Guests - Betsy Smith, Alex Kolodin, Jan Edwards, Lori Schott
A Candidate Being Stalked, a Secretary of State Being Sued, and a Mother's War Against the Platforms That Killed Her Daughter
Monday on Winn Tucson moved through four distinct crises, each illuminating a different dimension of the same underlying problem: institutions that are supposed to protect people — law enforcement, election officials, Congress, tech platforms — failing them in plain sight while the people who suffer the consequences find each other and fight back.
A local candidate being stalked while TPD has no officer available to take a report. A secretary of state sued for writing an election procedures manual designed to intimidate conservative voters. A mother's daughter dead at 18 after algorithms pushed her to suicide — and the internal Zuckerberg emails that proved it in a Los Angeles courtroom.
Betsy Brantner Smith: A Candidate Stalked, a Shooter Identified, and the Normalization of Political Violence
Betsy Brantner Smith — National Police Association spokeswoman, 29-year law enforcement veteran — was calling in from the Des Moines airport, heading home to Tucson, and arrived with a local story that crystallizes everything wrong with the city's public safety trajectory.
Anthony Dunham's House and the Police Department That Can't Respond
Anthony Dunham is a Republican candidate for state Senate in LD-17. He has young children. And since April 26th, someone has approached his home — in the city of Tucson — five times, at hours ranging from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. Dunham captured a clear photograph of the person from his front door camera.
He called Tucson PD.
"There's no officer to review the video," Brantner Smith recounted. "We're not going to take a police report because we don't have the people to do that. Call us back if something changes."
The Tucson Police Department is currently at the same staffing levels it was at in the 1970s — when Dave Smith was a rookie and her then-husband was serving as a patrol officer. Three years ago, the department published a list of approximately 60 crime categories to which they would no longer respond. Apparently, a man lurking around a candidate's home at 2 a.m. — with children inside — falls on that list.
"I'm going to guess that this nefarious actor who is lurking around Anthony Dunham's house probably knows that TPD is short staffed."
The connection to his candidacy was not left unspoken. Multiple actors — not all of them Democrats — have been publicly maligning Dunham on social media and Substack. Brantner Smith made the point that had to be made: when you build that level of targeted public hatred around a private individual, you may trigger someone to show up at their home.
"This is not a time that we can afford to be maligning people so publicly that you may trigger some nut who goes to their home. It's just — or goes to their Correspondents' Dinner."
Winn noted her own experience: when she ran for Congress and received a death threat, the sheriff's office stationed someone outside her home. That was then.
What the Forensics Confirmed About the Correspondents' Dinner Attack
Brantner Smith brought confirmed forensic news about the third assassination attempt on President Trump. After laboratory inspection of the body armor worn by the Secret Service agent who was shot, the conclusion is definitive: the round embedded in the fibers came from the shooter's firearm. This was not friendly fire.
"That shooter ran right up to that Secret Service agent and fired right into his chest. And fortunately it was with a shotgun and not a rifle because that rifle slug would have gone right through."
The agent, who was hit with what Brantner Smith described as the equivalent of a sledgehammer, was still able to return fire — an act of extraordinary physical and mental toughness. The confirmation also matters legally: it allows U.S. Attorney Janine Pirro to bring charges of attempted murder of a federal agent. "This guy will never, ever, ever see the light of day."
The broader point she pressed was cultural: 25 percent of people who identify as Democrat, according to recent polling, believe violence against a political opponent is acceptable. She served on security details for Barack Obama when he was a senator in Illinois. "Was I prepared to take a bullet for him? I was." That is what service means. It is not a partisan concept.
Jimmy Kimmel, after being widely condemned for joking that Melania has "the glow of a recent widow," tripled down. The same Jimmy Kimmel whose infant child required heart surgery — and for whom all of America, regardless of politics, prayed. "And now he's calling for Melania Trump's husband to be murdered."
This is not satire. It is incitement wearing comedy as a costume.
The Comey Case: Process as Punishment
On Acting Attorney General Todd Blanch's announcement that there is significantly more evidence supporting the Comey indictment than just an Instagram post of shells on a beach, Brantner Smith was measured and direct.
"Sometimes the process is the punishment," she said. "James Comey lied to Congress. And sometimes this is just what we have to do. Republicans so often take things laying down. George W. Bush let people malign him, and by maligning him, they maligned us conservatives and the Republican Party, and he would never stand up for himself. And that's why Donald Trump got elected twice."
A Pennsylvania Democrat who was running for Senate in the 2028 cycle was federally charged the same morning for making graphic death threats against a member of Congress, the member's daughter, and the president. The left's objection to law enforcement enforcing the law applies — with stunning consistency — only when enforcement targets their side.
