Holding colorful posters with messages like “No Dolphin Prison” and “Thanks, but No Tanks,” at least 50 men, women, and children gathered at the four corners of a busy Scottsdale intersection Saturday evening to protest a swim-with-the-dolphins entertainment center under construction a few miles away on the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian…
Back in November, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey publicly demanded that the federal government stop sending Syrian refugees to Arizona. But hundreds have arrived in the state since then — so many that Arizona now leads the nation in resettling the refugees. Millions of Syrians have been displaced from their homes since a brutal…
Donald Trump gave a large crowd of enthusiastic supporters at the Phoenix Convention Center the harsh rhetoric on illegal immigration they wanted to hear on Wednesday night. Forget any softening of the Republican presidential candidate’s message on the subject. Hours after meeting with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto in Mexico…
Proposition 205, Arizona’s controversial recreational-marijuana initiative, was the subject of yet another lawsuit this week. Last week a judge threw out a suit filed by opponents of the initiative who alleged that the 100-word summary on the petition to get the measure on the November ballot was misleading and fraudulent. …
A ballot initiative to raise Arizona’s minimum wage has (once again) been cleared for a vote in November. The Arizona Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld an earlier decision to dismiss a lawsuit challenging the validity of signatures gathered in support of the initiative, Proposition 206, which proposes to increase wages…
Former Phoenix police officer Sergio Virgillo remembers the point of no return for what should have been a routine call to a trailer park in South Phoenix, when fellow cop Richard Chrisman took his Glock 22 and pressed it so hard against the temple of Daniel Rodriguez that it bent Rodriguez’s head to one side. Chrisman and Rodriguez had been “going at it…
John McCain and Joe Arpaio smashed their Republican competitors, Christine Jones and Paul Babeu appear headed for Washington, D.C., and Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell might be in trouble. That’s just some of the fallout from Arizona’s 2016 primary election on Tuesday, which featured contests that are being watched nationally…
No hackers, no hour-long lines and no real problems — that’s the message from the Maricopa County Elections Department so far today as state voters go to the polls for the primary election. If you haven’t voted yet, it should be smooth sailing. Polls close at 7 p.m. Locate your…
The FBI believes that the infiltration in late June of Arizona voter-registration databases may be linked to foreign hackers who stole data from an Illinois election site, Yahoo News reported on Monday. Michael Isikoff, Yahoo’s chief investigative correspondent, reported that he’d obtained an FBI warning about cyberattacks on elections databases…
A north Scottsdale car dealership official bragged about its “out-of-step” cultural values after rescinding a job offer because the applicant was using a legally prescribed drug, according to a federal complaint filed last week. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) alleges that Bell Lexus of north Scottsdale had offered a job to…
Arizona’s medical-marijuana program could be in for substantial changes if voters approve Proposition 205, which makes marijuana legal for all adults 21 and older. Will Humble, former director of the Arizona Department of Health Services, says the impact on patients will depend largely on the director of the Department of…
Mexican-American civil rights activist Dolores Huerta visited Phoenix last week to encourage Latinos to turn out and vote against presidential nominee Donald Trump. At an August 26 press conference with several other Latino leaders, including including U.S. Congressman Ruben Gallego and State Representative Rebecca Rios, Huerta called Trump “bizarre” and…
Let’s say you’re Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and a federal judge would like to see you behind bars, owing to the disrespect you showed while the landmark civil-rights suit Melendres v. Arpaio was unfolding in his courtroom. What is your response? A) Throw your 84-year-old carcass on the mercy of…
The parking lot for Deanna France’s indoor batting cages in Mesa has 10 handicap-accessible spaces marked with a clearly painted wheelchair symbol — four more than are required under the Americans with Disabilities Act. So she was confused, in June, when she was served with a $10,000 lawsuit for not…
At a press conference on Thursday, Arizona’s top law-enforcement officials announced that they have increased the reward for information about the Serial Street Shooter, saying they urgently need the public’s help to crack the case. The news conference at Phoenix police headquarters included Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, Maricopa County…
The campaign manager for a group trying to raise Arizona’s minimum wage said on Wednesday that the effort was helped considerably by his own timely loan of $100,000. Bill Scheel is one of three founding partners of the public-relations and political-strategy firm Javelina, which Arizonans for Fair Wages and Healthy Families hired to…
The Phoenix man who narrowly escaped being killed in July by the Serial Street Shooter doesn’t want his identity revealed. “I’m just an ordinary young man who experienced an extraordinary miracle,” he says with a grin. He may be right about that. On July 11, the unknown assailant, who appears…
Talk about a win for science! The state of Arizona is finally backing out of its fight to require that doctors tell their patients that it’s possible to “reverse” a medication abortion. Also known as the “abortion pill,” a medication abortion terminates a pregnancy through the use of two drugs,…
Maricopa County’s death-penalty system is plagued by “overzealous” prosecutors and creates a high number of questionable death-penalty cases, according to a new Harvard Law School report. “Too Broken to Fix: Part I: An In-Depth Look at America’s Outlier Death Penalty Counties,” by the school’s Fair Punishment Project, identifies Maricopa as one of…
Whether you’re concerned about the impact uranium mining has on the air quality of the Grand Canyon or think the issue has been blown way out of proportion, you have one week left to share your thoughts with the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality before the agency renews permits for…
A Maricopa County Superior Court judge has dismissed a lawsuit challenging thousands of signatures gathered in support of an initiative to increase Arizona’s minimum wage, clearing the way for it to appear on the ballot. Given that it hinged on the minutiae of Arizona law concerning ballot initiatives, it was…
A Mesa police supervisor was facing termination before he retired last week following his recent conviction for super-extreme DUI, a police spokesman says. Richard “Rick” Van Galder, who had more than 20 years on the force, was stopped in February with his wife, Teresa, a Mesa PD homicide detective, as…
