The top Republican in the Arizona Senate is calling for a federal investigation into a Democratic senator’s social media posts about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Sen. Analise Ortiz, D-Phoenix, represents a Latino-majority district, and has been a fierce critic of the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts. When ICE agents began staking out the Phoenix immigration courthouse earlier this year to detain people showing up for mandatory hearings, Ortiz joined protestors in videotaping the arrests and blasting out social media alerts.

The Democrat has been among the outspoken in her party, frequently sharing posts from local advocacy groups about the presence of federal immigration officials in the Valley via her Instagram page and criticizing due process violations on her X account.

On Tuesday, that activism put Ortiz in the crosshairs of a far-right social media force and the leader of the Arizona Senate. On X, formerly Twitter, the LibsOfTiktok account accused Ortiz of “actively impeding and doxxing” federal immigration officials by sharing Instagram posts about their locations and called on ICE director Tom Homan and the Department of Homeland Security to “charge” her. Run by former real estate agent Chaya Raichik, LibsOfTiktok frequently posts content intended to spark conservative ire about culture war issues and initially gained notoriety with virulently anti-LGBTQ content.

Ortiz responded to Raichik on X, saying she will continue to keep Valley residents informed about the movements of federal immigration officials.

“Yep. When ICE is around, I will alert my community to stay out of the area, and I’m not f---king scared of you nor Trump’s masked goons,” she wrote.

Just hours after the LibsOfTiktok account’s post about Ortiz went viral, Senate President Warren Petersen announced that he had referred the matter to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona for investigation. In a press release, the Gilbert Republican criticized Ortiz for failing to act in accordance with her public position.

“Public servants have a duty to uphold the law and respect those who enforce it, not undermine them,” he wrote.

Petersen called Ortiz’s social media posts “deeply troubling” and claimed they likely violated federal law. He did not say which federal law he believes was broken and didn’t respond to follow-up questions seeking clarification.

Esther Winnie, the executive assistant to the United States Attorney, said that her office is aware of Petersen’s request and will refer it to the right investigative agency for review.

Doxxing involves sharing someone’s sensitive personal information online without their permission and with malicious intent. The controversy over when that applies to federal immigration agents, who do their work in public, has reached a fever-pitch amid increased efforts to conceal their identities because of public criticism of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign.

DHS officials claim an alleged spike in assaults against ICE agents justifies them hiding their faces behind masks during arrests, while immigrant advocates warn it amounts to the creation of a secret police. Clashes between protestors and federal officials have resulted in an increasingly hostile crackdown on activists.

And at the center of that has been the social media alert strategy of immigrant rights advocates. Last month, federal officials lashed out at ICEBlock, an app that allows users to share ICE sightings, and threatened to prosecute its creator. But legal experts say doing so would violate the First Amendment right to free speech.

Ortiz lambasted the threats to investigate her social media activity as “intimidation tactics” and said she wouldn’t be deterred from continuing to use her accounts to warn people about the presence of ICE agents in the community. She added that the Trump administration has regularly flouted constitutional protections like due process, and said she has a duty to keep her community safe from its “unconstitutional and authoritarian actions.”

“Every individual has the right to know when and where law enforcement activity of any kind is taking place in an effort to protect themselves, in the same way people use popular apps to alert each other about speed traps,” she said in a text message. “The Fifth Amendment guarantees due process rights to any person present in our country and the First Amendment guarantees my right to free speech.”

In the early morning hours of June 30, Ricky E. Miller Sr. was shot while sitting inside his truck in Tucson. The 69-year-old later died from his injuries. Pima County prosecutors quickly got to work building a case against the suspect, Julio Cesar Aguirre, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico.

But two weeks later, that case is at risk of never being heard. Just days after his arrest by local law enforcement, federal officials abruptly transported Aguirre out of the county and have since refused to return him for trial. County prosecutors are warning it could negatively impact the state’s case against Aguirre, and are concerned the Trump administration may deport him.

The case is one in a growing number that highlights the impact of the federal government’s mass deportation campaign on local justice systems. At the same time that the Trump administration brags about expelling the “worst of the worst” — despite crystal clear evidence to the contrary — prosecutors and judges across the country have been forced to shelve cases and drop charges against people accused of violent crimes after they or key witnesses were deported.

In Tucson, the Pima County Attorney’s Office filed a criminal complaint against Aguirre that detailed 14 charges, including first-degree murder and six counts of aggravated assault. The federal complaint, meanwhile, only accuses Aguirre of three felony charges: attempted carjacking, the use and discharge of a firearm during a violent crime, and alien possession of a firearm.

On Thursday, hours after federal prosecutors informed her office that they wouldn’t be facilitating Aguirre’s appearance at any hearings except for one initial appearance at state court, Pima County Attorney Laura Conover said she’s willing to sue the federal government to ensure the county’s prosecution can actually happen.

Custody fight puts case in jeopardy

At an apartment complex in midtown Tucson, Aguirre was seen by witnesses threatening to shoot Miller if he didn’t turn over his keys. Aguirre, 42, shot Miller and then fled to a nearby home, where he once again attempted to intimidate the residents into giving him their car, according to the Tucson Police Department. Eventually, Aguirre was found hiding in a nearby storage shed and was taken to the hospital to treat injuries he obtained while fleeing.

While Aguirre recuperated, Pima County prosecutors began constructing their case. During the course of the investigation, the federal government revealed that Aguirre was in the country without documentation, had been arrested more than 10 times between 2007 and 2013 for “immigration-related crimes” and had been deported in 2013.

According to a timeline posted to social media by the Pima County Attorney’s Office, federal prosecutors agreed at a June 2 meeting that Aguirre would remain in the county’s custody to face a first-degree murder charge. Federal officials would be given access to Aguirre to pursue federal charges.

But that understanding was upended later that day, when federal officials instead took custody of Aguirre and transported him overnight from the hospital to a federal detention center in Florence, in neighboring Pinal County.

When Conover’s office reached out to request Aguirre be returned, federal officials appeared cooperative at first, but quickly began to delay sending him back. On Wednesday, the Pima County Attorney’s Office once again requested Aguirre’s return, saying a preliminary hearing to preserve the testimony of three victims in their 70s who were held at gunpoint was needed. On Thursday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office denied that request.

In an emailed statement, Esther J. Winnie, the executive assistant U.S. attorney for Arizona, dismissed Conover’s description of events as false, but refused to offer another explanation.

“Our office has a significant federal interest in this matter,” she wrote. “The press release from the Pima County Attorney mischaracterizes the situation. However, we have no intent to engage in an exchange with the County Attorney via the media.”

In a virtual news conference on Thursday afternoon, Conover called the process “completely abnormal” and accused federal officials of exploiting the case for “political gain.” The Democrat, who has been fiercely critical of Trump, lambasted the decision to deny the county access to Aguirre as contrary to justice, flying in the face of what voters want and undermining the Trump administration’s purported commitment to eradicating crime.

“This new federal administration said that they were going to go after aliens with a criminal background. That people who had caused harm in our community should be removed immediately and have no authority to be here,” she said. “That was something that voters got behind and agreed to. Never did they tell us that we were going to deprive local residents of justice.”

But she said she wouldn’t be deterred and that her office is exploring what legal avenues are available to ensure Aguirre faces the 14 charges in Pima County. One of those options, she said, may be taking the fight to federal court.

“We want indeed to have a fair trial someday,” she said. “It seems like ‘someday’ is sort of the operative word right now.”

Conover noted that the charges initiated by federal prosecutors aren’t sufficient to ensure justice for everyone involved. The federal complaint doesn’t include a homicide charge. And Aguirre pointed a gun at several people that day who are covered in the criminal complaint under aggravated assault charges.

“We were trying to warn the feds that it needed to go in the direction of the state first and the federal government later, because once we had their criminal complaint in hand — the criminal complaint is about a carjacking with use of a firearm, and then it’s about possession of that firearm,” she said.

Federal immigration officials continued targeting people at the Phoenix Immigration Courthouse on Thursday, surveilling and detaining migrants whose cases were dismissed minutes earlier in ways that appear to be an attempt to minimize attention from both protestors and media.

Berta, a soft-spoken 48-year-old woman who was afraid to give her last name, spoke to the Arizona Mirror while she and her lawyer took refuge near protesters. She said that the United States has been her home longer than Mexico ever was.

“It’s been 28 years,” she said. “More than half my life.”

Returning to Mexico terrifies her, she said, and she’s been working with an immigration lawyer to make sure that never happens. On Thursday, she went to Phoenix Immigration Court to attend a mandatory hearing.

ICE agents were waiting.

Berta is one of hundreds of people across the country with tenuous legal protections who have lately been caught in the crosshairs of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign.

Trump promised on the campaign trail that he would deport millions of people. But doing so has proven more difficult than simply declaring that it would happen, and Trump has reportedly spent months angry that immigration agents haven’t rounded up more immigrants.

