Commentary
The Affordable Care Act saved me from a job that was killing my soul
It turns out grinding away at a career you have no passion for whatsoever simply for the stability of health insurance coverage is not sustainable. It will take a serious toll on your mental health. I know this because after eight years as the graphic designer at a leading commercial real estate brokerage, I found […]
Fentanyl’s newest victims are our children. Partisan gridlock means we aren’t protecting them.
Andrew was just 15 when he arrived in my Scottsdale emergency room, pale, lifeless and in cardiac arrest. His friends, who had been joking with him on their way to school just two hours prior, told us he wasn’t a recreational drug-user. Andrew was a varsity athlete and a 4.5-GPA student. Unfortunately, he also suffered […]
Why shocking new data shows we can’t stop fighting hate
If you ever needed a reminder that we can’t turn a blind eye to hate, then new data from the Anti-Defamation League should more than do the trick. As the Pennsylvania Capital-Star reported Tuesday, white supremacist propaganda hit an all-time high across the country in 2022, even as antisemitic propaganda more than doubled from the year before. The […]
My family has deep roots in Arizona. So why are Republican politicians trying to push us out?
The story of my family — myself, my husband Jose, and our 15-year-old son Daniel — is the classic story of a family who has intentionally created roots in Arizona. I was born in Arizona, Jose came to Arizona as a child, and we had our son Daniel in Arizona because we decided to build […]
I am one of the original Dreamers. Congress Needs to Finally Pass the Dream Act.
When I received DACA protections a decade ago, at age 24, I immediately burst into tears. I’d recently graduated from Arizona State University with a degree in mechanical engineering, but I wasn’t allowed to hold a legal job or even live legally in the United States. Now I could get a social security number. That […]
Not all diabetics are on Medicare, and Congress needs to cap insulin prices for all Americans
For diabetics like me, insulin is as necessary as water, but too often it comes with an unaffordable price tag. As a result, as many as one in four of the seven million Americans dependent on insulin are skipping or skimping on doses, which can lead to severe complications, including death. Many of us ration […]
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 […]
A year after Russia’s terrorist attack against Ukraine, the terrorism continues
The CIA posts a list online of the world’s most notorious international terrorist groups. There, you’ll find names and descriptions for some 65 organizations, like al-Qaeda, the group that slaughtered nearly 3,000 Americans at the World Trade Center on 9-11. There’s Boko Haram in Nigeria, which kidnapped 300 schoolgirls in 2014, marrying many of them […]
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 […]
Biden’s infrastructure and inflation reduction laws are transforming the boilermaker trade
Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act has created 100,000 clean energy jobs, and my profession will be a growing part of that workforce. As a third-generation boilermaker, the profession runs in my blood. My grandfather moved to Tucson in 1948 to help build the Hughes Missile site. My father worked in copper mines and power plants all over […]
The death penalty does nothing to keep us safe. Let’s end it now.
I was a 35-year-old military veteran working for the U.S. Postal Service in Phoenix when my life was turned upside down. I was arrested and charged for a crime I knew nothing about. My trial only lasted four days and the jury convicted me after deliberating for only four hours. A Maricopa County judge sentenced […]