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Kari Lake granted new trial, must prove Maricopa County ignored signature-verification rules
Kari Lake will have one last chance to argue in court that her 17,000-vote loss 2022 election should be overturned — but to actually do so, she will have to prove conclusively that Maricopa County brazenly failed to verify tens of thousands of early voter signatures and that, in doing so, the county affected the […]
AZGOP must pay Secretary of State’s legal fees for ‘bad-faith’ 2020 election lawsuit: appeals court
An Arizona appellate court ruled Thursday that the Arizona Republican Party and its lawyers must pay the attorneys’ fees for the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office in a lawsuit that challenged how Maricopa County audited ballots in the 2020 election and sought to stop the county from certifying Donald Trump’s loss. The lawsuit challenged procedures […]
Arizona Supreme Court tosses GOP Senate candidate’s defamation lawsuit against radio talker
The Arizona Supreme Court on Friday unanimously affirmed First Amendment protections for political commentators, ruling that lower courts should have swiftly rejected a defamation lawsuit that a failed Republican U.S. Senate candidate brought against a talk-radio host. In February 2021, Daniel McCarthy, who lost in the GOP special primary election for the U.S. Senate in […]
Hobbs vetoes bills punishing businesses for denying vaccine exemptions, public camping
Gov. Katie Hobbs on Thursday vetoed Republican-backed bills that would have fined businesses that didn’t grant their employees religious exemptions from vaccines and made it illegal for the unhoused to camp in public spaces. The vaccine exemption would have required all companies in Arizona to allow employees — including those who work in health care […]
Katie Hobbs will shatter Janet Napolitano’s veto records
It’s fitting that Gov. Katie Hobbs was given Janet Napolitano’s veto stamp as a gift when she took office. Over the course of 158 days, Napolitano vetoed 17 bills in 2003 when the GOP-controlled legislature met for the first time in the Democrat’s tenure as governor. In exactly half that time — 79 days — […]
Peterson Zah, former Navajo chairman and the tribe’s first president, dies at 85
Former Navajo President, Peterson Zah, died Tuesday at his home in Window Rock, Arizona, after a lengthy illness. He was 85. Zah served as chairman of the Navajo Nation Council from 1981 through 1987, before he was elected the first president for the Navajo Nation in 1990 when the government was restructured into three branches. He […]
Minority rule is anti-American, but it’s how Republicans are governing in Arizona
When Ben Toma won the contest to be speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, there was a sigh of relief at the Capitol. The Peoria Republican is unquestionably conservative, but had built a reputation as someone willing to engage in good faith with those who hold opposing views — a person who could guide […]
Pro-Lake PAC didn’t fabricate its source of $2.1 million, officials concluded last year
A campaign finance complaint accusing a super PAC that spent $2.1 million boosting Kari Lake of inventing the source of its funding was quietly dismissed last year after elections officials determined that a media report questioning the money’s origin was inaccurate. In July 2022, the Arizona Republic reported on the mysterious source of more than […]
Pursuing power with propaganda: The ties that bind Brnovich and Fox News
Maybe Mark Brnovich should get a job hosting a show on Fox News. It’s clear that Arizona’s former attorney general and the propaganda channel’s premier hosts share the same instinct for lying to their followers about invented election fraud claims for purely selfish reasons. On Wednesday, the world learned that Brnovich both hid the results […]
Katie Hobbs should try to veto her way to a Democratic legislative majority
Seven weeks into her tenure as governor, Katie Hobbs is battling with the GOP-led legislature at every turn, and it seems unlikely that she’ll be able to accomplish much, if anything for the foreseeable future. She has proposed a budget with dead-on-arrival components that skewer GOP sacred cows, vetoed Republicans’ political theater budget, openly dismissed […]
GOP Arizona legislators, including leaders of the House and Senate, subpoenaed to testify in special counsel probe of Trump
At least three Arizona Republican state legislators have been subpoenaed by the U.S. Justice Department’s special counsel, Jack Smith, as part of the criminal investigation into former President Donald Trump and his efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss. The federal grand jury subpoenas were issued to Senate President Warren Petersen, Sen. Sonny Borrelli and […]
David Schweikert blames ‘populist’ AZ Freedom Caucus for his quitting the House Freedom Caucus
U.S. Rep. David Schweikert was a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus when it formed in 2015 to undercut then-Speaker John Boehner and pull the broader Republican conference further to the right. But now that the group has more power than it’s ever had — as evidenced by the concessions its members wrung out […]