Republican Abe Hamadeh shared Thursday that Maricopa County had allegedly delayed his team’s efforts to inspect the County’s adjudication log from the 2022 election following a public records request.
“Maricopa County told my team that they were available for inspections this week. After we arrived yesterday morning the County kicked us out after just one hour. Maricopa County continues to obstruct and conceal – my team is prepared for litigation,” tweeted Hamadeh.
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Former Arizona state legislator Paul Boyer announced this week that he is running for mayor of Glendale. The current mayor, Republican Jerry Weiers, assumed that office in 2013 after serving eight years in the Arizona House.
Boyer submitted an op-ed to the Daily Independent on Monday explaining his decision. He criticized the legislature for attempting to pass laws that would stop cities and towns from taking certain actions.
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Arizona State Senate President Warren Petersen (R-Mesa) and House Speaker (R-Peoria) sent a letter to Governor Katie Hobbs Monday, outlining their concerns with the Elections Task Force (ETF) created through Executive Order 2023-03.
“We agree that election reform is necessary. But we question whether your unilateral decision to appoint a task force and direct it to address this subject of paramount and statewide importance is an appropriate exercise of your authority,” according to the letter.
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The Arizona State Senate has officially passed Senate Concurrent Resolution (SCR) 1009, sponsored by Sen. Ken Bennett (R-Prescott), which lifts the spending limits placed on public schools by the aggregate expenditure limit. This lifting will allow schools to spend a nearly $1.4 billion surplus in allocated funds.
“Senate Republicans have an uninterrupted history of always allowing our K-12 public schools to spend the money appropriated to them by the Legislature, and this year is no different,” said Bennett. “By far, our public education system receives the most money annually from our state budget.”
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Republican Abe Hamadeh is continuing his attempt at a new trial in his election challenge, alleging he was denied due process during his first court appearance.
“Judges, not executive branch nor election officials, are the arbiters of justice. After all, if this — the closest statewide office election in Arizona history — is not worth an exacting review, whatever could be,” Hamadeh tweeted. “Without honest and transparent elections, nothing else matters.”
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The Arizona State Senate Committee on Elections, chaired by Sen. Wendy Rogers (R-Flagstaff), convened Monday to discuss several proposed Senate Bills (SB) to strengthen Arizona’s Elections. One of those, SB 1265, sponsored by Sen. Anthony Kern (R-Glendale), presumptively restricts the implementation of a ranked choice voting (RCV) system in Arizona.
“To me, there enough questions out there, as you guys [the committee] have probably heard for the last three or four hours, on our current elections system without muddying the waters even more with a ranked choice voting,” said Kern while speaking at the meeting.
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Abe Hamadeh’s election challenge for attorney general continues to wind its way through the court system, with his attorneys filing a reply in Mohave County Superior Court supporting their motion for a new trial on Monday. The Consolidated Reply in Support of Plaintiffs’ Motion for a New Trial addressed the claims brought up in the response from defendant Kris Mayes, who was declared the winner in the race. The lawsuit, which included the Republican National Committee and Republican Jeanne Kentch of Mohave County as plaintiffs, was also filed against Secretary of State Adrian Fontes.
Hamadeh’s reply brief, led by former Attorney General Election Integrity Unit civil attorney Jen Wright, emphasized the race’s closeness as a reason for a do-over.
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What’s portrayed on national television about large family groups with small children claiming asylum at the southern border isn’t what’s happening in the Tucson Sector of Arizona, Border Patrol Chief John Modlin testified on Tuesday before the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.
“The most notable factor that sets Tucson apart from the rest of the southwest border is the migrant demographic. It is not what you see on the news,” he said.
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Former GOP Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is heading this week to her home state of Iowa, where she plans to attend two upcoming political events and talk about her signature issue.
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Three new Senate Bills (SB) have been introduced between State Senators Sine Kerr (R-Buckeye) and Janae Shamp (R-Suprise), which aim to provide more protections to children and victims of abuse. Kayleigh Kozak, the Arizonan behind the state’s new “Kayleigh’s Law,” called on residents to support these bills’ passage.
“Prioritize protecting children, victims and our communities,” Kozak shared. “Attend the Arizona State Senate this Thursday, February 9th at 8 am in Senate Hearing Room 1. Sign up to speak or simply show up.
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As a former law enforcement officer from Southern Arizona, I have seen first-hand the direct impact failed border policies have on local communities and police departments.