In what legal experts have derided as a bid to boost deportation numbers, the Trump administration has recently launched raids at immigration courthouses in multiple cities, targeting migrants and asylum seekers who show up for scheduled immigration hearings. Last week, more than a dozen people were detained by ICE agents in Phoenix, shortly after federal prosecutors filed to dismiss their cases, effectively leaving them open to deportation.

That same pattern played out in Berta’s hearing on Thursday afternoon. The federal prosecutor made a motion to dismiss her case, and the judge granted it. The consequences were almost immediate. When she and her lawyer, Erica Sanchez, exited the courtroom, they noticed ICE agents. Thinking quickly, they ducked into the bathroom to wait it out. Later, the pair were able to exit the courthouse building and stood with immigrant rights advocates until Sanchez’s husband arrived to pick them up.

At the same time that Berta and Sanchez climbed into the black Jeep, a federal agent raced down the stairs from the courthouse’s covered carport towards them, but they drove away before he could stop them. On the second floor of that parking structure, which is directly across from the courthouse’s entrance, ICE agents could be seen looking through binoculars and speaking into walkie talkies, ostensibly taking note of which cars immigrants were leaving in and relaying that information to other federal officials waiting in white paneled vans and vehicles with out-of-state license plates in the surrounding streets.

Protesters take pictures of Immigration and Customs Enforcement vans parked near the Phoenix Immigration Court on May 29, 2025. ICE agents have been arresting people showing up to their scheduled court hearings in order to swiftly deport them. Photo by Gloria Rebecca Gomez | Arizona Mirror

Thursday was the second day ICE agents employed a new tactic of following migrants outside of the courthouse grounds and pulling them over blocks away. Immigrant rights advocates say the move is intentional: detaining people in the surrounding streets instead of the elevator or courtroom lobby makes it more difficult for advocates to protest or film the arrests. At least one woman was observed by a reporter being detained after being pulled over in her car, but it’s unclear how many more people were arrested under the new strategy.

But opponents of the raids haven’t let that new difficulty deter them from at least trying to monitor ICE activity. Members of pro-immigrant groups, including the Phoenix branch of Indivisible, Common Defense, Fuerte and the Borderlands Resource Initiative, organized themselves via text messages, Signal chats, phone calls and walkie talkies.

Some protestors gathered in front of the courthouse entrance and warned migrants entering and exiting the building that ICE agents were watching. Others stood near two white paneled vans with U.S. Department of Homeland Security license plates parked behind the courthouse on 9th Avenue and Van Buren Street. A few jumped into a car to respond to a tip sent to the ICE watch hotline set up by immigrant advocacy groups in January, in anticipation of Trump’s hostile agenda.

And when an immigrant woman whose case had just been dismissed approached protestors waving posters at oncoming traffic advising them of ICE’s presence, a man who would only identify himself as “P” for fear of repercussions, accompanied her to the McDonald’s across the street and ordered her a Lyft home. “P”, who teaches music in the Creighton Elementary School District, said that it was clear the woman was being followed by ICE because the duo had cut through a construction area, crisscrossed streets and turned down corners only to consistently find ICE vans nearby. He said it was “surreal” to watch federal agents try to arrest a person simply attending a scheduled immigration hearing — going through the same legal process border hawks have for years advocated for.

Artie, who also teaches at Creighton Elementary School District, said he was inspired to join the handful of protestors because of his own history with the immigration system. In 1979, at just 14-years-old, Artie left Guadalajara, Mexico, with his parents to immigrate to the United States. He’s since become a citizen, but that experience helps him empathize with the fear that people attending immigration hearings on Thursday felt.

“I’m here to support, to try to get ICE to be less effective,” he said, calling their strategies “crazy”.

While the threat of a detainment persists at Phoenix Immigration Court, migrants with scheduled hearings have no other option but to show up. Those who skip a hearing have a deportation order filed against them and their case is closed; getting back into the legal process is much more difficult if that happens.

Carlos accompanied his wife to Phoenix Immigration Court on Thursday morning. While she attended her hearing inside, Carlos waited across the street on a public bench. He was nervous and restless, walking back and forth between the bench and the courthouse, then up and down the public sidewalks near both. When Phoenix police officers arrived to keep protestors away from the courthouse entrance, he kept a close eye on them, worrying that they might be ICE agents. He had heard about the arrests of the past two weeks, and said the news scared him and his wife.

“It almost makes you not want to show up,” he said. “You show up and you get deported anyway.”

But, he added, they went to the hearing despite the risk because the alternative only guarantees a deportation order.

Two of Arizona’s top public health officials have resigned rather than face an acrimonious confirmation process at the legislature, where Republicans have used agency director hearings to play hardball politics with Gov. Katie Hobbs and stymie her government.

On Wednesday, Hobbs announced that Jennie Cunico, the director of the Arizona Department of Health Services, and Carmen Heredia, who heads Arizona’s Health Care Cost Containment System, the state’s Medicaid program, have stepped down from their positions. Heredia was scheduled to go before the state Senate’s Committee on Director Nominations for consideration on Thursday.

In her announcement, Hobbs blamed the Republican majority for co-opting the confirmation process to attack her nominations on political grounds.

“Unfortunately, the Senate’s unprecedented politicization of the director confirmation process has ended the directorship of two healthcare professionals who have made our state government run more efficiently and more effectively,” she said in a written statement. “The people of Arizona are tired of the relentless politics that has undermined good governance in the name of partisan retribution. It should not matter whether the leaders of our state government are Democrats or Republicans; it should matter that our state is run by public servants who do what’s right for everyday people.”

Under Arizona law, the governor’s agency picks are required to be vetted and approved or rejected by the state Senate. The process has historically been uneventful, with candidates facing interviews from lawmakers on committees relevant to the agencies they’ve been chosen for, but Hobbs’ election prompted Republicans to set up an entirely new committee to vet her choices. And that has resulted in aggressive, hourslong interrogations that more closely resemble federal confirmation hearings.

After several of her candidates resigned or were shot down for political reasons, Hobbs attempted to circumvent the process by appointing them as executive directors. Cunico was appointed in 2023, following the withdrawn nomination of her predecessor, former Pima County Health Director Dr. Theresa Cullen, who underwent a contentious hearing that focused on her handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Heredia was appointed in late 2022. But a failed court battle over the legality of Hobbs’ actions meant the duo would eventually need to win approval from the state Senate to continue serving in their roles.

Both Heredia and Cunico cited the contentious confirmation process in their resignation letters as the reason for their decisions to step down, despite their desire to continue working in public health.

“Serving the people of Arizona — especially our most vulnerable — has been one of the greatest honors of my professional life,” Heredia wrote. “However, it has become increasingly difficult to carry out this mission in good faith under the current political climate. I am deeply concerned about the escalating politicization of state agency leadership roles under the Republican-led Legislature. The intrusion of partisan agendas that drag professionals through career damaging hearings is not an effective way to attract and retain qualified people in these critical roles and has made it increasingly challenging to serve Arizona agencies effectively.”

“It is clear to me that there is no path forward to confirmation,” echoed Cunico.

Cunico, whose confirmation hearing hadn’t yet been scheduled, had already faced criticism for a Child Fatality Report that recommended increasing gun safety regulations and advised parents to remove firearms to prevent gun-related deaths. Republican lawmakers accused the department of public health of advocating for “stripping Arizonans of their Second Amendment rights.” While Cunico was not a part of the team that developed that report, it’s likely that, as the figurehead of the state’s public health department, the topic would have been brought up during her confirmation.

Republicans celebrated the resignations. Sen. Jake Hoffman, a Republican from Queen Creek who chairs the Director Nominations Committee and who also heads the legislature’s far-right Arizona Freedom Caucus, said they are a “testament” to the work done by lawmakers to ensure candidates are the best choice for Arizonans.

Hoffman denounced Heredia for what he said was “mismanagement” of the state’s Medicaid program and blamed her for the sober home living fraud that targeted Arizona’s indigenous community and cost taxpayers $2.5 billion.

“Arizona is in the middle of a monumental Medicaid fraud crisis with a loss of more than $2 billion in taxpayer dollars,” he wrote. “Under Katie Hobbs’ leadership, Heredia’s response has been incredibly disturbing, to say the least.”

That widespread fraudulent scheme, under which behavioral health and addiction treatment facilities lured and neglected patients to obtain Medicaid reimbursements, began in 2019 and went unchecked by Republican Gov. Doug Ducey’s administration. In a bid to clean up the mess and crackdown on fraudulent sober living homes, some legitimate businesses have had their payments suspended by AHCCCS. But officials have said that a process exists to release those payments and the department has sought to correct mistakes when they occur.

Hoffman vowed to continue pushing for stringent reviews of Hobbs’ candidates.

“Since its inception, the Committee on Director Nominations has been committed to honestly, thoroughly, and accurately vetting Katie Hobbs’ nominees,” he wrote. “We have served as Arizonans’ last line of defense against incompetent, unqualified, and highly partisan picks to lead state agencies.”

