The Center for American Institutions examines issue confronting the state of Arizona. Our goal is to go behind the headlines to better inform the citizens of our state.
Thanks, California! Why Gas Prices in Arizona and the West Are Pushed Up by California Policies
Arizona relies heavily on California for its gasoline supply. California provides a third of our state’s gasoline, mostly in Maricopa County. The high price of California gasoline directly affects our state. What happens in California lands in Arizona.
California has the highest prices at the pump, nearly $2 more per gallon than the national average.
California’s high energy prices are a policy choice. In 2000, 23 refineries operated in the state. At the end of 2026, only 11refineries will be left, with only 5 of them producing large quantities of transportation fuels.
Source: Stillwater Associates
If the California Air Resources Board has its way, more refineries may be forced to close. Under the state’s Cap-and-Invest program, CARB has proposed reducing the carbon emissions limits refineries operate under. They would be required to either reduce emissions or purchase expensive offsets.
Marathon and Chevron warn that the proposed rules call into question whether “operations in California remain viable."
If more refineries close, California can’t simply import gas from other states without connecting pipelines. Furthermore, California requires specific “boutique” blends.
California could exploit its own copious oil resources (its proven reserve of heavy oil, an important component of gas, diesel, jet fuel, and numerous other products is second to Venezuela’s) and refine under its characteristically strict labor and environmental oversight. Instead, the state has made the environmentally-dubious decision to import fuel produced without such oversight over thousands of miles, sending more carbon into the atmosphere.
As a result, California imports gas from as far away as South Korea and India to make up shortfalls.
With the apparent goal of attacking climate change through policies that target fossil fuels, California is poised to add to its carbon footprint by ruining its domestic industry.
We might shrug this off as just desserts: Californians are getting what they voted for.
But no one in Arizona or Nevada voted for these policies. Yet we are paying the price for California green mania to supposedly save the planet.
While California pays the most for gas, Arizona remains in the top ten in gasoline prices. This is despite Arizona’s fourth-from-the bottom state gas tax.
Arizona has negligible oil reserves and no refineries. Thirty-three percent of Arizona’s gas travels by pipeline from California, terminating in Phoenix. The state is also served by a pipeline originating in Texas that terminates in Tucson.
Source: Stillwater Associates
States that depend on California supply are naturally worried about further environmental policies that will drive up prices in their states. In 2024, Republican Governor Joe Lombardo of Nevada and Governor Katie Hobbs of Arizona sent a joint letter to California Governor Gavin Newsom urging him to delay a plan requiring gas companies to hold stockpiles. Nevada and Arizona argued that California’s plan will further drive up prices and hurt economic growth in their states.
Is Help on the Way?
Arizona’s energy access and prices can improve. Here are a few changes on the horizon:
California could pull back, at least a little, from its suicidal policies. There have been small steps in this direction. Governor Newsom has delayed new oversight measures for refineries and signed a bill increasing oil production in Kern County. Meanwhile, opposition to the new CARB regulations persists in California as well as in neighboring states.
To alleviate price spikes and supply issues (California imports crude oil from Saudi Arabia and Iraq among other sources), the Trump Administration has ordered the restart of offshore drilling off the coast of Santa Barbara. Governor Newsom has vowed to sue to stop the project.
For Arizona and Nevada, being held hostage by Sacramento is not the best course in energy policy in the long run. Promising plans to diversify supply have been proposed:
A pipeline connecting new Texas supply to Arizona has a projected completion date of 2029. While drawing criticism from environmental nonprofits, the permitting process is going forward.
The Western Gateway Pipeline can be expanded further. A joint project of Phillips 66 and Kinder-Morgan, it can connect Midwestern refineries to California. Originating in Illinois, the gas, diesel, and jet fuel would travel through parts of Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada, with the possibility of using existing pipelines in reverse to ship fuel to California.
With the Trump Administration’s enthusiasm for energy projects and apparent buy-in from the Apache Nation, which owns the land required for one section of new pipeline in New Mexico, the Western Gateway might avoid being stuck in legal purgatory of endless permitting fights and litigation that has stymied energy projects in the past.
Since 1997, Maricopa County and part of Pinal County have required special clean-burning fuels. Changing this, however, requires federal EPA approval.
