PHOENIX, ARIZONA – This week, the Arizona House of Representatives passed SCM 1002, which “urges the President, and the Congress of the United States to eliminate Vision Zero and instead promote transportation solutions that prioritize sound engineering methods, reliable safety outcomes, flexibility and engineering innovation.”
Vision Zero is an ideology, not transportation engineering. The ideology has one set of prescriptions for every perceived problem – narrow lanes, remove lanes, lower speed limits, add bike lanes and sidewalks, and other mandates that increase congestion to get people out of their personal vehicles. It first appeared in Sweden at the end of the 20th Century and has spread all throughout Europe and, unfortunately, most American communities.
Thankfully, the Trump administration has already taken steps to eliminate Vision Zero, DEI, and the Green New Deal from the federal government, including blocking New York City congestion pricing, uprooting emission reduction requirements, and removing the Complete Streets page from the Federal Highway Administration’s website. More of these actions are forthcoming under President Trump and Secretary Sean Duffy’s leadership.
“In recent years, radical leftists have hijacked our government to impose their woke transportation-related dreams across our country and world,” said Scot Mussi, President of the Arizona Free Enterprise Club. “We witnessed those dreams rapidly become reality over the past four years under the Biden administration and Pete Buttigieg. Thankfully, President Trump and Arizona Republicans realize the importance of stopping the un-American war on cars, replacing these with rational, tested, and true actions in our communities that prioritize freedom of choice and prosperity for all. We are grateful for the members of the Arizona Legislature who supported SCM 1002 and who stand as a check against Governor Hobbs’ radical schemes to fundamentally transform our state’s transportation policies.”
The Arizona House passed SCM 1002 with a vote of 32-23 (with five members not voting). Earlier this session, it was approved by the Senate 17-12 (with one member not voting).
Help Protect Freedom in Arizona by Joining Our Grassroots Network
Arizona needs to have a unified voice promoting economic freedom and prosperity, and the Free Enterprise Club is committed to making that happen. But we can’t do it alone. We need YOU!
Join our FREE Grassroots Action List to stay up to date on the latest battles against big government and how YOU can help influence crucial bills at the Arizona State Legislature.
For the past decade, our organization has been fighting the Green New Deal agenda in Arizona, working to score a decisive victory for reliable and affordable energy. Thanks to President Trump, that decisive victory now appears within reach.
Earlier this month, President Trump released three new executive orders and one proclamation, all aimed at unleashing American energy abundance. These executive actions are all part of a coordinated White House effort to initiate a tidal shift in the ever-steady march toward the Net Zero nightmare being pursued by radical environmentalists, the green industrial complex, and public utilities across the nation.
For years, energy regulators have forewarned of the impending grid crisis due to the overreliance on costly renewable energy, yet the previous administration only accelerated the catastrophe. The new Trump Executive Orders, coupled with his declaration of a National Energy Emergency, will directly address this crisis by ending the regulatory discrimination against coal, empowering the domestic mining of coal resources, encouraging the development of coal energy generation, and allowing for these activities to take place on federal lands.
Reigniting the American coal industry couldn’t happen soon enough. While China and India are building new coal plants at unprecedented rates to power their economic growth, we have been aggressively shutting our plants down. As a result of costly regulations, market manipulation to inflate the cost of coal and throwing immense subsidies at wind and solar projects, coal was set to be nonexistent within the next decade.
In Arizona, nearly 4,000 MW of reliable coal generation has been shuttered in the last decade alone. For reference, Arizona’s largest electricity provider has a peak demand of 8,000 MW. And the remaining coal generation benefiting Arizona’s electric grid is either being shuttered this year (Cholla) or is slated to be retired in 2031 (Four Corners Generating Station).
For some time, the thought of keeping coal in the resource mix, let alone building new capacity, was nothing more than a pipe dream. Despite tremendous work at the state level, reversing the war on coal has been viewed as an impossible task. The Obama/Biden EPA worked to regulate coal out of existence, the “Inflation Reduction Act” was dumping trillions into unreliable solar and wind, and the impact of ESG had taken its toll on the energy industry. And the Arizona Corporation Commission, the regulatory body that oversees our public utilities, has shown little interest in challenging the phase-out of coal.
Now everything has changed. The most destructive regulatory and economic barriers hindering new fossil fuel development and generation, including coal, have been removed, thanks to President Trump.
Just as significant, multiple banks and hedge funds have dropped their woke Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) lending requirements due to pressure from the White House. And another Trump executive order cracking down on state overreach has directed the Attorney General to act against states with laws and policies that undermine energy resource development and grid reliability, including ESG (a term the Arizona Corporation Commission has previously claimed to be undefinable).
