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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Nearly $4 million in grants to the University of Arizona for LGBTQ+ mental health services is raising concerns among some students.
The UA Southwest Institute for Research on Women recently received $3.7 million in federal grants, according to a university news release late last month. The two grants came from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
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The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on Friday the sentencing of a Phoenix man who led a human smuggling ring which moved illegal immigrants from Central America and held them in Arizona before driving them to destinations across the United States.
Tony Cardenas, a 36-year-old man from Phoenix, was sentenced to four years in prison and three years of supervised release earlier this month for his role as “the leader of a Phoenix-based human-smuggling operation” involving a total of at least 19 criminals, the DOJ announced. Cardenas is of no known relation to U.S. Representative Tony Cardenas (D-CA-29).
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The Maricopa Community Colleges District (MCCCD) library houses an online collection of Critical Race Theory articles, videos, and guiding questions about white privilege, social justice, and racism that are made available for community college students.
The materials are not labeled as Critical Race Theory (CRT) curriculum but as “Cultural Diversity Resources.” In a statement on the Arizona Department of Education’s website explaining Critical Race Theory, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne said, “Critical Race Theory is real, no matter what it’s called.”
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The Republican primary for Maricopa County Sheriff just became a lot more interesting, with a second heavy-hitter entering the race, former Arizona Department of Public Safety (DPS) Director Frank Milstead. Jerry Sheridan, who served as chief deputy under former Sheriff Joe Arpaio, is already in the race, along with several lesser known candidates. Current Democratic Sheriff Paul Penzone is not running for reelection.
Milstead told The Arizona Sun Times that the reason he is running is because as a police officer, he saw how bad the crime is in Maricopa County and felt he needed to do something about it. “I live by the rule that if I’m going to complain about something, I’d better step up and do something about it,” he said.
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Kari Lake’s attorney Bryan Blehm is encountering pushback defending himself against the State Bar of Arizona’s disciplinary proceedings. The Arizona bar is trying to disbar Blehm and two of Lake’s other attorneys for asserting in a brief that it was an undisputed fact that 35,000 ballots were inserted into the 2022 election at Runbeck Election Systems, Maricopa County’s third-party mail-in ballot processing company. The Arizona bar also brought charges against Blehm for a post on X criticizing the Arizona Supreme Court for setting up a disinformation task force that appeared to be directed in part to squelch election challenges from attorneys representing Republicans.
Blehm, who is representing himself, is in the discovery phase of the disciplinary proceedings, where parties provide disclosures to each other and serve interrogatories or subpoenas for information.
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The Saudi Arabian-backed company Fondomonte Arizona is officially no longer using the state’s water resources.
According to the governor’s office, the State Land Department inspected the company’s land leases in western Arizona’s Butler Valley on Feb. 15, which determined that it was no longer irrigating. The company was estimated to have pumped over 5.3 billion gallons of groundwater in 2022, according to Arizona’s Family.
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Following the Wednesday news that an Arizona grand jury issued subpoenas regarding the 2020 election contest, reports now claim prosecutors working under Attorney General Kris Mayes reportedly asked witnesses about former President Donald Trump and his direct involvement in the effort to challenge the election results in Arizona.
Subpoenas were sent on Wednesday by the grand jury investigating the challenge to the 2020 election results in Arizona. Multiple reports now confirm the grand jury targeted those involved with the effort to create an alternative slate of Electoral College electors in a bid to preserve the former president’s legal standing in various court cases.
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Only 322, or 43 percent, of the roughly 750 Arizona school districts and charters surveyed confirmed that they are teaching students about the Holocaust and other genocides.
The completed survey, due to the Arizona Department of Education by January 24, 2024, asked schools to show evidence that students were receiving the required Holocaust education. “We surveyed districts and charters to find out if they are following the law, but more than half did not respond,” said Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne in a statement on Monday. He believes new legislation could help.
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Democratic Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego’s 2024 Senate campaign announced raising $1 million on Thursday since independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema announced her retirement.
