State and Local News That Matters
In a shocking revelation, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Tuesday announced that it apprehended nearly 250,000 migrants entering the United States in April alone.
Representative Andy Biggs (R-AZ-05) discussed the news Tuesday night.
Maricopa County Board of Supervisors has responded to the rising cost of goods and services with a property tax rate cut.
The board approved a tentative FY 2023 budget aiming to mitigate the impact of inflation in the county by using hundreds of millions of dollars in American Rescue Plan funds for financial assistance and resources to residents and businesses.
State Rep. Shawnna Bolick (R-Phoenix) was driving through Skull Valley in Yavapai County, Arizona, two weeks ago when she noticed an unmonitored ballot drop box in the parking lot of the U.S. Postal Service. Unmonitored ballot drop boxes have become a big concern lately due to the new Dinesh D’Souza documentary 2,000 Mules, which traced GPS cell phone locations to show that around 2,000 people may have illegally transferred handfuls of ballots repeatedly from left-leaning nonprofits to these drop boxes in swing states including Arizona.
Bolick tweeted, “Why does the Skull Valley, AZ US Post Office have an unmanned drop box for mail-in ballots in its parking lot when it has a blue mailbox in front of the post office that can already receive mail-in ballots?” She told The Arizona Sun Times she has a call scheduled with the Yavapai County Recorder Leslie Hoffman to discuss them.
Phoenix residents are feeling the effects of the highest gasoline prices in American history, as Tuesday marked the first day that the city’s average price for a gallon per gas was $5.
According to the American Automobile Association (AAA), the average price per gallon of gas in Phoenix Tuesday was exactly $5, an 11 cent jump from Monday’s average of $4.89, and a 28 cent jump from last Tuesday’s average of $4.72. A month ago, the average price of a gallon of gas in the city was $4.56.
A former Arizona high school counselor who helped organize a drag queen show for students has been arrested for allegedly having sex with a 15-year-old student.
Zobella Brazil Vinik, 29, who resigned on May 5 from Tucson Unified School District, is accused of having the inappropriate relationship off school grounds with a 15-year-old student, KOLD News 13 reported Friday.
The Pima County Democratic Party has joined in the chorus of far-left Democrats who are blaming Republicans for Saturday’s mass shooting in Buffalo, that left 10 people dead.
“White Supremacy is not mental illness, it is intentional radicalization of large groups of people, with the purpose of conducting terror operations,” the group said on Twitter. “It is enabled and often sponsored by Republican lawmakers. It is weaponized by [Fox News]. It is tearing our nation apart.”
Arizona saw an uptick in drug overdose deaths in the 12-month period from December 2020 to December 2021.
The state saw a 4.39% increase in drug overdose deaths in that span; the increase was below the 15% national increase, according to a new provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey is calling on social media companies to protect youth from cartels recruiting them into transnational human smuggling activity.
In a letter to the leaders of four social media companies, Ducey urged the companies to start doing a better job of stopping people from being exploited by cartels.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) this week announced a digital advertising campaign geared towards would be illegal aliens who are considering using Mexican cartel smugglers, called “Coyotes,” in order to enter the United States.
“The ads deliver a clear message: smugglers are lying to you, the fact is that entering the United States illegally is a crime,” CBP said. “The ads highlight that smugglers, known as ‘coyotes,’ who take advantage of and profit from vulnerable migrants.”
Neil W. McCabe, the national political editor of The Star News Network, covered Arizona GOP gubernatorial hopeful Kari Lake’s May 12, 2022, in front of the statehouse in Phoenix, where Lake unveiled her education policy.
Arizona Governor Doug Ducey announced on Wednesday that the state will follow the lead of Texas and transport migrants to Washington D.C.
The announcement was a portion of a larger action plan laid out by Ducey to address the ongoing border crisis.
U.S. Senate candidate Jim Lamon, who is running as a Republican for office in Arizona to defeat incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, is making waves with his provocative, bold TV campaign spots. The left-leaning big tech companies don’t like them, however, and so both Yahoo and Facebook have pushed back, with Yahoo actually censoring them. While broadcast TV is generally required by law to run political ads (FCC rules state that if a station allows state and local political candidates to run ads, they must accept them from all candidates), big tech is not. Yahoo refused to run an ad of his because it merely said “Let’s Go Brandon.”
