyone questioning them is guilty of being an 'election denier.'

No one is supposed to question whether Democrats have corrupt motives for framing a debate this way.
— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) November 15, 2022

Lake has said Hobbs, who as Arizona’s secretary of state oversees elections, should have recused herself from overseeing the election.

Jack Davis

Contributor, News

Jack Davis is a freelance writer who joined The Western Journal in July 2015 and chronicled the campaign that saw President Donald Trump elected. Since then, he has written extensively for The Western Journal on the Trump administration as well as foreign policy and military issues.

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Voting Machine Issues Spread To Pennsylvania As Midterms Are Underway

By JACK MCEVOY, ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT REPORTER | November 08, 2022

Corey Threatt, chairman of the West Columbia #3 polling station, right, assists Tim Nicholson at a voting machine for the South Carolina Republican presidential primary at American Legion Post 79 on February 20, 2016 in West Columbia — **(Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images)**

Several states are experiencing problems with voting machines as Americans continue to cast their ballots at polling centers across the country.

Voters in Pennslyvania’s Luzerne County are claiming that voting machines ran out of paper, meaning that some voters had to cast provisional ballots while a poll worker drove to get more paper, according to ABC News affiliate WNEP. Luzerne County election officials told WNEP that voters who were forced to cast a provisional ballot should not be worried about whether their vote will be counted.

Just hours after polls opened on Tuesday, tabulation machines began malfunctioning in Arizona’s Maricopa County and voting machines are experiencing issues in Mercer County, New Jersey, according to county officials. The Maricopa County Elections Department announced that there are problems with precinct-based tabulators that paper ballots are fed into and said that they are sending technicians to address the problem, according to a tweet.

“Technical staff are working to resolve an issue with tabulators and investigating the cause … people can still check in and then vote their ballot at the voting booth,” the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office said in a statement provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Once complete, they can insert their ballot in the secure slot on the ballot box where it will be counted at the Tabulation and Election Center.”

Maricopa’s elections department also said that people can still cast their votes into secure ballot boxes if the tabulator at their voting site is not working. Roughly 20% of polling places were experiencing the issues, according to a reporter from 12 News in Phoenix.

In Maricopa County, about 10% of polling places are experiencing problems with tabulators. One machine became operative after it was cleaned. Voters can still place their ballots in a slot in a locked container; they will be counted at the downtown tabulation center tonight.

— YvonneWingettSanchez 🏜 (@yvonnewingett) November 8, 2022

Advice for Voters: If a tabulator is not working at a site, you can still vote! You have the option to cast your ballot and place it into the secure ballot box. The poll workers on site at the voting location are best equipped to help you ensure your ballot cast. pic.twitter.com/iobrOHmy86

— Maricopa County Elections Department (@MaricopaVote) November 8, 2022

In addition, election officials in Mercer County, New Jersey, announced early Tuesday it was experiencing multiple issues with voting machines.

“The Board of Elections has advised the county of issues with voting machines. Poll workers will be on hand to walk voters through the process. The board is working with Dominion, the machine maker, to resolve the issue,” the county announced on Facebook.

A notice on the website of the West Windsor township said that voting machines in “each district across the county” were down.

“On behalf of our NJGOP legal counsel and election integrity team, I want to make crystal clear to the voters of Mercer County that in spite of reported problems with scanners on voting machines in Mercer County, this issue does not affect their voting experience at all,” New Jersey GOP Executive Director Tom Szymanski said in a statement. “Voters can be completely rest assured that NJGOP is ensuring voters’ rights are protected at all phases of the process and that their vote counts.”

The Mercer County Board of Elections, the Mercer County Democratic Party and the Luzerne County Bureau of Elections did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Liberal Supreme Court Justice Blocks Jan. 6 Committee

By Jack Davis October 27, 2022

Efforts by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol incursion to examine phone records of the Arizona Republican Party chairwoman have been stymied by a member of the U.S. Supreme Court’s liberal wing.

Justice Elena Kagan on Wednesday temporarily blocked the panel from accessing the phone records of Dr. Kelli Ward and her husband, Mark Ward, according to The Hill.

Kagan’s order was terse, saying, “Upon consideration of the application of counsel for the applicants, it is ordered that the October 22, 2022 order of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, case No. 22-16473, is hereby stayed pending further order of the undersigned or of the Court.

“Likewise, respondent T-Mobile USA, Inc. is temporarily enjoined from releasing the records requested by the House Select Committee pending further order of the undersigned or of the Court.

“It is further ordered that a response to the application be filed on or before Friday, October 28, 2022, by 5 p.m. (EDT).”

Kagan was involved because she is the justice assigned to handle emergency requests from Arizona.

The Wards had sued to block access to their phone records. After losing their case at the district court level, they appealed, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit voted 2-1 to deny their bid to protect their records, according to CNN.

That prompted the emergency appeal to Kagan. “This is an unprecedented case with profound precedential implications for future congressional investigations and political associational rights under the First Amendment,” the Wards said in the appeal.

“In a first-of-its-kind situation, a select committee of the United States Congress, dominated by one political party, has subpoenaed the personal telephone and text message records of a state chair of the rival political party relating to one of the most contentious political events in American history—the 2020 election and the Capitol riot of January 6, 2021.”

The appeal painted the case as potentially setting a dire precedent.

“If Dr. Ward’s telephone and text message records are disclosed, congressional investigators are going to contact every person who communicated with her during and immediately after the tumult of the 2020 election. That is not speculation, it is a certainty. There is no other reason for the Committee to seek this information,” the Wards’ filing said.

“There can be no greater chill on public participation in partisan politics than a call, visit, or subpoena, from federal investigators,” they wrote.

The appellate panel ruled against the Wards, saying the federal subpoena “is substantially related to the important government interest in investigating the causes of the January 6 attack and protecting future elections from similar threats.”

“The investigation, after all, is not about Ward’s politics; it is about her involvement in the events leading up to the January 6 attack, and it seeks to uncover those with whom she communicated in connection with those events,” Judges Barry Silverman and Eric Miller wrote in the majority opinion. “That some of the people with whom Ward communicated may be members of a political party does not establish that the subpoena is likely to reveal ‘sensitive information about [the party’s] members and supporters.’”

The two judges who formed the majority castigated the activities of the Wards, who were electors pledged to former President Donald Trump.

“Ward participated in a scheme to send spurious electoral votes to Congress, a scheme that the committee describes as ‘a key part’ of the ‘effort to overturn the election’ that culminated on Jan. 6,” the opinion said.

In her dissent, Judge Sandra Ikuta said the Wards have valid constitutional rights that were insufficiently considered.

“The communications at issue here between members of a political party about an election implicate a core associational right protected by the First Amendment,” Ikuta wrote.

“Regardless of Ward’s position regarding the 2020 election, her right to engage in discussions with her political associates remains entitled to First Amendment protection against the government’s compelled disclosure of her political affiliations,” the judge said. “We must be vigilant to protect First Amendment rights — even when raised by an individual alleged to have engaged in a nefarious ‘scheme.’”

Jack Davis

Contributor

Category:

Law, Political

Tagged with:

Democratic operative sentenced to jail for illegal ballot harvesting in 2020 Arizona primary election

By PAUL SACCA | October 16, 2022

Like Blaze News? Get the news that matters most delivered directly to your inbox. SIGN UP

A Democratic operative was sentenced to jail for allegedly harvesting ballots during the 2020 primary election. Guillermina Fuentes – a 66-year-old school board member and former mayor of the small border city of San Luis – pleaded guilty to collecting four early ballots in the 2020 primary. On Thursday, Fuentes was sentenced to 30 days in jail and two years of probation for her alleged election crimes.

In the plea deal, prosecutors dropped three felony counts claiming that Fuentes filled out one voter’s ballot and forged signatures on some of the four ballots she illegally returned for non-family members.

Arizona prosecutors had sought a year in jail for the crimes committed by Fuentes. Meanwhile, the attorneys for Fuentes argued for probation.

KSAZ-TV reported, “Fuentes collected the four completed mail ballots from acquaintances in San Luis, and gave them to co-defendant Alma Juarez while working a table outside a polling place where she was urging people to vote for a slate of city council candidates. Juarez carried them inside and put them in a ballot drop-off bin. Election officials in Yuma County confirmed that the ballots were legitimate and the mail-ballot envelopes were signed by qualified voters, so they were counted.”

Don’t miss out on content from Dave Rubin free of big tech censorship. Listen to The Rubin Report now.

Yuma County Superior Court Judge Roger Nelson considered being more lenient on Fuentes if she had admitted that she had committed a crime. Fuentes reportedly declared, ‘I’m not a criminal.”

Nelson blasted back, “Well, you are a criminal. You committed a criminal offense. I don’t think you recognize that as a criminal offense. That’s the problem that I have.”

Nelson continued, “It’s been an issue for a long time, or at least it’s been alleged that it’s an issue, that people vote for others, take their ballots. Everybody that’s involved in politics in this area knew that a new law was passed. You certainly knew it, that that law was new, even went up to the Supreme Court.”

“Many of the things that were put forward as mitigating factors, I think they’re also aggravating factors,” Nelson added. “You have been a leader in the San Luis community for a long time. People look up to you, people respect you, and they look to what you do.”

Fuentes’ attorney – Anne Chapman – railed against the punishment, “The Court’s sentence today is an unjust result in a political prosecution where the only alleged harm was the delivery of four lawfully voted ballots.”

Fuentes reportedly lost her school board seat and cannot serve in an elected or appointed post unless the felony conviction is dropped to a misdemeanor.

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Martha’s Vineyard Isn’t The First Time Democrats Failed To Live Up To Their Empty ‘Sanctuary’ Promises

BY: SIMON HANKINSON | SEPTEMBER 22, 2022

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot complaining about illegal immigrants being sent to her city

SIMON HANKINSON

Earlier this month, a Washington Post editorial acknowledged there was “no end in sight to the procession of buses inbound” to Washington, D.C., and praised Mayor Muriel Bowser for earmarking $10 million for the nearly 10,000 illegal immigrants who have arrived in the capital — about 15 percent of whom intend to remain there.

