President-elect Donald Trump announced Wednesday night that he had picked Kari Lake, a former newscaster who lost two statewide races in Arizona in 2022 and 2024, to lead the Voice of America. The move places one of his staunchest loyalists at the helm of the taxpayer-funded broadcaster that provides independent news reporting around the world.

Lake was a Phoenix television news anchor for almost 30 years until 2021, when she left her anchor job at the local Fox affiliate following a series of blunders and controversial statements on social media, including accusing the #RedForEd movement to increase teacher pay of being a front for marijuana legalization and spreading COVID-19 misinformation during the coronavirus pandemic.

She brought similar evidence-free claims to her political career, which she launched shortly after leaving her television gig, embracing Trump’s lies about the 2020 election and modeling her political persona after his aggressive and grievance-fueled demeanor.

Although Lake quickly built a loyal following among Arizona Republicans by tying herself to Trump, defeating the wife of a wealthy developer who had a long history in GOP politics in the 2022 gubernatorial primary, she struggled to generate support beyond the MAGA movement. In 2022, she lost the race for governor to Katie Hobbs by 17,000 votes, owing in large part to her alienation of moderate Republicans and center-right independent voters, many of whom soured on her after she said that supporters of the late U.S. Sen. John McCain should “get the hell out” of the GOP.

But in true Trump fashion, Lake refused to acknowledge that she had lost, instead making outlandish claims about election fraud that were supported by no evidence. When she brought those allegations to court and asked to be declared governor, they were rejected — in two separate trials — after she failed to provide any proof. Her final appeal was dismissed barely a month ago when the Arizona Supreme Court declined to take up her case.

That dismissal came a day after the 2024 election, which saw voters again reject Lake, this time in a bid for the U.S. Senate against Democrat Ruben Gallego. Lake lost that election by almost 81,000 votes; this time, she didn’t contest it or try to overturn the results.

Trump has in the past been a fierce critic of Voice of America, including saying in 2020 that “things they say are disgusting toward our country,” and a White House publication accused it of using taxpayer money “to speak for authoritarian regimes” because it covered the lifting of lockdown in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus first emerged.

Voice of America was founded during World War II, and its congressional charter requires it to present independent news and information to international audiences. Upon taking office in January 2021, President Joe Biden’s administration swiftly removed a number of senior officials aligned with Trump from Voice of America.

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com.

Today feels like a new America, one I don’t recognize. One that doesn’t make sense. One that has abandoned the promise of our great country. One I now fear. One I weep for.

We have transformed ourselves from the shining city on the hill to a monument to the grotesque, an experimental empire set to be destroyed in a madness of our own making.

The ascension of Donald Trump to the presidency in 2016 was terrible, and ushered in all manner of national embarrassment, scandal, destructive policies and political violence, but his defeat in 2020 left us with the belief that America realized it made a mistake and corrected its course and the nation would resume its course toward the exceptionalism that had defined us for more than 200 years.

This is different, and demonstrably worse. In 2016, no one knew exactly how Trump would govern — or that his incompetence was consistently an impediment to his worst instincts and kept him from implementing the most noxious parts of his agenda.

No longer. This is a new and far more dangerous Trump, one hell bent on revenge and with the backing of a conservative movement that has turned him from a morally bankrupt real estate tycoon and reality show huckster into a deity. Those allies have spent the past four years devoted to ensuring he can carry out every terrible thought that enters his mind, and whatever other radical policies they want.

Trump has told us all of this, and he’s been frighteningly explicit about what he will do as president this time, particularly in the final weeks leading up to yesterday’s election.

He will seek to root out every undocumented immigrant in a “bloody” and violent mass deportation. He will build concentration camps. He will institute ideological screenings for legal immigrants and end birthright citizenship.

He will end the prosecutions he is facing for fomenting a coup on Jan. 6 and illegally hoarding classified documents, and he will sic the Justice Department on his political enemies. He will pardon his violent supporters who sacked the Capitol in 2021 to overturn an election he lost and tried to kill members of Congress and Trump’s own vice president.

He will use the military to violently suppress dissent and round up “the enemy within,” which amounts to anyone who criticizes him. He will deploy soldiers to take over cities run by Democrats.

He will replace the civil service with his cronies to ensure there is no resistance to implementing his policies, no matter how un-American or unconstitutional, and to dismantle the government from the inside.

He will oversee the implementation of a national abortion ban, undoing the will of the voters in Arizona and other states — many deep red — that voted decisively to guarantee a right to abortion.

He will appoint lunatic anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to oversee public health.

He will target transgender people, particularly children, and seek to erase their existence from American life. He will aggressively attack LGBTQ+ rights.