The need for solutions to the supply of transportation fuels – and natural gas, which can help power the growing data-center industry hogs – is obvious and pressing.
Removing the stranglehold of California on Arizona is a must for our state’s economic growth.
Behind the anti-ICE, pro-Hamas, anti-Iran war, and some No Kings protests in Arizona (and across the nation) rests the pro-Maoist Party of Socialism and Liberation. The Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) is a pro-Maoist communist party funded with millions of dollars by Shanghai-based American millionaire, Neville Roy Singham. Singham has close ties with the Chinese Communist Party. PSL lists on its website over a hundred chapters located in nearly every state of the union.
PSL is ready at a moment’s notice to stage a protest as soon as a news story drops. These protests might be about ICE enforcement, the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, abortion restrictions, or American action against the communist governments in Venezuela and Cuba.
To a dedicated core of protesters, the issue doesn’t matter so long as it can be spun as anti-capitalist and anti-Western. While some protesters join because they are motivated by a specific issue, for the PSL, the revolutionary overthrow of American capitalism and political institutions is the ultimate goal.
The PSL runs candidates for office, but the party’s power rests in organizing street protests and disruptive demonstrations. Examples include:
- In February, 2025, the Phoenix chapter of the PSL, led a series of anti-ICE protests across Maricopa County, including a march to the state house. PSL leaders, Lexia Isais, a public-school teacher, and her comrade, Jordan Napier organized the march on the state house “No one is illegal! Viva Mexico!” Napier shouted. Organizers arranged similar marches in Flagstaff. Isais got her start in PSL activism as an Arizona State University (ASU) student. PSL remains active today at ASU. In 2024, it led the construction of an encampment – the “ASU Liberated Zone" – on the Tempe campus in solidarity with Hamas.
Source: The State Press
- Highway shutdowns are a specialty. In 2016, they organized the shutdown of a road to block access to a rally for then-candidate Donald Trump in Fountain Hills. Whether PSL was involved in a road closure and general chaos at an anti-illegal immigration enforcement rally in Glendale in 2025 is unclear from media reports, but it fits the pattern.
- PSL cultivates college campus memberships. The University of Arizona also sported an encampment, while members of the PSL chapter chanted “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” at a rally denouncing Israeli actions in Lebanon, American capitalism, and Western imperialism everywhere.
- PSL strongly continues to support the brutal Maduro regime in Venezuela. Protests against Maduro’s capture to stand trial in the United States drew few if any Venezuelans, who were thrilled to see the dictator removed from power. Protesters also rallied to the defense of the Iranian government at the start of the American Epic Fury campaign. In contrast Iranians turned up as counter-protesters.
- PSL member Dania Duran was one of the organizers of the ICE Out protest at Phoenix Sky Harbor airport. At a time of public concern about long security lines because of the government shutdown, the stunt was an airport version of blocking traffic, since their presence could add to delays. The protest was sure to make the local mainstream news, even if travelers were annoyed. In this case and others, the PSL minimized its visibility to the public. The public-facing organizing group – the one more likely to generate quotes in mainstream press – was the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. It is funded through left-wing sources.
- Unlike the Democratic Socialists of America, the PSL does not believe that working within the Democratic Party is a viable strategy to gain power. PSL organized a march at a campaign appearance by Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Kept outside of the venue, they shouted about how the ticket was insufficiently opposed to Isreal.
The PSL does not publish membership totals, but mass membership is not its goal. PSI considers itself a vanguard party with a tight cadre of dedicated revolutionaries.
The party follows the Leninist doctrine of a disciplined revolutionary party spelled out in his lengthy pamphlet "What Is to Be Done?” published in 1901. Lenin believed a centralized, disciplined party was necessary for communist revolution. As self-proclaimed vanguard party, PSL is organized as a centralist party in which all members are bound to defend and act on the party’s program. Members who don't follow the party line are expelled.
Why PSL Matters
The PSL’s instant disruptive protests on most any leftist issue is obviously within their First Amendment rights, even if they dismiss the Constitution as a capitalist farce.
Their funding and connections to Chinese Communist Party groups are what should alarm us.