Trump’s tariffs “upend constitutional order” and harm state economies, Dem AGs allege

by Gloria Rebecca Gomez, Arizona Mirror
April 23, 2025

A dozen Democratic attorneys general, led by the AGs in Arizona and Oregon, filed a lawsuit Wednesday arguing that President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs were illegally implemented and will cause irreparable harm to their constituents.

In the 38-page filing, attorneys general for Arizona, Oregon, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York and Vermont urged the U.S. Court of International Trade to find that the president’s tariffs were issued illegally.

In the past three months, Trump has at various times declared and withdrawn the financial penalties on multiple countries. For now, the White House has settled on a 145% tariff on most products imported from China, 25% tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods and 10% base tariffs on the rest of the world.

ALSO READ: 'We’ve made a mistake': Trump’s trade war sends GOP into frenzy

Another 57 countries were subject to “reciprocal” tariffs that were actually based on trade deficits, not existing tariffs that those countries had applied to American goods.

The attorneys general argued that the whiplash of constantly changing tariff rates has injected uncertainty into the country’s economy and said the president’s misuse of his strictly defined powers violates the U.S. Constitution.

“These edicts reflect a national trade policy that now hinges on the President’s whims rather than the sound exercise of his lawful authority,” reads the lawsuit. “By claiming the authority to impose immense and ever-changing tariffs on whatever goods entering the United States he chooses, for whatever reason he finds convenient to declare an emergency, the President has upended the constitutional order and brought chaos to the American economy.”

Arizona AG Kris Mayes, who has mobilized her office to challenge the federal government’s actions in thirteen different lawsuits, called the tariffs “economically reckless” in a news conference announcing the latest lawsuit.

“As Arizona’s chief law enforcement officer, I will not stand by while the federal government imposes policies that harm our economy, violates the constitution and ignores the limits of executive power,” she said. “This lawsuit is about protecting Arizonans and businesses large and small, it is about defending our constitutional system and reminding this administration, yet again, that no one — not even the president of the United States — is above the law.”

The attorneys general argue that only Congress has the power to impose tariffs, and that Trump’s bid to circumvent that by invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act is unlawful. The act, they wrote, makes no mention of tariffs, and only empowers the president to regulate, investigate or block trade while an investigation is ongoing.

And, they argue, the requirements for Trump to act during peacetime haven’t been met. The act grants the president the ability to regulate trade between the United States and other countries if there is an “unusual and extraordinary threat” that poses a risk to national security, foreign policy or the country’s economy.

To satisfy that, Trump has justified his tariffs by accusing Canada and Mexico of not doing enough to stop the flow of fentanyl and China of failing to intercept the chemical precursors that are used to manufacture fentanyl. And while Trump relied on IEEPA to greenlight 10% tariffs against the rest of the world, he provided no reasoning that might comply with the act’s requirements.

The lawsuit also notes that applying tariffs to every product from Canada, Mexico and China violates IEEPA, because not every product that is imported from those countries is related to the president’s purported goal of addressing the fentanyl crisis.

“The Plaintiff states agree that the fentanyl crisis requires urgent government action, but the imposition of tariffs is neither an effective nor a lawful response to that crisis,” the AGs wrote in the lawsuit. “The (tariff orders for China, Mexico and Canada) lacks any rationale for the tariff rates imposed and bears no relationship between the goods subject to the Order and the claimed emergency.”

During Wednesday’s news conference, Mayes highlighted the damage the tariffs risk causing to the Grand Canyon State’s business community and government agencies.

The Democrat, who previously served on the Arizona Corporation Commission, said she has discussed the possibility of increased rates with utility companies in the state, and while they haven’t committed to avoiding doing so, they also haven’t ruled them out. Mayes pointed out that some utility companies depend on lumber from Canada to erect telephone poles, and others use solar panels, which are largely made in China, or transformers, which come from Europe, China and South America.

Likewise, the Arizona Department of Transportation is already seeing prices rise, and Mayes said that will ultimately increase the cost of highway and road construction.

Bill Sandweg, the owner of Copper Star Coffee in central Phoenix, said that his business depends on ingredients that are grown in other countries, with climates that cannot be replicated in the United States, and specialty equipment that isn’t manufactured in the country. He said that he buys around $5,000 worth of spices from India every year, but the new tariffs have increased that cost to $7,500.

Sandweg called the tariffs “taxation without representation” and warned that, if they aren’t reduced, his costs will eventually be transferred to consumers.

This isn’t the first lawsuit the White House has had to contend with in the wake of its tariff policies. Last week, California launched its own legal challenge in federal court that similarly attacked the president’s use of his emergency powers to impose tariffs. And a Florida woman who owns a stationary business went to court to contest the fact that her voice, and those of other U.S. citizens, was ignored because the tariffs weren’t subject to congressional debate.

A group of small businesses also filed a lawsuit against Trump’s use of the IEEPA in the U.S. Court of International Trade on April 14. On Wednesday, a panel of judges overseeing the case decided against freezing the tariffs while litigation continues. A hearing is scheduled on May 13 for the court to consider the issue.

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com.

Arizona police departments would be incentivized to target people they believe are undocumented under a Republican bid to award them a $2,500 bounty for every arrest that ends in a deportation.

The move represents the GOP legislative majority’s latest foray into immigration policy, which has taken on a decidedly hostile tone in the wake of President Donald Trump’s election victory and his stated goal of deporting millions of immigrants.

And it goes far beyond what Republican lawmakers in Arizona have ever attempted, including the controversial SB1070 in 2010, the “show me your papers” law that spawned boycotts of Arizona and ultimately cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars of economic activity.

Sponsored by Sen. Jake Hoffman, the leader of the far-right Arizona Freedom Caucus who has built a reputation for hard-ball politics and controversial proposals, Senate Bill 1111 would set up an “Arizona Deportations Fund.” That fund would be used to disburse bounties of $2,500 to law enforcement agencies every time the arrest of an undocumented person leads to their removal from the country by federal officials.

Originally, the bill called for that money to be divided up among the arresting officers as compensation for their involvement in the deportation of unauthorized immigrants, but Hoffman modified it so that the money is sent instead to the police department or sheriff’s office they work for.

Immigrant rights advocates argue that the effect remains the same: Paying law enforcement agencies to arrest people suspected of being in the country illegally essentially transforms Arizona’s police departments into bounty hunting agencies, incentivizing them to prioritize enforcing federal immigration laws over state laws.

Noah Schramm, the border policy strategist for the Arizona chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, warned lawmakers on the Senate Government Committee — which Hoffman chairs — that it would spell disaster for the constitutional rights of Arizonans, no matter their citizenship status.

“It will supercharge racial profiling across the state,” he said.

Lena Avalos, an organizer with Living United for Change in Arizona, a progressive pro-immigrant organization, denounced the bill as “hateful, racist legislation” and criticized GOP lawmakers for seeking to facilitate deportations instead of resolving pressing issues the state faces.

“Instead of focusing on lowering the cost of rent, keeping our schools open and making sure that Arizonans can keep their health care, we are here discussing different ways to spend taxpayer dollars on criminalizing communities of color,” she said, shortly before being cut off by Hoffman for what he said were comments that strayed from the bill’s intent.

The Republican framed his proposal as restoring lost funding sent abroad by undocumented Arizonans. The money for the $2,500 bounties would be raised from increasing taxes on foreign wire transfers, which immigrants often use to send remittances back to family in their countries of origin.

“We are losing hundreds of millions of dollars every year in economic activity to foreign nations,” he said. “Hundreds of millions of dollars are being sent out of our economy to the economy of foreign nations by those who are in this country illegally, who have broken our laws and are now exploiting the benefits of this great economy, the benefits of this great nation to prop up failing foreign governments.”

Billions of dollars in remittances are sent every year from the U.S. to other countries, including those in Latin America. In 2023, Mexico alone received more than $63 billion in remittances.

Anti-immigrant politicians have long aimed their ire at people who send money back to family members in their native countries. During his first presidency, Trump threatened to tax remittances to pay for the border wall, and long before that, in 2009, Oklahoma lawmakers approved a $5 tax on foreign wire transfers under $500 with collected revenues being sent to the state Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.

Hoffman’s proposal far outstrips Oklahoma’s law, levying a $25 tax — on top of current foreign wire transfer fees — on every sum below $500 and an additional 5% of any amount exceeding that threshold. And while Arizonans with lawful status who file taxes would be able to recoup those fees during tax season, undocumented people — who don’t file income taxes — would essentially be forced to fund deportations.

Western Union, the most popular financial services firm for wire transfers, is opposed to the bill.

Democrats on the committee questioned the fairness of punishing migrants for using the money they earned. Sen. Flavio Bravo, D-Phoenix, pointed out that sometimes people travelling through the state stop to send remittances, and students at Arizona’s public universities who don’t file their taxes in the state might also wire money to their relatives in other countries.