With Trump leading the way, our elected leaders have never had a better opportunity to boldly and enthusiastically reshape Arizona’s energy future. Much of this work must begin at the Corporation Commission, which is why Republicans at the legislature are rallying behind HCM 2014, a memorial to the Commission to support the buildout of reliable energy and reconsider previous decisions that are leading to the closure of Arizona’s remaining coal facilities.
For those evaluating the politics of sound energy policy, the risk now isn’t opposing the radical environmentalists and climate change fanatics, but resisting the headwinds of Trump’s energy agenda. Let’s hope that our elected leaders don’t waste this historic opportunity for meaningful reform.
Help Protect Freedom in Arizona by Joining Our Grassroots Network
Arizona needs to have a unified voice promoting economic freedom and prosperity, and the Free Enterprise Club is committed to making that happen. But we can’t do it alone. We need YOU!
Join our FREE Grassroots Action List to stay up to date on the latest battles against big government and how YOU can help influence crucial bills at the Arizona State Legislature.
This past November was a good time to be a Republican, especially here in Arizona. Not only did President Donald Trump win our state in a landslide victory, but Republicans expanded their majorities in both the Arizona House and Senate—despite being outspent in every single race.
While this turn of events shocked many in the corporate media who were convinced that Arizona was on its way from being a purple state to a blue state, we knew that voter registration trends told a different story.
Over the last couple of years, the gap between registered Republicans and Democrats in Arizona widened from 3.04% in 2020 to 4.03% in 2022. By April of last year, it had increased to 5.77%. And by November, it had expanded to 6.77%, a registration increase that proved decisive in President Trump’s overwhelming victory.
Now, 5 months removed from their electoral wipeout in November, there has been a lot of discussion about whether the Democrats’ political fortunes in Arizona would be reversing after their blowout loss to Trump.
Unfortunately for them, the latest voter registration numbers poured plenty of cold water on those dreams.
Maricopa County Slipping Away from the Democrats
If Democrats want any shot of controlling the legislature or winning statewide offices in Arizona, they need to flip Maricopa County blue. Yet that can’t happen when they keep losing the voter registration battle.
As you can see in the graph below, the gap between registered Republicans and Democrats in Maricopa County has increased from 85,000 in April 2020 to 191,000 in April 2025. That’s right, Republicans have more than doubled their registration advantage over Democrats!
These registration trendlines are consistent with the statewide figures that show Republicans doubling their registration advantage in that same timeframe. In fact, Arizona is more red from a voter registration advantage standpoint than at any point in the last 75 years! But that may not even be the worst news for Democrats.
If you look closely at the graph above, you’ll see something interesting. There are now fewer registered Democrats in Maricopa County than there were five years ago. And this has come during a time when the population in Maricopa County has grown by over 150,000 residents. (See here and here.)
Note to Democrats…that’s not how this is supposed to work. As the population grows, you would think your raw numbers of voter registrations would increase as well. But maybe, just maybe, it’s your woke policies that are the problem.
President Trump Brings Early Successes While Governor Hobbs Becomes a Bigger Embarrassment
In less than 100 days in office, President Trump has been hard at work executing his mandate from the American people. Along with issuing a torrent of Executive Orders that have unleashed fossil fuel production in America, he rolled back the Green New Deal climate cult fantasy, ended DEI and other race-based hiring and employment practices, and has been taking a sledgehammer to the administrative state by allowing Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to identify and eliminate billions in wasteful spending.
On top of this, President Trump issued an executive order announcing his intention to enforce the citizenship requirement for federal elections. His Department of Justice (DOJ) then followed that up by ceasing a legal challenge that began under the Biden administration against Arizona’s proof of citizenship laws. And his EPA recently announced that it will no longer penalize our state—as the Biden administration had been attempting—for foreign air pollution.
In the meantime, let’s check in on Arizona’s chief executive.
So far this year, Democrat Governor Katie Hobbs has vetoed a popular bill aimed to deliver same-day elections results to our state. She vetoed a bipartisan bill that looked to provide affordable and reliable utilities to Arizonans. And to prove that she’s a total embarrassment (and a fraud) to the people of Arizona, she diverted hundreds of millions of dollars for an unauthorized program that has blown a hole in our state’s budget.
With all this incompetence, it’s no wonder why Democrats continue to see a steady decline in voter registrations with no surge of support. But Republicans can’t be satisfied. As the numbers continue to show Arizona as a firmly red state once again, we must build on this momentum with unity, hard work, and good policy.
Help Protect Freedom in Arizona by Joining Our Grassroots Network
Arizona needs to have a unified voice promoting economic freedom and prosperity, and the Free Enterprise Club is committed to making that happen. But we can’t do it alone. We need YOU!
Join our FREE Grassroots Action List to stay up to date on the latest battles against big government and how YOU can help influence crucial bills at the Arizona State Legislature.