The PSL collects dues from members, but the real money comes through Neville Roy Singham, a tech billionaire who cashed out his business fortune to focus on his political passions. From his office in Shanghai, he funds left-wing, pro-Chinese groups in the United States as well as India, South America, Great Britain, and Africa.
Singham shares office space with a Chinese media group, with a link so seamless “It can be hard to tell where Maku begins and Mr. Singham’s groups end.” It is a connection that goes back to at least 2019.
How much Singham contributes to the PSL is impossible to track.
In a five-part series that documented the Singham network, Fox News estimated the spending of the total Singham network at $401 million between 2017 and 2025.
Money that has been partially entangled with investment in Chinese companies and until recently passed through an untraceable Goldman Sacks donor-advised fund among other dodges that maximize opacity, makes it way to nonprofits with blandly positive names.
The core group includes The People’s Forum, the Justice and Education Fund, the United Community Fund, The Progress Unity Fund, and BreakThrough Media (BT Media). Some exist only as post office boxes in UPS stores.
Media Matters
In media outreach, for example, Ben Becker, a founder of PSL, started BT Media in 2020. As the Network Contagion Research Institute reports, PSL dominates the key offices and editorial team of BT News. They include:
- Claudia De la Cruz – BT Media’s Secretary and Director, as well as PSL’s candidate for the 2024 Presidential election.
- Karla Reyes – BT Media’s Chair and Director and De la Cruz’s 2024 PSL Presidential campaign running mate.
- Yari Osorio – BT Media’s Treasurer and Director and PSL’s 2012 Vice-Presidential candidate.
“The degree of overlap between BT Media and PSL on their executive and editorial teams is so significant,” the NCRI concludes, “that one can easily conclude that the former is functionally serving as a mouthpiece for the latter.” BT Media is now a multimedia outlet for anti-Western content.
The People's Dispatch published an approving story about No Kings rallies that even included an X post from the Speaker of Iran’s Parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. “Welcome to the party we started 47 years ago, No kings. This is the people of Iran, and we approve this message. #NoKings.” The People’s Dispatch weirdly characterized the 1979 Iranian Revolution as the fruit of class struggle.
Other Singham-funded media connections are much more subtle. The Justice and Education Fund, for example, has supported The Independent Media Institute. Through that grant, writers for such publications as Teen Vogue, Salon, and Food and Wine wind up in the Singham network.
Demonstration Discord
Agitation and maximum public chaos is PSL’s core business, part of Singham’s “transnational protest and media machine.”
With PSL as the networking hub, other groups, some basically hashtags for a temporary cause, demonstrators and pre-printed signs appear as if by magic.
PSL, with its siblings, the ANSWER Coalition, the People’s Forum, and Code Pink (Singham’s wife, Jodie Evans was a co-founder) reliably advance the views and interest of China. Code Pink was once critical of human rights abuses in China. Evans is now the co-author of China Is Not Our Enemy.
At a February 2026 Ways and Means committee hearing on foreign influence in America’s tax-exempt sector, Adam Sohn, Co-founder of Narravance, a social media research and intelligence firm, concluded:
“The ANSWER Coalition and the Party for Socialism and Liberation mobilize the protesters. The People’s Forum trains and coordinates the activists. BreakThrough News handles messaging and media amplification. The impact of this money is ongoing: federal property vandalized at Union Station; American flags burned and police officers assaulted. Airports blocked at JFK and LAX. Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges shut down. Ambulances and commuters disrupted. Wall Street blockaded; holiday commerce halted at Macy’s Herald Square; and immigration and law enforcement facilities targeted. This is not grassroots protest. It is a repeatable system for paralyzing American infrastructure on demand, financed through U.S. tax law, and aligned with a hostile foreign power. It is an active vulnerability we cannot afford to leave intact.”
In multiple decisions, the United States Supreme Court upheld the right for free speech for communist and radical agitators. The Center for American Institutions supports this right for free speech. Citizens though have a right to know that Arizona popup protests are not spontaneous expressions of widespread public discontent. The Arizona mainstream media has an obligation to report the news truthfully.
Independent Spending Rises
Arizona legislative elections are increasingly driven by independent expenditures. This money, raised by groups that cannot coordinate with candidates or parties, has made political campaigns massive financial battlefields.