Bravo added that there’s nothing wrong with seeking to help family members who live outside the U.S., and said he himself has sent remittances to his wife, who at the time hadn’t yet become a legal permanent resident and lived in Mexico.

“The American Dream isn’t just about preparing yourself for success, it’s also about bringing up your family with you, and if people have worked hard and earned this hard earned money, I don’t see anything wrong with them supporting loved ones abroad,” he said.

Hoffman also dismissed concerns that the bill would incentivize police officers to make racially biased arrests, saying that it doesn’t change how law enforcement agencies should carry out their duties and leaves in place current protocols that protect Arizonans’ due process rights.

But even without the law on the books, police departments across the state have been found guilty of detaining people based on their ethnicity. A 2011 investigation from the U.S. Department of Justice found that officers with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department stopped Latino Arizonans nine times more often than non-Latino drivers in some parts of the county. And just last year, after a three-year investigation, the DOJ concluded in a 126-page report that Phoenix Police Department officers engaged in rampant discrimination against Black, Hispanic and Native American people, and routinely violated people’s civil and constitutional rights.

Some law enforcement groups have spoken out against the bill. The Arizona Police Association, which is the state’s largest law enforcement advocacy organization and is made up of more than 12,000 law enforcement officers, is opposed tocreating a bounty system for cops. Joe Clure, the group’s executive director, said it doesn’t support the “monetizing” of arrest decisions under any circumstances.

Currently, there appear to be no similar laws or state-funded policies on the books that reward police departments for how many arrests are made of a particular group. Bart Graves, a spokesman for the Arizona Department of Public Safety, said no bounty program exists for the agency that is dependent on an officer or agency’s everyday actions. Richie Taylor, a spokesman for the Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, said the office does award some bonuses for law enforcement agencies, but those are based on retention and performance outcomes. He added that Mayes is opposed to the bill, which she derided as a political “stunt.”

The Senate Government Committee, which is controlled by Republicans, passed SB1111 along party lines. Democrats on the panel denounced the bill as an attack on immigrants and sharply criticized Republicans for advancing discriminatory legislation.

Sen. Lauren Kuby, a freshman Democrat from Tempe, said it was an “ugly” and “hateful” bill. Her voice shook as she shared the story of meeting with a 17-year-old student in her district from a mixed status family.

“She and her family have their bags packed, ready to leave if they need to leave and escape the country, escape persecution, escape this terror that is being visited upon them,” Kuby recounted. “She told me that, when she’s in school, she worries when she gets a phone call from her mother that it’s not her mom just seeing what her plans are for the day. She’s worried it’s going to be a message from her mother that her grandfather’s been taken, or that her sister’s been deported.”

Republicans, meanwhile, dismissed concerns about the bill’s impact on the state’s immigrant communities. Sen. Wendy Rogers, who regularly traffics in hard-line anti-immigrant rhetoric and spoke at a white nationalist conference in 2022, called for taking the “emotionalism” out of the conversation. She said the bill doesn’t stop people from sending remittances home, it merely raises the fees to do so.

Rogers, a Republican from Flagstaff, also used nativist terms to characterize undocumented immigrants as an “invasion.”

Hoffman, too, invoked invasion terminology and alluded to the racist Great Replacement theory — which has spawned violence in America and around the globe — accusing Democrats of supporting undocumented people with the intent of ousting Republicans from power.

“There is an effort afoot in this nation to take it over through invasion,” he said. “Democratic politicians want illegal aliens to vote, they want illegal aliens to be counted in our census so that the district lines can be drawn in favor of Democratic politicians.”

Anti-immigrant politicians have long framed unauthorized immigration as an invasion to push draconian policies. But the terminology isn’t just wielded in statehouses: it has also been widely adopted by nativist movements and white supremacist terrorists, like the El Paso shooter who targeted Mexicans at a Walmart in 2019.

The bill next goes before the full state Senate for consideration, where it is expected to be supported by the Republicans that hold a majority in the chamber. If that happens, and if the state House of Representatives — which Republicans also control — also passes it, SB1111 would almost certainly meet a swift veto from Gov. Katie Hobbs, who has already panned it.

The Democrat has been a strong advocate for increasing funding for communities and law enforcement agencies along the border instead of taking a hostile approach. And while she has previously voiced support for anti-immigrant proposals at the federal level, she has been dismissive of state-led policy changes that immigrant rights groups oppose. Christian Slater, Hobbs’ spokesman, said she’s prepared to reject it if it lands on her desk.

“There’s no way in hell the Governor signs a tax hike into law, especially one that puts a bounty on the heads of innocent people who have worked hard, paid taxes and lived in their communities for decades,” he said. “Arizonans want border security, they don’t want to turn hard working law enforcement officers into bounty hunters.”

And while Republicans, including Hoffman, have criticized Hobbs as weak on border security and unwilling to work with them on the issue despite acknowledging it as critical, Slater said Hobbs is simply not going to cave to “political messaging games.”

“She’s going to work with anybody in order to deliver real border security, and that includes President Trump,” Slater said. “She’s also going to stand up and tell people when they’re getting it wrong.”

On the same day that a white supremacy aligned university club encouraged students to report their classmates to ICE, hundreds of Arizona State University Sun Devils responded by marching in support of their undocumented classmates.

Crowds of students waving Mexican flags and posters with supportive messages, including “Education not deportation” and “Stand with ASU Dreamers,” surrounded a small gathering of College Republicans United at Hayden Library as they held up their own signs with information on how to tip off immigration officials about classmates suspected of being in the country illegally.

Loud shouts of “Down with deportation!”” and “No hate, no fear, everyone is welcome here!” resounded throughout the campus.

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Earlier this week, College Republicans United announced on social media that it would staff a table at the university’s central building to provide information on how to file reports against classmates believed to be undocumented, including recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — people with temporary authorization who wouldn’t be subject to President Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan.

The student organization has frequently courted scandal, inviting Jared Taylor, a white nationalist who espouses racist talking points to speak in 2022. The new event spurred immediate backlash from immigration advocates, who slammed the move as likely to encourage racial discrimination.

Reyna Montoya, the founder and CEO of Aliento, a local organization that serves DACA and other undocumented youth, criticized the event as a bid to instill fear in students without legal status who are simply trying to get an education, and called on protestors to respond with activism.

“They wanted to intimidate students,” she shouted through a bullhorn as march attendees took a short break. “They wanted to ensure that they don’t get their degrees, and the best way to fight back is with love, with compassion — and by getting an education!”

The group made several circuits around Hayden Library and the nearby Memorial Union, with the intent of letting Dreamer students who might be listening to their chants know that they “are not alone,” before settling in front of the union to hear speeches.

Ayla Moreno stumbled on the protest by accident and quickly joined it. She listened to the speeches with tears streaming down her face, and when she noticed some of her white classmates in the crowd, she ran up to them and thanked them for their participation.

Moreno said she’s struggled with all the anti-immigrant news in the past few weeks since Trump took office, and hearing about students who vocally advocated for helping deport Latino students at her school was especially painful. Her paternal grandparents immigrated to the country from Chihuahua, Mexico, many years ago, and she said they would be astonished by the vitriol.

“They never would have expected this to happen,” she said, still wiping away tears. “I didn’t think we’d go back in time like this.”

But, she added, she was reassured by the fact that so many showed up to the protest, and that pro-immigrant advocates outnumbered the few handful of representatives from College Republicans United.

“It’s clear that there are a lot more people here, than there are against us,” Moreno said.

Nineteen-year-old Sharik Luengas, wrapped up in a Colombian flag, said it “baffled” her that anyone would be willing to call ICE on their fellow classmates. She said the news angered her as the first generation child of immigrants, and spurred her to join the march.

“Any chance I have to speak up for my family, I will,” she said.

Jesus Verdini also wore a flag to the protest, one that was half of the American flag and half of the Mexican flag, in acknowledgement of both his heritage and his U.S. citizenship. He said he was disappointed that ASU allowed the anti-immigrant event to go on, and that students just trying to get an education and help their families succeed had to deal with hostility just steps away from their classrooms. He added that he’s concerned about the risk of racial profiling, saying that there’s no way to know a person’s immigration status from just looking at them.

“You don’t know who is or isn’t an immigrant,” he said. “Immigrants are just normal people. And it’s so unjust and racist that people are allowed to discriminate against them like this.”

In a press release, ASU denounced the College Republicans United event, but said that it could not prevent it from taking place without violating free speech protections. One journalist reported that only four of the people at CRU’s event were students at ASU; they were joined by prominent white nationalist advocates.

“Encouraging ASU students to make indiscriminate complaints to law enforcement about fellow students is not in keeping with the principles which underlie our academic community,” reads the statement. “We are here to teach and learn — not to engage in self-aggrandizing conduct meant solely to generate as much media attention and controversy as possible. But we must also recognize that we live in a country that protects individual free speech, even speech that is hurtful.”