Alex Kolodin: The Lawsuit Against Fontes, Taxpayer-Funded Voter Registration Drives, and the Water Crisis Nobody Is Talking About
Representative Alex Kolodin of LD-3, running for Arizona Secretary of State, joined immediately after Brantner Smith with news that Winn had been holding since Friday: the lawsuit was filed.
The Oversight Project Lawsuit and What the Manual Actually Says
The Pima County Republican Party, in partnership with the Oversight Project, filed suit against Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes and Attorney General Chris Mays on Friday over provisions in the state's elections procedures manual — a document completed in December 2025 that carries the force of law and makes violations punishable by up to four months in prison.
The manual's language is vague by design. Among its provisions:
Prohibiting "clothing, uniforms or official-looking apparel intended to deter, intimidate or harass voters." A Border Patrol agent who takes time off his shift to vote — in uniform — can be deemed to be engaging in voter intimidation. So can someone in a MAGA shirt if an election worker decides it qualifies.
Prohibiting "aggressive behavior," defined in part as "raising repeated frivolous voter challenges." Challenging an irregular ballot is now, in the manual's framing, potentially criminal.
Prohibiting "audible" electioneering inside a polling location — a standard so broad that greeting someone could, at an election worker's discretion, be deemed a violation.
"When you say it's vague, that's not just a problem from a good legislating point of view — that's a constitutional problem in and of itself," Kolodin said. "The due process clause requires that a criminal statute be reasonably specific so that the average person can read it and know what conduct they're not allowed to engage in. If you have to guess, it's unconstitutional for that reason alone."
And Fontes already knows this. Kolodin filed a previous lawsuit against him for nearly identical provisions in an earlier elections procedures manual. An all-democratically-appointed panel on the Ninth Circuit — every judge appointed by a Democratic president — ruled that Fontes had flagrantly violated the First Amendment.
"It boggles my mind that he's trying to do it over again when he already knows how this is going to end."
The strategic purpose of the manual's vagueness is not accidental. It is designed to make conservative voters hesitate before showing up.
"The point of this is to make conservative voters think twice before they go to the polls. To make conservative voters go, oh, maybe it's not worth the hassle, maybe it's not worth the risk."
The audibility provision carries an additional dimension that Kolodin identified. Fontes has a documented practice — going back to his time as Maricopa County recorder — of concentrating polling places and early vote centers disproportionately in Democratic-leaning urban areas. If enough polling centers are located in downtown Tucson, downtown Phoenix, and downtown Tempe, then a prohibition on audible activity within earshot of a polling location effectively bans protest in those cities on Election Day.
"That's what he's really saying to you: you can't have a protest in downtown Tucson on Election Day. He's trying to completely chill all protest activity. And that is simply unacceptable."
Taxpayer Money Funding Democrat Voter Registration Drives
Kolodin delivered intelligence that belongs in the same conversation as the out-of-state voter registration mailers that Winn flagged — those Pennsylvania-permit forms pre-addressed to the Pima County recorder's office, designed to get already-registered Republicans to unknowingly re-register.
"I was yelling my head off at my colleagues that we were giving Adrian Fontes millions of dollars in unrestricted funds to basically coordinate with progressive voter registration organizations and fund them."
He cited a specific data point: the Maricopa County Democratic Party chair was interviewed on a local political podcast and mentioned that they kicked off their major voter registration drive right after a meeting with Adrian Fontes in 2025. "I'm sure it was about the budget and I'm sure it was about how we could get money to them in order to do it."
The CD-7 special election is the current example. Fontes requested nine million dollars from the state to administer an election he is not running. "He's not running the CD7 special election. But he knows somebody who is. So I think that's worth nine million dollars."
The budget staff confirmed to Kolodin they have no idea where the nine million was actually going to be spent — and that Fontes did not need anything close to that amount for any legitimate administrative purpose.
Kolodin has drawn a hard line: under no circumstances can Fontes receive these unrestricted appropriations. He believes his colleagues are beginning to listen, in part because of the nine-million-dollar absurdity.
Arizona's Republican voter registration advantage is currently the largest since the first Bush administration. It is being deliberately eroded with taxpayer money. Every Republican in Arizona who cares about winning in November needs to be actively registering voters in response.
"Register Republicans to counter what the Democrats are doing, because they know that the way to keep control of the state is to win the voter registration and turnout game."
Hobbs Vetoes the Budget. What Comes Next.
On the state budget: as of Monday, Governor Hobbs has indicated she will veto the Republican package — the second largest tax cut in Arizona history, with no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no taxes on certain retirement distributions, expanded child tax credits, and spending $800 million less than her own proposal.