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As many Arizonans prepare for the first Super Bowl in the state since 2015, Attorney General Kris Mayes offers a warning about sports betting scams.
“While many Arizonans participate in legal sports betting, it is important to remember there are scammers out there trying to intercept your money and your personal information,” Mayes said. “If you bet on the Super Bowl, or any sporting event, make sure you are gambling on sports and not on whether an illegal sportsbook will steal your winnings.”
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One of Arizona’s newest State Senators, Janae Shamp (R-Suprise), has a bill headed to the Senate Health & Human Services committee Tuesday that would require employees in the state to have the opportunity to opt out of a vaccine mandate. Shamp, a former operating room nurse, said this bill would be significant for health care professionals.
“It’s sickening that many healthcare workers, like myself, lost our jobs because we refused to take the jab,” said Senator Shamp. “The COVID-19 vaccine has not been on the market long enough to determine if there is a correlation between its ingredients and medical issues a number of patients are now experiencing after getting the shot. We already have a dire shortage of medical professionals within Arizona, and these mandates have only exacerbated the crisis.”
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Over a dozen activists groups have asked for an ethics probe into allegations Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema is using her staff for personal errands other tasks outside of their official duties.
The request was filed Thursday with the Senate Ethics Committee, and some of the groups are from Sinema’s home state of Arizona, according to The Hill newspaper.
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A U.S. Senator has called on the nation’s top tech companies to break up with the popular short-form video service TikTok.
U.S. Senator Michael Bennet, D-Colorado, asked Apple CEO Tim Cook and Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai to remove TikTok from the company app stores immediately over national security concerns.
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The Arizona House Ways and Means Committee voted to move forward a bill that would scrap the rent tax at the city, town and county levels.
If enacted, House Bill 2067 would not allow someone to face a tax if they’re leasing property for residential purposes, starting on Jan. 1, 2024.
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Arizona State University’s Barrett Honors College is sponsoring a “Health, Wealth & Happiness” panel discussion on February 8 featuring Rich Dad Poor Dad bestselling author Robert Kiyosaki, conservative leaders Dennis Prager and Charlie Kirk, and wellness expert Dr. Radha Gopalan. Most of the faculty at Barrett — 37 of 47 members as of February 2 — denounced Kiyosaki, Prager, and Kirk in a February 1 letter addressed to the dean. Kiyosaki spoke to The Arizona Sun Times about the criticism.
“If they picket me, this won’t be the first time I’ve been received like this,” he said. Kiyosaki served in the Marines as a gunship pilot during the Vietnam War, and when he returned home, protesters targeted him and his fellow Marines and spit on them. Kiyosaki has written over 26 books related to finance, and Rich Dad Poor Dad is the best-selling personal financial book of all time.
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An Arizona State Senate resolution would fundamentally change how initiatives would make it to the ballot.
SCR1015 would require 10% of voters in each legislative district to sign onto a petition to get a statewide measure proposition on the general election ballot, as opposed to the 10% statewide that’s currently needed.
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Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) refused to answer a question regarding her stance on the death penalty while speaking with reporters.
“I don’t necessarily think that’s relevant here. We just want to make sure we’re studying the practices,” Hobbs said in response to a reporter’s question.
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State Senate President Warren Petersen (R-Mesa) announced Thursday that there would be a new bipartisan Director Nominations Committee in the Senate to make decisions regarding Governor Katie Hobbs’s Executive Appointments.
“Agency directors have a tremendous responsibility to administer necessary government functions as directed by state law, without attempting to legislate from the executive branch or expanding the reach of big government,” said State Sen. Jake Hoffman (R-Queen Creek), who is appointed to lead the new committee.
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An Arizona State University (ASU) student who serves as vice chair of the East Valley Young Republicans discovered a urinal in a women’s restroom and asserted ASU is “putting men’s urinals in the women’s restroom!”
Rachel Hope tweeted on Jan. 26, “ASU caves to the far left by putting men’s urinals in the women’s restroom!! 🤢🤡.” Along with the tweet she displayed a video of entering a women’s restroom and encountering a urinal inside a stall next to a toilet.
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Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels spoke at the US House Judiciary Committee’s Wednesday hearing on the southern border crisis, speaking on how his county has been affected by the ongoing issue.
“Our southern border, against all public comfort statements out of Washington D.C., is in the worst shape I have ever seen it,” Dannels said. “Communities have been neglected and abandoned, relying on our own local and state resources to address a border that is in crisis mode.”