The Biden administration pretends it has the burgeoning problem of illegal immigration under control. Late last month, White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre claimed that people aren’t just walking across the border. And just last week, Vice President Kamala Harris insisted the border was “secure.”

Much of the national media are happy to play along with this deliberate deception. The same corporate media that last year blithely ignored the federal government’s mass, midnight airlifting of illegal immigrants to New York; Jacksonville, Florida; and points beyond are now obsessed when a southern governor flies 50 Venezuelans to swanky Martha’s Vineyard.

In their eyes, when the administration ships tens of thousands of illegal immigrants under cover of darkness, it’s no big deal. But if the Post spots 50 people flown into Martha’s Vineyard, somehow, it’s a “crisis.” The media never accused the administration of using migrants as pawns or being inhumane, yet the latter is doing exactly what Texas and Arizona are on a vast scale.

The Post’s editors argue that “state and local officials nationwide must accommodate a flow of migrants — in schools, shelters, streets” as if there is no alternative. They seem unaware that for 250 years, the United States had an immigration law and that, for much of that time, the executive branch did its job, enforcing the law and defending our border.

What the open-borders, sanctuary-city crowd are at last realizing is that their blank checks can be cashed. New York and Washington’s social services are drowning under a mere 10,000 arrivals each. They’re lucky not to be El Paso (population 684,000), which is dealing with 1,400 illegal migrants arriving per day, or Yuma (population 97,000), which has received 250,000 so far this year.

Mayor Bowser’s $10 million might sound like a lot but putting just 200 people in hotel rooms in Washington at $200 per night comes out to upwards of $15 million annually, and educating the “about 70” new illegal immigrant children now enrolled in D.C. public schools will cost a couple million more for the first year. What happens next year?

New York City already has 7,600 migrants in its homeless shelters, which are 99 percent full, and is struggling to find housing for 5,000 new arrivals. As if trying to put out a fire with an eye-dropper, the city has opened a $6.7 million “welcome center” in Manhattan to receive migrants arriving by bus. Cost estimates for housing the city’s noncitizens already exceed $300 million a year. To complicate things, New York requires residents to spend at least 90 days in a shelter before being eligible for housing vouchers. It also requires a background check to verify applications. This normally takes a month, but it will presumably longer to process illegal immigrants who have no records that can be checked.

Even assuming all the new arrivals actually claim asylum, the average wait for an initial hearing in New York is over three years. In the meantime, they will be public charges on the city’s schools, hospitals, and housing. How long will New York taxpayers put up with this? Well, Mayor Eric Adams has admitted that the city is reaching the end of its rope, and officials are now said to be reconsidering their “right to shelter” commitment to house unlimited foreign indigents on top of New York’s plentiful home-grown needy.

New York and Washington actually look tough compared to Chicago. Mayor Lori Lightfoot proudly signed a “Welcoming City” ordinance in February 2021 to stop city police from working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But when the first busloads of 50 migrants arrived in early September, she packed them off to neighboring Burr Ridge without telling its mayor.

Later, when 500 migrants arrived in Chicago, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker declared an emergency and called out the National Guard. Coincidentally, Chicago has suffered almost the same number (491) of murders this year, but that’s not considered an emergency worthy of mobilizing the guard.

How long will this game of pass-the-parcel continue? Migrants deserve to be treated with dignity and compassion. However, that does not require those who enter illegally to stay here — on the taxpayer’s dime — until our overwhelmed immigration courts can get around to hearing their cases. Under the Migrant Protection Protocols, they could be housed outside our borders while their cases are considered. Even if not, ICE has to be allowed to do its duty, and those who fail to file for asylum or whose cases are denied after due process should be quickly deported as the law requires. It’s time President Biden stopped denying the crisis at the southern border and accepted the truth. Only then can we work for a national solution to the ongoing migrant crisis.

A former State Department official, Simon Hankinson is a senior research fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Affairs.

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

WATCH: Trump-Endorsed Kari Lake on Stage CALLS OUT Pence-Endorsed RINO Primary Opponent For “Duping THOUSANDS Of People Out of Money” – She Was the Very Next Speaker

By Jordan Conradson | Published July 19, 2022

Trump-Endorsed Arizona Gubernatorial frontrunner Kari Lake called out her billionaire RINO primary opponent in person for scamming thousands of American senior citizens out of their money. This was right before Karrin Taylor Robson spoke at the 78th Annual Mohave County Central Republican Committee Picnic last week. Robson is losing BIG, and she is desperate for grassroots support.

The Gateway Pundit recently conducted a poll with Cygnal Polling which found that Kari Lake and Trump-Endorsed Blake Masters for U.S. Senate both hold a steady double-digit lead over her primary opponents.

EXCLUSIVE Gateway Pundit-Cygnal Poll: Trump-Endorsed Candidates Kari Lake and Blake Masters Hold Double Digit Leads In Arizona Primary Elections

Kari Lake is Trump-Endorsed, and she is the only candidate with the guts to talk about the Rigged and Stolen 2020 Presidential Election. Because of this and her aggressive stances on other issues, Arizona loves her.

The Arizona State Media is pushing bogus polls in favor of her opponent to set the grounds for another rigged election.

Karrin Taylor Robson is a weak, pathetic RINO endorsed by Arizona Governor RINO Doug Ducey and Turncoat Mike Pence, who both certified the Fraudulent 2020 Election. Like other weak Republicans, Karrin Robson refuses to admit that the 2020 Election was stolen and incorrectly certified.

In order to save her failing campaign, Robson has turned to the “lowest of lows,” ripping off elderly American citizens with fraudulent text message fundraising schemes.

The Gateway Pundit recently reported that Kari Lake exposed Robson for using phone messaging alerts that purport to back various conservative causes to trick elderly conservatives into donating to her failing campaign.

WATCH: “Karrin, SHAME ON YOU” – Trump-Endorsed Kari Lake EXPOSES Her Ducey-Endorsed RINO Primary Opponent For Swindling Elderly Americans In Unethical Fundraising Scheme

According to Lake, she’s been doing this since August 2021, and over 1200 people have been refunded for their donations to Robson’s shady campaign.

“People are still figuring it out, and hundreds more this last reporting period figured out they were being swindled and demanded refunds,” said Kari Lake.

Kari released her exposé at the same moment that she called Robson out live at an event so that Robson would be totally unprepared and uncoached to deal with it. Lake told The Gateway Pundit that “without that coaching, she literally was speechless” when she took the stage immediately afterward.

Robson doesn’t even need this money. She already has so much money that she’s been caught donating thousands to elect democratic candidates up and down the ballot. She donated to Democrats in 2020, and she even donated to elect radical leftist anti-police Mayor Kate Gallego in 2019.

The Arizona Democratic Party recently thanked Robson in a statement for donating thousands of dollars to elect liberal Democrats “as recently as 2020.”

Arizona Democratic Party Thanks Ducey-Endorsed RINO Primary Candidate For Her “Longtime Financial Support To Help ELECT DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES UP AND DOWN THE BALLOT”

Her campaign is also funded by her husband, billionaire developer Ed Robson, and Anti-Lake Super PACs funded by Arizona’s elite. Robson and the PACs that support her are each dumping millions into attack ads against Kari Lake.

Lake gave us the following statement.

Lake: She got up on stage, and she didn’t have any response to it because there is no response. She is swindling elderly people out of their social security check. There is no response to that. The sick part is that she didn’t even need the money. Her husband is giving her a “blank check.” She did this in order to trick people, so it looks like she has grassroots support when she has none. Nobody wants her, and she’s trying to make it look like they do, and it’s really disgusting, frankly.
She is a closet liberal, and she is going to destroy this state if she gets anywhere near the Governor’s office. And we are not going to let her buy this election with a bunch of lies, and her ads, and the people need to be aware of it. She’s trying to deflect from what she’s been up to with all these bogus ads on me. I frankly think she and Katie Hobbs would be just as bad for the state. The RINOs and the Socialists are just as bad for the state.
America First all the way.

Recently, days before dropping out and endorsing Robson, RINO Matt Salmon admitted that Robson has a “blank check” and she is trying to buy the election.

Lake posted the video to her rumble, where she called Robson out straight to her face. The crowd cheered on Lake’s savage remarks.

Robson had to take the stage after this:

Lake: Karrin, where are you? We want answers to why you’re duping thousands of people out of money. It’s wrong. Here’s the sad thing, guys. She doesn’t need the money. The sad thing is, she’s being funded by a billionaire. She doesn’t need to dupe senior citizens out of their paycheck. But she did it to trick people into thinking she has grassroots support. It is unethical and it’s outrageous, and I think she should give every single one of them a refund. Everyone deserves a refund. I had to lay that out because you got to know who’s on the ballot. We cannot put an unethical person with no integrity who is trying to buy this election on the ballot. We can’t put her in the governor’s office. We’re at a crossroads in Arizona, guys. We’re at a crossroads whether we want to go back to the McCain style, McCain Mafia running the show, or do we want to go America first? I don’t want to go back to an Arizona where the high-price McCain consultants are running the show. I want to go back to an Arizona where We The People are in charge of our government.

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

EXCLUSIVE: Sentencing for Arizona Ballot Trafficker Pushed Forward After NEW Footage Released – New Hearing Set for July 7th

Reported By Jordan Conradson | Published July 5, 2022

A Yuma County Superior Court Judge recently set a new sentencing hearing for San Luis ballot Mule, Gadsden Elementary School District Board Member and Ex-Mayor of San Luis Guillermina Fuentes.

Fuentes pleaded guilty last month to her role in a sophisticated ballot trafficking ring during the 2020 Primary Election in Arizona. She was caught forging signatures and trafficking ballots in August 2020 by San Luis residents who filmed her using undercover cameras. Arizona State Senate candidate Gary Snyder and San Luis Resident David Lara witnessed this voter fraud in their community, and they busted these criminals.

Their work, which resulted in two indictments for illegal ballot trafficking, was featured in True the Vote‘s and Dinesh D’Souza’s “2000 Mules” documentary.

As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, this evidence was delivered to the Arizona Attorney General, RINO Mark Brnovich, months before the General Election, and he waited until December to file the charges. Brnovich apparently let them steal the general election.