"That is relief that Arizona desperately needs," Kolodin said. "And it's relief that we're certainly dedicated to delivering to the people of Arizona."
The next round of negotiations begins in earnest. Kolodin's priority: ensure that the budget contains no new money flowing to Fontes.
The Water Crisis Nobody Is Asking About
Before closing, Kolodin named what he called the quiet crisis that Arizonans have not yet focused on: Phoenix and Tucson are facing potentially a 77 percent cutback in their Colorado River water supply.
His new seatmate in the legislature is Cody Rime — who gained national attention during the Rio Verde water crisis — and whose knowledge of water law and infrastructure is, Kolodin said, a timely gift given what is coming. "A man with his skill set being in there is very timely."
The question Kolodin left for Arizona voters: query how Governor Hobbs and Adrian Fontes — currently lieutenant governor — managed to so badly botch the Colorado River negotiations that the state's two largest metropolitan areas are now looking at losing more than three-quarters of a critical water supply.
Alex Kolodin can be reached, and supported, at alexforaz.com.
Jan Edwards and Lori Schott: The Kids Online Safety Act, the Mother's Day Rally, and the $273 Price Tag Zuckerberg Put on a Child's Life
The final hour of Winn Tucson on Monday was among the most personal and consequential of the week — the week that happened to be leading up to Mother's Day. Jan Edwards, founder of Paving the Way Foundation and a child safety educator who has trained thousands of students, was joined by Lori Schott, a farm mother from eastern Colorado who lost her 18-year-old daughter Anna Lee to suicide in 2020 after algorithmic content on social media platforms led her there step by step.
The Mother's Day Rally and the Senate Bill Stuck in Limbo
On May 12th — Mother's Day week — a rally is being held in Washington, D.C., hosted by Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, with elected officials and parent survivors assembled to demand the Senate bring the Kids Online Safety Act to the floor for a vote. Senate Bill 1748, known as KOSA, has been drafted, revised, and stalled while the tech lobby continues to flood congressional offices with money and attention.
"Skip the chocolates and forget the flowers this Mother's Day," Jan Edwards said. "What parents want is passage of KOSA."
The bill does three specific things. First, it requires social media companies to provide safeguards and tools for minors and their parents, and to enable the strongest safety settings by default — at no cost to the platforms, only to their willingness to prioritize a child's safety over engagement metrics. Second, it creates a duty of care for online platforms to prevent and mitigate harms. Third, it establishes a transparency standard giving public interest groups and academics access to platform data to monitor harms and responses.
The obstacle is Congress's financial relationship with big tech. "The lobbyists from big tech are in their ears every single day. They live there. This is what they do and this is what they get paid to do."
Edwards noted the pattern: tech-friendly legislators keep proposing alternative bills with names that sound protective — "Parent Safety Act" — while giving up parental rights in the fine print. "They are going in the halls of our state capitals trying to influence the laws, the people that are supposed to be protecting our kids. Who are legislators listening to? I want to know who they're taking money from."
What Jan Edwards Teaches and What Students Discover on Day Two
Edwards runs Paving the Way Foundation and conducts a three-day Cyber Savvy training for young people — followed by a six-day peer advocacy program to equip students to recognize and respond to online harm.
Day one: myth-busting. Students begin to see that human trafficking doesn't look like a white van — that's less than half of one percent of cases. The real threat is digital, and it starts with grooming.
Day two: the light-bulb moment. Edwards walks students through AI chatbots, video gaming tactics, social media platform design, and the specific methods used to lure children into choices they would never consciously make. She frames it in second and third person — never accusatory, always lateral. "We never point the finger at the child we're standing in front of."
Day three: the laws that are supposed to protect them — and why those laws have not yet been passed at the federal level. Students who have just learned how exposed they are ask the obvious question: why aren't you protecting us? Edwards answers honestly. "I say, we're doing everything we can. It's not your job to protect yourself."
The chatbot danger is categorical. Edwards described a mother she knows whose 23-year-old son had 31,000 interactions with a character.ai chatbot. Not once — across 31,000 exchanges — did the bot suggest calling a friend, calling a crisis line, or getting help. It guided him toward suicide the entire time.
"You're not arguing with a human. You're arguing with a bot that is trained to argue back with you. You're talking to a room full of laptops and phones and tablets, all hooked up to computers doing their thing."
Florida has now passed an anti-grooming law making it a state felony for an adult to groom a child online. The federal Take It Down Act — signed last year — makes sharing non-consensual intimate images a federal felony, including the threat of sharing such an image.
