The West

An Arizona grand jury on Wednesday indicted former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani, and five other former aides to former President Donald Trump on felony charges related to alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

A Tuesday report which detailed alleged culture clashes between local workers and those from Taiwan at the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) facilities in Arizona reveals some workers from Taiwan, who relocated to Arizona to build the plants, will seek to start or expand families so their children reap the benefits of U.S. citizenship. The Rest of World report described TSMC's ventures in Arizona as a "debacle," with American engineers subjected to intense scrutiny, public humiliation and restricted communications while being trained by TSMC in Taiwan.

Michelle Martin, a Libertarian candidate running against Representative David Schweikert (R-AZ-01), has dropped out of the race after at least four voters said someone illegally signed her petition with their signatures. Martin’s paperwork revealed that a registered Democrat named Jeremy Garrett was one of the petition signature gatherers, along with four other registered Democrats. Someone named Jeremy Garrett works as an Electoral Campaign Manager at the progressive group Our Voice Our Vote (OVOV).  Schweikert told The Arizona Sun Times that this is clearly fraud and needs to be prosecuted. He said it has been referred to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.

Arizona U.S. House candidate Abe Hamadeh released a new advertisement declaring his Republican primary opponent, Blake Masters, "abandoned America First" and "surrendered to the swamp" after Masters released his own ad accusing Hamadeh of being an "anchor baby." Hamadeh posted the video to the social media platform X, where the candidate emphasized his endorsements from former President Donald Trump and Arizona U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake.

California disciplinary court Judge Yvette Roland (pictured above), who disbarred Trump’s former attorney and constitutional legal scholar John Eastman last month, contributed to a Democratic PAC last year which funneled all of the contributions to a Super PAC that seeks to stop “undermining the most basic tenet of our democracy, the right to vote.” Despite the fact that the charges against Eastman were all related to his efforts investigating and stopping election corruption in the 2020 election, Roland did not recuse herself.

Thirty alleged members of the Arizona Mexican Mafia were indicted on Friday for their role in an alleged conspiracy to steal pandemic unemployment money. The Arizona Attorney General's office confirmed Friday that a state grand jury "returned a 50-count indictment against members and associates of the Arizona Mexican Mafia," with a total of 30 individual defendants.

In his "This Week with Gosar" newsletter Monday, U.S. Representative Paul Gosar (R-AZ-09) said that during a House Oversight and Accountability Committee hearing, every Democrat voted against H.R. 7109, the Equal Representation Act, which would add a citizenship question to the decennial census. An amended version of the legislation passed the committee vote (22-20) and awaits further action on the House floor. Gosar, who serves on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, stated that the new question on the decennial census would ask, "Are you a citizen? YES or NO."

Kari Lake agreed earlier this month to settle the defamation lawsuit against her filed by Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, citing the enormous cost it would take to go through a full trial. Her attorneys sent a letter on Monday to Richer’s attorneys regarding Richer’s proposed meet and confer terms, rejecting all three proposals from him, at times sarcastically.  Lake is running for the U.S. Senate and still fighting two election lawsuits, one over her loss in the gubernatorial race and another challenging the use of voting machine tabulators in elections. Richer filed a defamation lawsuit against her for stating that he intentionally sabotaged the 2022 election. Approximately 300,000 ballots in the 2022 election lacked a chain of custody, a class 2 misdemeanor, but the county has strenuously fought litigation efforts to allow Lake to inspect the ballot affidavit envelopes and other requests from her and voter integrity groups related to the election anomalies.

The influential National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) labeled Arizona U.S. Representative Ruben Gallego (D-AZ-03) a "deadbeat dad" in a commercial released less than one month after a court ordered some of his divorce records unsealed. Ruben Gallego was branded a "deadbead dad" by the NRSC over his 2017 divorce from Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego. The couple reportedly split just days before Christmas in 2016, with reports indicating it was Ruben Gallego who initiated the separation. Kate Gallego was nine months pregnant at the time.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes confirmed on Tuesday her office will not enforce the 19th century abortion law recently upheld by the Arizona Supreme Court until at least June. Mayes said in a video posted to the attorney general's account on X clarifying that the law is slated to go into effect on June 8. Calling the ruling "outrageous," Mayes also confirmed she is "working on a plan to fight back" against the abortion ban.

A nonpartisan elections analysis announced two rating changes on Wednesday that endanger Republicans for competitive races in the battleground state of Arizona following a ruling that imposed a near-total abortion ban. The Arizona Supreme Court decided on April 9 that an 1864 law, which allows for abortion only when the life of the mother is at risk and makes performing or helping procure the procedure a crime, can take effect. The ruling, which has supercharged the issue of abortion in the swing state, prompted Sabato's Crystal Ball to move the expected Senate matchup between Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego and Republican Kari Lake to "Leans Democratic," as well as shifting GOP Rep. Juan Ciscomani’s reelection bid to "Toss-Up."

A progressive polling firm released data on Tuesday that claims Republicans are divided over the decision by the Arizona Supreme Court to enact a 19th-century law that bans most abortions, including in the event of rape or incest. Pollsters at Data for Progress asked likely U.S. voters whether they approve of the state Supreme Court's decision to ban all abortions "with exceptions only for when the life of the mother is in danger" and with "no exceptions for pregnancy resulting from rape or incest."

Republican lawmakers in Arizona are trying to fast-track ballot initiatives to counter an abortion amendment that will likely be in front of voters this fall, according to Axios. Activists have been working to get an amendment on the ballot that would enshrine abortion as a right in the state’s constitution and in April, proponents of the measure claimed that they had enough signatures to get the proposal on the ballot in November, according to NBC News. GOP state representatives, however, are considering a series of initiatives that would protect the legislature’s ability to limit abortion and enshrine a law restricting abortion to before the first day of the 15th week of pregnancy, according to Axios.

The Arizona Republican Party (AZGOP) submitted a joint Amicus Curiae brief on Thursday with the Georgia Republican Party and the Republican State Committee of Delaware supporting Kari Lake’s and Mark Finchem’s Petition for Certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court. The pair are appealing the lower courts’ decisions against their lawsuit challenging the use of electronic voting machine tabulators in elections. Under the new leadership of AZGOP Chair Gina Swoboda, who has a lengthy history in election integrity work including heading the Voter Reference Foundation, the AZGOP is heavily focused on election integrity.  Authored by attorney William J. Olson, the brief argues that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals erred by dismissing the case claiming Lake and Finchem lacked standing. The court affirmed the trial court’s granting of the defendants’ motion to dismiss, asserting that the pair lacked standing because “speculative allegations that voting machines may be hackable are insufficient to establish an injury in fact under Article III.” The complaint emphasized that the lower courts “conflated standing with merits, twisting the standing rules to require much more — that the complaint prove facts sufficient to grant relief.” 

Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake of Arizona brought in $4.1 million in the first fundraising quarter of 2024, her campaign announced on Sunday. Lake’s haul is roughly twice as much as she raised in 2023’s last fundraising quarter, and she now has $2.5 million in cash on hand, according to her campaign. The Republican’s opponent, Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, announced on April 2 that his campaign topped $7.5 million in the first fundraising quarter with more than $9.6 million in the bank.