Beginning September 5, Tempe will offer a rebate of up to $300 to residents who build and stock tiny libraries on their property. Mini libraries, most of which are registered with the nonprofit group Little Free Library, are publicly accessible containers of books that are available for anyone to borrow…
One year after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency spilled 3 million gallons of toxic mining waste into the Animas River, the Navajo Nation is suing the agency in federal court for the millions of dollars’ worth of damages it has incurred. On August 5, 2015, a contractor hired by the…
New evidence shows that a few weeks before a teenager held in solitary confinement at Perryville Prison died in what appears to be an act of suicide, the Arizona Department of Corrections had been specifically warned about her deteriorating mental health and notified that the conditions in which she was…
Only days before the emergency overnight shelter in downtown Phoenix was scheduled to start phasing out services ahead of an October shutdown, a group of local government and nonprofit-sector leaders have managed to keep it open — at least for now. The space, which opened in May 2015, is not a…
Without officially saying, “Bring it on,” the Hillary Clinton campaign has essentially done just that by declaring Arizona a battleground state. The news broke today after campaign staffers called local Democratic Party leaders to tell them Arizona is officially in play, and that the national campaign will be investing a…
When you live in Phoenix, there’s nothing quite like a Friday full of thunderstorms and rain, huh? Depending on where you are in the Valley, there’s a good chance you woke up to monsoon activity this morning, or at least encountered it during your commute. Isolated downpours have already left…
As Republican vice-presidential candidate Mike Pence swung through Phoenix on Tuesday, the fresh scum that had boiled to the top of the current news cycle included (but was not limited to) his running mate Donald Trump’s ongoing feud with a Pakistani-American couple whose son was killed while serving in Iraq; Trump’s failure to…
When Duane “Chili” Yazzie learned that a massive load of bright-yellow toxic mining waste was flowing down the Animas River toward his small farming community in Shiprock, New Mexico, he rushed home and turned on every sprinkler and hose he had. With the plume of waste about 100 miles upstream…
Today is the last day the U.S. Bureau of Land Management will accept public comment about a proposal to expand the Daneros uranium mine in southern Utah. The mine, which began excavating uranium in 2010, is located in the heart of the proposed Bears Ears National Monument, at a site…
From outside, Geraldine “Jerry” Johnson Emmett’s house looks like any other quaint single-family home on this suburban street in Prescott, Arizona. But step inside and it’s a different story. It’s like walking into a shrine to the Democratic Party. “Vote for Hillary” and “I’m with Her” and other campaign signs are all…
Noting John McCain’s “stunning disregard for women’s health,” Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, announced this week that her organization is endorsing Ann Kirkpatrick for U.S. Senate. “It’s time that all Arizona women had someone like Ann in their corner, standing strong for reproductive freedom,” Richards wrote in…
The Arizona Court of Appeals has dealt a sizable blow to environmentalists set on stopping a proposed open-pit copper mine 30 miles southeast of Tucson in the Santa Rita Mountains, just west of State Highway 83. In a unanimous decision, a panel of three judges overturned a lower court’s ruling,…
One day after an unknown suspect set fire to a recycling bin outside of the Islamic Center of Tucson, the Arizona Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (the largest Muslim Civil Rights organization in the country) is asking local law enforcement to investigate the incident as a possible hate…
A new poll indicates that unless younger and more liberal Arizona voters come out in droves in November, things aren’t looking very good for the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana like Alcohol’s ballot initiative. In a recent survey conducted by MBQF Consulting and OH Predictive Insights, 1,060 likely voters across the state…
Hours after U.S. Sen. John McCain released a new ad attacking his Democratic rival, Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, for being weak on border security, her campaign is firing back with a damning charge of its own: McCain is so desperate to save his political career that he’s willing to lie about…
Another day, another attempt to prevent legalizing marijuana in Arizona. Less than two weeks after the leading pro-cannabis effort in the state, the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, submitted 258,582 petition signatures to the secretary of state to get its Regulation and Taxation of Marijuana Act initiative on the…
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump “doesn’t give a damn” about veterans. So said Arizona Congressman Ruben Gallego hours before Trump was scheduled to deliver a speech about reforming the Department of Veterans Affairs’ healthcare system. “Trump has said so many things over the years that are just so utterly…
One of the Arizona militants who occupied a federal wildlife building in Oregon earlier this year has pleaded guilty to one felony count of conspiracy to impede officers of the United States, court documents show. Blaine Cooper (real name: Stanley Blaine Hicks) was arrested on February 11 for his role in…
It’s not every day that a federal judge uses words like “absurd” and “disappointing” to describe a state-designed healthcare plan, but according to a transcript, obtained by New Times, of a recent court hearing, U.S. Magistrate Judge David K. Duncan did just that after reviewing a proposal by the Arizona…
Remember that time about a year ago when Governor Doug Ducey announced that Arizona needed a “rebranding”? You know, so the world wouldn’t automatically hear “Arizona” and think of things like SB 1070 or the fact that the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating our botched presidential primary vote. Ducey said…
In the latest gesture of public support for the permanent protection of the Grand Canyon watershed, a coalition of environmental groups and tribal leaders announced today that they’ve delivered petitions containing more than 550,000 signatures to President Barack Obama demanding he create a 1.7-million-acre national monument around Grand Canyon National…
As former Arizona Governor Jan Brewer appears to take a short break from campaigning for Donald Trump in order to announce her official endorsement of Senator John McCain in his bid for re-election, some wonder whether it will help him finally win some support with the conservative wing of the…