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The Republican Legislative Victory Fund (RLVF), a PAC supporting moderate Republicans, posted its end-of-year campaign finance report recently, and of $1.8 million raised, only about $700,000 was spent on independent expenditures (IEs) to support candidates. Almost all of that was spent during the last 15 days of the general election, which Arizona Free Enterprise Club President Scot Mussi told The Arizona Sun Times was well after many of the strongest attacks came against Republican candidates in September.
“I am hearing Camelback Strategies and others associated with the 2022 Victory Fund are trying to take credit for ‘saving’ the majorities at the legislature,” Mussi said. “If anything, their actions contributed to the slim majorities. They did nothing to help Michelle Pena in LD 23, which if she didn’t win we wouldn’t even have a majority.”
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A group of Republican state lawmakers joined in sending a letter to the Scottsdale Unified School District (SUSD) Governing Board calling for the resignation of Superintendent Scott Menzel after racist comments about white people he made in 2019 were unearthed by the media.
“The racist words and sentiments Menzel publicly expressed have no place in Scottsdale schools. Superintendent Menzel was hired and trusted to foster a culture of mutual respect among students, parents, and teachers. However, his racist words prove that he is incapable of doing that job,” according to the legislators.
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Arizonan Bramley Paulin has achieved victory in a free-speech lawsuit against the City of Phoenix which allowed the National Football League (NFL) and Arizona Super Bowl Host Committee (ASBHC) to decide what signs residents could or could not display in a part of the City.
“This ruling is a huge victory for Bramley’s rights. Thanks to today’s order, Bramley will be able to exercise his free speech rights without unconstitutional restrictions on what he can and cannot say,” said Goldwater Institute Staff Attorney John Thorpe in a statement emailed to The Arizona Sun Times.
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The America Project (TAP) held a conference on border security Saturday in Phoenix at the Hershberger Theater. The Border 911 event featured leading experts on human trafficking, cartels, and drugs coming over the border, including former acting ICE Director Tom Homan, who also served as a Border Patrol agent in Phoenix.
Homan said, “Under President Trump, we had the most secure border in my lifetime.” He discussed all the progress Trump made, such as getting countries to accept illegal immigrants back, Title 42 restrictions, and implementing the Remain in Mexico program.
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Republican Arizona state legislators of the House and Senate are moving forward with their previously proposed continuation budget, referred to as a “skinny budget,” which members call the financially responsible move to ensure state entities are funded and continue without issue.
“This is a budget that recognizes the political and economic realities in our state right now. It’s a responsible plan based on the budget funding approved last session with bipartisan support. It fully funds our state’s obligations and ensures that essential functions of state government will continue without interruption,” said State Representative David Livingston (R-Peoria).
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As six states wait for California to join its Colorado River Basin water use agreement, Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema called on the state to be willing to seal the deal.
In a letter to the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation on Tuesday, Arizona, Nevada, Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado all agreed to work toward finding the best way to distribute the water source, which is facing drought conditions, but California was the missing signature.
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Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) sent a letter to Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) Monday, requesting she investigates Republican Kari Lake for allegedly violating state law by sharing images of voter signatures on social media. Tim LaSota, one of Lake’s attorneys, accused Fontes of selectively quoting the law to defame Lake.
“This is becoming all too common in politics – another attempt to weaponize the justice system with a phony allegation against a Republican. Adrian Fontes selectively quotes the statute in an attempt to distort the law and smear Kari Lake in the process. Kris Mayes should immediately say that she will have no part in this shameful, disgusting effort,” LaSota said in a statement emailed to The Arizona Sun Times.
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Arizona State Senate President Warren Petersen (R-Mesa) aims to shorten the administrative approval process, which may speed up the rate of home building in the state.
“20 years ago, the homebuilding process from start to finish would take approximately six months. Today, that process can take up to four years,” said Petersen. “I believe this action will soon provide relief for our citizens that are hurting from sky high housing prices by quickly increasing supply. I’m thankful for the collaboration on this bill from the League of Arizona Cities and Towns to help ensure our communities will have the tools they need to increase the number of homes being built so that our hardworking citizens are able to secure affordable housing in a timely matter, while also protecting our groundwater.”
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The Arizona Senate’s Election Committee continued the second part of a hearing on Monday that began last week, featuring testimony from election integrity proponents. Shelby Busch, the co-founder of We the People AZ, and Heather Honey of Verify Vote, went over five areas where their team found apparent law violations by Maricopa County in the 2022 election.