Independent expenditures—contributions from political action committees (PACs), corporations, labor unions, trusts, wealthy individuals, and other organizations—now matter more to a candidate’s success than ever. Candidate funding is increasingly dwarfed by independent political expenditures.
Collectively, these groups comprised two thirds of all political election expenditures in 2024, spending a total of $46.3 million—a figure that has more than quintupled since 2018. In races where outside money is present, it effectively takes over, accounting for a median of 95.9% of all spending in 2024, up from 65.4% in 2022 and just 30% in 2020.
While non-candidate spending has permeated all 30 of Arizona’s state legislature districts, the scale of that spending varies dramatically by race. A few high-value districts—most notably districts 4, 13, and 17—have attracted millions of dollars in independent funding. In 2024, spending in just these 3 districts accounted for 35% of total election spending. While candidates remain the public face of their campaigns, the financial landscape surrounding them has changed dramatically, reshaping where resources are concentrated and how competitive races are contested across the state.
Large independent expenditures inevitably mean “dark money”—funds supplied by super PACs and nonprofits whose contributions are untraceable to their source. Using legal loopholes and other less savory methods, super PACs can amass vast sums of money from a series of other nonprofits and super PACs. Following the trail rarely leads to an actual person or group, and usually only leads to an inference about the sources of cash through PAC leadership.
The Rise of Independent Spending in AZ
Recent election cycles have drawn attention to large increases in non-candidate spending. Modern election cycles have seen drastic increases in outside money, but this was not always the case. Until 2018, independent expenditures hovered around or below one third of total election spending. Between 2018 and 2020, however, outside funding tripled from $8 million to $25 million and saw another 68% jump in 2022 to $42 million.
From 1998 until 2018, independent expenditures played an important, but markedly secondary, role in Arizona elections. Since 2018, however, they have exploded, dramatically reshaping the financial structure of campaigns. Candidate spending, on the other hand, has not kept pace, and in many cases has declined.
source: data derived from Arizona Secretary of State
Candidate Spending Collapses as Independent Expenditures Explode
Although third-party spending has seen a massive increase over the past few election cycles, candidate income and expenditures have seen the opposite trend. Median candidate income has fallen every year since 2020—exactly when external spending jumped—while median candidate expenses have plummeted from just over $20,000 in 2020 to an astonishing $360.15 in 2024. While the average expense has remained higher thanks to a few especially high-spending districts, it too has been falling as external money takes over in keeping campaigns afloat.
source: data derived from Arizona Secretary of State
Independent Expenditures Are Highly Concentrated in a Few Key Districts
While non-candidate spending appears in all 30 of Arizona’s state legislature districts, three districts have seen especially heavy outlays. Each of these districts is highly competitive and concentrated in the metro Phoenix and Tucson areas. District 4 includes Scottsdale and Paradise Valley, District 13 broadly encompasses Chandler, and District 17 lies in the outlying Tucson area.
Senate District 4: Dark Money Exposed
“Dark money” groups along with established interest groups drove the large expenditures in Arizona legislative races. For example, in Senate District 4, the candidates raised relatively modest sums: $408,621 for Republican Carine Werner, the winner, and $504,129 for the Democratic incumbent Christine Marsh in 2024.
Outside spending was another story. The total was nearly $2 million on election day, with the Democratic/Marsh side generating over $780,000 and the Republican/Werner camp just over $1 million.
The most active groups pro-Marsh groups included Stand for Children Arizona and Future Freedoms AZ. Neither reported any contributions over $5,000, which is a known disclosure loophole. On the Republican side, the Arizona State Victory Fund disclosed contributions for the 2024 cycle. The largest reported contribution was $10,000 from a construction PAC.
The largest PACs and nonprofits contributing to Marsh’s campaign committee was the Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund, a nonprofit founded by Michael Bloomberg, which was the largest single contributor at $50,000. Other sizable contributions came from Future Freedoms, an Arizona PAC, which is in turn funded by America Votes, “the Coordination Hub of the Progressive Community.” It in turn is a member of the Democracy Alliance and has received millions from George Soros and other progressive deep-pocketed individuals and groups.
Among the major contributors, the Our Voices, Our Votes super PAC rests on contributions from organization such as Movement Voters, an independent fund of the Soros-connected Tides Foundation.