Just three years ago, the university was designated a Hispanic-serving Institution by the U.S. Department of Education, in recognition of its high rate of Hispanic student enrollment and opening it up to new federal funding. For the fall 2021 semester, the university’s Hispanic student enrollment was over 30,200. And that number is only expected to keep growing after Arizona voters approved in-state tuition for Dreamers in 2022.

Aliento at ASU, the student-run chapter of the larger statewide organization, drafted a letter to ASU administration officials demanding that ICE officials be prohibited from stepping foot on campus without a judicial warrant, that school administrators ensure student clubs don’t violate guidelines and assurances that students won’t be targeted by their peers without consequences and that all students can fully participate in academic activities without fear of harassment. According to Emily Sotelo, the co-chair of Aliento at ASU, the letter has so far garnered more than 4,000 student signatures. All students, regardless of their legal status, Sotelo said at the march, deserve to seek an education without fear.

“Whether they’re Dreamers or they have DACA, and they’re pursuing an education and they want to be here, they have the right to be here just like everybody else,” she said.

Arizona’s 15-week abortion ban is projected to cost the state billions every year, with women forced out of the labor market as a result of inadequate reproductive health care, a new report says.

An analysis from the Grand Canyon Institute, a non-partisan think tank, warns that the economic hit to Arizona could be as high as $3.4 billion annually. The report, which relies on a July study from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, notes that current restrictions around abortion access will lead to steep workforce losses.

Among Arizona women between the ages of 15 and 44, participation in the labor market is expected to fall by 1% every year that abortion is restricted. For individual women and their families, that translates to a loss of $9,564 in annual income.

The source of those economic pitfalls is Arizona’s gestational ban, which prohibits abortions performed after 15 weeks. There are only two exceptions: a life-saving procedure or one provided to avert the impairment of a woman’s “ major bodily function.” Doctors who violate the law face a class 6 felony, which could result in a prison sentence between four months and two years.

Reproductive rights advocates are hoping voters strike down the ban in November by approving the Arizona Abortion Access Act. Proposition 139 would enshrine abortion in the state Constitution as a fundamental right and guarantee access to it up to the point of fetal viability, generally considered to be around 24 weeks. It also includes exceptions beyond that point, if a provider deems an abortion is necessary to preserve a woman’s life, physical or mental health.

In its report, the Grand Canyon Institute pointed out that the state of women’s health care in Arizona is already dismal. In a 2024 ranking of states by maternal mortality rates, Arizona fell near the bottom at 40.

Similarly, the availability of abortion clinics in Arizona is well below the national average of 1.5 clinics per 100,000 women. There are only nine women’s health clinics in the entire state that provide abortions, and the majority of them are located in Maricopa County.

Health care, higher education and the business industry in Arizona also stand to lose under the continued restriction of abortion access, according to the report. The Association of American Medical Colleges found that applications for medical residencies in states with abortion bans plummeted after the overturning of Roe v. Wade. In Arizona, interest from applicants dropped by 18.3% in the 2023-2024 application year — orders of magnitude greater than the national average decline of just 0.4%.

Applications for emergency medicine and OB-GYN residencies were the two most negatively impacted in Arizona. And, unless interest is recaptured, the future of health care in Arizona is likely to suffer. The federal government projects a 7% decline in OB-GYNs across the country by 2030, while demand is expected to increase during the same time frame.

Analysts for the Grand Canyon Institute added that prospective students and businesses are looking to move to states that offer comprehensive reproductive health care. A national survey found that 71% of college students, both male and female, said reproductive health care policies were important factors in their decision-making about where to enroll. And 62% of people aged 18 to 34 said they would refuse to relocate to a state with restrictive abortion policies — a critical barometer for businesses hoping to recruit and retain employees.

“Arizona is losing out in efforts to attract talent to the state,” warned the authors of the Grand Canyon Institute report.

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and X.

Republican leaders are siding with Arizona’s Democratic secretary of state in a legal dispute over whether roughly 97,000 voters should get a full ballot this election, arguing that, despite the uncertainty that those voters ever turned in proof of citizenship, they still have a right to back their preferred candidates in local and state elections.

“Nearly 100,000 Arizona voters should not be penalized for a mistake made by the government. We will not stand by as voters are disenfranchised, especially so close to an election,” Gina Swoboda, the chair of the state’s Republican Party, said in a press release accompanying the announcement of the group’s filing calling on the Arizona Supreme Court to not penalize the voters who inadvertently are not properly registered to vote.

A law passed by voters in 2004 requires Arizonans to provide evidence of their citizenship status to be eligible to vote in local and state elections. The U.S. Supreme Court prohibited that same rule from being applied to federal elections, forcing Arizona to adopt a bifurcated system that allows voters who haven’t adequately proven their citizenship status to receive federal-only ballots.

The ability of almost 100,000 voters to obtain full ballots was jeopardized by the discovery of a 20-year-old coding glitch that affects how Arizona’s Motor Vehicle Division shares information with the state’s voter registration database. Arizonans who signed up for a driver’s license before October 1996 and then received a duplicate replacement that was used to register to vote after 2004 — when voter registration requirements were updated — were marked as having sufficient proof of citizenship, even though they had never actually proved they were citizens to get their license.

Earlier this week, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican, filed an emergency petition for special action with the state Supreme Court asking the justices to order that the affected voters should qualify for federal-only and not full ballots, unless they remedy the issue themselves by providing evidence of their citizenship status. While 97,000 is just a fraction of Arizona’s 4.1 million total voters, leaving even that number of votes on the table is significant in a state that’s become known for its tight races.

And Republicans sounded the alarm over the fact that the group is made up of older voters who likely lean Republican.

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes weighed in on the debate. In his filing, Fontes advocated for preserving the status quo during the election and verifying citizenship statuses afterwards. Election deadlines are around the corner, wrote his attorney, Craig Morgan, and introducing new requirements this late in the year will only cause confusion and chaos. Ballots for military and overseas voters are set to be mailed this Saturday, and the last day to register to vote is Oct. 7, just two weeks away. Early voting begins on Oct. 9.

On top of that, Fontes added, there’s no reason to suspect that the majority of the 97,000 are non-citizens. In fact, most of the evidence points to most of them being in the country lawfully and being eligible to vote.

Multiple studies have shown that non-citizen voting is extremely rare. And even if the affected voters weren’t asked to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote, they were still required to sign a statement affirming their citizenship status under penalty of perjury.

“To deprive voters of the franchise, when there is no actual proof they should be so deprived, is undemocratic, unconstitutional, and must be avoided at all costs,” Morgan wrote.

Fontes also pointed out that Richer’s request that the court downgrade the 97,000 voters from full ballots to federal-only ballots would require the court to wade into lawmaking — something that isn’t within its authority and it should avoid. State legislators have passed laws directing election officials on how to handle voter list maintenance, how to move voters from active to inactive voting status and even how to cancel invalid registrations, but no state law exists detailing how to revise a voter’s eligibility.

Republicans backed Fontes’ argument, urging the court to keep things the way they’ve been for the past 20 years. Attorney Andrew Gould, representing the Arizona Republican Party in an amicus brief, told the justices that preventing the voters from receiving full ballots would violate federal protections.

The First and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee a person’s right to vote without undue burdens, and the National Voter Registration Act prohibits invalidating the registrations of voters less than 90 days out from any election, he noted. This year, that deadline was in August. Government clerical errors aren’t included in the list of exceptions, either.

“The governmental failure to enforce state law regarding proof of citizenship must be corrected — but not on the eve of an election where doing so may cause massive voter disenfranchisement and would be unlawful,” Gould wrote.

Republican legislative leaders also joined Fontes in requesting that the Supreme Court preserve the ability of the affected voters to vote for local candidates. In a motion to intervene, Senate President Warren Petersen and House Speaker Ben Toma said they agreed with Fontes’ assessment of the situation, though they added that they might have different “philosophical and institutional perspectives” that warranted their inclusion in the case. The duo argued that they should be involved because the debate concerns due process and fair notice conflicts with Arizona’s voter ID law and, as lawmakers, they’re best situated to take on the constitutionality of state laws.

Until the Arizona Supreme Court issues a ruling in the matter, the ballots of 97,000 Arizonans remain in limbo. In the meantime, Fontes has told county recorders to make no changes, and has instructed them to shift operations to identifying affected voters if the high court disagrees with his argument.

U.S. Rep. Greg Stanton, a Phoenix Democrat, sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security requesting help for the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office in confirming the thousands of missing citizenship statuses.

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and X.

Arizona voters will decide whether state judges should be awarded lifetime appointments, after the Arizona Supreme Court on Thursday cleared a proposal to do just that for the November ballot.

Progress Arizona, a progressive advocacy and lobbying organization, requested that the high court block the ballot measure and prevent it from going before voters. Attorneys for the group argued that Proposition 137, dubbed “The Judicial Accountability Act of 2024” by the GOP lawmakers who sent it to the ballot, is unconstitutional because it illegally amends more than one part of the Arizona Constitution.