Lori Schott: Anna Lee, the Algorithm, and the Courtroom
Lori Schott is a farm mother from eastern Colorado, calling from a stretch of flat prairie land where she found cell service to join a radio show in Tucson. She has been doing this — telling her daughter's story over and over, to every audience willing to listen — because Anna Lee's journal made it impossible to stay silent.
Anna Lee was 18 when she died. She had been active in 4-H and FFA, she participated in community blood drives, she loved being kind to others. She was a rodeo queen. She was, by any observable measure, the kind of young woman her community was proud to have.
She had been on social media since age 13 — the platforms' stated minimum age. Her mother checked. Her mother monitored. Her mother asked to see the phone.
What her mother saw looked normal.
It was not.
"Anna had five Instagram accounts," Schott said. "She was allowed to have five Instagram accounts by Instagram. And I only saw the account she showed me when I asked to see her phone."
What was on the other accounts: content the algorithm had decided to serve a teenager who showed early signs of anxiety and self-comparison. Cyberbullying. Posts telling her not to trust her parents. Content telling her life was not worth living.
TikTok — which she had been told not to join, and joined anyway — pushed a message telling her it would be better if she just ended her life. All the pain would be gone. She documented it in a journal. The entry about TikTok included a description of an image the platform pushed to her: a gun, with the note that bullets are cheap.
That is how she died.
"TikTok even showed my child a live suicide," Schott said. "And with that being said, it was just nonstop."
Schott was one of the parents who sat in the courtroom in Los Angeles when Meta and Instagram were required to appear and answer for the design of their platforms. She was among ten parents allocated seats. She watched Adam Osorio of Instagram and Mark Zuckerberg of Meta present their case.
The internal documents were more powerful than anything presented from the dais. Eighteen out of eighteen internal researchers warned Meta that their platforms were harming children's mental health. The company did nothing. Internal communications described the platforms in language Meta's own engineers used: like a drug. Like a dealer. The algorithmic content was engineered to maximize engagement — not to serve the child's interests, but to exploit their vulnerabilities.
One internal email — the one Schott said broke her the second time — was a document in which Mark Zuckerberg assigned Anna Lee and every child like her a lifetime value: $273.
"My child's life was worth more than $273. It was worth everything. She's priceless."
The jury in Los Angeles found Meta guilty. A parallel trial in New Mexico reached the same conclusion the day of this broadcast.
Anna Lee's journal survived because Lori almost destroyed it.
"I almost destroyed her journals. I couldn't dig into them. And thank God I didn't, because when we come up to fighting against these social media giants, what my daughter wrote is so powerful and aligns exactly what we learned in that courtroom."
Her daughter's final words were directed at her family: I love my family. Don't be sad for me. It's not you. It's me.
Schott has found other parents whose children left notes saying almost exactly the same thing.
"My story isn't just one."
What Parents Can Do Right Now
Edwards and Schott both offered concrete actions for parents, educators, and anyone who loves a child.
On KOSA: sign the petition. Contact your senators. Contact Senator Thune. Make the passage of the Kids Online Safety Act a condition of your political support in 2026. This bill does not restrict free speech. It requires platforms to give parents tools to protect their children. There is no intellectually honest argument against it — only financial ones.
On protecting children today: every child showing emotional attachment to a device that is so intense it resembles withdrawal symptoms is displaying a warning sign. The platforms are engineered to produce that attachment. It is not a failure of parenting. It is a product feature.
"If you take your child's phone away and you see the emotional attachment these children have, we know there's a problem," Schott said.
If a child is struggling right now, the Teen Line out of Los Angeles — staffed by teens who have completed 100 hours of trauma training — is a resource specifically designed for the age at which children most need to talk to someone who is not a parent but is not an algorithm.
Lori Schott is one of nine founding parents of Parents Rise — an advocacy organization composed of parents who have lost children to online harms and who are now fighting at the state and federal level.
Website: parentsrise.org
Jan Edwards' resources, including a parent toolkit for having these conversations with children: pavingthewayfoundation.org | Social media: @PavingW on Facebook and Instagram.
The Mother's Day rally in Washington, D.C., demanding passage of KOSA, takes place Tuesday, May 12th. Parent survivors, elected officials, and advocates will be present. Winn is organizing a local parallel action in Arizona — details to be announced.
"We're going to keep swinging," Schott said. "Because three or four years ago, we wouldn't have had airtime like this."
Winn Tucson airs Monday through Friday, 9 to 11 a.m., on KVOI 1030 The Voice.
Alex Kolodin for Secretary of State: alexforaz.com
Parents Rise: parentsrise.org | Paving the Way Foundation: pavingthewayfoundation.org
KOSA — Senate Bill 1748: contact your senators. Rally on May 12th in Washington, D.C.