Stephen Puetz, one of Lamon’s campaign staffers, told The Arizona Sun Times the ads are making a difference in getting Lamon’s name known, since polls show his support is increasing. Lamon is running against Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich in the Republican primary, who has considerable name recognition, and another candidate, Blake Masters, is making significant ground due to funding from his boss, Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel.
Conservative commentator and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza recently released a documentary, 2,000 Mules, which features the work of True the Vote tracking GPS cell phone locations from around the 2020 election period to track what they have named “mules,” people purportedly illegally transporting hundreds of thousands of ballots from left-leaning nonprofits and depositing them in unmonitored drop boxes in several key swing states, including Arizona. Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich may have already prosecuted one of the mules discussed in the documentary, a Democratic former official in San Luis, and he is currently litigating in court with Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs over her attempts to allow unmonitored drop boxes in the state Elections Procedures Manual (EPM).
In the documentary, a whistleblower whose identity is disguised discusses a prominent Democratic official in San Luis — which is a small town of about 25,500 located in Yuma County — who engaged in ballot harvesting and even enlisted her to assist. Last year, Brnovich’s office prosecuted Guillermina Fuentes, who was a previous mayor of San Luis, a Democratic precinct committee person, and a member of the Gadsden Elementary School Board. A grand jury indicted her in December on one count of ballot abuse, also known as ballot harvesting, for collecting four ballots from people and turning them in. She has a change of plea hearing scheduled for June 2.
The January 6th Committee issued subpoenas to five different members of Congress, including Representative Andy Biggs (R-AZ-05).
In addition to Biggs, Representatives Kevin McCarthy (R-CA-23), Scott Perry (R-PA-10), Jim Jordan (R-OH-04), and Mo Brooks (R-AL-05) were requested to appear before the group.
Amid surging gas prices and 40-year high inflation, a congressman Thursday reacted to the news that the Biden Administration has canceled domestic oil and gas lease sales.
“Biden just canceled massive oil and gas lease sales in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico amid historic gas prices. Just wait for him to blame Putin for all of this!” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ-05) said on Twitter.
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The Arizona Sun Times reported last week on rumors that Arizona Attorney General (AG) Mark Brnovich might withdraw from the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) due to its leftward drift, and he did this week. He became the fifth state attorney general to leave NAAG over its left-leaning agenda, an exodus that began with Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall last year, followed by the AGs of Texas, Missouri, and Montana last week.
“We are hereby notifying you that the Arizona Attorney General’s Office had decided to withdraw its membership from NAAG,” Brnovich said in a letter to NAAG President and Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller. “The Association is supposed to function as a nonpartisan forum but the speakers and topics presented at recent NAAG meetings indicate otherwise. We believe NAAG must take immediate steps to remedy this partisan permeation.”
The few dissenters from the U.S. House of Representatives who opposed a bill sending $40 billion to Ukraine while inflations crushes Americans are expressing their displeasure over the bill’s passage.
“Biden wants to send FORTY BILLION that has been taken from taxpayers to Ukraine while our borders remain wide open with historic crossings. This Regime prioritizes every other country before it even thinks about our own – this is the definition of America Last. I VOTE NO!” said Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ-04), who was one of 57 Republicans to vote against the spending package.
A decision by voters 10 years ago is keeping most Arizonans’ property taxes from skyrocketing as the market values on their homes rise as fast as anywhere else in America.
Property analytics company CoreLogic released its monthly Home Price Index last week showing U.S. home prices increased a record 20.9% in March compared to a year prior.
Some young people from Trump-endorsed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s campaign were greeted with violence when they showed up at a protest organized by Planned Parenthood over Arizona’s expected post-Roe v. Wade abortion laws at the Arizona State Capitol on May 3 to engage in civil conversations with the demonstrators. Two student staffers who coordinate Students for Kari and a student intern were hit, scratched, shoved, spit on, and pushed into vans, they told The Arizona Sun Times. Some of it was caught on video, including the spitting.
Andorra Blattner, data director for the campaign, who can be seen in the second half of the video in a bright red shirt, told The Sun Times, “They told me that my mom should have aborted me, and since she didn’t, I should kill myself.” Protesters pushed her, tripped her, and ripped her sign “Unborn Lives Matter” out of her hands. One woman with extremely long nails kept poking them in her face, almost hitting her in the eye. The protesters called her profane words used to demean women.