But the justices were unconvinced, with Chief Justice Ann Scott Timer writing that the proposal’s content is so interconnected that it complies with the constitutional requirement that it make just one change.

“The Court finds that (Prop. 137) complies with the separate amendment rule because its provisions are topically related and sufficiently interrelated so as to form a consistent and workable proposition that, logically speaking, should stand or fall as a whole,” she wrote.

The proposal would virtually eliminate term limits for Arizona Supreme Court Justices, Arizona Court of Appeals judges and trial court judges in Maricopa, Coconino, Pima and Pinal counties. Currently, state supreme and appellate court judges have six-year tenures and trial court judges serve for four years before they must convince voters to award them another term.

But Prop. 137 would grant state judges indefinite terms. Only those convicted of a felony or a crime involving dishonesty or fraud; who file for bankruptcy or a mortgage foreclosure; or who receive a negative review from the Judicial Performance Review Commission would be forced to face a retention election.

The ballot measure also allows each legislative chamber to appoint a new member to the Commission by a majority vote. And every lawmaker would have the power to prompt an investigation of any judge by sending the Commission a written accusation that the judge in question is engaging in a “pattern of malfeasance in office.”

Opponents of Prop. 137 claimed in court filings that it violates the separate amendment mandate because it both revises how state judges are retained and inserts lawmakers into the performance review process. Timmer dismissed that concern, however, writing that the justices agree with a lower court’s assessment that the measure complied with the Arizona Constitution.

Before the Arizona Supreme Court threw out the appeal from Progress Arizona, Yavapai County Superior Court Judge John Napper rejected similar arguments. In his ruling, Napper concluded that, while the changes to how the Judicial Performance Review Commission is run are distinct from the overhaul of the judicial retention system, the two have been intertwined for long enough that they fall under the same subject.

“There is a history of linking retention elections and the judicial review process,” he wrote.

AZ justices who voted to reinstate abortion ban stand to gain

While it was being considered by lawmakers, Prop. 137 was mired in controversy. Along with transforming how term limits for Arizona judges work, the ballot measure is also retroactive to this year’s election. That means that, if Arizonans choose to approve it, any retention bids held in the same election would be nullified, even if a majority of voters agree to unseat a judge.

Among the judges facing retention elections this year are Arizona Supreme Court Justices Clint Bolick and Kathryn King. The duo have recently been targeted by a campaign to convince Arizonans to remove them — headed by Progress Arizona — in response to their support for reinstating a near-total abortion ban from 1864 earlier this year.

In April, Bolick and King were among the four justices who ruled that the Civil War-era law that mandated prison time for doctors who perform an abortion for any reason other than saving a woman’s life should once again be enforced.

Progressive and reproductive rights advocates are counting on abortion to be a mobilizing issue in November, drawing voters to the polls, and critics of Bolick and King hope that will result in rejected retention bids. But if Prop. 137 passes, Bolick and King will be insulated from any voter repercussions they might otherwise face.

Bolick’s wife, state Sen. Shawnna Bolick, helped send Prop. 137 to the ballot, despite criticism from fellow lawmakers.

Bolick and King both recused themselves from the case in light of the impact the ballot measure could have on their retention elections.

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and X.

Disgraced former lawmaker Leezah Sun’s hopes of returning to the state Capitol were dashed Tuesday, as she was trounced by fellow Democrat Eva Diaz in a West Valley legislative race.

Diaz, the incumbent in the race, handily defeated Sun in Tuesday’s primary, sweeping up nearly three times the number of votes as her opponent in a scathing rebuke of the disgraced former lawmaker.

Initial reporting showed Diaz with a hefty 53% lead over Sun. A difference of nearly 4,000 votes separated the two.

Diaz was first elected to the Arizona legislature in 2022, after mounting a successful write-in campaign following the withdrawal of Diego Espinoza, the only Democratic candidate running to represent Legislative District 22, which spans parts of Goodyear, Avondale and Tolleson. Since then, the first-term lawmaker has made immigrant advocacy, public education and health care key parts of her political focus. The district Diaz represents is majority Hispanic, and is solidly Democratic.

Sun, meanwhile, was elected to the Arizona House of Representatives for the same district in 2022. In the freshman lawmaker’s first year of serving in the state legislature, Democratic Party leaders filed an ethics complaint against her, alarmed by reports that she had weaponized her office to influence the outcome of a friend’s child custody arrangement, intimidated a school superintendent and threatened kill a Tolleson city lobbyist by throwing her off a hotel balcony.

After a monthslong investigation and two separate hearings — during neither of which Sun apologized or admitted guilt — the House Ethics Committee concluded that the freshman lawmaker was guilty of violating the legislature’s rule against disorderly conduct. Facing certain expulsion, Sun resigned shortly before the start of the floor session during which Democratic and Republican lawmakers were expected to vote her out of office.

Undeterred by the mark on her political reputation, Sun forged ahead with her campaign to represent west Phoenix in the state Senate and voters in her district responded with a stinging rebuke.

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and X.

Arizona’s strict 1864 abortion ban will never go back into effect, as lawmakers adjourned for the year on Saturday, meaning a bill repealing the ban will become effective before the court order that would have revived the law.

In April, the Arizona Supreme Court upended the state’s political landscape and thrust health care providers into legal turmoil when it ruled that a near-total abortion ban from 1864 could once again be enforced. The 160-year-old law was slated to go into effect in September, after Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes won a three-month delay.

After weeks of debate, lawmakers voted to repeal the law in May, but such legislative actions only become effective 90 days after the end of the annual legislative session.

Reproductive rights advocates had worried the legislature would stall its adjournment, meaning the ban would have gone into effect before its repeal, or before voters could weigh in on a likely November ballot measure to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.

Dr. Gabrielle Goodrick, medical director of Camelback Family Planning, one of just nine clinics in the state that offer abortion services, said that she was relieved to hear that the 1864 law will no longer threaten to halt her work.

“I’m relieved that there won’t be any complications or interruptions in services,” she said. “I’m relieved for my patients and my staff.”

It would have been strange for the state to enforce a law that the legislature has already agreed to repeal, she said. But, Goodrick added, the nullification of the Civil War-era law doesn’t mean women no longer have to contend with restrictive abortion laws.

The law, which was previously blocked by the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, mandated a 2- to 5-year prison sentence for any doctor who performed an abortion for any reason other than saving a woman’s life.

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe in 2022, it led to weeks of political turmoil and uncertainty for women and providers as courts and elected officials disagreed as to whether the 1864 law or a more recent 15-week abortion ban was in effect.

That all changed on Saturday, when Arizona lawmakers rang in the last day of the legislative session and ensured that most state laws passed this year, including the repeal, will go into effect Sept. 14, according to the Arizona Attorney General’s office. And two court orders had delayed the near-total ban’s reimplementation until Sept. 27, days after the repeal will have already been made official.

One of those court orders is a 90-day delay requested by AG Kris Mayes, a staunch proponent of abortion access who asked the Arizona Supreme Court to freeze its April ruling until her office could decide whether to pursue an appeal from the U.S. Supreme Court.

Richie Taylor, Mayes’ spokesman, declined to comment on whether Mayes will follow through with an appeal now that the repeal can go into effect, but said that the office is still evaluating the legal issues at stake.

Part of the state supreme court’s reasoning for reviving the 1864 near-total ban relied on a fetal personhood law passed in 2021 that continues to be litigated in federal court. Mayes argued that using the 2021 law to reimplement the 160-year-old law undermined federal rulings and threatened to impact the ongoing case.

Arizona is under a 15-week gestational ban, with no exceptions for rape or incest. Only women facing imminent death or irreversible bodily harm can obtain an abortion after the gestational deadline. And a separate law prohibits all abortions sought for the sole reason of a fetal genetic anomaly.

Goodrick said that patients who visit her clinic are often unaware a 15-week ban is in place, and are devastated and panicked when they are told they cannot receive an abortion unless they travel out of state — an option that is unfeasible for many women.

Abortion advocates are setting their sights on November to eliminate that remaining abortion ban and restore the procedure’s legality up to 24 weeks and beyond, if a doctor deems it necessary to protect a patient’s life, physical or mental health. The Arizona Abortion Access initiative, which would enshrine abortion as a right in the state constitution, has far exceeded the number of signatures it needs to gather to qualify for the ballot.

Campaign spokeswoman Dawn Penich said collection efforts are winding down in preparation for the July 3 deadline to turn in signatures. Penich added that, despite the legislature’s repeal of the 1864 law, the abortion rights initiative is still needed to ensure such threats never arise again.

“When it comes to extreme abortion bans, what’s important to us to remember is that as long as these decisions are the purview of the legislature, our rights are always at risk, and the political gameplay and flip flopping we saw this session will continue to threaten our access to essential healthcare,” she said, in an emailed statement. “It’s as important as ever that we enshrine the right to access abortion care in the state Constitution to finally put an end to political interference into private medical decisions about pregnancy and abortion.”