The Future of Dark Money in AZ Legislative Elections
Recent ballot measures reflect Arizonans’ concerns over these exact trends. In 2022, Proposition 211, which increased transparency requirements for independent expenditures in local and state elections, passed with more than 72% support from voters. Similar efforts at the national level have also aimed to shed light on the growing role of independent expenditures and so-called “dark money” in elections.
Whether these measures will significantly alter current spending patterns remains unclear, but they indicate that voters are increasingly aware of the changing role of outside spending in elections.
Arizona’s nearly five decades of principled criminal justice reform have made its communities safer and given crime victims a meaningful voice. That record is now under attack. Understanding what was built — and why — is essential to defending it.
The Indeterminate Era and Its Failures
Until the late 1970s, Arizona’s sentencing laws were largely “indeterminate,” meaning judges held broad discretion over whether to send an offender to prison and for how long. The penalty for rape, for example, ranged from probation to life imprisonment — entirely at a judge’s discretion. Three consequences followed: fewer criminals went to prison, outcomes were manifestly unfair, and crime rates rose sharply.
The unfairness was structural. Without guardrails in the law, two people committing the same crime under the same circumstances could receive radically different sentences. These failures — weakened consequences, arbitrary outcomes, and rising crime — eventually united an unlikely coalition. Civil rights advocates and law-and-order advocates found common cause in demanding reform.
The 1977-78 and 1993 Reforms
In 1977 and 1978, that coalition produced results. A bipartisan group of legislators — a Republican House, a Democratic Senate, and a Democratic governor — agreed on a sweeping overhaul of Arizona’s criminal code. The state abandoned indeterminate sentencing in favor of “presumptive” sentencing. Every crime was classified within a structured hierarchy: six classes of felonies, three classes of misdemeanors, and a petty offense class. For each felony class, the law established a “presumptive” prison term, adjustable up or down based on aggravating or mitigating circumstances, including the offender’s criminal history and the harm caused. Probation remained available, except for dangerous, sexual, or multiple repeat offenders.
The effect on crime was nearly immediate, as the chart below shows.
When the laws were first passed, inmates were required to serve at least 50% of their sentence — or two-thirds for violent and repeat offenders. But inconsistent application of various early release programs undermined that floor. In late 1993, the Truth-in-Sentencing law closed that gap, requiring every inmate to serve 85% of the sentence imposed. It passed the legislature with 89 out of 90 votes. The data show a strong correlation between this law and the more dramatic decline in crime that followed.
Today, well over 90% of those in Arizona’s prisons are violent, sexual, or multiple repeat felony offenders. Despite growth in the prison population, corrections costs still represent roughly a dime out of every dollar in the state budget. It is worth noting that even in Arizona’s current system, most people convicted of felonies never go to prison at all; they receive probation and this often follows a previous participation in a diversion program that can result in the dismissal of charges.
The social benefit has been substantial: the gap between Arizona’s 1975 crime rate and today’s represents thousands of Arizonans who were spared from becoming victims.
Restoring Rights to Crime Victims
While Arizona was reforming its sentencing laws, a parallel injustice was gaining attention — correcting it also drew broad bipartisan support.
From statehood, as in the rest of the country, crime victims had been reduced to little more than mere evidence. They were instruments of a prosecution controlled entirely by the state — a dramatic departure from the country’s founding principles. In early America, crime victims were their own prosecutors, with full agency over the cases that delivered justice for the crimes committed against them. However, by the late 19th and early 20th centuries, government had assumed a near-monopoly over investigating and prosecuting crime. Victims had no right to notice of proceedings except when the state told them to appear to testify. They had no right to be present in the courtroom except to testify. They had no right to be heard at sentencing. And they had no standing to challenge any of it.
Consider what that meant in practice: a woman not informed when her rapist was released from custody; the parents of a murdered child barred from the courtroom during the trial of their child’s murderer; a couple who lost their life savings to fraud, silenced when they tried to tell the court what the crime had cost them.
These injustices persisted well into the last decades of the 20th century. But great movements in America often arise out of great injustice, and so it was again in our country and in our state.