In March, Alma Juarez pleaded guilty to one count of ballot abuse after admitting to police that Guillermina Fuentes handed her ballots with instructions to deposit them in a dropbox. Fuentes pleaded not guilty; however, after the release of “2000 Mules” featuring whistleblower testimony from San Luis, Fuentes changed her plea to guilty.

Finally, after over one year of delay, Fuentes pleaded guilty to one felony count of ballot abuse after three additional felony counts were dismissed. The Gateway Pundit reported that Fuentes took the plea agreement without forgery and conspiracy charges.

Yuma County Woman Guillermina Fuentes Finally Pleads Guilty In Ballot Trafficking Case

Fuentes got off with a slap on the wrist because the prosecutors failed to prove forgery and conspiracy. Despite having video evidence of Fuentes sealing envelopes to be trafficked and forging signatures, for some reason, the prosecutors decided not to show it.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, it appears that the Attorney General doctored the footage he was given and redacted the part where Fuentes forged ballot signatures. The full unredacted clip was recently revealed by Arizona Gubernatorial Candidate Kari Lake and others at Jovan Hutton Pulitzer’s Kinematic Artifact Detection analysis presentation in Arizona.

BREAKING EXCLUSIVE: Footage Reveals Ballot Traffickers Forging Signatures and Trafficking Ballots But RINO AG Brnovich Dropped Forgery Charges (VIDEO)

Best Women's Sandals for Travel from Sursell

The prosecutors had this footage BEFORE the 2020 General Election but did nothing about it.

Now, Fuentes’ sentencing hearing, previously scheduled for June 30th, has been continued. The new hearing is set for July 7th at 1:30 pm.

It is unclear if the motion to continue directly results from citizens publishing the unredacted video footage.

Lock her up!

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Maricopa County Releases “Analysis Of The Senate Inquiry” – Admits To Double-Counted Ballots And Double Voting

Reported By Jordan Conradson | Published January 6, 2022

Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer

Yesterday, Maricopa County released a 93-page response to the Arizona Senate audit.

The auditors identified hundreds of thousands of illegal ballots. They discovered internet connectivity on the Elections Management Server, deleted elections files, and several more election law violations.

The County denied every claim, but they finally admitted, a year after the election, to double voting and double-counted ballots.

All evidence from the Senate audit was delivered to Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich and Arizona voters are still waiting for justice.

It has now been almost four months since Brnovich received the evidence of illegal votes, deleted files, computer violations, and other potential fraudulent activity.

The County officials also held a four-hour-long special meeting with their attorneys yesterday, to deny all of the auditors’ findings.

Maricopa County’s response referenced the findings of their “bullsh*t” election audit, performed by the County early last year.

Former Maricopa County Supervisor Steve Chucri said on record that the County’s audit was “bullsh*t”. He then resigned after these recordings were revealed to the public.

As Chucri stated before he resigned, his colleagues are afraid of a real audit.

Maricopa County denied almost all claims by the Senate auditors in their lengthy report. They did, however, admit that voters voted twice and that ballots were double-counted.

The Maricopa County report stated,

Our analysis found 37 instances where a voter may have unlawfully cast multiple ballots. We have forwarded these instances to the Arizona Attorney General’s Office for further investigation. We also found 50 instances in which a ballot was potentially double counted.
After Maricopa County’s post-election review of all 2,089,563 ballot IDs, it appears that 50 ballots in one batch were scanned twice. This had no impact on the outcome of any contest.

They continued to discredit the Arizona Senate audit and its findings.

Attorney General Mark Brnovich will decide how many instances of these illegal votes truly occurred when he releases his findings.

Maricopa County is not the only county in question either. In Pima County, 35,000 fake votes were allegedly inserted into the election system.

Dubai Photos That Will Make You Think Twice About Visiting

Mother Bear Does This After Man Saves Her Drowning Cubs

Eye-opening Photos Smuggled out of North Korea Reveal Terrible Reality

Contact Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich to demand justice for the stolen 2020 Election.

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Parents demand resignation of Scottsdale school board president after he accidentally reveals creepy dossier of info on anti-CRT parents

Reported by CARLOS GARCIA | November 11, 2021

**Image Source: KTVK-TV YouTube video screenshot**

Parents of students in the Scottsdale Unified School District were shocked to discover that a school board member had secretly compiled a dossier detailing parents who opposed critical race theory. The dossier was compiled on Google Drive and contained a list of parents who objected to teachings about CRT; it included photographs of both the parents and their children.

Parents who had been calling for the recall of Governing Board President Jann-Michael Greenburg are now demanding he resign

over the secret dossier, to which he had access.

“I am calling for the immediate resignation of our board president Jann-Michael Greenburg,” said Amy Carney, a mother of six, who is now running for a seat on the Scottsdale Governing Board.“We cannot allow anyone in a leadership position to secretly compile personal documents and information on moms and dads who have dared speak out publicly or on social media about their grievances with the district,” she added.

The dossier included a trove of information on 47 parents, including home addresses, phone numbers, mortgage data, traffic tickets, family members, and social security numbers.

One of the videos on the drive showed Greenburg’s father wearing a bodycam before going out to record video of the parents.

The dossier was discovered when Greenburg sent a screenshot of his desktop to a parent that displayed the address of the link to the Google Drive.

Amanda Wray told KTVK-TV that she saw photographs of her children on the dossier and was horrified.

“When I first saw the contents of the Google Drive and I saw my 8- and 10-year-old’s photos, that was terrifying. And like, what’s he doing?” said Wray.
“But he has pictures of my vacation home, property records,” she added. “I’m not a political opponent, I’m an involved parent and that is threatening to me and it makes me wonder why and what he was planning to do with those photos.”

The district said in the letter that Greenburg could only be removed if he was recalled, if he resigned, or if he was voted out in the next election.

Attorney Alexander Kolodin told the Arizona Free News that Greenburg and his father could face criminal charges related to intimidation.

Here’s more about the secret parent dossier:

Category:

Education, Political

Tagged with:

Photo: Marine Vet Gets Award for Stopping Robbery, But His Anti-Biden Shirt Steals the Show

Reported By Randy DeSoto | October 27, 2021

U.S. Marine veteran James Kilcer, who thwarted an attempted robbery in an Arizona convenience store last week, received an award Tuesday from the Yuma County Sheriff’s Office while wearing a “Let’s Go Brandon” T-shirt. He was also sporting a red “Make America Great Again” hat, apparently in support of former President Donald Trump.

Sheriff Leon Wilmot presented Kilcer with the YCSO Citizen’s Valor Award, “For extraordinary heroism and exceptional courage while voluntarily coming to the aid of another citizen during an incident involving criminal activity at extreme, life threatening, personal risk in an attempt to save or protect human life,” the sheriff’s office said in a news release.
“The YCSO Citizen’s Valor Award is the highest award for citizens whose actions warrant recognition.”

Surveillance video of Kilcer stopping the robbery at the Chevron convenience store early in the morning on Oct. 20 went viral. The now-U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground employee had just purchased some Gatorades and other items and was talking to the clerk when the suspects came in, Kilcer told the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service.

“I heard the door start opening forcefully and my ‘Spidey senses’ or whatever kind of tingling, and I turn around and saw they were coming in real quick,” he said.

The veteran turned around and his military training kicked in as he sought to disarm the robber.

“I was ready: I saw it coming,” Kilcer said. “The minute my hands closed around it, I never lost contact with the gun. And I pulled him down.”

ZERO FEAR:
When this Yuma, AZ veteran saw some criminals pop in guns high — he didn't wait for things to potentially go south.

“The Marine Corp taught me not to [mess] around,” he later said.

'The few, the proud' for a reason.
More on the story on @ABC15 at 10. pic.twitter.com/fGjKthcXvO
— Zach Crenshaw (@ZachCrenshaw) October 21, 2021

He held the suspect down until law enforcement arrived. The person arrested was a 14-year-old juvenile who has now been charged with one count of armed robbery and one count of aggravated assault.

“Kilcer served as a tactical air operations technician in the Marine Corps and was deployed to Afghanistan during his time in the military. He credits his actions to his Marine Corps basic training and mindset,” DVIDS reported.
“I guess I was just in the right place at the right time,’’ Kilcer said. “I was doing what needed to be done.”Advertisement – story continues below

While appearing on Fox News on Friday, the Arizonan also waded into the political when he ended the segment, saying with a smile to host Dana Perino, “And remember, [Jeffrey] Epstein didn’t kill himself.”

The Marine who stopped the corner store robbery in the viral video was just on Fox News.

He ended his interview saying "Epstein didn't kill himself" haha. pic.twitter.com/NUkZaow09j
— Kassy Dillon (@KassyDillon) October 22, 2021

“OK, got it,” said Perino, who laughed and added, “Very clever.”

Randy DeSoto, Senior Staff Writer

Randy DeSoto has written more than 2,000 articles for The Western Journal since he joined the company in 2015. He is a graduate of West Point and Regent University School of Law. He is the author of the book “We Hold These Truths” and screenwriter of the political documentary “I Want Your Money.”@RandyDeSoto

Category:

Political, Society

Tagged with:

Haitian Migrants Have Located ‘The Gap,’ a ‘New Route’ to Illegally Enter the US

Reported By Dillon Burroughs October 7, 2021

Illegal Haitian migrants are crossing the southern border of the U.S. via a new route in Yuma, Arizona, as Border Patrol braces for the arrival of up to 60,000 Haitian migrants. “Haitian migrants find new route to cross illegally into United States in Yuma, Arizona, location is known as ‘The Gap,’” the Daily Caller’s Jorge Ventura tweeted Thursday.

“As the state of Texas prepares for 60,000 Haitian migrants to arrive later this month, Haitian migrants find new route in the Yuma sector.”
Ventura shared a video of “three Haitian adults with three young children making their way to the United States.”
“We’re getting early reports of Haitian migrants starting to make their way into Yuma, Arizona, after the 15,000 Haitian caravan arrived in [Del Rio, Texas] in late September,” Ventura said.

Haitian migrants find new route to cross illegally into United States in Yuma, Arizona , location is known as 'The Gap". As the state of Texas prepares for 60,000 Haitian migrants to arrive later this month , Haitian migrants find new route in the Yuma sector pic.twitter.com/8sFgZEPs83
— Jorge Ventura Media (@VenturaReport) October 7, 2021

A second video showed a human smuggler receiving a cash payment from illegal Cuban migrants who had arrived at “The Gap.”