Athena Salman, director of Arizona campaigns for Reproductive Freedom for All, an abortion advocacy group that is part of the coalition to put abortion rights on the ballot, reiterated the importance of passing the initiative in November and said the protracted battles over abortion laws between Republicans and Democrats highlights the need to turn the state blue.

Arizona Democrats and reproductive rights organizations are hoping abortion, which has proven to be a mobilizing issue in other red states like Kentucky and Kansas, will convince voters to award the party a trifecta – the abortion rights measure and Democratic control of the legislature. Republicans currently hold both legislative chambers with a razor-thin, one-vote majority.

“Let’s be clear, Arizona is still under an abortion ban and has over 40 laws restricting abortion care. These last few months in Arizona demonstrate what we must do this November,” Salman said, in an emailed statement. “Reproductive Freedom for All Arizona and our members are laser-focused on enshrining the right to abortion care in our state constitution, electing reproductive freedom champions up and down the ballot, and flipping the state legislature, finally ending anti-abortion extremists’ majority by delivering a reproductive freedom majority in both state chambers.”

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and X.

The Arizona Supreme Court ruled to make abortion largely illegal in the Grand Canyon State, reinstating a 160-year-old law that forbids all procedures except those to save a woman’s life.

Justice John R. Lopez IV, writing for the court in a 4-2 split decision, said that a 2022 law allowing abortions up to 15 weeks of gestation depended on the existence of a federal constitutional right to abortion. And since the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated that right in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling two years ago, that law can’t overrule one first passed in 1864, when Arizona was a territory.

“Absent the federal constitutional abortion right, and because (the 15-week abortion law) does not independently authorize abortion, there is no provision in federal or state law prohibiting (the 1864 law’s) operation. Accordingly, (the 1864 law) is now enforceable,” Lopez wrote.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes called the ruling “unconscionable” and “and affront to freedom.”

“Make no mistake, by effectively striking down a law passed this century and replacing it with one from 160 years ago, the Court has risked the health and lives of Arizonans,” Mayes said in a written statement. “Today’s decision to reimpose a law from a time when Arizona wasn’t a state, the Civil War was raging, and women couldn’t even vote will go down in history as a stain on our state.”

The ban will go into effect in 14 days.

The dilemma arose in the summer of 2022, after the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to abortion and sent the power to regulate the procedure back to the states. Then-Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich went to court to reinstate the 1864 abortion ban, and convinced a trial court judge that the Civil War-era law should be enforced instead of the 15-week ban passed just months earlier.

The consequences for reproductive health care in Arizona were instantaneous: An uncertain legal landscape led the majority of the state’s nine abortion clinics to provide intermittent services for months. The 1864 law carries with it a 2- to 5-year mandatory prison sentence for doctors who perform abortions for any reason other than saving a patient’s life, and the 2022 law punishes doctors with a class 6 felony and a revoked license.

Women were cut off from potentially life-saving care as the abortion rate saw record lows that year. Whereas abortions in Arizona have consistently exceeded 13,000 since 2011, in 2022 that number plummeted to just 11,407 procedures.

With two conflicting statutes on the books, uncertain doctors shutting their doors rather than risk prison time, and state officials vying over which ban to implement, Arizona courts were tasked with figuring out how to make the laws coexist.

Proponents of the near-total ban argued that the 2022 law included a provision that stated it wasn’t meant to repeal any laws that came before it, signifying that the 1864 law should reign supreme. But reproductive rights advocates pushed back, pointing out that if the 1864 law wasn’t overruled by the 15-week law based on that interpretation, then neither were the numerous abortion law restrictions enacted in Arizona in the 50 years since Roe v. Wade was decided. And keeping in place laws that mandate an ultrasound, a 24-hour waiting period and an informational consultation, among other requirements, meant that abortion must be preserved to some extent.

The near-total ban was brought back into play by a Pima County judge who nullified an injunction holding it at bay that was erected in 1973, under the auspices of Roe.

But the Arizona Court of Appeals later ruled that the 15-week ban should supersede its predecessor, with the judges noting that if the GOP-majority legislature had intended to completely outlaw abortion, it should have been done so explicitly instead of passing what amounted to a gestational limit.

Less than two months later, Alliance Defending Freedom, an anti-abortion legal firm, filed an appeal with the Arizona Supreme Court on behalf of Dr. Eric Hazelrigg, the medical director of a chain of Valley-wide anti-abortion pregnancy centers. Hazelrigg was admitted into the case to fill the role of “guardian ad litem”, representing the interests of the unborn in Arizona. The position was added in 1973 when the near-total ban was first challenged.

In a December hearing, Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Jake Warner urged the justices to reverse the appellate court’s decision, saying that the lower court erred when it ruled to permit elective abortions up to 15 weeks under the 2022 law.

Warner argued that both the 1864 near-total ban and the 15-week gestational ban outlaw all but the most life-threatening procedures. Instead, the way to harmonize the two laws is by allowing the exception baked into the 15-week law for “immediately” life-threatening situations to modify the requirements of the 1864 law, he said.

Until 15 weeks, Warner explained, all abortions would be prohibited unless the mother’s life is in danger, as the 1864 law mandates. After the 15-week point, the threshold for obtaining an abortion would be raised, so that only “immediately” life-threatening emergencies would merit a procedure. A cancer patient, Warner said, is facing a life-threatening situation, but not an “immediately” dangerous prognosis, and so they would not be permitted to obtain an abortion to begin treatment.

Planned Parenthood Arizona attorney Andy Gaona, meanwhile, rebutted that if the Arizona legislature truly meant to outlaw virtually all abortions, it should have made its intention clearer. GOP lawmakers in Arizona modeled the state’s 15-week ban after the Mississippi law in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, under the assumption that the U.S. Supreme Court would uphold that law and the Arizona copy could stand.

But Arizona lawmakers left out a key provision from the Mississippi law: a clause which stated that any abortion that complied with Mississippi’s 15-week law but violated any other abortion law was nonetheless illegal. Gaona pointed to that as proof that Arizona lawmakers never intended to completely ban abortion.

While the courts worked through the legal parameters of abortion in Arizona, the election of pro-choice Democrats to statewide offices two years ago dampened the threat of a state ban to some degree.

Gov. Katie Hobbs, who ran on a promise to protect abortion access, issued an executive order in July concentrating the prosecutorial authority for abortion law violations in the Arizona Attorney General’s office. Doing so preemptively barred any of the state’s 15 county attorneys from using Arizona’s abortion laws to take a doctor to court. At least one county attorney, Yavapai’s Dennis McGrane, who joined Hazelrigg in advocating for the 1864 law, has indicated an interest in pursuing abortion law violations. AG Kris Mayes, meanwhile, has vowed never to prosecute a single case.

But the legal strength of Hobbs’ executive order has yet to be tested in court. Shortly after she issued it, county attorneys threatened to mount a legal challenge against it, though none has since materialized.

Reproductive rights groups are aiming to stave off threats from the court rulings and GOP-backed laws by enshrining abortion access in the state constitution this November. The Arizona Abortion Access Act would guarantee the procedure as a right up to 24 weeks of gestation, in a mirror of the standard in Roe. The act would also include an exception for procedures performed after that time if the doctor considers it necessary to safeguard the life, physical or mental health of their patient.

Because it is a constitutional amendment, the initiative needs to collect 383,923 signatures to qualify for the ballot and be considered by Arizona voters. Earlier this month, the campaign announced it has gathered 500,000 signatures, and it plans to continue collecting more to ensure a buffer against signatures that are eventually thrown out during the verification process.

Democrats in Arizona and across the country are counting on the abortion issue to mobilize voters and deliver wins for party candidates. Abortion access has proven to be a highly motivating concern, even in red states like Kansas, where a record number of voters showed up to reject a legislatively referred ballot measure that would have given lawmakers the power to eliminate abortion protections, and in Virgina, where voters awarded Democrats a legislative majority to defend against the anti-abortion policies of the state’s Republican governor.

In a joint statement, Arizona Democratic Party Chairwoman Yolanda Bejarano and state Senator Eva Burch, who has recently become the face of abortion access in Arizona after sharing the difficulties she faced obtaining an abortion, denounced anti-abortion Republicans and vowed to back reproductive rights efforts in November.

“The decision to choose when and how to start a family belongs to each of us as individuals. Donald Trump and extremist Republicans at every level of government have been undermining these rights for years, and we have had enough,” the two said in an emailed statement. “Arizona Democrats are ready to do whatever it takes to protect the people of Arizona from these out-of-touch extremist policies, and take it to the ballot in November.”

Arizona Republicans want hospitals and doctors to either provide or pay for the treatment of people who received gender-transitioning procedures and later regretted it, but LGBTQ advocates say the move is nothing more than an effort to further villainize trans health care.

The legislation would mandate that any health care institution or doctor who provides gender-affirming care also offer or pay for the medical care of those who later detransition. And insurance policies that cover gender-affirming care would also be required to cover detransition care.