In 1981 President Reagan convened the first-ever President’s Task Force on Victims of Crime. The Task Force held hearings across the country and in 1982 produced a report which included 68 recommendations for reforms to make the justice system more just for victims. The final recommendation was that the 6th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution be amended to include rights for victims "to be present and to be heard at all critical stages of judicial proceedings." This proposal launched a wave of state constitutional reforms beginning in 1988.
In November, 1990 voters in Arizona adopted a comprehensive Bill of Rights for crime victims. It recognizes in particular that victims have rights to justice and due process:
Article 2, Section 2.1. (A) To preserve and protect victims' rights to justice and due process, a victim of crime has a right:
1. To be treated with fairness, respect, and dignity, and to be free from intimidation, harassment, or abuse, throughout the criminal justice process.
2. To be informed, upon request, when the accused or convicted person is released from custody or has escaped.
3. To be present at and, upon request, to be informed of all criminal proceedings where the defendant has the right to be present.
4. To be heard at any proceeding involving a post-arrest release decision, a negotiated plea, and sentencing.
5. To refuse an interview, deposition, or other discovery request by the defendant, the defendant's attorney, or other person acting on behalf of the defendant.
6. To confer with the prosecution, after the crime against the victim has been charged, before trial or before any disposition of the case and to be informed of the disposition.
7. To read pre-sentence reports relating to the crime against the victim when they are available to the defendant.
8. To receive prompt restitution from the person or persons convicted of the criminal conduct that caused the victim's loss or injury.
9. To be heard at any proceeding when any post-conviction release from confinement is being considered.
10. To a speedy trial or disposition and prompt and final conclusion of the case after the conviction and sentence.
11. To have all rules governing criminal procedure and the admissibility of evidence in all criminal proceedings protect victims' rights and to have these rules be subject to amendment or repeal by the legislature to ensure the protection of these rights.
12. To be informed of victims' constitutional rights.
Moreover, the law now gives victims standing to enforce these rights. Victims have been given agency, not a veto but nonetheless a real voice. The people demanded that justice for victims be restored.
What Is Now at Risk
The criminal code Arizona adopted — grounded in fairness, deterrence, proportionality, public safety, and accountability — and the constitutional rights extended to victims have made Arizona a safer and more just state. Those achievements are now being targeted.
In recent years, Arizona legislators from both parties have introduced bills that would roll back these reforms. They are animated by the belief that harsh sentences fall disproportionately on low-risk offenders, that casual drug users are filling Arizona’s prisons, and that undermining truth-in-sentencing by expanding early release programs serves the public interest. The objective evidence does not support their beliefs, but the misguided ideology persists. The result is that they support bills that would release thousands of inmates, disproportionately repeat offenders, back into our neighborhoods without the full accountability the law promised.
Legislators have also introduced bills that would weaken victim’s rights directly: stripping victims of control over whether and when they receive notice in their own cases and reducing the enforcement mechanisms for funding that supports victim services and programs.
These efforts are being driven by well-funded out-of-state advocacy organizations that define justice exclusively as leniency for offenders, with no regard for victims or the broader community. So far, the objective evidence demonstrating results from our laws that hold offenders accountable in a proportionate and fair manner has prevailed. But the resolve of legislative leadership cannot be assumed. And the forces of leniency that will put Arizonans at risk are relentless with no regard – and no responsibility – for the harms that history repeatedly shows us will occur.
When considering legislation that promises criminal justice “reform” that is claimed to protect public safety, legislators should always ask:
Will the proposal undermine promises made to victims and the community for the punishment for crimes?
Will the idea lead to more disparity in sentencing?
Does the proposal take into account the effects of plea bargaining on the crime of conviction? Will the proposal allow consideration of the real conduct of the person convicted?
What are the impacts of the proposal on a crime victim’s rights to justice and due process? And to community safety?
Will the idea limit the state’s ability to collect monetary orders that are intended to help crime victims?
Will the reform result in crime reductions as dramatic as the current system has produced?
Conclusion
Arizona’s reforms — in sentencing determinations, truth-in-sentencing, and victim’s rights — were built through hard-won bipartisan consensus and decades of sustained effort. They have worked. The Legislature should reject proposals that would undo them and reaffirm that Arizona’s criminal justice system exists to protect the public, deliver fairness, and ensure that every victim has a meaningful voice.
Report Author: Steve Twist