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The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office (MCAO) announced Monday that two Phoenix Police officers, Nicholas Beck and Eddie Becerra, would not be charged for excessive use of force. In response, Phoenix Police Department Interim Chief Michael Sullivan said he did his part by giving the MCAO all the evidence for the case.
“The case stems from a use of force incident on October 27, 2022, that occurred after a subject shot at Officer Becerra and Officer Nicholas Beck,” Sullivan said in a statement emailed to The Arizona Sun Times. “It is my responsibility to ensure an appropriate investigation is conducted when there is reason to believe a crime has been committed. That was done in this case and the investigation was turned over to MCAO for the criminal justice process to continue.”
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Former Arizona State University student Tim Tizon, being represented by the Chicago-based Liberty Justice Center, filed an appeal in the State of Arizona v. Tizon case Thursday after being convicted for trespassing while handing out copies of the Constitution on the ASU campus. Reilly Stephens, a staff attorney at the LJC, told The Arizona Sun Times this appeal is all about protecting First Amendment Rights.
“For us [the LJC], the core idea here is pretty straightforward. If the First Amendment’s going to mean anything, it means that at the public spaces of a public university, a student should not be arrested for handing out copies of the constitution,” said Stephens via the phone. “What could be a more basic free speech principle than that?”
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At a standing-room-only event Sunday, Kari Lake signaled she is not giving up her legal battle to install her as the rightful Arizona governor instead of Democrat Katie Hobbs. Lake held a Save Arizona rally at Orange Tree Golf Club in Scottsdale with over a thousand in attendance, assuring her supporters she intended to fight until the “victorious end.” The mainstream media recently ran stories claiming Lake was switching her focus to running against Senator Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ).
Lake focused her entire speech on election fraud. “They thought they could steal it and we would just go away,” she said to thunderous applause. “We had the greatest candidates in the country here in Arizona. We were running against some of the worst candidates in the history of Arizona. It didn’t matter if they rolled out brain-dead candidates,” she said, alluding to election fraud ensuring the Democrats’ victories. “The fix was in. They knew they didn’t have to campaign.”
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Recognizing Arizona’s growing semiconductor sector, North America’s “premier microelectronics exhibition and conference” is coming to town.
SEMI, an industry association with members across the electronics manufacturing and design supply chain, announced Tuesday it would hold SEMICON West 2025 in Phoenix after holding the conference in San Francisco for the last five decades.
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State House Speaker Ben Toma (R-Peoria) and Senate President Warren Petersen (R-Mesa) sent a request to Gov. Katie Hobbs Thursday, requesting she transfers the remainder of her inaugural fund to the state for general use.
“We appreciate your commitment to transparency in releasing the list of 120 donors and the amounts of each donation to the ‘Katie Hobbs Inaugural Fund,'” the legislators wrote. “We urge you to follow in your predecessors’ footsteps and transfer any monies left over in the Inaugural Fund to the Protocol Fund.”
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Arizona State University (ASU) student Tim Tizon was convicted in October of criminal trespassing in the third degree for handing out copies of the U.S. Constitution on the school’s campus. University Lakes Justice of the Peace Tyler Kissell, a progressive, conducted the trial. The Liberty Justice Center is now representing Tizon with an appeal, which was filed on Thursday.
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A jury convicted Arizona Oath Keeper Edward Vallejo of seditious conspiracy and other charges on Monday for his involvement with the protest on January 6, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol. Three other Oath Keepers were also convicted of that and other lesser offenses. The 63-year-old Army veteran’s defense attorney, Matthew Peed, said he plans to appeal.
“Ed brought 30 days of food with him, not just for himself but for a group, and he believed he was going to a campground where he would set up a food kitchen and cook for protesters,” Peed described Vallejo’s role during opening statements. “And it would be kind of a, kind of like a festival.”
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The Arizona State Senate and House leaders, Sen. Warren Petersen (R-Mesa) and Rep. Ben Toma (R-Peoria), filed an amici curiae brief, known as a friend of the court brief, weighing in on Republican Abe Hamadeh’s request for a new trial in his election challenge.
“Our system of government depends on the accurate tabulation of every legal vote. This imperative does not lapse on Inauguration Day; it imparts to the courts an enduring obligation to guarantee a full and fair adjudication of every bona fide dispute that may be material to the determination of an election,” according to the brief.
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The Arizona Freedom Caucus (AFC) announced it would take a stand against lifting the highly contested aggregate expenditure limit (AEL), which puts a cap on public school spending unless it comes with systemic reform.