Gender-affirming care seeks to support the gender identities of trans people. That can be done both via social acceptance measures, like using a person’s preferred pronouns or name, and through medical care that includes puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgical procedures that better align a person’s physical body with their gender identity.

People who detransition, meanwhile, represent an extreme minority of the transgender experience. A 2015 survey from the National Center for Transgender Equality found that, out of nearly 28,000 respondents, only 8% reported having detransitioned at some point in their lives. And, of that percentage, the vast majority reported later transitioning again, and said their decision to detransition was attributable to external pressures.

Despite that, far-right politicians have latched onto detransitioners to justify their calls to curtail gender-affirming care.

In a Thursday news conference, Sen. Janae Shamp, the sponsor of Senate Bill 1511, denounced gender-affirming care as a political ideology that harms patients. The Republican from Surprise, a former nurse, criticized doctors who provide the care for “butchering” children instead of helping them resolve mental health issues.

“(Doctors) take an oath to never intentionally do or administer anything to harm their patient,” Shamp said. “We’ve turned away from these promises and we’ve turned towards harmful theories that guide judgment and suggest and administer life-altering irreversible surgeries and drugs.”

Shamp and her GOP colleagues were joined at the media conference by Chloe Cole, a frequent supporter of anti trans legislation in statehouses across the country who detransitioned after receiving a mastectomy at 15. At the time, the California native identified as a boy, and, she said, her parents were pressured into affirming her identity by doctors who warned them that not doing so would risk inspiring suicidal thoughts.

“My doctors, with their gender theories, thought all my troubles would go away as soon as I was transformed into something that vaguely resembled a boy,” Cole said in an emailed statement. “Their theories were wrong. I now have two giant scars across my chest that remind me every day that I was butchered by the institutions that we all thought we could trust.”

Transgender health care, especially for minors, has been a target for Republican lawmakers across the country in recent years.

In 2022, Arizona Republicans passed a ban on gender-affirming surgeries for patients under 18, framing it as a protection for children from irreversible change. The law originally sought to outlaw puberty blockers and hormone therapy for minors – both of which have been backed by major medical associations as safe and necessary for the well-being of transgender people. But outrage and pushback from LGBTQ Arizonans resulted in a revision that removed those provisions.

Still, GOP lawmakers have continued to introduce measures to restrict those health care tools for minors since then, with no success. This year’s version would make it a misdemeanor for a doctor to prescribe a minor puberty blockers or hormone therapy without a parent’s written consent — despite the reality that parental involvement is a key part of a minor’s gender transition.

Cathryn Oakley, the senior director of legal policy for the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group, said the spotlight on detransitioners only acts as a vehicle to strip rights away from trans people.

“This bill is an unnecessary and gratuitous excuse to talk about detransition in an effort to shift the focus from the actual health care that transgender people receive, which is supported by every mainstream American medical health organization, to the care of a very small number of folks whose medical needs are already covered by health insurance,” Oakley said in an emailed statement.

Bridget Sharpe, the director of the HRC’s Arizona branch, told the Arizona Mirror that the care for people who detransition is the same as the care for transgender people.

“Any medical service that affirms someone’s gender includes someone who decides to detransition,” she said. “If they decide to detransition they are affirming their gender.”

Much like gender-affirming care for transgender people, treatment to help people who have detransitioned may include social acceptance, such as using their preferred pronouns and names, or medical interventions like breast reconstruction surgery.

Instead of resolving a real issue, Sharpe said, the Republican legislation instead seeks to weaponize detransitioning against transgender health care.

And it’s not a new strategy, she added. Politicians have in the past invoked the voices of discriminatory groups like Gays Against Groomers to defend anti-drag legislation or used the testimony of people who previously identified as LGBTQ to advocate for the preservation of conversion therapy.

“This is a pretty normal tactic from any anti-LGBTQ elected official to find maybe the couple of folks who have had bad experiences and maybe decided to detransition — and again, that’s up to them — and use it as an example for every single transgender person in the country,” Sharpe said. “It becomes this sort of scare tactic and feeds into this disinformation machine that anti-equality elected officials have been feeding into for the past several years.”

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and Twitter.

Stephen Mott has worked in the construction industry in Arizona for more than 40 years. Now, at 66, he’s considering retirement — but 2023’s spike in gas prices has eaten up so much of his company’s profit that he said he’s faced with the prospect of postponing it.

“I look forward to retiring,” he said at a Wednesday morning news conference on gas prices. “But I can’t right now because of the increased fuel cost. In fact, retirement itself seems difficult, because all the products and food that is at the stores are delivered by trucks that run on fuel.”

Throughout 2023, drivers in Arizona — and Phoenix in particular — have experienced unprecedented sticker shock at the gas pump. At its peak in April, fuel rates in Maricopa County surpassed even those in Los Angeles, at an average of $5.02 a gallon.

The biggest reason has to do with the fact that Maricopa County is legally required to use only one type of fuel, called Cleaner Burning Gasoline (CBG), and the refineries that produce it experienced pipeline disruptions in March that led to a shortage.

And while gas prices have begun trending down since the summer, with experts projecting costs falling to under $3 dollars a gallon soon, Republican state lawmakers are wary of future disruptions that could recreate this year’s fiasco. To prevent that, they are championing a plan to increase the number of fuel blends available in the state’s most populous county, and give legislative leaders more power to find alternate fueling options when issues arise.

“We’re proposing a free-market solution to allow at least eight blends,” Senate President Warren Petersen said at the press conference. “We believe the EPA can and should approve these blends as they provide similar clean air benefits.”

In 1997, Arizona approved a law that requires counties with populations greater than 1,200,000 to exclusively only CBG fuel. Their intention was to reduce air pollution — also a top concern for the Environmental Protection Agency, which will ultimately have the final say in whether the fuel blends can be used.

Phoenix has consistently failed to meet air quality standards, netting a 5th place for most unhealthy days of ozone and a 7th place for worst annual particle pollution levels in the American Lung Association’s 2023 national State of the Air report. The threat of a federal takeover of the region’s air quality programs looms if existing efforts to improve pollution levels fail or are scaled back.

But Republicans are confident that the list of fuel blends they’re proposing will meet with the EPA’s approval. Two of the blends are already used in California, Texas and New Mexico, and CBG is included in the list.

According to Republicans, increasing the number of options is the key to driving down prices so that Arizonans can afford their daily commutes. Rep. Alexander Kolodin, R-Scottsdale, said that introducing competition into the state’s fuel market is the best solution.

“It’s simply a matter of classical economics,” he said. “When you increase the options available to supply a market, it has a deflationary impact on prices.”

Addressing gas prices is one of the top priorities for legislative Republicans going into the next session, which begins in January. After spending the last two years waging culture war battles (that earned a record number of vetoes under Hobbs), the party says it plans to turn its focus in the election year to mitigating the impact of inflation on everyday Arizonans by slashing taxes and lowering costs. This year, the GOP succeeded in eliminating the rental tax — which 75 cities and towns in the state benefited from — and passing a family tax rebate that reimbursed Arizonans $250 per dependent.

The party’s goal, said Sen. Justine Wadsack, R-Tucson, is to ease the strain on constituents.

“The people of Arizona can rest assured knowing that Senate Republicans will do everything in our power to ease the financial burdens forced on them by the failing big government policies in Washington D.C.,” she said.

The proposal also seeks to transfer some power from the governor to legislative leaders. If the state expects a debilitating fuel shortage, the governor has the power to petition the EPA for a waiver to use other fuel types. Earlier this year, Gov. Katie Hobbs weathered backlash from Republicans who criticized her for failing to seek a waiver in March, despite knowing that there would likely be a shortage. Refineries had reached out to the Governor’s Office to warn of anticipated shutdowns that could lead to reduced supply.

“The Legislature was not made aware of the shortage until after it had happened,” Wadsack said. “As part of our plan, we’re proposing the Legislature be immediately notified if a waiver is requested by refineries, and that the Senate President and House Speaker are provided the authority to file a waiver request directly with the EPA.”

In October, during a joint legislative committee hearing on air quality and energy, Michelle Wilson, the regulatory compliance administrator with the Arizona Department of Agriculture, informed lawmakers that a waiver wasn’t sought in March because the EPA had indicated it would be rejected. Hobbs did, however, request and win waivers in August and September.

While Republicans tout the proposal as a commonsense solution, it’s likely dead in the water if it doesn’t earn bipartisan support or the governor’s approval — and it doesn’t yet appear to have the latter. A spokesman for Hobbs panned the idea, calling it “half-baked”, and said the Democrat would be open to working on something more substantial that actually addresses the problems facing the state.

“Governor Hobbs knows Arizona working families need relief from rising costs at the pump. That’s why she successfully secured two fuel blend waivers this year, and is developing real solutions to increase supply and lower the cost of gas,” said spokesman Christian Slater. “Governor Hobbs will prioritize real solutions over politics and headlines, and looks forward to working across the aisle to deliver those.”

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and Twitter.