Two Mexican nationals were indicted on eight charges stemming from a plot to hold undocumented immigrants hostage and for ransom until their families paid.
A grand jury in Tucson charged Olegario Lares-De La Rosa and Ivan Heriberto Borboa-Ruiz with Conspiracy to Commit Hostage Taking, Hostage Taking, Conspiracy to Commit Transportation of Illegal Aliens for Profit, Transportation of Illegal Aliens for Profit, and Prohibited Possessors of Firearms and Ammunition.
Blake Masters, a Republican running to represent Arizona in the U.S. Senate, threatened to take legal action over a news article on his stance on contraception.
According to Masters, the Arizona Mirror published a piece with “defamatory claims” that implied Masters supports banning contraception.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey has signed legislation to ensure that more insurance plans, including Medicaid, cover biomarker testing.
Ducey signed House Bill 2144 into law. The bill’s goal is to increase the chances of cancer patients surviving, improve their quality of life, and provide lower healthcare costs to them, according to a press release from Ducey’s office.
The Bureau of Reclamation will reduce the amount of water released from Lake Powell in response to a drought situation threatening the water supply of millions of residents in several western states and hydropower generation.
The federal agency said Tuesday Lake Powell’s water surface elevation is currently at 3,522 feet, the lowest since it was first filled 60 years ago. The critical elevation is 3,490 feet and would be the lowest point where Glen Canyon Dam can generate hydropower, according to the bureau.
Former Phoenix news anchor and mother of two, Kari Lake, gave high praise to filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza’s documentary film, “2000 Mules”, which highlights the ballot-stuffing operations that occurred across multiples states during the 2020 presidential election.
“We just saw Dinesh D’Souza’s movie. It’s outrageous. It’s called 2000 Mules. I think every man and woman in this country should see it,” Lake declared Friday at a campaign stop to support David Perdue’s run against Georgia Governor Brian Kemp at the Appalachian Gun & Range.
In a long-fought win for local officials, Arizona will soon widen a portion of Interstate 10.
The state is investing $400 million to widen the road due to the passage of Senate Bill 1239. Arizona Governor Doug Ducey signed the bill into law on Wednesday.
The Goldwater Institute filed a lawsuit against the city of Phoenix.
The Goldwater Institute is challenging a $7 million subsidy that the city gave to a high-rise apartment development.
The grassroots patriotic group America Pack put on a debate for the Republican primary candidates for Arizona Attorney General Friday night, and of the five candidates who participated, none of them came across as moderates, to the pleasant surprise of the audience (Dawn Grove, who sounds very conservative, could not participate). The main issue championed by the five was border security, with election integrity a close second.
Their agendas mainly mirrored that of current AG Mark Brnovich, who is now running for U.S. Senate. Brnovich has been one of the most proactive AGs in the country pushing back on the Biden administration, filing tens of lawsuits over election integrity, border security, and other areas of overreach or inaction. Endorsed by both Mark Levin and Sean Hannity, the candidates sounded like they were trying to out-conservative him.
Jim Lamon, who is running to represent Arizona in the U.S. Senate, will host a town hall discussion with former acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Tom Homan.
The event, which will take place on Friday, will focus the discussion on how to “preserve America,” according to a release from the Lamon campaign.
Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake told The Georgia Star News Friday she maintains confidence in Arizona Senate President Karen Fann, despite some doubts in her ability to adequately complete the 2020 election audit.
“I do have confidence in Karen,” Lake told The Star News. “I’ve seen a few things that have made me pause a bit, but don’t forget, she’s the one who got things going.”
Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake told The Georgia Star News she plans to secure the southern border of the United States with her “Defend Arizona” policy, which includes the destruction of drug tunnels and surveillance drones used by Mexican drug cartels. The Republican frontrunner traveled to Georgia on Thursday to support David Perdue in his bid to upset incumbent governor Brian Kemp.
“When we discover drug tunnels, we’re going to blow them up. We’re not just going to pour a little bit of cement in where they can easily jackhammer that out and start running drugs again,” Lake said.