Arizona House Democrats faced yet another resignation on Thursday with Rep. Marcelino Quiñonez of Phoenix stepping down.
“I have had the fortune of being here for three sessions, and I take so many lessons with me,” the Legislative District 11 Democrat said on the House floor. “Amongst them, we cannot let perfection be the enemy of progress.”
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As legislators continue discussing ways to address questionable content in school libraries, books promoting LBGTQ and gender ideology are readily available to children as young as 11 years old in a Scottsdale Unified School District middle school.
“Mohave Middle School offers 11-year-olds a book that encourages irreversible medical transition,” and that the book targets “pre-teens” and “promotes the idea that a girl can change into a boy,” Scottsdale Unites for Educational Integrity said in a Twitter (X) post on Tuesday.
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Two Republicans in the Arizona State House announced its investigation of Attorney General Kris Mayes over using her office to advance her political career with her recent legal threat against farmers over water use.
State Representatives Austin Smith (R-Surprise) and Jacqueline Parker (R-Mesa) on Wednesday sent a letter to Mayes which they say includes requests for “public records related to recent unfounded attacks she has made on the agricultural industry, her threats to file a public nuisance lawsuit against Arizona’s farmers and using town hall events to make campaign speeches.”
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Arizona Republican Party (AZGOP) Chairwoman Gina Swoboda secured a favorable court ruling for her election integrity group, the Voter Reference Foundation (VRF), and will gain access to New Mexico voter roll data.
U.S. District Court Judge James Browning in New Mexico made a ruling on Friday in the case brought against that state by the VRF that was largely favorable to Swoboda’s group, with reports indicating VRF was given permission to post voter rolls online and was given access to voter information previously withheld by the New Mexico Secretary of State.
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Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer wants a private contractor to use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to optimize his office, according to an online advertisement seeking contractors.
The web listing, made on behalf of the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, reveals Richer “is seeking a contractor to provide a solution to improve processes around document identification, data extraction, and comparing handwritten signature images with on-file signature images by way of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).”
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An Arizona judge ordered the divorce case between Representative Ruben Gallego (D-AZ-03) and Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego to be partially unsealed, ruling the decision to permanently make the proceedings private was improper, the conservative media outlet behind the legal action to reveal the divorce records reported Friday.
The Washington Free Beacon reported that Yavapai County Superior Court Judge John Napper ruled last Tuesday that the decision to seal the records in the 2017 divorce case of Ruben Gallego, the likely Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, was improper.
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Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs signed a bill on Friday of galactic proportions.
“Pluto is the official state planet,” House Bill 2477 simply states.
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Scottsdale parents have uncovered gender ideology propaganda used in the Scottsdale Unified School District.
Scottsdale Unites for Educational Integrity, a grassroots organization calling for transparency in education, has a “Parent Discoveries” page on its website, where it posts examples of gender ideology content parents have found in schools in the Scottsdale Unified School District (SUSD).
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Homicides in Phoenix declined in 2023, with law enforcement crediting the success of their new policy to target repeat and violent offenders.
Phoenix saw 198 criminal homicides in 2023, and police received reports of 54,472 violent and property crimes in total. The number of homicides marked an 11 percent decrease from 2022, when the city reported 223 homicides.
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State Senator Anthony Kern (R-Glendale) held a press conference on March 24 denouncing Attorney General Kris Mayes convening a grand jury to indict Arizona’s alternate slate of electors for Donald Trump from 2020. Reports circulated earlier in March that Mayes issued grand jury subpoenas to people connected to Trump’s attempt to find fraud in the 2020 election.
Kern, who is running for Congress in Arizona’s Congressional District 8 to replace outgoing Representative Debbie Lesko amidst a competitive field of primary candidates, began, “What’s so wrong about standing up for the rule of law and our Arizona constitutional principles, and when did that become a crime?”
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Israeli Consul General to the Pacific Southwest Israel Bachar will be addressing the Arizona State Legislature on Wednesday.
Bachar is expected to discuss the ongoing Israel-Hamas War in the joint protocol session, according to a news release. The Israeli-born diplomat is part of the Consulate General in Los Angeles who also operates a consulting firm.
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Arizona Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs addressed possible concerns about lower than requested funding in the spending deal signed by President Joe Biden last week.