“Fiscal responsibility is a foundational tenant of good governance, and the legislature has a fiduciary duty to our constituents to ensure that their tax dollars are spent as efficiently and responsibly as possible. Unfortunately, despite years of record high education funding from legislative Republicans, government-run school districts continue to increase class sizes, strip teachers of critically needed classroom resources, and force feed a far-left worldview on children,” according to the AFC.
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Kari Lake’s election lawsuit contesting her loss to Democrat Katie Hobbs in the gubernatorial race is at the Arizona Court of Appeals after being dismissed by the trial court judge. Lake filed a reply on Tuesday to the responses from defendants Maricopa County and then-Secretary of State Hobbs.
The reply brief began, “Defendants ignore the trial court’s holdings, misstate the law, misstate material facts, and — unable to get their stories straight — contradict each other.”
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PHOENIX, Arizona – Republican members of the state legislature gathered outside the state capitol to discuss the ongoing crisis caused by conditions at the southern border and how they plan to address it in the coming session. State Rep. Steve Montenegro (R-Avondale) began the meeting by addressing the fentanyl flowing into the country across the border.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is now a public health crisis, and we need to take swift action to deal with what is happening, to combat it,” Montenegro said. “The legislature is focused on empowering law enforcement to stop border crimes by directing resources, forming task forces, and applying pressure on those who are abetting this crisis and denying the disastrous effects it has on our communities.”
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One of Arizona’s newest Republican State Representatives, Rachel Jones (R-Tucson), introduced a new bill that would prevent a Secretary of State from certifying an election in which they participated.
“So, I think it is pretty clear what the intent of this bill is. It is basically saying if a current Secretary of State is running for another office, such as happened in the 2022 election with Katie Hobbs running for governor, this is just getting rid of any potential conflicts of interests with that individual,” Jones said while introducing her bill to the House Municipal Oversight and Elections Committee.
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The Phoenix Police Department (PPD) proposed a new limit of force policy focusing on de-escalation, which it intends to adopt after seeking public comment. The public can comment on the proposed changes through January 31.
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Newly Elected State Rep. Matt Gress (R-Maricopa), Chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Budgetary Funding Formulas, announced a hearing for Thursday to review the public school spending cap created by the aggregate expenditure limit (AEL).
“The purpose of this committee hearing is to ensure the record investments we’ve made in K-12 education over the last eight years are effectively and responsibly spent so that we can properly invest in our state’s future leaders,” said Gress.
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Social media giant Meta announced Wednesday that it would reinstate former President Donald Trump\’s accounts on both Facebook and Instagram. The former president was suspended from both platforms in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2022, Capitol Riot. Other social media platforms such as Twitter acted likewise, prompting Trump to create Truth Social, a digital platform similar to Twitter that practiced looser content moderation than its competitors.
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Amid allegations that Arizona Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs withheld evidence last year as secretary of state during an election trial regarding the state attorney general race, new Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes is shifting the focus of the AG’s election integrity unit to voter suppression.
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The election committee of the Arizona Senate held a hearing on Monday featuring the results of an investigation into Maricopa County’s 2022 midterm election conducted by the election integrity group We the People AZ (WPAZ). Commissioned by outgoing Senate President Karen Fann (R-Prescott), the group submitted public records requests to Maricopa County Elections Department to obtain the data. The leader of WPAZ, Shelby Busch, testified to the committee chaired by State Senator Wendy Rogers (R-Flagstaff) that 464,926 ballots fed into tabulators on Election Day in Maricopa County, 217,305 were rejected, which is nearly a 50 percent failure rate.
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The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) announced Friday that it had made multiple discoveries of suspected fentanyl pills being smuggled by newly booked inmates into the Intake, Transfer, and Release Facility (ITRF).
“This week alone MCSO detention officers have seized approximately 260 pills in the jail system, suspected to be fentanyl and pending lab analysis. The seizures were a compilation of three unique incidents,” according to the office.
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State Senate Republicans have introduced two bills that target Arizona’s grocery and rental taxes to give local families a financial break. Kim Quintero, the spokeswoman for the Senate Republican Caucus, told The Arizona Sun Times that it would be unwise for Governor Katie Hobbs (D) to veto bills like these should they pass the legislature.
“It would not be wise of the Governor to veto the food tax bill, as this will provide immediate inflation relief to those living paycheck to paycheck, and it’s something that resonates with a large portion of her voter base,” Quintero said via email.
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