Gallego and former Republican gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake have been vying for Sinema’s seat while the senator weighed whether to seek a second term in the upper chamber. In the 24 hours since Sinema declined to run on Tuesday, Gallego attracted nearly 24,000 donations, making it the campaign’s “most prolific fundraising day,” according to a press release obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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The Navajo County Sheriff’s Department (NCSO) confirmed on Monday that five men who allegedly robbed a train in Joseph City are illegal immigrants and are being held on a federal immigration hold.
Law enforcement confirmed in a news release that five men were arrested in Joseph City for robbing a BNSF Railway train as it was parked, explaining police received a call reporting suspicious activity and found the suspects in a vehicle containing tools that could be used to break into a train car.
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Arizona U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake highlighted the previous support by Representative Ruben Gallego (D-AZ-03) for legislation that would have allowed illegal immigrants who entered the United States as children to serve in the U.S. Armed Forces.
Lake noted Gallego’s previous support for the legislation after Tucker Carlson posted a discussion of a bill currently in the U.S. House that would allow illegal immigrants to serve in the military in exchange for an expedited path to citizenship.
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Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs launched a program on Monday aimed at “buying back” medical debt with taxpayer dollars distributed by the federal government.
The program is called “Affordable Arizona: Tackling Medical Debt for Working Families” and it is a public-private partnership between the state of Arizona and RIP Medical Debt, a national nonprofit.
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Arizona Independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema announced Tuesday not running for 2024 reelection.
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A memorandum of understanding (MAU) between the Arizona Legislature and Runbeck Election Services on Monday, with Representative Alex Kolodin (R-Scottsdale) and Senator Wendy Rogers (R-Flagstaff) declaring it will significantly strengthen election integrity.
The legislature and Runbeck, which processes the mail-in ballots for Maricopa County, reached four key areas of agreement that include the release of some 2022 election video, and the lawmakers explained in a press release that the MAU marks “the culmination of an extensive examination of the company’s election processes.”
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Arizona U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake has endorsed State Representative Justin Heap’s (R-Mesa) campaign for Maricopa County Recorder.
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The Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG) announced last week the federal government awarded over $40 million to supplement programs supporting the homeless. The federal money was announced as state spending on homelessness reportedly nears $1 billion per year.
MAG announced in a press release that “more than $46.5 million in federal funding” will be provided by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to “help fund dozens of local homelessness programs.” The figure is also $10 million higher than the previous year’s federal commitment, MAG explained.
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Both sides are calling a federal district court’s ruling a win, which upheld most of two new Arizona election integrity laws. On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton struck down parts of HB 2492, which requires proof of citizenship in order to register to vote, and HB 2243, which requires quarterly reporting of the number of Arizona voters who did not list their citizenship status.
State Senator Jake Hoffman (R-Queen Creek), the primary sponsor of both bills, expressed his disappointment to The Arizona Sun Times. “Bolton’s ruling is potentially the most intellectually dishonest, schizophrenic legal determination in the last half century. Bolton has shown a clear disdain for legislative authority, while simultaneously weaponizing the court against common sense. The idea that a person wouldn’t need to produce documentary proof of citizenship to vote in U.S. elections is lunacy. I can only hope that this case ultimately works its way to the U.S. Supreme Court where there still remains a semblance of sanity thanks to President Trump’s justices and the great Clarence Thomas.”
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Arizona Congressman David Schweikert is introducing legislation on Friday that would loosen regulations on the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Nonprofit Security Grant Program to allow for places of worship to get more protection.
The House bill dubbed the “Warranting of Religious Spaces to Handle Increased Protection (WORSHIP) Act” would allow an increase from 50% to 75% to use the grant funds for personnel-related expenses and allow the hiring of “public safety personnel” to be permitted under the grant as part of “covered expenses.”
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A new report from the Common Sense Institute of Arizona determines that spending on homelessness in the Grand Canyon State is roughly $1 billion.
The think tank analyzed data from both the public and private sectors to see how much was going toward the issue, and the vast majority of the spending, $678-807 million, was directed toward Maricopa County in recent years.
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Arizona Democratic Senate candidate Ruben Gallego submitted his petition to get on the Democratic primary ballot on Monday morning.