Adrian Fontes has proven himself to be good at two things during his tenure as Arizona’s Secretary of State: losing in court and throwing tantrums. It’s really unfortunate. The state’s top election official is not supposed to be taken to court on a regular basis—especially for, you know, his repeated attempts to undermine election integrity. And of course, throwing tantrums should be more characteristic of toddlers, not a government official. But Fontes can’t help himself.
In his latest tirade, Fontes joined Hillary Clinton’s old consigliere Marc Elias on Democracy Docket to whine about President Trump’s recent executive order to preserve and protect the integrity of American elections. Toward the end of the discussion, Elias asked Fontes about the multiple lawsuits against his Elections Procedures Manual (EPM), which he lost to us and Arizona Republican lawmakers. As has become all too common with our Secretary of State, he responded how you would expect someone to respond when he knows he can’t win. He attacked our organization and degraded our 15,000 activists and donors.
Yes. That’s right. The top election official in our state, who is supposed to remain unbiased and simply do his job to protect election integrity, lashed out against us and told people not to donate to us because we won our lawsuit against him and his illegal EPM.
Ummm…news flash, Mr. Fontes. One of the reasons our donors support our cause is to stop government officials like you from circumventing the law. So, when we win, they feel good because their money was put to effective use.
But we shouldn’t expect someone with such low character as Adrian Fontes to understand that. After all, this isn’t the first time he’s tried to use the power of his office to attack and intimidate organizations like ours that participate in the election process. Back in August, the day after the court ruled in our favor, Fontes hopped on a KTAR morning show to attack us and our donors in much the same way. Then, he followed that up a few days later with more baseless attacks during an interview with MSNBC.
Of course, all these attacks ignore the bigger picture that Fontes wouldn’t have to go to court—and lose—if he would just follow the law.
The fact is that Adrian Fontes took it upon himself to produce one of the most radical EPMs in Arizona’s history. Several of the “rules” in his EPM attempted to criminalize activity that is protected under the First Amendment—creating an unconstitutional chilling effect on protected political speech. On top of that, Fontes included language in the EPM that attempts to rewrite state law or create new laws, which he does not have the authority to do.
We sued not over statutes that are already in place, but we sued over the vague and undefined language that Fontes used in his EPM that could be used against people who are simply trying to engage their First Amendment rights at poll locations. The Maricopa County Superior Court judge agreed with us, and even highlighted 13 instances of “problematic language” in her ruling.
So, Adrian Fontes can keep whining and tell the judge that she was wrong all he wants. But we will not stand for his efforts to use the power of his office to defund our organization. And most of all, we will not be deterred in our work to hold him accountable for protecting the integrity of our elections.
As Fontes and his team of leftwing ideologues get to work on the next EPM, they should focus on following the law. And they should start by reading the U.S. Constitution and the Arizona Constitution for the first time. That’s what the people of our great state expect from their elected leaders.
Help Protect Freedom in Arizona by Joining Our Grassroots Network
Arizona needs to have a unified voice promoting economic freedom and prosperity, and the Free Enterprise Club is committed to making that happen. But we can’t do it alone. We need YOU!
Join our FREE Grassroots Action List to stay up to date on the latest battles against big government and how YOU can help influence crucial bills at the Arizona State Legislature.
PHOENIX, ARIZONA – Yesterday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it would be reversing the Biden administration’s Guidance on the Preparation of Clean Air Act Section (CAA) 179B Demonstrations for Nonattainment Areas Affected by International Transport of Emissions.
This regulation, as interpreted and enforced by the previous administration, held Arizona accountable for the eighty percent of emissions in the Maricopa County nonattainment area that emanated from outside of the state – primarily from China and Mexico. These incoming international emissions made it impossible for Arizona to adhere to its State Implementation Plan in the federal government’s eyes no matter what policies it implemented to lower local ozone levels.
“This announcement from the EPA is welcome news to our state, which had been oppressed by the environmental policies of the previous administration,” said Scot Mussi, President of the Arizona Free Enterprise Club. “Due to this regulation from the Biden administration, Arizona was being forced to adopt radical control measures, like banning gasoline-powered vehicles, which still would have left our state short of meeting the ozone standard. Yet again, the left’s environmental policies have proven to be disastrous and unworkable. For the good of our state and country, we must never repeat these mandates.”
The Arizona Free Enterprise Club is spearheading the effort to pass HCM 2010, which urges the EPA to take actions just like the one Administrator Lee Zeldin took yesterday, clearing the path for Arizona to submit an updated State Implementation Plan without the radical control measures that had been previously contemplated to protect businesses and families.
Help Protect Freedom in Arizona by Joining Our Grassroots Network
Arizona needs to have a unified voice promoting economic freedom and prosperity, and the Free Enterprise Club is committed to making that happen. But we can’t do it alone. We need YOU!
Join our FREE Grassroots Action List to stay up to date on the latest battles against big government and how YOU can help influence crucial bills at the Arizona State Legislature.
Recent Comments