Free Republic

PHOENIX — Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs quashed another 10 measures Tuesday sent to her by the Republican-controlled Legislature, including: — Legislation that could have barred students from other states, attending college in Arizona, from voting in elections here; — Defining who can shower with whom in public schools; — Setting up new procedures to deal with squatters invading homes; — Requiring enhanced sentences for those convicted of multiple incidents of “organized retail theft.’’ But Hobbs found more areas of agreement with GOP lawmakers than disagreements on Tuesday, signing 12 measures. Still, the day’s vetoes brought the number of bills she...

Republican Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake in an interview with an Idaho media outlet expressed disappointment that her state’s 1864 law banning nearly all abortions is not being enforced, backtracking on comments she made earlier this month when she said the resurrected measure went too far. “The Arizona Supreme Court said this is the law of Arizona. But unfortunately, the people running our state have said we’re not going to enforce it,” Lake said in a video interview with the Idaho Dispatch on Saturday. “We don’t have that law, as much as many of us wish we did,” she added....

Governor Katie Hobbs (D-AZ) said Friday on ABC’s “The View” that women in her state will die because of the reinstated abortion ban from 1864. Hobbs said, “This is absolutely outrageous, and, you know, we can talk about how crazy it is that a law passed in 1864 by 27 men now controls the lives of millions of Arizona women, but I want to talk about the effect that’s going to have on women in our state.” She added, “I, myself, have personally experienced a miscarriage, losing a pregnancy by miscarriage and the treatment for that is a procedure that...

Governor Katie Hobbs (D-AZ) said Tuesday on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” that she’s confident voters will enshrine abortion rights in November. When asked about the Supreme Court’s decision banning abortion, Hobbs said, “Arizonans across the state are reeling from this decision that reinstates the most draconian ban in the country. This is a ban that as you said, was passed in 1864 before we were state, before women had the right to vote and it is a near total ban with no exceptions for rape or incest. It requires prison time for doctors. There’s just right now a lot of...

Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) has vetoed a Republican-backed bill that would allow Arizona law enforcement to arrest illegal aliens. This week, Hobbs made her first veto of the year when she refused to sign the “Arizona Border Invasion Act” into law, which authorizes law enforcement officers across the state to arrest illegal aliens who have crossed the United States-Mexico border. Arizona police would be permitted to charge illegal aliens with a misdemeanor when they are first arrested and a felony if they are arrested a second time for crossing into the state. In a letter, Hobbs claimed the bill “does...

During an interview with CNN aired on Friday’s broadcast of “NewsNight,” Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) responded to a question on reports that President Joe Biden is considering stricter executive action on the border such as potentially preventing people who have crossed the border illegally from seeking asylum in the U.S. by saying that while she does wish Congress would have passed the Senate bill and administrations of both parties have failed to act on the border, her state needs some action from the Biden administration on the border to bring about “sanity and an end to the lawlessness at...

More than 400 non-citizens have been removed from the voter rolls of two Arizona counties since 2015, with most of the removed Pima County registrants being registered to vote through third parties. Arizona’s most populous counties removed non-citizens from their voter rolls after some had already voted in elections. While many in Pima County were registered through political parties and voter registration drives, the more common means across the country are through states' Departments of Motor Vehicles. According to a report by the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) released on Tuesday, Pima County has removed 186 non-citizens from its voter...

Arizona removed nearly 200 residents from its voter rolls after discovering they were foreign nationals, and therefore ineligible to vote, a new report revealed. Published on Tuesday, the analysis by the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) found that 186 noncitizens residing in Pima County have been “involuntarily purged” from the Grand Canyon State’s voter registration lists since 2021. According to the report, seven of these 186 foreigners appear to have cast ballots “across two federal and local elections.” Records reviewed by PILF included more detailed information, such as the party affiliation of the aforementioned noncitizens. The analysis indicated 108 did...

America First Legal (AFL) filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against Maricopa County, alleging numerous violations of election law since 2020. Some of the issues raised in the complaint were brought up in similar lawsuits brought around the country challenging irregularities in the 2020 election, where judges found they had merit. The AFL listed eight issues in its complaint, and mainly asked for declaratory judgment to stop the county from repeating the wrongdoing and comply with law. The first was lack of chain of custody for tens of thousands of ballots, a class 2 misdemeanor. The second was failure to conduct...

More than 5,600 federal-only ballots were cast in the 2020 presidential election in Arizona, without proof of U.S. citizenship required by the voters who cast them, according to data from the state's counties. Arizona is a state with the unusual situation of bifurcated elections, in which residents who provide proof of U.S. citizenship can vote in all elections while the others may vote only in federal elections, resulting in ballots cast by voters who haven’t proven their U.S. citizenship. Arizona law requires residents registering to vote in the state to provide proof of U.S. citizenship. However, after the Supreme Court...