Hobbs, as well as Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly, welcomed the news of $650 million being allocated toward the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Shelter and Services Program, The Center Square reported. However, the trio first asked for $752 million to go toward the fund, as it ends up being distributed.
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Arizona State Senator Jake Hoffman (R-Queen Creek) on Thursday announced his candidacy to become a Republican National Committee (RNC) National Committeeman for Arizona, pledging to be a “fearless advocate” for the interests of Arizona Republicans if selected for the party position.
“Today I am proud to announce my candidacy for RNC National Committeeman for Arizona,” wrote Hoffman in a post to the social media platform X. He declared that Americans “feel abandoned, taken advantage of, and stabbed in the back,” as well as “discarded by the political class in both parties.
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Some Arizona leaders are breathing a sigh of relief as the federal government passed funding that will presumably go toward transporting migrants out of border communities or caring for them while there.
There was widespread concern about daily mass migrant street releases starting in April, as federal funding for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Shelter and Services Program was set to expire on April 1, The Center Square previously reported.
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Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes reportedly issued a subpoena to Mike Roman, the opposition researcher who worked former for President Donald Trump and was criminally charged in the Georgia election case against the former president.
Cable news outlet CNN reported Wednesday that Roman is “being subpoenaed by prosecutors” in the “state-level probe” into the former president’s contest of the 2020 election results launched by Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes.
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Maricopa County executive director Zach Schira claimed on Tuesday that recent changes to the state’s elections as a result of a “landmark” election integrity bill that enjoyed overwhelming support in the Arizona Legislature.
Schira told The Arizona Republic that complying with a provision in HB 2785 which requires election workers to count the number of early ballots at each polling location required an average of 30 to 45 minutes at polling locations across the state for the March 19 presidential preference election.
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Scottsdale Unites for Educational Integrity member Jill Dunican was interviewed on The Conservative Circus w/ James T. Harris podcast on Thursday, where she spoke about the organization’s American Pride Library initiative to donate “wholesome” and “patriotic” books to 29 schools in Arizona’s Scottsdale Unified School District.
Scottsdale Unites For Educational Integrity is a group of parents, teachers, administrators, and community members within the Scottsdale Unified School District who advocate for parental rights in education, curriculum transparency, and academic achievement. Jill Dunican is part of the organization’s parent-led launch of The American Pride Library project, which seeks to counter left-leaning ideologies by offering pro-American and age-appropriate books to its district libraries.
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Boston University Professor Ibram Kendi took in $35,000 for a 60-minute speech, according to a recently released contract.
Arizona State University sent the contract to The College Fix on March 20 in response to a public records request filed in October 2023. The university never responded to a November 2023 message asking for an update nor provided any other updates up until last week.
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Students at Arizona State University (ASU) have the ability to enroll in a program that allows them to provide support services to illegal immigrants serviced by a Catholic Charities organization in exchange for school credit.
A university website reveals that any student enrolled in an ASU Health Sciences program and some students from the ASU School of Social Work are eligible to “provide aid to migrants looking for a better life” at Casa Alitas in what the university calls the MILAGRO Collaborative.
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A Phoenix-area parent filed a lawsuit against Creighton Elementary School District on March 19, 2024, for using a dual language program, accusing the district of violating a law that requires students learning English to be taught in English-only classrooms throughout the school day. The lawsuit was part of a broader effort to uphold English as the primary language used in Arizona classrooms.
According to the lawsuit, parent Patricia Pellett, whose “son is a student currently studying at Scottsdale High School,” is suing Creighton Elementary School District for allegedly violating Proposition 203, which Arizona voters approved “by margin of over 60 [percent]” in 2000. The lawsuit states that the “purpose of Proposition 203 was that children should no longer be taught in bilingual or dual language classes, where they are taught part of the day in Spanish. Instead, the purpose of Proposition 203 was that children should be taught the entire school day in English, so that they would quickly become proficient in English.”
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It is “bigotry” to ask a student candidate why she posted “F*** ICE” on her Instagram account, according to one campus leader.
Current University of Arizona student body president Alyssa Sanchez told College Republicans President Ricky Guthridge it was inappropriate for him to question a vice presidential candidate about her immigration views. ICE stands for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
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The new federal budget signed by President Joe Biden on Saturday includes funding to continue providing shelter to illegal immigrants in Arizona, even as many were reducing operations or preparing to close after Republicans defeated a controversial immigration and foreign aid bill.
Lawmakers approved a $1.2 trillion budget to avoid a government shutdown despite opposition in the U.S. House, where the funding bill proposed by Speaker Mike Johnson received the support of 101 Republicans. A total of 112 Republicans and 22 Democrats voted against the spending bill in the House.
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Attorneys for Kari Lake and Mark Finchem filed additional pleadings last week with their Petition for Certiorari at the U.S. Supreme Court, providing new evidence to their plea to the court to reconsider the lower courts’ rulings against their lawsuit to stop the use of voting machine tabulators. The new filings include a Motion to Expedite and declarations from top cybersecurity experts, who provided evidence that “overwhelmingly demonstrates” that the election results in 2020 and 2022 from Maricopa County contained “artificial control over the tabulation of ballots and the election results for the November 2020 election.” Additionally, they asserted that the county thwarted efforts to obtain the new data, which is a crime punishable by up to a year of incarceration.
The appendix to the Petitioners’ Motion to Expedite included 176 pages of new affidavits from Clay Parikh, Benjamin Cotton, and Walter Daugherity. Daugherity, who taught computer science and engineering at both the undergraduate and graduate levels for 37 years and served as a computer consultant to major firms and government agencies, including classified work, said this was his second declaration filed in the case, based on the new information from Maricopa County. That information included system log files from Maricopa County’s electronic voting tabulators in the 2020 election, and according to Parikh, “a copy of Maricopa County’s election systems database and the forensic images of the vote center tabulator memory cards used in the 2020 General Election.”
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State Senate Majority Leader Sonny Borrelli (R-Lake Havasu) and State Senator Wendy Rogers (R-Flagstaff) held a press conference on Wednesday revealing that a cybersecurity expert discovered that voting machine software used in Maricopa County’s elections in 2020 and 2022 was compromised. Borrelli said “there is probable cause” of a crime, and Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell has been notified.
Borrelli said, “A few days ago I received documentation and a sworn declaration by a cybersecurity expert that examined the data from the 2020 and 2022 elections, where it has been determined that the data and the equipment had been altered. The Election Assistance Commission never approved this altered software. In Maricopa County’s previous representation that the election software is EAC certified, including to the Arizona Senate, [that was] false [testimony].”
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Student gun rights would be protected under pending Arizona legislation to legalize campus carry.
State Sen. Wendy Rogers (pictured), a Flagstaff Republican, brought up the recent murder of Georgia college student Laken Riley and problems with illegal immigration as some of the reasons why Senate Bill 1198 is important.
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An educator in Buckeye was arrested on Wednesday was arrested for having an illegal sexual relationship with a minor student, marking the third arrest of a former Maricopa County teacher for sexual offenses against students.
The Buckeye Police Department (BPD) confirmed the arrest Alyssa Todd, who was employed as a coach and teacher at the Odyssey Institute for Advanced and International Studies (OIAIS) High School when police claim she sexually abused a 15-year-old male student.
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The Arizona Supreme Court heard oral arguments last week from the Arizona Republican Party (AZGOP) and opposing litigant Secretary of State (AZSOS) over lower courts awarding sanctions against the AZGOP for filing a “groundless” lawsuit “in bad faith.” The AZGOP sued Arizona officials immediately after the 2020 election for conducting a post-election audit that the AZGOP contended did not comply with the law. The AZGOP said the law required the audit to be conducted at the precinct level, but the audit was conducted at the voting center level according to the state’s Election Procedures Manual (EPG), which the AZGOP claimed contradicted state law.
The AZGOP said A.R.S. § 16-602 requires precinct-level audits. The relevant part of that statute, (B)(1), provides, “ At least two percent of the precincts in that county, or two precincts, whichever is greater, shall be selected at random from a pool consisting of every precinct in that county.” In contrast, the EPM states that in counties which utilize vote centers, vote centers will be used for the audits.
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A bill aiming to crackdown on unlicensed sober living facilities passed out of the Arizona State Senate unanimously, but could face hurdles as it moves forward.
State officials say an increasingly common scam occuring in Arizona involves facilities that brand themselves as sober living facilities but do not offer people any actual help. Many Native Americans in Arizona have been targeted by the homes, and those who go into these homes sometimes end up losing contact with loved ones while there, according to lawmakers.
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A Grand Canyon University student says she has not been allowed to offer her opinions in class while her econ textbook is full of them.
Elizabeth Olson sent excerpts of the book, “Essentials of Economics” by Gregory Mankiw, to The College Fix and a syllabus showing it is being used for assignments and discussions throughout the course at the private Christian Arizona university.
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Former President Donald Trump currently has the support of just under half of Arizona voters and boasts a slight lead over President Joe Biden, according to a poll released Wednesday.
The Emerson College poll found 48 percent of registered voters in Arizona support Trump’s bid to return to the White House, while 44 percent want to see Biden elected to a second term.
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State Senate President Warren Petersen (R-Mesa) and Speaker of the House Ben Toma (R-Peoria) filed a Motion for Leave to File Brief as Amicus Curiae in the prosecution of Cochise County Supervisor Tom Crosby on March 8.
Crosby, along with Cochise County Supervisor Peggy Judd, was indicted by a grand jury in November 2023 for briefly delaying canvassing of the 2022 election in order to investigate the laws that were broken. Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes charged them with the class 5 felonies of Interference With an Election Officer—even though they were in part administering elections themselves as officials—and conspiracy since they both voted together to delay the canvassing.
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A slate of self-described “clean energy” candidates who are reportedly engineering a “takeover” of the Salt River Project (SRP) Board say they want to increase Arizona’s reliance on renewable energy with a focus on “justice, equity and inclusion.”
The SRP Clean Energy Team of candidates for the SRP Board and Council elections, for which voting has commenced will conclude April 2, admits online that its “vision for SRP” involves “a diverse board” that intends to “address voting rights to give all customers a vote” and govern to “ensure justice, equity and inclusion, while prioritizing climate issues and sustainable clean energy” in Arizona’s energy generation.
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SCR 1021, the proposed legislation that aims to give Arizona voters a chance to decide whether criminals who commit child sex trafficking should qualify for life in prison without being eligible for any chance of parole or release, passed in a House vote (31-27) on Monday.
SCR 1021 focuses on traffickers convicted of a class 2 felony and recently passed out of the Senate with the complete support of Republicans.
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SB 1511 would hold insurance companies and healthcare providers who offer gender transition coverage and procedures accountable for providing equal treatment for individuals who choose to detransition back to their birth gender after having had their gender medically altered.
SB 1511 states that those insurers who provided coverage for gender transition “may not deny coverage for gender detransition procedures.” The bill also requires physicians and healthcare institutions performing gender transition services to provide gender detransition procedures.
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State Representative Jevin Hodge (D-District 8) acknowledged on Monday that he was accused of sexual misconduct as a college student in 2015, but claimed police would not hear his side of events.
Hodge acknowledged a Monday article which revealed he was banned from the George Washington University campus after he allegedly tried forcing a woman to have sex with him in 2015, but claimed the encounter ended without any aggressive act.
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Kari Lake and Mark Finchem filed a Petition for Certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday, appealing the dismissal of their lawsuit against Arizona officials to stop the use of electronic voting machine tabulators. The 210-page petition added new allegations stating that the defendants lied to the court and that new evidence had surfaced exposing the vulnerabilities of the machines to bad actors.
“New evidence from other litigation and public-record requests shows defendants made false statements to the district court regarding the safeguards allegedly followed to ensure the accuracy of the vote, on which the district court relied,” the petition asserted.
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Inflation in the Phoenix metropolitan area appears to be calming down, according to new Consumer Price Index data from February.
The CPI saw an uptick of 2.2% year-over-year from last February, and a 0.7% increase between December 2023 and this February. That’s lower than the nationwide year-over-year rate of 3.2%.
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An Arizona election official who resigned from her former position in Cochise County over her refusal to hand count ballots in the 2022 elections is now the statewide election director after a promotion from Secretary of State Adrian Fontes.
Lisa Marra was appointed by Fontes to become the Arizona Elections Director and will oversee equipment testing, candidate filings, election night reporting and canvassing during the 2024 elections.
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Arizona Republican lawmakers are asking Attorney General Kris Mayes to retract a consumer alert on crisis pregnancy centers.
A news release from Mayes’ office on Wednesday said that the centers, which are meant to assist pregnant women as an alternative to Planned Parenthood or other abortion facilities, are masked as “legitimate healthcare clinics” but have the intent of encouraging women not to have abortions.
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Republicans have filed five election integrity lawsuits recently in Arizona, attracting the ire of election fraud denier and progressive attorney Marc Elias.
Elias issued a video last week analyzing some of the lawsuits, which he described as “anti-voting lawsuits” that seek to make it “harder to vote and easier to cheat,” part of a “plan Republicans have to undermine elections and suppress voters.”
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Hundreds turned out Thursday evening in Cave Creek for a “Win the West Rally” at Frontier Town with Kari Lake.
The former gubernatorial candidate discussed how to defeat Democrats this fall, particularly how she intended to beat Representative Ruben Gallego (D-AZ-03) for Arizona’s U.S. Senate seat.
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The Sedona City Council voted on Tuesday to designate an area for homeless Arizonans who live in their vehicles to park overnight.
In a decision proponents presented as a partial solution to the city’s housing crisis, the city council voted to allow residents to park and stay overnight in an unpaved parking area that formerly served Cultural Park, which closed in 2004.
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Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs asked Congress on Wednesday to support a request by Senators Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) and Mark Kelly (D-AZ) to provide more than $750 million in funding to support the southern border.
While Hobbs urged the U.S. Congress to take action on the border, her letter came after she vetoed a Republican-backed bill that would have made it a state crime to enter Arizona outside official ports of entry.
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Officials in Pinal County are reportedly working to address toxic garbage caused by illegal camping by the homeless after the Bureau of Land Management displaced them by closing 1,000 acres of public land in Apache Junction and the Tonto National Forest to create a new recreation area.
Pinal County Supervisor Jeff Serdy confirmed local authorities are left to confront the numbers of “boondockers,” “nomads” and “truly homeless” who were displaced after BLM closed the acreage to build a recreation area in remarks to ABC 15.
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The Maricopa County Sheriff’s race has started heating up, due to former Arizona Department of Public Safety Director Frank Milstead entering the race, where he faces former Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Chief Deputy Jerry Sheridan. Sheridan, who ran unsuccessfully in 2020 for the office, took a break from shooting in the desert with his grandson to be interviewed.
Sheridan grew up in a law enforcement family in Queens, where both his dad and two uncles served as officers with the New York Police Department. He intended to enter college immediately after finishing high school, but his family moved to Arizona, and he admired his father and uncle so much that it wasn’t difficult deciding to go directly into law enforcement instead.
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Three Chilean nationals arrested by the Scottsdale Police Department (SPD) over a string of burglaries in Arizona and California were originally allowed to enter the United States as tourists.
Scottsdale Police Chief Jeff Walther confirmed in a Tuesday press conference that three Chileans the department arrested Sunday entered the country using the U.S. State Department’s visa waiver program, which allows citizens of other countries to remain in the United States for 90 days if the purpose for their travel is business or tourism.
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According to a report on refugee resettlement, Arizona has settled almost 1,800 refugees in the past four months alone.
The 1,764 refugees that have been sent to the state are represented by people from some of the most brutal and war-torn nations on earth.
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A recent risk-based audit of Grand Canyon University conducted by the Arizona State Approving Agency (SAA) for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs did not “show any findings” related to the institution’s doctoral disclosures, which have been targeted by the Biden administration’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) through a $37.7 million fine.
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U.S. Representative Andy Biggs (R-AZ-05) confirmed in a Monday appearance on C-SPAN that he was not in attendance for the joint session of Congress to hear the State of the Union address delivered by President Joe Biden last week, citing his lack of respect for the 81-year-old president.
Asked about the State of the Union address Monday on The Washington Journal, Biggs characterized Biden’s remarks as “a campaign speech” before revealing he watched from his office and did not attend in person.
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U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., now has the backing on Gov. Katie Hobbs and U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly in his bid for U.S. Senate.
The endorsements come after Independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema announced last week she’s retiring at the end of the year and not seeking re-election. If she decided to run, it would have set up an unusual three-way race between two major parties and an incumbent. Sinema left the Democratic Party in December 2022.
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