He will impose 1,000 percent across-the-board tariffs that will cost the average American family an extra $3,954 per year and eliminate 1.4 million American jobs.

He will eliminate the Department of Education and withhold funding from American schools that teach truths, be they about the nation’s history of racial inequality or the existence of gay and transgender people.

He will withdraw from NATO and give Vladimir Putin a green light to attack our NATO allies. He will cede Ukraine to Putin and abandon a critical ally in the fight against the Russian dictator’s desire to reestablish the Soviet Union.

He will scrap policies that aim to mitigate climate change and accelerate the use of fossil fuels, which will drive America further into crisis with worsening droughts, deadly heat waves, dangerous winter storms and increasingly intense and frequent hurricanes. He will roll back the incentives for electric vehicles that are a key part of reducing carbon emissions.

He will do nothing to stop gun violence, and will instead take aim at existing policies like expanded background checks and regulating ghost guns.

He will remake America in his fascist image.

Arizona will be the epicenter of any deportation effort, with families being ripped apart. We just passed a constitutional right to abortion that federal action will either overrule or make irrelevant. Our increasingly scorching and interminable summers will become more extreme, with more deaths and higher utility bills and less water. Our Indigenous brothers and sisters, who have been prioritized by the Biden administration in a way never before done in America, will once again be cast aside and, at best, ignored.

And Americans, it seems, can’t wait. Arizona and every other battleground state has gone for Trump, and decisively handed him a second term. My colleague wrote recently about the deeper meaning of the “promise of America” that Kamala Harris invoked on the campaign trail.

But that America is not the one we live in today. This America is cruel and vicious, uninterested in equality or justice, instead intent on indulging its basest desires.

I hope my kids inherit some semblance of that “promise of America.” But I’d be lying if I said I believed, in this moment, that we will.

But the greatness of America has always been our resilience and our commitment to truth and justice. We may not be championing those ideals right now, but I have to believe that we will once again find our way.

If we don’t, then there won’t be much of a country worth saving.

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and X.

In a move that underscores the high stakes of Arizona’s legislative elections, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee announced today it will pump nearly $1 million into targeted races across the state, adding to the $8.5 million that’s already been spent by outside groups in a handful of key districts.

The DLCC’s investment, part of a larger $2 million ad buy split between Arizona and Pennsylvania, aims to flip both chambers of the legislature to Democratic control for the first time in nearly 60 years. This latest spending push is the DLCC’s first directly trying to influence voters, though it has previously spent about $350,000 supporting Democratic candidates.

“Control of Pennsylvania and Arizona’s legislatures will come down to just a handful of votes, and abortion could be the driving message that determines who wins in November,” DLCC Communications Director Sam Paisley said in a written statement.

The focus on abortion rights aligns with a key theme Democrats are emphasizing this cycle, especially with a constitutional amendment guaranteeing reproductive rights on the Arizona ballot in November.

An Arizona Mirror analysis of independent expenditure data reveals that the infusion of outside money has created a slight overall advantage for Democrats in the most competitive districts. Across 11 key races examined, pro-Democrat IEs totaled about $4.67 million, compared to $3.87 million for pro-Republican efforts.

Notably, the outside spending in these targeted races significantly outpaces the candidates’ own fundraising efforts. For instance, in the hotly contested Legislative District 13 House race, outside groups have spent over $1.6 million to sway voters in the Chandler-based district, more than double the combined $826,310 raised by the four candidates — Democrats Nicholas Gonzales and Brandy Reese and Republicans Jeff Weninger and Julie Willoughby — in that race.

Similarly, in the Senate race for District 2, which includes much of north Phoenix, outside spending has reached nearly $1.42 million, dwarfing the $841,000 raised by GOP Sen. Shawnna Bolick and her Democratic challenger, Rep. Judy Schwiebert — a figure that itself is staggering and far beyond what legislative hopefuls have traditionally raised in Arizona. This pattern repeats across most of the targeted races, highlighting the outsized influence of independent expenditures in shaping these contests.

The data shows some intriguing patterns in the outside spending:

The most expensive race is in Legislative District 13’s House contest, where combined IE spending has exceeded $1.6 million.Senate races generally favor Republicans in IE support, with pro-GOP spending leading in three out of five key Senate races.House races have seen more pro-Democrat IE support, with four out of six key races favoring Democrats in outside spending.

The top outside groups spending in battleground legislative races are:

Future Freedoms ($2.3 million), which is supporting DemocratsResponsible Leadership for AZ ($1.5 million), which is supporting RepublicansHouse Victory Fund ($1.5 million), which is supporting RepublicansArizona Senate Victory Fund PAC ($1.3 million), which is supporting RepublicansStand For Children Arizona ($1.1 million), which is supporting Democrats

!function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r=0;rPolitical observers note that this influx of outside money reflects the competitiveness of these races and their potential to decide control of the legislature.