“Before crossing into the United States illegally, human smuggler gives his final instructions to these Cuban migrants and receives his cash payment. Cuban migrants cross into Yuma, Arizona,” Ventura tweeted.

Before crossing into the United States illegally, human smuggler gives his final instructions to these Cuban migrants and receives his cash payment. Cuban migrants cross into Yuma, Arizona. This route is known as 'The Gap', Haitian migrants are also crossing through this route pic.twitter.com/SqIGt4NQFa
— Jorge Ventura Media (@VenturaReport) October 7, 2021

“These are three Cuban migrants who are also taking the same route here in Yuma as the Haitians and Central Americans,” Ventura said.
“This area of Yuma has been hit with a huge migrant surge. They’re seeing a 2,000 percent increase compared to the same time last year,” he added.

Last month, Ventura documented illegal migrants crossing into the U.S. in Roma, Texas, including over 100 on rafts.

“Migrants coming off the raft were wearing bracelets that cartels/smuggling groups put on them to track and determine payment,” he tweeted.

Many of those crossing the border illegally were children.

Border Crisis Continues : Last night we witnessed human smugglers bring over 100 Central American migrants with small rafts from the Mexican side. You can see small children on the rafts being smuggled into the United States throughout the night. @DailyCaller pic.twitter.com/Ahhxf9B9m6
— Jorge Ventura Media (@VenturaReport) September 27, 2021

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott joined 10 Republican governors on Wednesday to discuss ways to better protect the nation’s southern border.

Dillon Burroughs, Breaking News/Media Reporter

Dillon Burroughs reports on breaking news for The Western Journal and is the author or co-author of numerous books.

@dillonburroughs

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

ARIZONA AUDIT COULD NOT FIND THE IDENTITY OF 86,391 VOTERS BECAUSE…HERE’S WHY

Reported by COOTER | SEPTEMBER 30, 2021

Reports have surfaced questioning the validity of the recent Arizona election audit report. First and foremost, there seems to be critical things removed or omitted from the final Executive Summary. Beyond unanswered questions within that report, there are even more alarming facts arising.

The cyber research company Cyber Ninjas was entrusted with the job of auditing 2020 election ballots in Maricopa County, Arizona. They found issues with the election, and an original draft indicated they felt the final results should not be certified. However, another huge problem has been discovered. Cyber Ninjas was unable to identify and authenticate over 80,000 voter registrations. The whole process bleeds of corruption. We have to go back over 15 years to begin digging at the root cause of this problem.

In 2004, Arizona passed a voting registration law that required proof of U.S. citizenship to vote. Arizona Prop 200 seemed to implement safeguards to ensure election integrity. That didn’t stop Democrats from finding a way to cheat. The Democrat Party started to use a federal voter registration form that did not require proof of U.S. citizenship. This fit perfectly into the liberal left’s plan to allow millions of illegal immigrants to vote in a national U.S. election. It’s unconstitutional and blatant fraud.

In 2013, the United States Supreme Court backed the Democrat’s ploy. However, these registrations could only be applied to elections for President or Congress. Democrats didn’t care. That was all they wanted at this stage of the game. The voters are designated as “Federal Only”, but there is no process to ensure that these registrations are authentic U.S. citizens. It doesn’t take a degree in rocket science to figure out exactly what the Democrats were up to here. They found a way to use a federal election loophole to garner up thousands of illegal votes in federal elections. Back in March 2017, the Maricopa Recorder held thousands of unprocessed registrations. They lacked the required documentation. What happened to these registrations?

When Democrat activist Adrian Fontes snaked his way into the head position at the recorder’s office, suddenly no one could account for these unprocessed registrations. There is no way to authenticate them, or tell if they were processed illegally and allowed to vote. To add another dark element to the Arizona election problem, registrations in the state skyrocketed across a two-year period between 2018 and 2020. The number of new voter registrations shot up nearly 15 percent in 24-months. For a state the size of Arizona, this massive increase in registered voters isn’t logical. The number would quickly fall to a more reasonable figure, if the percentage of potential illegal voter registrations is considered. Now the number of new registrations would be palpable.

If a majority of these illegal registrations cast ballots for Joe Biden, it would flip the state for former President Donald Trump. Maricopa County had hacked servers and hacked databases as well. The story in Arizona smells of corruption. But will we ever get to the truth?

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author of the article and not necessarily shared or endorsed by SteadfastClash.com, and WhatDidYouSay.org.

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

AZ Auditors Say Over 17,000 Duplicate Ballots Found in Maricopa County, 1.5 Times What Biden Won By

Reported By Michael Austin | September 24, 2021

On Friday, Arizona state Republicans announced the findings of the Arizona Senate audit of the 2020 presidential election results in Maricopa County. Among the audit’s many findings was that over 17,000 total duplicate ballots — meaning ballots submitted by individuals who voted more than once in the election — were found.

As much was revealed by Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, an expert in pattern recognition and classification of diverse signals and signatures who has four degrees from M.I.T. The Arizona Republicans conducting the audit enlisted Ayyadurai and his team of experts to aid in the audit by investigating mail-in ballot envelopes used in the election. The team reported it found 17,322 duplicate ballots in the election.

As noted by Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake on Twitter, Maricopa County itself had reported no duplicate ballots.

WOW! Look at the surge of duplicate ballots AFTER Nov. 3!

96% of the ballots that came in on 2 of these days were DUPLICATES

The same exact surge can be seen in blank ballot envelopes with no signatures, and scribbles, indicating a bad signature pic.twitter.com/xPywE6Azuo
— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) September 24, 2021

“Maricopa reported ZERO duplicate ballots. Real total is 17,322,” Lake wrote on Twitter.

“This is more than enough to change the election result.”

Other conservatives went to Twitter to react to the shocking findings as well.

WOW! Look at the surge of duplicate ballots AFTER Nov. 3!

96% of the ballots that came in on 2 of these days were DUPLICATES

The same exact surge can be seen in blank ballot envelopes with no signatures, and scribbles, indicating a bad signature pic.twitter.com/xPywE6Azuo
— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) September 24, 2021

The Western Journal is following the Arizona audit results closely.

If you want to stay informed on the investigation’s many findings, stay tuned.

Michael Austin

Michael Austin joined The Western Journal as a staff reporter in 2020. Since then, he has authored hundreds of stories, including several original reports. He also co-hosts the outlet’s video podcast, “WJ Live.”

@mikeswriting

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Breaking: AZ Auditors Reveal Massively Disturbing Results in 2020 Election

Reported by Michael Austin July 15, 2021

On Thursday, Arizona Republicans issued a major announcement related to the audit of Maricopa County’s 2020 general election results. During the proceedings, Arizona state Senate President Karen Fann, along with state Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Warren Petersen, gave the floor to auditors who announced that as many as 74,000 absentee ballot mail-in records are missing in addition to a great many vote irregularities found by the audit.

“… as many as 74,000 absentee ballot mail-in records are missing in addition to a great many vote irregularities found by the audit.“

Fann began the hearing by introducing three individuals who played key roles in the state audit.

Lead auditor Doug Logan first introduced a video clip that detailed the process and emphasized the security measures that were taken to ensure the audit could proceed safely.

Former Arizona Secretary of State and Arizona Senate liaison Ken Bennett then provided specifics of the audit, including how many ballots were received and examined, how data was collected and examined from voting equipment and which security protocols were enforced while the audit took place.

The liaison noted that the examination of duplicate ballots was a particularly strenuous process. Duplicate ballots are typically produced when a ballot becomes damaged or is improperly marked.

“It has created great difficulty to try to match up a duplicated ballot to its duplicate,” Bennett said, noting that some serial numbers were completely missing from duplicated ballots, ……….. READ THE REST OF THIS IMPORTANT REPORT AT https://www.westernjournal.com/breaking-az-auditors-reveal-massively-disturbing-results-2020-election/

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich Responds to Biden Admin’s Threats: “My Office Is NOT AMUSED With DOJ’s POSTURING”

Reported By Jordan Conradson | Published June 14, 2021

Last week, the Biden DOJ put their dirty hands in the wrong place, warning state lawmakers that if they proceeded to audit fraudulent elections they will be targeted.

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich sent a letter to AG Merrick Garland clarifying that this is not a game for AZ officials.

OAN correspondent Christina Bobb tweeted the following update.

AZ Attorney General Mark Brnovich steps up big time to support the AZ Senate. Sends letter to AG Garland saying “My office is not amused by the DOJ’s posturing.” Brnovich says he will protect state sovereignty.
— Christina Bobb (@christina_bobb) June 14, 2021

“AZ Attorney General Mark Brnovich steps up big time to support the AZ Senate. Sends letter to AG Garland saying “My office is not amused by the DOJ’s posturing.” Brnovich says he will protect state sovereignty.”

The full letter is below.

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-000 I
Dear Attorney General Garland,
June 14,2021

Late last week, you made troubling comments about the ongoing efforts in states to ensure election integrity. Your statements displayed an alarming disdain for state sovereignty as defined under
the 10th Amendment of the United States Constitution and the election provisions in Articles I and 11.

Your comments followed a May 5 letter from Pamela Karlan of the Department of Justice’s Civil
Rights Division, on the subject of the Arizona Senate’s oversight of the Maricopa County audit. This
letter appeared more interested in supporting the hysterical outcries of leftist pundits on cable television,
rather than the rule of law.

My office is not amused by the DOJ’s posturing and will not tolerate any effort to undermine or
interfere with our State Senate’s audit to reassure Arizonans of the accuracy of our elections. We stand
ready to defend federalism and state sovereignty against any partisan attacks or federal overreach.
It is important to remember that the states created the federal government, not the other way
around. America’s founders intentionally restrained the federal government’s constitutional boundaries to
ensure each state could flourish in unique ways. Today, our federal government has largely forgotten the
Founders’ intent, but my office has not.

There are no issues more important for states to prioritize than the integrity of our elections. This
is the cornerstone of our republic, binding together the peoples’ trust in the whole of government. Today,
we see mistrust in our elections from Americans on all sides of the political spectrum. This should not be
a partisan issue. States can and should take every opportunity to reassure all citizens that their vote
counts.