Gallego, who’s a congressman representing Arizona’s 3rd Congressional District, touted that his campaign did not use paid canvassers, and only “grassroots” efforts to get 14,186 signatures, which is more than double the 6,556 minimum.
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The Arizona State Legislature has approved SB 1231, known as the Arizona Border Invasion Act.
Senate Republicans celebrated the Legislature’s passage of the bill meant to “protect Arizona citizens and communities from the crime and security threats associated with the current border invasion caused by the Biden Administration’s refusal to enforce immigration laws.”
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State Representative Justin Heap (R-Mesa) announced at the State Capitol during a press conference on Wednesday that he will enter the Republican primary race for Maricopa County Recorder, challenging incumbent Stephen Richer.
Richer has come under extensive criticism for maintaining that there were only minor problems during the 2022 election, fighting back through the courts against attempts to obtain public records about the election and other related election integrity lawsuits.
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Former GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is leading both Representative Ruben Gallego (D-AZ-03) and Senator Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) in the 2024 Arizona U.S. Senate race, according to a new telephone and online survey conducted by Rasmussen Reports and The Bull Moose Project.
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The Arizona Republican Party (AZGOP) on Tuesday reported that it raised nearly $250,000 in the 30 days after Gina Swoboda’s election as the party’s new chair.
A post by the AZGOP to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, attributed the fundraising haul to Swoboda, writing that the party chair raised nearly a quarter of a million “in her first 30 days on the job.”
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Arizona could have six presidential candidates on the ballot in November after a super PAC supporting Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claims to have obtained enough signatures for the independent presidential candidate to qualify.
The American Values 24 super PAC confirmed on Tuesday it “met the signature requirements” for Kennedy to get “on the ballot in Arizona and Georgia.”
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Cochise County Supervisors Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd are fighting back against Attorney General Kris Mayes’ prosecution of them for voting to delay certification of the 2022 election by three days. The pair filed motions last week requesting that the case be dismissed and challenging the grand jury’s finding of probable cause against them.
In Crosby’s Motion to Dismiss, which Judd joined later, Crosby’s attorney Dennis Wilenchik said, “The criminal statute involved is vague and ambiguous and overbroad, and unconstitutional as applied here to a member of a Board of Supervisors of a County voting in his official capacity. The case was brought purely for political purposes by the Attorney General and is an egregious abuse of her powers.”
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The City of Phoenix last Wednesday approved just over $1 million to Central Arizona Shelter Services (CASS), which operates the city’s largest homeless shelter.
Phoenix made the payment using leftover federal funds originally earmarked for COVID-19 recovery, but CASS warned the organization still has a shortfall of around $500,000 that could threaten its ability to provide shelter services, explaining that it filed three state grant requests that were denied by Arizona.
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Although Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs could end up making the final call of the legislation, making some fentanyl-related deaths a felony murder charge is one step closer to becoming law in Arizona.
The bill passed the Senate 18-10-2, with Democratic Sens. Christine Marsh and Catherine Miranda voting in favor of the legislation on Thursday.
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A bill to ban the sale of lab-grown meat to consumers, even for consumption by animals, narrowly passed the Arizona State House on Thursday.
HB 2121 by Representative David Marshall (R-Snowflake) passed the Arizona House with 31 votes in favor and 28 votes against, with one lawmaker absent. If passed by the Arizona Senate and signed into law by Governor Katie Hobbs, the legislation would ban any “cell-cultured animal product” from being sold to Arizona consumers for “human or animal consumption.”
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Opposition is increasing to the judges assigned to handle election related lawsuits in Arizona, as their biases are being revealed. After Arizona Senate Majority leader Warren Petersen (R-Mesa) and House Speaker Ben Toma (R-Peoria) requested that Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Tim Ryan recuse himself from their lawsuit challenging the state’s Election Procedures Manual (EPM) because of his progressive activist older brother’s posts on X, Ryan voluntarily recused himself.
