Local Muslim woman Sumayyah Dawud says a civil rights organization defending her in a religious-discrimination case against the Phoenix Police Department dropped her as a client after learning she is transgender. The Council on American and Islamic Relations, the largest Muslim civil rights organization in the country, offered to represent…
The Tempe Police Department says it now believes Glenn Edward Baxter, the driver of a vehicle that crashed into Tempe Town Lake early Sunday morning and killed his entire family, was a murder-suicide. “Detectives have been working around the clock on this investigation,” Tempe Police Lieutenant Michael Pooley writes in a…
A mother, father, and their three young children are dead after their vehicle crashed into Tempe Town Lake near the Scottsdale Bridge. According to Tempe Police, four witnesses say they saw a silver SUV drive into the lake just after midnight on Sunday morning, though it remains unclear why the…
It’s hard to say why U.S. Senator John McCain is so frequently the butt of late night TV jokes. Maybe it’s his relentless willingness to say or do anything for votes? Maybe it’s his “maverick” unpredictability and love of the spotlight? Or maybe it’s just that he’s such a good…
Within a 24-hour period, both a state and federal judge handed down two separate decisions about medication abortions in Arizona —- decisions plaintiffs are calling “major victories for the pro-choice movement, women, and the reproductive health of women in Arizona.” In the first, a 2012 state law that placed restrictions on…
U.S. Senator John McCain announced his new Hispanic voter-outreach effort today at the back of El Mercado De Los Cielos, a small mall-within-a-mall of Latino-owned businesses, restaurants, and kiosks in west Phoenix. “Unidos con McCain,” or “United with McCain,” is the senator’s latest efforts to garner favor with the growing…
About 100 members of the Phoenix Latino community, most of them high school students, descended on the Arizona capital as part of a national day of climate action. They came armed with a simple message for Arizona’s elected officials: climate change is real, it’s killing our community, and you need to…
Mere hours after U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders told the American public that the greatest danger to national security is climate change, a large crowd is expected to descend on the Arizona capital building in Phoenix to demand that state leaders take aggressive action to combat the threat. The planned action…
Rumain Brisbon, the 34-year-old father of three who was fatally shot in the back last December by a Phoenix police officer is buried in an unmarked grave. With less than two months until the one-year anniversary of his death, his family and friends are trying to get him the headstone…
Despite months of hype and planning, Jon Ritzheimer’s Global Rally for Humanity did not draw the thousands and thousands of people he expected would join him in rallying against Islam. Ritzheimer, the de facto leader of Arizona’s Islamophobia movement, garnered attention earlier this year after he organized a large anti-Islam…
It’s time to take off your “Make American Great Again” hats and put away your Ben Carson and Jeb! paraphernalia because finally, after two lively debates between the Republican presidential candidates, it’s time for the Democrats to take the stage. Tonight’s event in Las Vegas is the first of six…
Shortly after a student at Northern Arizona University shot four other students during what authorities are saying was a fight outside of a popular fraternity hot spot late last week, another round of the national gun-control debate exploded on social media. Predictably, those calling for tighter background checks and laws…
U.S., Representative Raúl Grijalva will announce a bill this afternoon designed to permanently ban uranium mining in the Grand Canyon watershed. The Tucson congressman’s measure, officially called the Greater Grand Canyon Heritage National Monument Act, calls for protecting the area by declaring the region a national monument. According to a…
For the second time this year, a big anti-Islam rally is scheduled to take place outside of the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix. Officially part of the “Global Rally for Humanity,” Saturday’s demonstration will be one of many purportedly taking place around the world, intended to draw attention to the…
According to Northern Arizona University officials, one person is dead and three others are wounded following an early morning shooting on the Flagstaff campus. A statement from the University reports that the shooter is in custody and that the three victim are being treated at Flagstaff medical center. The first…
It’s a good week for Arizonans who support Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. Not only is Sanders coming back to the state for a second political rally this Friday, but Arizona Congressman Raúl Grijalva is expected to give the Vermont Senator his first official congressional endorsement. Grijalva, a Mexican-American liberal…
Arizona U.S. Senator John McCain was booed by the audience last night when he appeared Monday night on The Late Night Show With Stephen Colbert. The buildup to the comment that drew the audience’s ire came after Colbert asked him if, as one of the senior leaders in the Republican Party, he…
With tensions still high after a spate of recent shootings of cars along Phoenix freeways, a 36-year-old Arizona man fired on the driver of a Honda Civic in the far right lane of Loop 101, authorities say. Christopher Joel Hoffman tailgated the Honda for miles before unleashing his road rage…
Following a new report released by the Phoenix Police Department about officer involved shootings, tensions in the community about law enforcement’s use of force tactics are once again running high. The report – which was a joint-effort by the PPD and ASU – found that officers lack the proper training…
Moments after asking Diamondback fans to take selfies and post them to Twitter, two Major League Baseball sports announcers, Steve Berthiaume and Bob Brenly, couldn’t stop joking about a group of ASU Alpha Chi Omega sorority sisters doing just that at last night’s game. “Look at the one on the…
Despite four out of 11 Arizona congressional delegates voting to shut down the federal government over Planned Parenthood funding, citizens can take a deep breath knowing that the country narrowly averted that fate — at the very last moment, both houses of Congress passed stop-gap spending bills, giving lawmakers a…
Just days after the Arizona Department of Public Safety removed those panic-inducing I-10 shootings tip-line signs from highways, Leslie Allen Merritt Jr., the 21-year-old suspect in the violent spree, will enter an official plea at his arraignment hearing this morning. He’s claimed innocence in the past, telling a judge: “I’m…
