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Legally sanctioned homophobia still a mainstay of Arizona law
The long overdue repeal of the “no promo homo” law was the right thing to do. But the struggle to grant equal rights to Arizona’s LGBTQ community is far from over.
Arizona lawmakers have an idea for a reboot of ‘The Purge’
You’ve heard the bill. You’ve read the headlines. Now see the movie. Arizona Republican Party Films presents….THE PURGE! (In booming movie trailer voice.) “In a world where GOP state legislators want to block people’s right to vote just to maintain party dominance.” (In booming overly earnest trailer voice.) “Sen. Michelle Urgenti-Rita, like you’ve never seen […]
Why the GOP doesn’t want people of color to vote
The so-called “party of Lincoln” may have helped free the slaves, but it has spent the bulk of its history since building a record of discrimination against people of color.
How to manufacture a humanitarian catastrophe
U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen this week, as The New York Times put it, “implored Congress to confront” what she called a growing humanitarian catastrophe on the U.S.-Mexico border. Under normal circumstances and under a normal presidential administration, Nielsen’s entreaty might well have seemed appropriate or even compassionate. Then again, this is someone […]
The faces of immigrants are everywhere
Contrary to widely mistaken popular belief, immigrants and the profound role they play in U.S. society are not confined to those grainy images Fox News loves to run with the inflammatory “Battle at the Border” logo it routinely plasters on stories about immigration.
Trump’s State of the Union, another kick in the head
To paraphrase a certain red-faced, golden-haired president with a gift for Orwellian rhetoric who delivered a State of the Union address Tuesday night, what you saw and what he said was not what was happening. Okay, what you saw actually did happen. It’s the part about what he said that’s highly dubious. After two years […]
Overcoming ‘these times’
I’m talking here about unabashed racists, folks who hold and express clearly bigoted views the way other people just breathe, not matter if they try cloaking them in quaint or cutting euphemisms. You know the kind. At least one of them serves in the Arizona Legislature. At least one.
Billions in federal funds for AZ threatened by potential census undercount
As the D.C. press corps spends the week chasing Trump’s newest shiny objects, a federal court in San Francisco began taking testimony in a suit involving what may be one of the most underreported but nationally significant story of the decade: the once-a-decade U.S. census count. The case was brought by California Attorney General Xavier […]
Trump’s presidency is ‘the line beyond which’ we will not go
No matter how woke I thought I was, the 2016 election was a life-altering sucker punch I never saw coming. Like most Americans, I didn’t appreciate how fragile freedom could be.
Beyond the scandals, Trump’s enmity for immigrants is becoming institutionalized
One of the problems with Trump’s scandal-ridden administration, aside from the scandals themselves, is that the media frenzy about the scandals makes it harder to notice the long-term damage being done to vital government agencies. A case in point: the U.S. immigration system.
Pastor’s quiet leadership style crossed party lines and cultural barriers
They are flying flags at half-mast in Arizona again for a felled political icon. Unlike the late Sen. John McCain, this long-time public servant was not known for a maverick pugnaciousness but for a low-key and almost old-fashioned behind-the-scenes style of leadership. Former Congressman Ed Pastor died Tuesday. He was 75. The first Mexican-American elected […]
Trumpism and the browning of Arizona’s blue wave
I believe Arizona’s political watershed is the product of two key underlying forces: outright GOP arrogance, fueled by strong strains of bigotry, greed and faux evangelicalism; and the explosive growth of the Latino population.