Incensed by a group of protesters who blocked a road in an attempt to shut down a Donald Trump rally in Fountain Hills last month, a right-wing Arizona senator is pushing to increase the penalty for political protesters who interfere with traffic. Already, protesters who block traffic can be charged…
Supporters of Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders will have to suck it up. There will be no do-over of Arizona’s disastrous Presidential Preference Election. Following two days of testimony this week, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge booted a lawsuit claiming fraud, illegal voting and other improprieties in the contest,…
It’s all fun and games till the U.S. Secret Service comes knocking on your door. Actually, for controversial, right-wing street artist SABO, that’s when the games began. The Los Angeles denizen, infamous for his poster of a shirtless, tatted-up, butt-smokin’ Ted Cruz, was in Phoenix for the group show “Provocative…
The director of the Arizona Department of Economic Security, Tim Jeffries, plans to take roughly 200 letters from pious DES employees to a popular religious site in France later this month. Jeffries requested the letters in an April 10 email about the trip he sent to the state agency’s…
Standing in line for hours to cast a ballot. Cries of “voter suppression.” The finger-pointing, the recriminations, the heads hanging in shame. These all could be things of the past, at least in relation to voter angst, if a Republican effort to repeal Arizona’s Presidential Preference Election, now held up…
Arizona Congressman Ruben Gallego wants to bring some deported veterans back to the United States, the country they fought for and served. He introduced a bill this week that asks the U.S. Department of Homeland Security secretary to allow deported veterans who served in the U.S. military to come back,…
Steve Gallardo, the lone Democrat on the five-member Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, says federal oversight of county elections is needed after last month’s voting debacle. He may right – but one glaring reason the county may need federal oversight of its elections because of the lack of county oversight…
For the first time his decades long political career, U.S. Senator John McCain says he’ll skip the National Republican Convention in Cleveland this July because he needs “to campaign for reelection,” CNN is reporting. McCain is in the middle of tough election battle against Ann Kirkpatrick, the Democrat trying to…
Ivonne Salazar wants to get a better-paying job so she can help her 18-year-old daughter, who’ll be attending Arizona State University this fall, pay for college expenses. But Salazar’s job opportunities are limited because she is undocumented. She has been living in Arizona without legal status for 23 years. The…
Should 1.7 million acres of land around the Grand Canyon be designated a national monument? It’s certainly a topic of hot debate in Arizona. Supporters of the monument say it will permanently protect an ecologically fragile and historically significant area from uranium mining, while those opposing the plan say it’s…
A string of dark-money organizations with ties to the billionaire Koch brothers is helping Arizona politicians and special-interest groups fight the popular Grand Canyon National Heritage Monument proposal, tax documents show. The money trail begins with a conservative political advocacy organization funded in part by Charles and David Koch and…
Arizona and Maricopa County officials violated federal law and the Constitution with bad legislation and the bungled March 22 election, a group of voters and the Democratic Party allege in a lawsuit filed today. The anticipated lawsuit, which the Democratic National Committee said this week would be forthcoming, blasts the…
The U.S. Senate race in Arizona between Republican incumbent John McCain and Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick has reached a new milestone: For the first time since Kirkpatrick announced she was challenging McCain, polls show the two candidates tied at 48 percent. For months Kirkpatrick has been slowly catching up to McCain,…
For months now, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have engaged in a back-and-forth battle over immigration. This was again in full display this week, with both campaigns attacking their opponent’s record on the issue. The Sanders team held a conference call with reporters to blast Clinton for opposing a plan…
It’s no secret that Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar thinks the proposed Grand Canyon National Heritage Monument is part of a conspiracy put forth by “radical environmentalists” to “lock up 1.7 million acres of land” and kill local business, but if a three-hour event he hosted this week is any indication,…
House Speaker David Gowan today dropped the requirement that reporters must sign a background-check form to receive House floor privileges. The decision came under intense pressure from media outlets, and also followed New Times’ article that revealed that the form wasn’t really required to perform the sort of background checks that…
According to a recent poll performed by Sheriff Paul Babeu’s hired hand, a plurality of likely GOP voters in Arizona’s First Congressional District apparently don’t care about the various allegations swirling about the sheriff’s use of RICO funds. Nor do these reputedly conservative voters — about 35.7 percent of the poll…
For all those Arizonans out there worried about voter suppression during the presidential preference vote, rest assured that a local activist with a history of taking on problematic elections is trying to get to the bottom of what happened here. John Brakey, co-founder of AUDIT-AZ (Americans United for Democracy, Integrity,…
The Arizona Senate approved a bill Monday that would make it a state crime to take, harass, kill, or otherwise interfere with a herd of horses that runs free along the Salt River. The bill passed 27-2, with one senator not voting. House Bill 2340 already prevailed in the House…
The Arizona Department of Public Safety said today it won’t take part in background checks on reporters for the state House of Representatives, raising key questions about the controversial process. Without help from law enforcement, House staff would be relegated to searching court sites and Google, same as any member…
For nearly 90 minutes on stage at Phoenix’s Comerica Theater on Sunday night, comedian/commentator Bill Maher ripped into Republicans, religion, Islam, the Catholic Church and male sexual hypocrisy, but he saved special venom for presidential contender Donald Trump and his followers. Calling Trump “that douchebag from Queens,” Maher derided the…
With all the drama surrounding last month’s presidential preference election in Arizona, it can be hard to remember there are other powerful political seats up for grabs in November, but according to the latest political polls and election experts, the Senate race between John McCain and Ann Kirkpatrick is just…