My office looks for ways to work alongside the federal government to uphold our laws within the
constraints of the 10th Amendment and the election provisions in Articles I and II. As I have
demonstrated several times, however, Arizona will not sit back and let the Biden administration abuse its
authority, refuse to uphold laws, or attempt to commandeer our state’s sovereignty.

Respectfully,
Mark Brnovich
Attorney General

AZ State Senator Wendy Rogers had a similar message, threatening jail time for Garland if he lays a finger on Arizona’s election.

The Biden administration forgets a lot. They must have forgotten about states’ rights.

These goons belong in Tent City!

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Far-Left Media Hack Admits to Sneaking Inside Arizona Audit Room at Veterans Memorial Center without Proper Credentials Before Ballots Arrive in Attempt to Discredit Process

Reported By Jim Hoft | Published April 26, 2021

Far-left CBS media hack Morgan Loew from AZFamily.com published a hit piece on Friday against the upcoming forensic audit of ballots at the Veterans Memorial Center in Phoenix, Arizona. Democrats and their supporting operatives in the media continue to work overtime to shut down this process. What are they so afraid of?

Loew admitted in his piece that he sneaked into Veterans Memorial Center without proper credentials before the start of the forensic audit. This was his contribution to Democrats in their ongoing attempts to discredit the entire process.

Soros-funded Secretary of State Katie Hobbs then used Loew’s report in her latest attempt to shut down the audit of Maricopa County ballots.

They sure are scared!

Jim Hoft

Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016.

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Trish Reagan Intel. Three Articles of Importance

Illegal Migrants Hotel Bill at $86 Million For Only 1,239 Beds

Posted By Staff Writer| March 22,2021

https://trishintel.com/illegal-migrants-hotel-bill-at-86-million-for-only-1239-beds/

“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has signed a short-term contract with the non-profit division of Endeavors to provide temporary shelter and processing services for families who have not been expelled and are therefore placed in immigration proceedings for their removal from the United States,”said in a statement the ICE acting Director Tae D. Johnson.

“The $86.9 million contract provides 1,239 beds and other necessary services. The families will receive a comprehensive health assessment that includes COVID-19 testing.”

Endeavors is a non-profit organization which provides direct care, migrant wellness support, case management, home study and post-release services, staffing, and holistic programming for unaccompanied migrant children and families. Endeavors has served migrants since 2012.

“Our border is not open. The majority of individuals continue to be expelled under the Centers for Disease Control’s public health authority,”continued ICE acting Director in his statement.

Project Veritas Exclusive Photos From Inside Texas CBP Facility Show Horrific Border Crisis

Posted By Staff Writer | March 22, 2021

https://trishintel.com/project-veritas-exclusive-photos-from-inside-texas-cbp-facility-show-horrific-border-crisis/

Donna Migrant Center 4 — Courtesy: Project Veritas

In a stunning revelation of how horrific conditions at the border have become, Project Veritas released exclusive photos Monday from reportedly inside one of the border’s detention facilities.

The never-before-seen photos are said to have been taken from inside a Customs and Border Patrol facility in Donna, Texas. In the images (scroll down for more) you can see asylum seekers in tight spaces wrapped in space blankets, lying shoulder to shoulder on the floor.

The facility currently houses thousands of immigrants that travel illegally across the border and is beyond its capacity. Indeed, according to the Project Veritas source that provided the photos, “there are eight pods with eight cells each in the facility. At any given moment,” the source explained, “an average of 3,000 people in custody here.”

In addition, the source tells Project Veritas that the immigrants are “separated by age or physical size depending on room. Fifty were Covid positive in these cells over the last few days. There have been multiple sexual assaults, normal assaults and daily medical emergencies.”

Axios also reported horrible conditions at the same facility. In a report Monday, Axios quoted Representative Henry Cuellar (D-TX) who recently toured the Donna facility and described the conditions as “terrible for the children.” The Congressman added that Border Patrol agents are “doing the best they can under the circumstances” but are “not equipped to care for kids” and “need help from the administration.”

A reported 15,500 children are now in federal custody at the border.

Though Representative Cuellar was unable to take pictures, he was able to gain a tour of the facility. But he’s one of the few to have seen the conditions directly. Indeed, there has been what appears to be a deliberate and coordinated effort to keep journalists out of the facilities.

Project Veritas founder and CEO James O’Keefe visited the detention facility in Donna, Texas late last week and was asked to leave the location by staff members at the facility. You can watch the video here.

Meanwhile, an attorney representing migrant youth in the custody of the U.S. government was recently denied a tour of the Donna, Texas facility. Naha Desai told CBS News, that she interviewed children who said they were hungry and never saw the sun. “Some of the boys said that conditions were so overcrowded that they had to take turns sleeping on the floor,” she explained.

On March 2nd, the Donna complex was said to be holding more than 1,800 people — 729% of its pandemic-era capacity, which is designed for 250 migrants, according to CBS. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security head is calling on volunteers to assist CBP at these facilities complaining that the most number of migrants in 20 years have arrived.

A report over the weekend on ABC News showcased an interview with an asylum seeker in which he explained President Biden is one of the main reasons he made the journey to the border.

Biden Tax Hike Would Make Some States’ Rates Near 70% – Among Highest in World

Posted By Trish Regan | March 22, 2021

https://trishintel.com/bidens-tax-hikes-could-put-some-states-among-highest-rate-in-world/

New York, California, and numerous other states could soon become some of the highest tax places in the world if the Biden Administration gets its way. The Biden tax plan that Congress is debating this week would raise the top income tax rate to 39.6% from its current 37% today.

And that’s not all…

Biden wants to place a new payroll tax of 15% on earnings over $400,000 (or $200,000 each for a married couple.) This combined payroll and income tax hike would bring the marginal tax rate on an additional hour of work to 54%.

State and city taxes can no longer be deducted from federal returns. As such, high-tax states like New York, California, Hawaii, Minnesota, Oregon, Iowa, Arizona and New Jersey would all see marginal tax rates approaching 70%.

Meanwhile, if California and New York get their way, taxes could go even higher. Both states are discussing ways to shore up their disastrous finances. In California, the General Assembly is considering raising the state income tax to 16.5%. And, in New York, the embattled Governor Andrew Cuomo has proposed a two percentage point hike. This would raise income taxes in New York City to 15.5%.

As economists at the Committee to Unleash Prosperity point out, if New York and California are successful with their tax hikes, they will officially become home to some of the highest tax places in the world.

Hey, who needs Bernie Sanders when President Joe Biden is willing to go so far left and turn us into a socialist state?

To be clear — higher taxes is not a sustainable path forward for America. Instead, we need pro-growth policies that will generate more wealth for the country as a whole, instead of onerous taxation that will discourage prosperity.

The Biden tax hikes, the largest since 1993, should not be approved.

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

UPDATE: Arizona Citizens Investigation Discovers Thousands of Phantom Voters in State – Up to 30% of Addresses in Investigation Were Fraudulent

Reported By Jim Hoft | Published December 31, 2020

Here is a final report on the press conference last night in Phoenix, Arizona by Citizens Investigation that uncovered thousands of illegal votes in the state.

Mathematician Bobby Piton supplied Liz Harris, the Director of Citizens Investigation, and We The People AZ Alliance, a random sample of 3,900 questionable AZ voter names to check for residency from the latest election in Arizona. This list represented all 5 categories of voters (Republican, Democrat, etc.).

Bobby Piton testified in the AZ State hearing in late November about ghost voters and other anomalies. He was banned by Twitter during his compelling testimony. He has spent over 400 hours researching abnormalities with voter names and registrations.

Liz Harris then rounded up several hundred patriot volunteers who knocked on these doors looking to find what Piton calls “phantom sleeper” and suspicious Undefined or “U” voters. They are not eligible to vote for a variety of reasons. He estimated there are 160,000 to 400,000 of these illegal voters in Arizona. The team were able to visit 1,000 of the addresses in person and were often harassed or threatened by the residents. They found 539 voters DID NOT LIVE at these addresses. Additional results are below.

Investigation Finds Votes Cast by:

Voters that are dead, verified no longer at that address
Several with the actual name “Unknown Voter”
Registered at commercial addresses, especially Church’s Chicken
Non-U.S. Citizens who denied voting
Felons who stated they can’t vote, others in jail for years
Out of State residents who just don’t live in Arizona
Registered using Schools, car lots, and sports arena’s addresses
65 using the AZ Tabulation Center & Recorders Office as their address
Vacant lots at elderly villages (55 & over) and undeveloped properties
Wilderness addresses on Bureau of Land Management & State Trust land
Abandoned homes completely unlivable or boarded up
Street names that just do not exist in any Arizona records

Citizens Investigation held a Live press conference on Dec. 30th at the AZ State Capitol to release some findings and solicit more help (To volunteer just text 480-313-3924).

They found most AZ residents are horrified that a stranger or strangers have registered to vote using their home address. Several homeowners received multiple ballots (3, 4, 5), with one who received 20 ballots at their home. One business address received 200 ballots and another AZ address is used by 2,012 people who registered to vote. Within the first few days the Citizens Investigation had a couple hundred affidavits that 2020 votes were not associated with their registered address. Among other things, Piton found one corner lot has 1,500 registered voters and the lot next to it has 1,000. It’s beyond suspicious that 2,500 voters are registered to such a small area of land.

TheDonald.win reported on the press conference results.

The AZ voter address verification project presented their findings last night. They worked in groups of two. Each pair that presented last night checked a list of between 100 and 200 names/addresses. Many addresses didn’t exist, were businesses, schools, or churches. Five college campuses were checked, 60% or more did not even attend the college listed as the address. Many voters that could not be verified were listed at the same address. This means the 30% is not even accurate. More than 30% of addresses that were boots-on-the-ground verified by sworn affidavit were fraudulent! This is one project in one state. All swing states need to be verified!

