

Gov. Katie Hobbs speaking with attendees at the 2026 Legislative Forecast Luncheon hosted by the Arizona Chamber of Commerce & Industry on Jan. 9, 2026. (Photo by Gage Skidmore/Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0)
National Dems pledge $10M for Hobbs as GOP group stays silent on Biggs
Gov. Katie Hobbs’ reelection campaign is celebrating a $10 million boost from the Democratic Governors Association as she ramps up to face Republican gubernatorial nominee Andy Biggs.
DGA announced its spending plan early Tuesday, acknowledging it views Arizona as having the closest race for governor in the nation...

Public school teachers crowd into the upstairs lobby in the Arizona Senate on Feb. 21, 2022, to call on the legislature to lift a constitutional spending cap. (Photo by Gloria Gomez/Arizona Mirror)
Judge: GOP ballot measure aimed at teachers union unconstitutionally guts police, fire unions too
A Republican ballot referral that sought to amend the state’s constitution to put the state’s largest teacher’s union out of business was tossed off the ballot on Tuesday after a judge concluded that it also would have outlawed all public sector unions.
And that violates the Arizona Constitution’s Separate Amendment Rule, which demands that proposed constitutional amendments be limited to...

The exterior of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Johnston, Rhode Island. (Photo by Christopher Shea/Rhode Island Current)
New Trump asylum rule could push 444,000 cases toward quick denials and deportations
WASHINGTON — Federal asylum officers can deny interviews to asylum seekers and send them immediately to an immigration judge, speeding up deportation proceedings, under a rule U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services published Tuesday.
The rule, which takes effect immediately, will allow USCIS, a Department of Homeland Security agency, to refer directly to immigration judges certain asylum cases...

David Hearn, of Bethesda, Maryland, is charged with destruction of property of more than $1,000 for allegedly vandalizing the newly refinished Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on June 19, 2026. Shown is construction at the Reflecting Pool in Washington, D.C., on May 5, 2026. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)
Reflecting Pool damaged before Olympian charged with felony touched it, witness says
WASHINGTON — Attorneys representing the former Olympic canoeist charged with damaging part of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool have asked the judge in the case to release more information from the grand jury.
David Hearn’s legal team wrote in a motion that “the Government’s sole grand-jury witness on damages testified that the property was already damaged before...

Kentucky Republican Attorney General Russell Coleman holds up a cellphone as he kicked off Child Abuse Prevention Month in April. Legal experts say state attorneys general are playing a heightened role in consumer protection work amid persistently high prices and a drawdown in federal oversight. (Photo by Sarah Ladd/Kentucky Lantern)
State AGs expand consumer work as prices rise and Trump guts federal protections
Since President Donald Trump has gutted much of the federal government’s consumer protection work, state attorneys general are increasingly left to fight high prices and investigate businesses themselves.
Consumer protection work, long a growing focus of state AGs from both parties, has ramped up considerably more in the past two years, legal experts say. The change follows Trump’s dismantling of...
ICYMI
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