Gloria Gomez, Arizona Mirror

Arizona’s Democratic U.S. senators and Gov. Katie Hobbs are joining Republicans in backing legislation that would require federal officials to jail immigrants, including asylum seekers and DACA recipients, for non-violent crimes like shoplifting — even before they’ve been proven guilty.

Under the Laken Riley Act, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security would be forced to detain people without citizenship status who are accused of, charged with or convicted of burglary, theft, larceny or shoplifting.

The legislation is named after the Georgia nursing student who was killed in February 2024 by Venezuelan immigrant Jose Ibarra. Republicans have seized on Riley’s murder to advocate for harsh immigration policies, and have touted the act as a preventative measure. In 2023, Ibarra and his brother received citations for shoplifting. ...

An attempt by Arizona Republicans to rebuke Gov. Katie Hobbs for vetoing a bill aimed at expanding the sale of homemade foods failed after most legislative Democrats sided with her, slamming the move to override her veto as just another effort to undermine her.

Last week, Hobbs rejected House Bill 2509, dubbed the “Tamale Bill,” which would have relaxed the rules around food products Arizonans can make in their own kitchens to sell. Currently, perishable foods that require refrigeration are prohibited, but the bill would have removed that ban and allowed the sale of products like tamales, cheesecakes or other time and temperature-sensitive goods.

The Arizona Department of Health Services registered its opposition to the measure changing the rules for the sale of so-called “cottage foods” shortly before it won approval from the state Senate, and Hobbs cited public health concerns in her veto letter. ...

A spokeswoman for Gov. Katie Hobbs has resigned after Republican backlash erupted when she tweeted an image implying violence against transphobes.

On Monday, a shooting at a private Christian school in Nashville left three children and three adults dead. Later that night Josselyn Berry, Hobbs’ press secretary, tweeted a gif of a woman wielding two handguns from the 1980 movie “Gloria” with the caption “Us when we see transphobes” in a Twitter conversation about transphobia from progressives.

The tweet has since been removed for violating Twitter’s guidelines. ...

Last year, a record wave of book bans swept across the country when the GOP moved its culture war into school libraries, and Arizona Republicans this year are pushing to expand on that by outlawing books that “promote” gender fluidity or pronouns.

To do so, they want to give parents the power to request the removal of any book that “promotes” gender fluidity or the use of gender pronouns, includes content they deem too lewd for their children to be exposed to, or that would “groom children into normalizing pedophilia.”

The legislation does not define “gender pronouns,” but the term is generally understood to mean words that reference someone’s gender, such as he/him/his or she/her/hers. Non-gendered or nonbinary pronouns, which are not mentioned in the bill, are not gender specific and are most often used by people who identify outside of a gender binary. ...

A Scottsdale-based law firm is hoping to reinstate a near-total abortion ban from 1864, filing an appeal on Wednesday to overturn a court ruling that allowed limited access to the procedure.

Alliance Defending Freedom wants the Arizona Supreme Court to void the decision of the state appeals court that determined a 2022 law outlawing elective abortions after the 15-week mark supersedes the near-total ban originally written in 1864.

Among their arguments is that the state’s history of Republicans winning elections is evidence enough that both the legislature and citizens side with the 1864 law and want to abolish abortion in Arizona nearly entirely. ...