(DCNF)—When I ran for the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, I pledged to listen to voter concerns and work to ensure our citizens would have a smooth, fair, open, and transparent election process. I took office at a tenuous time in the county, which had been at the center of two contentious election cycles. As one of the largest counties in America, Maricopa County is looked upon as a bellwether of national elections – not to mention the myriads of other races within the state. I understand it is critical that we not only get our elections right but make sure that all voters – regardless of their party affiliation – trust the integrity of the process and result.
I have spent my entire career in public service defending the right of all Americans to know our votes count in each election – no matter how seemingly insignificant to the media or pundits. If Americans can’t trust an election for school board, then they certainly won’t be able to trust an election for the highest office in our land – President of the United States.
As a state legislator and United States Congresswoman, I sponsored and voted for legislation and supported ballot measures that require voter identification and proof of citizenship, prohibit non-citizens from voting, and end ballot harvesting. In the U.S. House of Representatives, I voted against legislation that would have allowed states to mail ballots to non-citizens and would have required states to accept ballot harvesting. I proudly sponsored and voted for the SAVE Act, which would have preserved American elections for the American people, because one vote from a noncitizen is one too many. Eventual passage of this legislation would do wonders for the integrity of our elections throughout the country.
To that end, I promised I would fight for an independent election-related audit in Maricopa County. In keeping my pledge, funding for this action was approved by the Board of Supervisors soon after I took office. One of those reviews is a technology audit, which will ensure that Maricopa County’s election equipment and software were not tampered with during the 2024 election cycle and cannot connect to the internet. The other is a comprehensive review by independent auditors, investigating lines of business as a chain of custody, physical security, tabulation, and drop box security of Maricopa County election processes.
This comprehensive audit was put out for open bid, so that any experienced individual or company could bid on doing the audit. After an extensive search, our Board voted to hire a nationally reputable audit firm to review the Maricopa County elections systems. With this audit, we will discover what is being done right and what needs reform. It is very important that voters in Maricopa County have faith in our elections system, and my prayer is that this audit is a huge step in that direction. I look forward to seeing the results of this review.
In addition to the audit, I’ve looked to unify and listen to all sides. There are many individuals who have very opinionated thoughts on the state of our election systems or what we must do to move forward to fully secure our elections. I appreciate those voices, and I’ve worked to build bridges and listen to the men and women who have shared their issues and solutions. To build back trust in the integrity of our elections, we can’t be dismissive of people simply because they are too opinionated or we may not agree with them. Rather, we must be inclusive of all these viewpoints and ensure that everyone feels like they have a seat at the table to fix what may be wrong with our elections.
One way I’ve listened and solicited feedback is by helping to facilitate tours of our elections department over the past year. We’ve taken many individuals – from all sides of the aisle – through our building and set up more conversations with the men and women who are responsible for making our elections run in Maricopa County. I’ve found that these tours work wonders. The attendees emerge with a deeper understanding and appreciation for what takes place behind the scenes, and they are grateful for the opportunities to interact with those who operate our elections system.
The road to true election integrity in America has proved daunting, yet I remain convinced that it is worth every investment we make. I’m working every day to restore trust in our elections and to help assure American voters that their selections at the ballot box are secure and that our system is as transparent as possible. Our children and grandchildren deserve our full cooperation for this worthy endeavor.
Debbie Lesko is currently serving as a Maricopa County Supervisor after a tenure in the U.S. House of Representatives. You can follow her on X at @DebbieLesko.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