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs said Monday that her administration would effectively kick a Saudi-owned alfalfa farm off a critical stretch of state land, a forceful step that speaks to the firestorm of controversy over foreign extraction of natural resources as well as deepening dilemmas over water scarcity as climate change dries out the West. The move will prevent the Saudi-owned company, Fondomonte Arizona, from pumping groundwater that could one day serve as backup for booming urban areas. Currently, the company uses the water to grow alfalfa to feed the kingdom’s dairy cows. Fondomonte came under fierce bipartisan criticism on the...

On Wednesday evening, the Arizona treasurer announced that she will be serving as acting governor beginning later this evening until mid-morning tomorrow amid a mysterious disappearance of Gov. Katie Hobbs. ... "While I am pleased to step in this role, I will refrain from naming directors to the 13 agencies that currently have vacancies and will not call the Arizona Legislature into session to confirm them," Yee said in an X post.

On Wednesday evening, the Arizona treasurer announced that she will be serving as acting governor beginning later this evening until mid-morning tomorrow amid a mysterious disappearance of Gov. Katie Hobbs. In a press release on X, formerly known as Twitter, Arizona Treasurer Kimberly Yee announced her brief tenure as acting governor, saying that she is "pleased to step in this role." The Republican state treasurer noted that during her less than 24-hours as acting governor she would refrain from confirming the thirteen agencies that still hold vacancies and wait for the Democratic governor to fill them upon her return. "While...

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) reportedly reached out to Twitter in 2020 to censor users who criticized her 2017 posts uncovered by Breitbart News, in which she claimed former President Donald Trump had a “neo-nazi base.” Days after the 2020 election, Breitbart News reported that Hobbs said Trump had a “neo-nazi base” while she was serving as a Democrat state senator in 2017. Hobbs’ tweet appeared to be a reaction to the false narrative that Trump praised neo-nazi rioters in Charlottesville. -snip On Thursday, Fox News revealed that Hobbs emailed Twitter in an attempt to censor critics who were upset...

Arizona Republican Kari Lake teased a possible run for U.S. Senate while appearing on Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Fourth of July Special, where she also spoke about her new book Unafraid: Just Getting Started. Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle asked Lake, last year’s Republican gubernatorial nominee in Arizona, if she was considering another bid for office in the Grand Canyon State. Lake, who had the backing of the MAGA coalition and is challenging her razor-thin election loss, said she is thinking of another run, though she emphasized she has not given up her legal battle.

A Maricopa County superior court judge declined to dismiss Kari Lake’s public records bid for access to ballot affidavit envelopes today. Maricopa County argued the ballot affidavit signatures are part of the voter registration record and are therefore rendered confidential by state law, aside from a few choice exceptions which county attorneys claimed Lake failed to meet. Judge John Hannah rebuffed the argument as the incorporation of ballot affidavit envelopes into the voter registration records is not mandated nor defined by law, but common practice among county recorders. Hannah ruled from the bench and said the court is “not required...

Gov. Katie Hobbs on Friday issued five more vetoes, rejecting Republican-led bills that state officials warned would have undermined and overcomplicated elections in Arizona. With her five new vetoes, Hobbs has so far delivered 99 rejections in her first term as governor, the most of any of her predecessors. One of the vetoes, Senate Bill 1135, would ultimately have forced the state to withdraw from the Electronic Registration Information Center, a multistate coalition that helps states share and keep accurate voter registration rolls. Known as ERIC, the coalition has come under fire from far-right conspiracy theorists who baselessly contend it...

Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs’ Chief of Staff, Allie Bones, has resigned after working with Hobbs for four and a half years. She worked in her current role for five months. ... Kari Lake (R-Ariz.), Hobbs’ gubernatorial opponent in the 2022 election, shared her thoughts ... Everyone close to @katiehobbs is fleeing as fast as they can. Hobbs is a disaster. She's a sinking ship. I just hope she doesn't take our state down with her. ... She is the fourth member of Hobbs’ administration to resign within the first six months of the governor’s reign.

Former GOP Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake announces the launch of a ballot chasing operation in Arizona "We are officially launching the largest, most extensive ballot chasing operation in our state's history and frankly, possibly in American history," Lake said during a press conference. "The courts just ruled that this corrupt election will stand. The courts just ruled that our elections can run lawlessly. The courts have ruled that anything goes. Well, we can play by those same rules."

The trial brought by Kari Lake over questionable ballot counting and verification in her unsuccessful 2022 Arizona gubernatorial campaign concluded Friday with her lead attorney saying audit data on the processes shows “this election should be set aside.” The trial lasted three days, with closing arguments on both sides focusing on whether there was mathematical evidence proving that Lake had actually won the election. Lake fell about 17,000 votes short in the official count in her race against then-Secretary of State Hobbs. She is suing Hobbs, the current Democratic governor, in addition to current Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D)...