The Arizona State Senate Republican Caucus issued an announcement praising the recusal. “His brother, Tom Ryan, is a liberal attorney who plagues social media with his contempt for the Republican-controlled Arizona Legislature with an incessant number of juvenile posts,” the statement said. “There is no way anyone who has witnessed the antics of Judge Ryan’s brother, which included case-specific criticisms and commentary, can credibly believe that Judge Ryan could give the Legislature a fair trial.”
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The Scottsdale City Council (SCC) has been approving plans to eliminate lanes on roads in the city and replace them with bicycle lanes, known as “road diets.” This is causing a wave of concern from Scottsdale residents over the increasing traffic congestion. A road diet that was approved last March particularly angered residents since it was located in the city’s popular Old Town entertainment district. Mason Gates, one of the candidates running for the SCC this year, has made opposition to them a priority.
Gates spoke at an SCC meeting on February 20 against road diets. He said he had a discussion with a business owner located near the Old Town road diet, who said he was not consulted in preliminary talks before the SCC decided to construct a road diet there. Protect Scottsdale reported that 23 business owners in the vicinity signed a petition opposing the road diet, but their concerns were dismissed. According to Gates, Rich Bonura, the owner of BEG Bakery, told him “he often sees buses, semi-trucks, and other vehicles parked in the bike lane that is intended for cyclists. This can pose a grave danger for cyclists who need to avoid parked vehicles by swerving into traffic lanes where drivers may not expect to see them.”
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A bill aimed at lowering gas prices by allowing more types of gasoline to be sold in Arizona passed the Arizona State Senate on Thursday.
In Maricopa County, environmental regulations allow for only two blends of gas to be sold to consumers, one winter blend and one summer blend, referred to as Cleaner Burning Gasoline, according to a news release.
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Kari Lake holds a commanding, 33-point lead in the race to secure the Arizona Republican Party (AZGOP) nomination to run for U.S. Senate, according to a poll released Wednesday.
Pollsters additionally found Lake statistically tied with Representative Ruben Gallego (D-AZ-03), who is poised to secure the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate, when Senator Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) was included in the survey.
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Some Republicans on the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) are resisting calls to stop Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) plans by the utilities they regulate, and the controversy has extended to the upcoming fall election.
Three of the five seats are up for election: two are wide open, and the third is held by Commissioner Lea Márquez Peterson, who is seeking reelection. While two new Republican candidates appear to be running as a slate with Márquez Peterson, newcomer Christy Kelly is running alone on a platform that emphasizes stopping ESG, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), and the Green New Deal.
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An Arizona affiliate of Catholic Charities USA has reportedly notified 30 of its employees that they will be terminated on March 30 after Republicans in the U.S. Senate successfully blocked a controversial border bill.
News that Catholic Community Services (CCS) of Southern Arizona now plans to reduce its apparent “temporary sheltering and transportation assistance” of illegal immigrants who were released into the United States by government officials surfaced through a memorandum written by Pima County Administrator Jan Lesher to the Board of Supervisors on February 16.
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Arizona House Speaker Ben Toma (R-Peoria) announced on Monday an effort to hold a public referendum for Arizona voters to decide whether to eliminate the possibility for illegal immigrants to receive welfare benefits from the state and to strength the E-Verify system used to prevent companies from employing those in the country unlawfully.
In a speech outside the Arizona State Capitol on Monday, Toma called his Protecting Arizona Against Illegal Immigration Act “one of the toughest anti-immigration laws ever written” and declared, “Our message to illegal immigrants is simple: If you want to take advantage of Americans, go somewhere else.”
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The Goldwater Institute (GI) sued the U.S. Department of Education last week over fining Grand Canyon University (GCU) almost $40 million.
The fine was purportedly for “insufficiently inform[ing] PhD students that they may have to take continuing courses while completing their doctoral dissertations,” GI said in a press release. GI noted that the $37 million fine against the Christian university “is 10 times bigger than penalties the Education Department assessed against Penn State and Michigan State for covering up the sexual crimes of Jerry Sandusky and Larry Nassar.”
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A couple of Arizona’s largest school districts have been rocked with scandals lately, mainly over administrations trying to implement woke agendas.