THE NAME GAME:

The door-knocking investigation confirms what Bobby Piton has claimed about names that have increased the voter rolls beyond the actual growth of Arizona’s new residents. They found people voting who are only registered with initials, like “D.E.” for a first and last name, or “J.B.B” that cast votes. They are seeing registrations that switch up the first and middle names, or use a combination of initials, first or middle names to produce multiple registrations. These are all the same person but use birth dates only a few months apart to avoid detection.

They’ve also found an unusual amount of voters tied to the same phone number. In one instance of a verified phantom voter, one cell phone number was registered to 19 registered voters, all with different addresses. They then picked one of those 19 voters and found that home phone is the same as 15 other registered voters, none living in the same home, all with different names. This spider web verifies a mess of fraudulent registrations and votes.

ASSISTED LIVING PRECINCT:

They looked at facilities in certain precincts that could not be visited before the election because of Covid restrictions. They looked at 110 voter profiles and a strange pattern emerged. Each person had more than one tag for “Already Voted”. They were all the same dates of Oct. 15th, 20th, and the 23rd. Records then show they requested a ballot on October 29th, after already voting several times. They were then tagged again as “Already Voted” on November 25th, twenty two days after the election. Nov. 25th is coincidentally the same day the 65 voters who registered using the Maricopa County Tabulation Center address and County Recorders address are documented as requesting ballots. This is the same time Maricopa county was dragging out the counting of votes.

COLLEGE RESIDENTS:

A list of voter registration for 5 Arizona colleges that provide on campus student living were compiled. Each school happily complied with help in cleaning up these voter lists. Each college reviewed the lists and responded. It showed that 60% (or higher) of the registered voters were not residents of student housing, nor were they students of that school. This evidence has turned into a larger project that will encompass all of the AZ colleges and is ongoing.

THE CANVASSERS SPEAK:

Two female volunteers said: “The two of us canvassed 119 addresses so far. We found 29 people who had moved. We were unable to locate a new address for them. Almost all of these voters were unknown to those living at the residence. We talked to one person who was not a U.S. citizen and said they didn’t vote, yet someone cast a ballot in their name and address. We had 3 people whose relatives voted for them and signed the voter form for them. We found 5 people who moved out of State who voted in AZ, or someone voted for them. 4 people stated they did not vote, one said she was in Covid isolation – yet votes were cast for these people. One we talked with decided to vote in person at the precinct. She was told she already voted and was offered a provisional ballot, which she completed. She has no idea which ballot was counted. To recap, there were 25 voters that we could not verify any information at all on these people, even after multiple attempts to find them. 48 locations had problems that we could verify, meaning almost half of the addresses had issues.”

Another canvasser said: “I visited 326 addresses. I spoke with an actual person at 195 locations and have written 60 affidavits with voter discrepancies. One Homeowner stated she received 4 ballots in her name for this last election. There were 4 addresses with deceased people, a daughter showed the canvasser her dead fathers ballot that came in the mail. Yet a vote was still cast in her dead Father’s name. 13 addresses were vacant lots or abandoned homes. At 27 addresses the current residents said: “I’ve never heard of that person”. There were 24 names associated with one address, which was an apartment complex, but no apartment number. The complex management said if USPS can’t determine the correct apartments mail slot, the mail is supposed to be returned to sender. 11 locations had voter names of “Unknown Voter”. “

Two male canvassers said: “Over 5 days we visited 122 homes in the East valley. We completed 43 affidavits that represent 31 locations where no such person lived there.”

VOLUNTEER or HELP: To help in Arizona with voter integrity canvassing of addresses just text 480-313-3924. Training is held daily at 7AM, 11AM, and 7PM. To help fund Bobby Pitons research visit his GoFundMe page.

Jim Hoft

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Joe Biden’s Lead in Arizona Drops Below 15K; 63K Ballots Remain

Reported by HANNAH BLEAU | 10 Nov 2020

US President Donald Trump delivers remarks at a Keep America Great rally in Phoenix, Arizona, on February 19, 2020. (Photo by JIM WATSON / AFP) (Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)

President Trump is continuing to make gains in Arizona, reducing Joe Biden’s (D) lead by the thousands over the course of the last week.

Another Maricopa County drop on Monday evening showed Trump reducing Biden’s overall lead from 16,952 on Sunday afternoon to 14,746. According to the Arizona Republic, Trump fell short in the Monday evening drop of ballots in terms of overall pace, taking 49.2 percent of the 6,495 votes. Trump needs to take 60 percent of the remaining ballots in the state in order to take the lead.

The paper believes 63,000 ballots remain, over half of which are provisional, though Data Orbital estimates the remaining number to be around 61.6K:

Over the weekend, the Trump campaign and Republican National Committee (RNC) filed a lawsuit in Arizona alleging that in-person voters had their ballots wrongfully rejected, as Breitbart News reported:

The lawsuit details cases in Maricopa County, Arizona, where eligible voters showed up on election day to cast their vote and subsequently had their ballot rejected.

In one case, Mia Barcello said she marked her ballot at an Anthem, Arizona, polling site with an ink pen that permeated through the ballot. When the ballot was fed through a tabulation device, it was rejected, according to the lawsuit. Barcello said she was told to press a “green button labeled ‘Cast’ on the device but was not told that doing so “likely would cause her selections in all candidate races or ballot proposition affected by the putative overvote or other defect or irregularity to be automatically disqualified and not tabulated.”

Trump’s team has continually expressed confidence that he will emerge victorious in Arizona and has called on Fox News and the AP to retract their premature calls.

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Local News Affiliate at AZ Event Attended by Biden, Harris: ‘Technically a Big Event But Not a Lot of Fanfare’ — ‘Can’t Tell Anything Much Is Going On’

Reported by JEFF POOR | 11 Oct 2020

During a Biden campaign event at Phoenix’s Heard Museum last week, local Fox affiliate Fox 10’s Nicole Garcia offered viewers a glimpse from outside the event, which was attended by both former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) — the first of any with both candidates since the Democratic National Convention.

Despite a few press reports noting the location of the event prior to its scheduled time, Garcia said campaign staffers told her it was an intentional decision not to publicize the event to limit the size of crowds.

“We’re right outside of the Heard Museum where Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and their motorcade arrived about one o’clock this afternoon,” she explained during a Fox News Now broadcast. “They are meeting with several tribal leaders here at the Heard Museum, and not a lot of fanfare out here. There’s really much to see — and I’ll step out of the way. So, it’s not your typical presidential campaign event. We don’t see people rallying outside. We don’t see signs or much of what’s going on. I’m told by one of the Biden staffers, local staffers, is that they kind of kept the details about the visit — as far as the timing and exact location — they didn’t want to give that out to the public because they want to keep the crowds to a minimum. They realize we are in a pandemic, and they don’t want a crowd of more than 50 people at their events.”

Garcia pointed out that given Arizona was considered a “battleground state,” an event with both Biden and Harris together for the first time since the convention would be expected to draw more interest, but the only ones there were the candidates, campaign staffers and pool reporters.

“Technically a big event but not a lot of fanfare. So we’re getting information about what’s going on with these meetings from our national correspondent pool reporters,” Garcia said. “But from out here, you really can’t tell anything much is going on.”

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Two Arizona County Sheriffs Vow to Not Enforce Governor’s Stay-At-Home Order, Say It Would Be a Violation of Their Oath

Reported By Cassandra Fairbanks | Published May 3, 2020 at 7:40pm

URL of the originating web site: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/05/two-arizona-county-sheriffs-vow-not-enforce-governors-stay-home-order-say-violation-oath/

Two Arizona county sheriffs are refusing to enforce Gov. Doug Ducey’s stay-at-home order, asserting that it would be a violation of their oath and the Constitution.

Mohave County Sheriff Doug Schuster and Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb have both said that they will not make arrests or fine people who do not comply with the order.

“My conscience will not allow me to arrest someone who is trying to make a living,” Schuster told The Arizona Republic. “I don’t believe it is a crime to try and make a living.”

“I don’t think, for the most part, people want to be defying (the order),” the sheriff added. “They’re trying to do what’s best for their families.”

Schuster explained that he feels that enforcing the order is a violation of the Constitution.

“If I were to consider enforcing that, I would be in violation of my oath,” he told the paper. “That is something I cannot do.”

Lamb added that he thinks that people “want to know that we’re going to support their constitutional rights.”

“I felt (Ducey) pushed me into a position where I needed to make our stance clear,” he told the paper.

“The numbers don’t justify the actions anymore. Three hundred deaths is not a significant enough number to continue to ruin the economy,” he also said.

The Arizona stay-at-home orders were implemented last month, but have now been extended through mid-May — though some businesses have been allowed to reopen. Governor Ducey has said that law enforcement should begin handing out Class 1 misdemeanors for those who do not comply, which means a $2,500 fine and up to six months in jail.

There have been 360 deaths in Arizona from the virus as of Sunday.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Cassandra Fairbanks

Cassandra Fairbanks is a former leftist who came out in support of Donald Trump in 2016. She has been published in the International Business Times, RT, Sputnik, The Independent and countless other publications.

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Written by Joshua Caplan | 2 Aug 2019

URL of the original posting site: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/08/02/man-arrested-at-elizabeth-warren-event-after-allegedly-assaulting-trump-supporter/

DETROIT, MI – JULY 24: Democratic presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) participates in a Presidential Candidates Forum at the NAACP 110th National Convention on July 24, 2019 in Detroit, Michigan. The theme of this years Convention is, When We Fight, We Win. (Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)

Police in Tempe, Arizona, arrested a man at a campaign event for Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) on Thursday after a scuffle with members of a pro-Trump group protesting the 2020 candidate’s stump speech.

According to the Washington Post, the man was taken into police custody after refusing to leave the Marquee Theater at the request of the venue’s security. A member of the AZ Patriots told the Post that the man attempted to rip a cellphone from the hands of one of the group’s members who was filming the event. Some of the group’s members wore red pro-Trump “Make America Great Again” baseball caps and unfurled a pro-Trump banner while protesting “the socialism that [Warren’s] peddling,” members said.

The AZ Patriots describe themselves as a group of activists and citizen reporters standing “boldly for American values and Conservative principals.”

Tempe Police Sgt. Kevin Renwick told reporters that the man will face charges, saying the matter is “pretty cut and dried.” In a statement, Tempe Police Department spokesperson said the man will be charged with “assault and disorderly conduct for confronting another subject at the event.”

