Guests - Cheryl Caswell, Wynton Hall, Joel Strabala
Wildcats Advance in March Madness as Tucson Cheers Local and National Battles
Kathleen Winn opens the show with excitement over the Arizona Wildcats basketball team facing the Arkansas Razorbacks. She wears her sparkly Wildcat shirt and urges fans to support the team toward the Elite Eight, Final Four, and national championship. "Tonight they play the Arkansas Razorbacks and if you care about U of A and you care about U of A basketball, I'm in my garb so my sparkly Wildcat shirt and we have to hope that we make it out of the Sweet 16 and get to the Elite 8, Final Four and National Champs."
Cheryl Caswell on LD19 State House Campaign, Tax Relief, Election Integrity, and Groundwater Protection
Cheryl Caswell, candidate for LD19 state representative, discusses her successful petition filing and the district's conservative stronghold. She emphasizes the need for strong Republican turnout in the primary and general election. "It's primarily still a Republican district. And so we intend to keep it that way." Caswell outlines her top priorities, starting with tax conformity to align with President Trump's tax cuts. "First and foremost, I think we all recognize we have passed several tax conformity bills to match President Trump's tax cuts, but they've been killed twice by our governor Hobbs requiring many folks the possibility to have to refile those 20, 25 returns."
She stresses election integrity, noting the importance of precinct committeemen and clean voter rolls. "Election integrity is something I experienced at the door as a precinct committeeman, as a candidate and just as a civic volunteer out there talking with people is our voter rolls do have issues." Caswell advocates for groundwater protection, criticizing bills that would ship rural water to Phoenix. "We have groundwater and we have some Republicans that are floating bills right now that are letting rural groundwater be shipped off to Phoenix. And so that's going to take in some areas up to six acre feet yearly per acre." She calls for equity in water distribution and support for family farms. "I want to make sure that we're protecting kids without touching parental rights."
Wynton Hall on AI Bias, Deepfakes, and the Race with China for Technological Dominance
Wynton Hall, author of Code Red: The Left, the Right, China and the Race to Control AI, explains the critical implications of AI development. He details how large language models exhibit left-leaning bias due to training on sources like Reddit, Wikipedia, and left-leaning publications. "They are largely trained on left leaning sources from Reddit to Wikipedia to what's a very large data set called the Common Crawl and peer reviewed academic journals." Hall warns of deepfakes as a tool for election interference. "With AI, generative AI, which generates video, audio, images, you can have completely fake and phony quotes or gotcha videos."
He stresses the national security stakes in the AI race with China. "We do not want to live in a world built on AI, Chinese AI rails." Hall highlights China's 2017 strategy to dominate AI by 2030 and the risks of recursive self-improvement. "Whoever achieves AI dominance in this race first will have full spectrum battlefield dominance in things like encryption, hacking of missile systems, hacking of infrastructure, cybersecurity." He calls for critical thinking skills to navigate AI hallucinations and bias. "We really have to help our children, particularly whether we're parents or grandparents, to not cede their critical thinking skills to AI."
Joel Strabala on the Sheriff Nanos Recall Process, Pima County Election Updates, and Grassroots Engagement
Joel Strabala, LD17 chairman, provides a detailed update on the recall effort against Sheriff Chris Nanos. He explains the legal requirements, noting 122,211 signatures are needed. "They need to collect 122,211 signatures. And how that is defined per ARS 19-201 is the number of people that voted in the 2024 election for the office of sheriff times 25%." Strabala outlines the timeline, with signatures due by July 10, 2026, and potential recall election dates as early as March 9, 2027. "The recall election will occur on the first consolidated election date that is at least 90 days in the future."
He discusses the Board of Supervisors' 5-0 vote to investigate Nanos's original application under ARS 11-253. "They voted unanimously to order any county official to come in and give testimony about something a matter that's under their purview." Strabala emphasizes grassroots engagement and precinct committeemen recruitment. "There's a form called a write-in candidate for precinct committeeman that you can submit. It's a one-page form that you fill out and sign and you need to submit that form to the Department of Elections by five o'clock on April 6th." He encourages participation to strengthen the Republican Party's ability to influence policy and elections. "The number of elected precinct committeeman determine the number of state precinct committeeman that we can send to Phoenix or wherever it's going to be the next time to represent Pima County in the state Republican Party for electing state officers and defining state policies and objectives."