However, the Deer Valley Unified School District (DVUSD), located in northwest Phoenix and surrounding cities, has escaped much of the controversy. Paul Carver, who sits on the governing board, said he believes it is because his district stresses transparency and teamwork. He said the superintendent has regular interfaith meetings, which have been transferred to Zoom since COVID-19, and the superintendent and many board members try to include everyone regardless of demographics.
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A new summary by the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) found that 186 voter registrants have been “involuntarily purged” for citizenship issues in Pima County, Arizona, since 2021.
The PILF summary, citing records released by Pima County election officials, found that seven individuals within the group of 186 canceled voter registrations had a history of casting ballots across two federal and local elections.
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An Arizona bill that would void the results of low turnout elections and reschedule them to coincide with statewide or federal races advanced past the Senate Committee on Elections and will now go to a full vote in the Arizona Senate, so long as the legislation is deemed constitutional by the Rules Committee.
The bill, SB 1131, would nullify the results of a local election that does not coincide with a statewide or federal election if less than 25 percent of possible voters turn out to vote.
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Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs will once again have a cottage food bill on her desk this year, and she seems bound to sign it this time around.
House Bill 2042, sponsored by State Rep. Travis Grantham, R-Gilbert, passed the House of Representatives unanimously on Thursday, and it was then transmitted to the State Senate for a vote.
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The Arizona House Rules Committee is scheduled to discuss legislation on Monday that would prevent cities from decreasing funding to their local police departments.
Rep. David Marshall, R-Snowflake, is the sponsor of House Bill 2120, and it has already passed the House Military Affairs & Public Safety committee in an 8-7 party-line vote this past Monday.
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Abe Hamadeh continues his election litigation challenging his 280-vote loss to Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes, including filing a Petition for Writ of Quo Warranto to remove Mayes from office. This past week, he filed a response to the Arizona officials’ Motions to Dismiss that lawsuit.
Represented by Ryan Heath of Heath Law, Hamadeh laid out the status of the case in the opening of his 43-page Response. “Respondent Kris Mays, Defendant Fontes, and the Maricopa County Defendants seek to deny Petitioner and many other voters their fundamental rights guaranteed by the Arizona Constitution for the sake of expediency,” he said. “The Maricopa County Defendants also seek to avoid accountability for their failures, which plausibly resulted in thousands (and likely hundreds of thousands) of illegal votes affecting the results of the 2022 General Election for the office of Attorney General (the ‘Contested Race’). Due to Maricopa County officials’ lack of candor, the circumstances permitting Petitioner to bring this action were not known — and could not have been known — until more than half a year after the official canvass was taken for the Contested Race.’
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Representative Debbie Lesko (R-AZ-08), who recently announced she will retire from the U.S. Congress at the end of her term, is now reportedly seeking election to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors.
Multiple reports reveal Lesko announced her candidacy for the District 4 seat on the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors within hours of the Thursday announcement when Supervisor Clint Hickman confirmed he will not seek another term in office.
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The Arizona House Rules Committee is scheduled to discuss legislation on Monday that would prevent cities from decreasing funding to their local police departments.
Rep. David Marshall, R-Snowflake, is the sponsor of House Bill 2120, and it has already passed the House Military Affairs & Public Safety committee in an 8-7 party-line vote this past Monday.
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Maricopa County Supervisor Clint Hickman will not be seeking re-election.
In a statement, Hickman thanked his constituents in the West Valley.
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The Arizona Free Enterprise Club (AFEC) filed a lawsuit last week against Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, accusing him of making illegal changes to the state’s Election Procedures Manual (EPM). Represented by the America First Policy Institute, Davillier Law Group, and Grand Canyon Legal Center, AFEC said the revisions improperly place protected political speech at risk of criminal prosecution and have an unconstitutional chilling effect on protected political speech.
“Secretary Fontes has produced one of the most radical elections procedures manuals in our state’s history,” said Scot Mussi, AFEC’s president. “If the illegal provisions of this manual are allowed to stand, the integrity and transparency of state elections would continue to dissipate at the hands of leftwing ideologues. We hope the court agrees with our arguments and forces the Secretary to adhere to state law.”
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