AZ Patriots member Jennifer Harrison told the Post that Warren’s campaign staffers were “rude” to the group and held up signs to block their view.

“[W]e left peacefully, no problem,” she recounted about being asked to leave the event. “We respect the law.”

As the group was walking toward the exit, the man became enraged, tried to take a group members’ cellphone and “came after me and tried to take a swing at me,” said Harrison.

“Liberals cannot keep their hands to themselves at these events,” she stated. “They see a Make America Great Again hat and they become unglued.”

This is far from the first instance in which Trump supporters have been subjected to threats and violence.
Breitbart News editor-at-large John Nolte has documented 639 acts of violence against Trump supporters, many of which corporate media has downplayed, ignored entirely, or approved and encouraged.

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Congressman Backs Trump’s Emergency Declaration After Border Deployment: ‘What I Saw Was Really Disturbing’

Reported By Randy DeSoto | Published February 25, 2019 at 10:11pm | Modified February 26, 2019 at 9:10am

URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournal.com/congressman-backs-trumps-emergency-declaration-border-deployment-saw-really-disturbing/

Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., speaks with members of the media during a news conference at the Republican congressional retreat in Philadelphia, Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2017. (Matt Rourke / AP Photo)

Congressman Adam Kinzinger of Illinois returned from an Air National Guard deployment — during which he conducted aerial surveillance over Arizona — and agreed with President Donald Trump that there is a crisis at the southern border. The Republican told CBS “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan on Sunday that based on this experience, he will be voting against a Democrat resolution to rescind Trump’s national emergency declaration on Tuesday.

Brennan first asked Kinzinger if what he saw constituted a national emergency.

“Yeah, I think it does,” the lawmaker responded. “You know, I went down there kind of undecided. You know I put on my lieutenant colonel hat, was apolitical but obviously I’m looking at this, getting the information I can.”

“And I think if this was just an issue of immigration it wouldn’t constitute a national emergency but what I saw was really disturbing.”

The Air Force pilot recounted finding a woman abandoned in the desert by her border trafficking coyotes, while on another mission they assisted in apprehending a person carrying 70 pounds of methamphetamines.

Kinzinger, who was flying his missions out of Tucson, said the situation in Arizona is completely different than what he saw during a prior border deployment in Texas during the Obama administration. During this deployment, Border Patrol informed him that they find at least 200 dead people a year in the arid, rough terrain.

Brennan pushed Kinzinger on whether there is truly a crisis, saying according to Border Patrol, apprehensions are near a 50-year low. Kinzinger responded that while the total apprehended may be down, his experience was large numbers were still crossing.

“There were many, many groups that we would see on technology with camera radar or something like that that we could not go address because there were not enough Border Patrol agents,” the congressman said.

“These agents sometimes left to take a truck and then walk two miles through terrible terrain to get to these groups only to have them run while they’re already exhausted and they get lost in that chaos.”

Kinzinger further observed that part of the decrease in illegal crossings outside the ports of entry can be attributed to more migrants learning how to abuse U.S. asylum laws.

“But I’ll tell you what I saw was a lot of people coming over the border, a lot of drugs in the border and a lot of human trafficking,” the congressman reiterated. “I mean these coyotes that would get paid a lot of money to bring groups over and then desert them to save their own backside. It was extremely disturbing.”

Kinzinger contended that he believes Trump’s national emergency declaration is constitutional, and he will be voting against the Democratic resolution to overturn it.

“(B)ecause in this case like I said at the beginning, if this was just about immigration I would disagree,” he stated. “I do think this is a security threat. It’s a security threat with the amount of drugs coming over the border and the human trafficking that I’ve seen.”

A resolution rescinding Trump’s national emergency declaration is expected to pass the Democrat-controlled House on Tuesday. The fate of similar legislation in the Senate is less certain, where the Republicans hold a 53 to 47 advantage. GOP Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine have indicated they would back Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s resolution, NBC News reported.

Several other Republican senators have expressed reservations about the president’s emergency declaration, including Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky, John Cornyn of Texas, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Marco Rubio of Florida. For the measure to pass, two more Republican senators must back the Democrat resolution.

In addition to the $1.375 billion Congress voted to authorize for barrier funding, the White House plans to redirect $3.6 billion from a military construction fund, $2.5 billion from a Department of Defense drug interdiction program and $600 million from the Treasury Department from a drug forfeiture fund.

The national emergency is specifically being used to tap the $3.6 billion from the military construction fund.

Trump tweeted on Monday, “I hope our great Republican Senators don’t get led down the path of weak and ineffective Border Security. Without strong Borders, we don’t have a Country – and the voters are on board with us. Be strong and smart, don’t fall into the Democrats “trap” of Open Borders and Crime!”

He added in a second tweet quoting from Fox Business Network’s Stuart Varney: “Why on earth would any Republican vote not to put up a Wall or against Border Security. Please explain that to me?”

If the resolution passes both the Senate and the House, Trump has the veto power, which would require a two-thirds vote in both chambers to override him. Politico reported that Trump expressed confidence on Friday if he vetoed the measure, it would not be overridden.

“We have too many smart people that want border security so I can’t imagine it (the resolution) will survive a veto,” Trump said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Randy DeSoto

Senior Staff Writer

Summary

Breaking: Arizona Governor Announces Replacement for John McCain

Reported By Randy DeSoto | September 4, 2018 at

11:19am

URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournal.com/breaking-arizona-governor-announces-replacement-john-mccain/

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey named former Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl as the late Sen. John McCain’s replacement on Tuesday. Kyl served with McCain in the Senate from 1995 to Jan. 2013 before his retirement. Sen. Jeff Flake succeeded him. Kyl, 76, was the GOP minority whip before leaving office, which is the second-highest position in the Republican conference, the Arizona Republic reported.

Ducey made the announcement at a press conference from the Arizona capitol in Phoenix.

“There is no one in Arizona with the stature of Sen. Jon Kyl,” the governor said.

“There is no one in Arizona more prepared to represent our state in the U.S. Senate than Jon Kyl,” Ducey added. “He understands how the Senate functions and will make an immediate and positive impact benefiting all Arizonans.”

Ducey also tweeted, “I am deeply grateful to Sen. Kyl for agreeing to succeed his friend and colleague of so many years. Every single day that Jon Kyl represents #Arizona in the U.S. Senate is a day our state is well-served.”

Kyl has agreed to serve out the remainder of the current session of Congress, which will conclude in December.

Ducey expressed the hope that Kyl will stay on through the special election to fill McCain’s seat, which will take place in 2020. That election will be to fulfill the last two years of McCain’s term, which ends in 2022.

McCain’s wife, Cindy, offered support for Ducey’s choice tweeting, “Jon Kyl is a dear friend of mine and John’s. It’s a great tribute to John that he is prepared to go back into public service to help the state of Arizona.”

Kyl spoke at a ceremony at the Arizona capitol honoring McCain last week.

Most recently, Kyl has been serving in the role of “sherpa,” guiding Trump’s Supreme Court pick Brett Kavanaugh through the confirmation process in the Senate.

Kyl will fly back to Washington, D.C., on Tuesday and could take up his seat in the Senate as early as Tuesday night.

Among the first high-profile votes he will be called upon to make is for the confirmation of Kavanaugh, which is expected later this month and likely to be close, given the current 51-49 Republican majority.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Randy DeSoto

Senior Staff Writer

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Fed-Up AZ Supreme Court Hits Dreamers with Costly Bad News in Blowout Ruling

Reported By Ben Marquis | April 10, 2018 at 12:39pm

URL of the original posting site: https://conservativetribune.com/az-supreme-court-hits-dreamers/

Former President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program created something of a legal limbo for a select class of illegal immigrants, shielding them from deportation without granting them legal status. Now, some of the program’s enrollees could quite literally be paying for that uncertainty.

According to The Washington Times, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that DACA recipients, also known as “dreamers,” are not eligible for the in-state tuition rates that some state colleges and universities were offering them, and instead will have to pay out-of-state rates.

That 7-0 decision upheld an earlier 3-0 state court of appeals ruling against the Maricopa Community Colleges, who had decided on their own volition to extend in-state tuition rates to DACA recipients. The ruling applies to all state colleges and public universities in Arizona.

The appeals court had ruled that both federal and state law granted that sort of decision-making power to the state’s political branches, and not the colleges or universities. At the heart of the decision was a 2006 law passed by voters known as Proposition 300, which declared that illegal immigrants were not eligible to receive state benefits, including in-state tuition rates.

“While people can disagree what the law should be, I hope we all can agree that the attorney general must enforce the law as it is, not as we want it to be,” stated Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich.

The Arizona Republic reported that an estimated 2,000 DACA recipients are currently enrolled in community colleges or state universities at in-state tuition rates, and could now find themselves being compelled to pay nearly three times as much for out-of-state rates if they wish to remain in school.

As might be expected, advocates for DACA recipients are incensed by the court’s ruling. They have claimed the decision essentially blocks access to education for dreamers by making it “impossible” for them to afford, especially when considering these particular illegal immigrants aren’t eligible for any sort of state or federal financial assistance because of their lack of legal status.

But based on a clear reading of the 2006 law, those dreamers should never have received the lower in-state tuition rates from colleges in the first place.

As Brnovich stated, “It’s about time someone held (the colleges) accountable, and that’s my job. My role as AG is to make sure you’re following the law.”

Though Brnovich did express some sympathy for the plight of the dreamers, he nevertheless pointed out that the law is the law. “What makes this country unique and great … is because the rule of law means something,” the attorney general said.

However, the Arizona Daily Sun reported that some college-aged dreamers may not ultimately find themselves having to pay the substantially higher out-of-state tuition rates thanks to something of a middle-ground solution worked out by the state university system’s Board of Regents.

That policy, put in place years ago by Regent Jay Heiler, “sets charges at 150 percent of the in-state rate for any student who graduated from an Arizona high school after attending school” in the state for at least three years, the Sun reported.

While that policy could very well be challenged through litigation, Heiler and others believe it will survive because the special rate would actually cover the costs of tuition, meaning state taxpayers would not be subsidizing or offering a “benefit” to illegal immigrants.