Earlier this year, Marilyn Rodriguez, a progressive lobbyist and campaign veteran, expressed optimism about Democrats’ chances, telling the Mirror, “We have to work hard, but this is gettable,” referring to winning legislative majorities.

The focus on state legislative races has intensified following Democratic successes in 2022, when the party won all top statewide offices, including the governorship. Democrats now aim to provide Gov. Katie Hobbs with legislative majorities to enact her agenda.

Republicans, while outspent overall, have had some bright spots. The primary victory of Vince Leach over incumbent Justine Wadsack in a Tucson-area Senate district has boosted GOP confidence in holding that seat.

Following the July primaries, Barrett Marson, a Republican campaign advisor, told the Mirror, “It was probably as good a primary as Republicans could have hoped for.”

As the general election campaign intensifies, both parties are framing the stakes in stark terms. Democrats are portraying their Republican opponents as “extreme” and aligned with MAGA politics, while Republicans are casting their challengers as socialists who are too radical for Arizona.

With millions in outside spending already shaping these races and more on the way, voters can expect an onslaught of messaging in the coming weeks as both parties vie for control of the state legislature in what promises to be one of the most closely watched and expensive legislative elections in Arizona history.

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and X.

If you want to see what happens when a dog catches a car, look at Republicans in Congress.

For decades, the GOP has increasingly been focused on immigration, spurred by a xenophobia intent on stemming the flow of immigrants from Latin America that was, 20 or so years ago, confined to a small but vocal wing of the party but now makes up the bulk of Republicans.

Strict enforcement, overhauling the asylum system and rapid deportations have topped the wish list for Republicans for years. So has a zeal to ensure no reform measures offer any new protections for undocumented immigrants already in the U.S., a hardline stance that has scuttled all attempts at comprehensive immigration reform this century.

So committed are they to border security and tightening immigration laws that they said for months the GOP wouldn’t support foreign aid for Ukraine and Israel unless these unrelated immigration measures were addressed.

Amazingly, that’s exactly what happened: A bipartisan team of senators spent weeks hashing out a deal for the foreign aid that includes pretty much everything GOP lawmakers have been asking for.

Democrats conceded on virtually every issue:

an asylum-processing system that is faster and tougher that would prevent those who don’t meet asylum criteria from staying and working for years until backlogged courts hear their cases;bolstering border security, including a mechanism to shut down the border during surges of migrants;a ton more Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents;spending large sums on technology to detect fentanyl and other systems to stop trafficking;no protections for existing undocumented immigrants or ways for them to attain legal status, much less citizenship.

So, the Republican reaction was to take a victory lap and race to approve it, right?

Right?

…

Of course it wasn’t, because the purpose of Republicans winning a majority has nothing to do with actually achieving policy victories or even governing.

The dog caught the car and found itself paralyzed at its incredible luck in doing so, and thus declared the car wasn’t really a car at all. The proposal to dramatically reform asylum, increase border enforcement and shut down the border entirely was really just an amnesty program!

So say the luminaries of today’s Republican Party, none of whom can take “yes” for an answer. Everyone from rapist and accused criminal Donald Trump to Christian-dominionist-inspired House Speaker Mike Johnson to QAnon fan Marjorie Taylor Greene has declared that the Democratic kowtowing the GOP demands is really just throwing open the borders and granting amnesty to drug smugglers, human traffickers and terrorists.

It’s all nonsense. And it demonstrates that Republicans have buyer’s remorse for demanding that aid for Ukraine and Israel be tied to border security — an ultimatum they clearly didn’t think Democrats would ever engage with.

The reality is that their opposition is a craven political move driven solely by a naked pursuit of power for power’s sake.

That’s why Trump, knowing that his base is fueled by xenophobia and animated by their furor about GOP fear-mongering about the border, denounced the deal even before it was finalized. He and his congressional enablers fear that taking any action now will mean they can’t effectively attack Joe Biden over the border during this year’s election.

The hypocrisy is stunning, even if it’s not surprising. And it was predicted in full by U.S. Sen. James Lankford, the Oklahoma Republican who brokered the deal (along with Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy and Arizona Independent Kyrsten Sinema) and finds himself both exasperated at his fellow Republicans and now in their crosshairs.

As he said Monday, the whole thing only highlights just how uninterested in governing many of his colleagues actually are: “The key aspect of this, again, is: Are we as Republicans going to have press conferences and complain the border is bad and then intentionally leave it open?”

If it helps Donald Trump win in November, you bet your ass they will.

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and Twitter.