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Talk about out of touch ...

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, his wife, Rachel, and their nine children traveled all over the country over the course of seven months to see our beautiful country. Oh, and also to make a new reality show. It was paid for by the Great American Road Trip Inc., a nonprofit sponsored by, wait for it ... many companies regulated by the Department of Transportation!!! Rachel said, in a condescending manner, about the trip, “No one in my family, including my husband, were paid to do this, we did it for free to celebrate America 250 & encourage other Americans to get off couches & screens and spend time together seeing the country." Wow. I guess we should thank them, because I’m sure the average family that doesn’t even have nine children is so happy to live vicariously through them, given the fact that most families don’t have enough money to buy gas to even go on a road trip.

Susan Rayner

SaddleBrooke

Shortage of AZ students

Prerana Sannappanavar provides analysis of the shortage of new students enrolling at the University of Arizona. Like true journalists without bias. However the university, now under its new President Garimella, has changed. Garmella has shown his fealty to Donald Trump. He was one of the first to demolish DEI on his campus. This has not gone unnoticed by foreign students and their parents and grandparents. Five of my grandchildren are citizens of foreign countries. It sent a chill down all of our spines. Foreign students at all levels bring higher fees that are badly needed by the University. A look at Garimella’s profile in Wikipedia could cause one to question the Arizona Regents ' judgment. In 2018, he was an early academic pick to serve the Trump administration.

David Rollins

North side

Questions for Republicans

How much money in the slush fund will go to the January 6th rioter with the Camp Auschwitz T-shirt?

Has Trump ever called the Camp Auschwitz insurrectionist an antisemite?

Rick Klumpp

Oro Valley

Trading by public officials

The Office of Government Ethics just released a disclosure that President Trump conducted more than 3,600 trades with a combined vale of over $750 million in Jan-March of 2026. Many of these trades were in securities in companies over which the president has influence. Add to that the trading that still goes on in Congress ($213 million to-date in 2026) by our representatives in companies under the direct purview of their respective committees and it’s not a pretty picture.

Any attempts to get legislation through congress to ban trading by members of congress has been stalled by Speaker Johnson. There is bipartisan support for such a ban, including extending it to all public officials, but not enough to get by that roadblock.

Just add this to the other corruption in Washington at the moment. The rest of the country is sinking (excluding the other plutocrats, of course), but not our elected officials!

Nancy Atherton

Foothills

Juan Ciscomani

It is nice to see Mr. Ciscomani's huge signs pop up again after a two-year retreat. He must still exist, though we haven't heard from him on anything of substance in a while — no town halls, supports Big Ugly Bill, nothing on immigration, the war, or inflation. I tried to send a note to him on his official website last night and got through the whole torturous process to have it fail when I hit submit. I guess he is not interested in hearing from his constituents either.

We shouldn't waste votes on him; he will just continue to sit on his hands and hope to avoid the notice of the Grand Wizard. Vote for someone who will look after us — not the lame duck. Thanks.

Arthur Stables

Midtown

One harmful effect of many lies

I know things are bad when I find myself believing news reports from Iran about our Operation Epic F--k-up rather than reports from our own White House. Tragic. Sad. Infuriating. Shameful.

Robert (Bob) Kafes

Midtown

DOI overshadowed

The DOI itself is being overshadowed by the 250th anniversary. The proposed aspirations in the declaration need not be trivialized as merely to remove a people from the subordination of a king and class but to raise each person to a higher purpose and equal status within the law.

My concerns with the 1789 Constitution is that it fails to follow the promises made in 1776. As originally implemented, the economic partisanship of the wealthiest founders brushed away the rights associated with gender, race, community and religion. These continue to concern us now. The constitution gives us the infrastructure on which we follow. The government gives us the means. The declaration gives us the reasons why and the soul of America.

A national consensus would help to remind us of the centrality of the DOI in our daily lives. Understanding and believing in the DOI may be a start to see us through the next 250 years.

Jerry Moser

Oro Valley

Save Big Bend National Park

Why is the administration dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud and abuse spending billions of dollars on a border wall in Big Bend National Park and surrounding areas that does not have a border problem? This has been verified by local sheriffs, residents, and the Border Patrol itself. Said wall and roads to be constructed will devastate wildlife by cutting them off from the dependable water source, the Rio Grande River. It will also block wildlife migration routes and cut off park visitors from the river. The contracts for much of the work have been no-bid contracts, further wasting money for no reason. Our national parks are for posterity, once desecrated, there is no repair. In addition, Homeland Security has been completely opaque as to their plans, while they constantly change. The reason? The only possibility is Trump's vanity about having a border wall, no matter the consequences.

Don Ries

Southeast side

Minnesota fraud

This week, a Minnesota woman was sentenced to 42 years in prison for defrauding the federal government out of $250 million. This is the single largest pandemic fraud case in the U.S.. The woman’s organization took federal money to pay for child nutrition programs, but spent it on her lavish lifestyle.

The leader is Aimee Bock, a white woman born and raised in Minnesota. She is the mastermind who recruited around 100 people, 85 of who are Somalian. Of those 85, 80 are U.S. citizens. They have also been indicted. Bock was the leader of this fraud, and the Somalians answered to her.

Will we see Trump posting about Bock being “sent back to where she came from?” NO, because she is not Somali. He would have to send her back to Duluth. Despite Trump’s claims of “billions of dollars,” it is unlikely that the total amount of fraud in Minnesota will exceed Trump awarding himself $1.7 billion from the IRS. Now, that is fraud.

Gary Haslett

SaddleBrooke

Members of Congress

Congresswoman Nancy Mace is proposing some very unusual legislation. Mace, a Republican from South Carolina, is pushing legislation to bar naturalized citizens from serving in Congress or at high levels of the U.S. government. Mace names three current Representatives, Ilhan Omar, Shri Thaneda, and Pramila Jayapal, all Democrats, as examples of those who should not be allowed to serve in the House because they are not native born.

At the moment, 16 members of the House are naturalized citizens. Four of those 16 are Republicans, including AZ CD-6 Representative Juan Ciscomani, who was born in Hermosillo, Sonora.

What does Ciscomani think of Mace's proposed legislation? Perhaps an enterprising Daily Star journalist will ask him to share his thoughts on it.

Robert Bishop

East side