The Republic noted that the Arizona supreme court has only released a three-page order at this point, and won’t make the full opinion explaining the ruling public until May 14.

Whatever one may think about the state law or this court ruling, one thing that’s patently obvious is that the hap-hazard manner by which Obama devised and implemented the DACA program has once again hurt those individuals it purported to help by leaving them in a legal limbo.

The only way to truly solve the problems created by DACA is for Congress to finally agree on a permanent solution to the legal status question for DACA recipients, as President Donald Trump has repeatedly called on legislators to do.

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Utility Company Wants to Cut Rates for Millions After Trump Tax Cuts

By Randy DeSoto | January 11, 2018 at 11:13am

URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournalism.com/utility-company-wants-cut-rates-millions-customers-trump-tax-cuts/

Arizona’s largest utility company is seeking permission to cut rates to its more than one million customers as a result of the Republican tax reform bill passed last month. The public corporation joined one of New England largest providers — serving liberal Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s Massachusetts — in announcing it will do the same.

The news came as Walmart became another of a plethora of companies that will pay $1,000 bonuses and other benefits to its employees due to the windfall it will reap as a result of the corporate tax rate being lowered from 35 percent to 21 percent.

The Associated Press reported Tuesday that Arizona Power Service is seeking permission from regulators to cut bills by $119 million a year, effective on Feb. 1. Residential customers will see their monthly decrease by an average of $4.68 per month.

APS said more cuts could follow once the tax bill’s effects become more clear, according to the AP.

Meanwhile, the Massachusetts-based utility Eversource, which serves over 3 million customers, announced earlier this month it wants to lower its rates as well.

“We believe it’s important that our customers reap the benefit of a lower tax rate,” Eversource Massachusetts Electric Operations President Craig Hallstrom said in a statement, according to WBUR. “As a regulated power company our rates are based on our costs, including federal taxes, so if taxes are reduced ultimately costs are reduced and that benefits our customers.”

Eversource seeks to reduce its rates by $35.4 million in eastern Massachusetts and lower its recently approved increase for the western part of the state from $24.8 million to $16.5 million.

The Bay State’s Democrat Attorney General Maura Healey is calling on all utilities serving Massachusetts residents to do the same.

On Wednesday, Fox News host Bret Baier questioned Warren, an outspoken critic of the GOP tax plan and President Donald Trump, about the decision by Eversource to lower its rates.

“Good for them. I’m delighted to hear that,” she replied, but added that she would move to change the new tax law if Democrats take back Congress in November.

“You’ve got to take out the parts that are giveaways to big corporations that right now, the Republicans plan for hardworking families to eventually pay for,” Warren said. “It is a $1.5 trillion that the Republicans gave away to billionaires and to giant corporations.”

“I want those breaks to go to hardworking families, not to a bunch of rich folks,” she added.

At his first Cabinet meeting of 2018 on Wednesday, Trump touted the benefits Americans at all income levels are already experiencing as a result of the tax law, including some that were unforeseen.

“Since that tax cut was enacted more than one million workers have received a tax cut bonus. Something that frankly no one even thought about,” he said. “We just knew a lot of good things were going to happen.”

“I must say AT&T was the first one, and they did it, $1,000 per employee,” he added. “They have hundreds of thousands of employees. And many companies followed immediately thereafter. Millions of employees in this country are getting $1,000 and more in some cases. Tax bonuses because of the tax cuts.”

He also pointed out the plan specifically targets working Americans by nearly doubling the standard deduction, making the first $12,000 earned income tax-free for individuals, and the first $24,000 for married couples. Additionally, the law doubles the child income tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000.

On Thursday, Trump tweeted out the announcement by Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, that it was raising its U.S. minimum wage to $11 per hour and issuing a bonus of up to $1,000 to employees as a result of the lower corporate tax rates.

The corporation also plans to expand maternity and parental leave benefits.

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Rush Limbaugh Says 1 Person Is Taking Over The GOP

Reported By Jason Hopkins | on October 10, 2017 at 7:55am

URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournalism.com/rush-limbaugh-says-1-person-is-taking-over-the-gop/?

Advertisement – story continues below

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh made a bold statement on his program about Steve Bannon and the current state of the Republican Part y.

Limbaugh believes Bannon, the former White House chief strategist, is taking over the roles and responsibilities meant for GOP leadership by enforcing conservatism onto Republican candidates up for re-election.

“I think what Bannon is doing is slowly but surely taking over the role of the Republican Party,” Limbaugh said Wednesday. “The Republican Party is obviously not with Trump on balance — you have some in the House who are — but the Republican Party on balance is not with Trump.”

Steve Bannon played a major role in then-candidate Donald Trump’s presidential victory upset last year and led the formulation of White House policy in the months that followed. He was Trump’s campaign chairman during the 2016 election and later served as a White House chief strategist — leading the nationalist wing of the administration.

After abruptly leaving the administration in mid-August, Bannon returned to his prior position as executive chairman of Breitbart News. Since leaving the White House, he made it clear he would use his position as a media executive to support insurgent conservative candidates running primaries against establishment GOP lawmakers.

Advertisement – story continues below

Bannon already appears good for his word.

In the special election in Alabama to fill the Senate seat once held by now-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Bannon went against the Trump administration with his endorsement of Roy Moore. Bannon supported the successful candidacy of Moore, a controversial former judge, in a move that was at odds with Trump, who campaigned vehemently for Moore’s opponent, Sen. Luther Strange. By election day, it wasn’t even close. Moore bested Strange in the GOP primary by almost double digits. Moore now heads into the Alabama general election, where he will likely win in a state that leans red.

The primary results demonstrated the power of Bannon’s support.

The leader of Breitbart is not stopping with the Alabama special election. Bannon has recently announced he is expanding his GOP targets, adding Republican Sens. Deb Fischer of Nebraska, John Barrasso of Wyoming and Orrin Hatch of Utah to his hit list.

> In Wyoming, Bannon is pushing Erik Prince, the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and founder of major security contractor Blackwater, to challenge Barrasso, CNN reported.

> In Utah, Hatch may very well retire on his own. If he does, former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is reportedly eyeing a run in the Mormon-majority state. If that happens, Bannon is ready to run a candidate against him.

According to a source close to Bannon, this is just a “partial” list of elections he is looking to influence.

Bannon is already working to knock off Republican Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake and his beleaguered campaign for re-election. Nevada Sen. Dean Heller and Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker are also on Bannon’s radar.

“Some people make an argument that there really isn’t a Republican Party left. I mean, there are people who call themselves that and they go out and raise money and they raise a lot. But whereas the party used to be known for one, two, or three very serious things, they’re not anymore,” Limbaugh added on his radio show.

The conservative talk radio host believes Bannon and others are trying to keep the identity of the Republican Party alive by enforcing such standards onto them by way of primary challenges.

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Perspectives; Thoughts; Comments; Opinions; Discussions

Posts tagged ‘Arizona’

By: Julio Rosas | February 27, 2023 3:00 PM

“We have to see them. Any one of those that needs a hospital visit and we’ve done that. We do it with pride…But what we need is a payer source for those individuals because we have nobody to bill. They have no resources and they’ve just continued to come in,” Trenschel explained.

Share this:

Like this:

BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | FEBRUARY 17, 2023

ACTS ON WHAT????????? Fund what???????? The Wall has been funded since Clinton. Finish the Wall. We’ve got the materials. Put it up.

A Deadly Crisis

“They need to finish the wall,” Espinosa said frankly, warning that until then, the area would not be safe to walk around at night.

Share this:

Like this:

BY: KERI INGRAHAM | JANUARY 27, 2023

Dr. Keri D. Ingraham is a Fellow at Discovery Institute, Director of the American Center for Transforming Education, and a Visiting Fellow at Independent Women’s Forum.

Share this:

Like this:

BY: VICTORIA MARSHALL | JANUARY 18, 2023

What This Means

“On November 9th, the reported count is 25,000 ballots less, which is beyond the margin here, than on November 10th,” Olsen said. “So the day after the election, they put out what the count is and then magically 25,000 ballots appear on November 10th, and well, hey, that’s the race.”

Victoria Marshall is a staff writer at The Federalist. Her writing has been featured in the New York Post, National Review, and Townhall. She graduated from Hillsdale College in May 2021 with a major in politics and a minor in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @vemrshll.

Share this:

Like this:

Scrutinizing Arizona’s Election Administration Does Not Make Kari Lake An ‘Election Denier’

Share this:

Like this:

By Jack Davis November 15, 2022 at 6:49am

Share this:

Like this:

By JACK MCEVOY, ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT REPORTER | November 08, 2022

Share this:

Like this:

By Jack Davis October 27, 2022

Share this:

Like this:

By PAUL SACCA | October 16, 2022

Share this:

Like this:

BY: SIMON HANKINSON | SEPTEMBER 22, 2022

A former State Department official, Simon Hankinson is a senior research fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Affairs.

Share this:

Like this:

By Jordan Conradson | Published July 19, 2022

Share this:

Like this:

Reported By Jordan Conradson | Published July 5, 2022

Share this:

Like this:

Reported By Jordan Conradson | Published January 6, 2022

Dubai Photos That Will Make You Think Twice About Visiting

Mother Bear Does This After Man Saves Her Drowning Cubs

Eye-opening Photos Smuggled out of North Korea Reveal Terrible Reality

Share this:

Like this:

Reported by CARLOS GARCIA | November 11, 2021

Here’s more about the secret parent dossier:

Share this:

Like this:

Reported By Randy DeSoto | October 27, 2021

Share this:

Like this:

Reported By Dillon Burroughs October 7, 2021

Share this:

Like this:

Reported by COOTER | SEPTEMBER 30, 2021

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author of the article and not necessarily shared or endorsed by SteadfastClash.com, and WhatDidYouSay.org.

Share this:

Like this:

Reported By Michael Austin | September 24, 2021

Share this:

Like this:

Reported by Michael Austin July 15, 2021

“… as many as 74,000 absentee ballot mail-in records are missing in addition to a great many vote irregularities found by the audit.“

Share this:

Like this:

Reported By Jordan Conradson | Published June 14, 2021

Share this:

Like this:

Reported By Jim Hoft | Published April 26, 2021

Share this:

Like this: