For a showcase of gross incompetence on behalf of public officialdom, it doesn’t get much better than the March 28 hearing of the Arizona House Elections Committee. In the pillory that day before a packed-to-overflowing room of angry citizens sans pitchforks was Republican Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell, a prim,…
Arizona Department of Economic Security director Tim Jeffries has boosted security at the agency out of concern about a possible terrorist attack and has encouraged his nearly 8,000 employees to carry Mace or pepper-spray products on the job for self-defense. But wait: There’s more. In addition, under a new security plan, about a…
A coalition of voting-rights advocates will form a commission to examine everything from how polling locations are chosen to how well citizens are educated on the voting process in Maricopa County. The effort comes in response to the long lines at many polling locations throughout the county during Arizona’s presidential-preference…
Democrat Kyrsten Sinema raised eyebrows at a recent East Valley Partnership luncheon in Mesa, by stating that she hopes right-wing ideologue and Republican state senate president Andy Biggs wins in Arizona’s deeply red Fifth Congressional District this year. The U.S. Representative for Arizona’s Ninth Congressional District was onstage, participating in…
From the tons sold in state-legal medical-marijuana dispensaries, to the tons imported each year from Mexico, Arizona is a place that knows its cannabis. Here’s a roundup of some of last week’s biggest news stories about marijuana that affect the Grand Canyon State… State Supreme Court: No Immunity for Doctors…
Talk about bad timing. In an election year rife with anti-immigrant sentiment, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol statistics show that apprehensions of unaccompanied minors from Central America have spiked to levels near those in the first six months of fiscal year 2014, when the issue became a political football and a…
Asked whether he’ll be Donald Trump’s commerce secretary, should the presumptive GOP presidential nominee KO the Dems’ best shot at the White House, Hillary Clinton, in the fall, Arizona’s Treasurer Jeff DeWit chuckles. “Nah, I like my job,” DeWit says. “I don’t think so.” That’s a somewhat odd answer. After…
As of Thursday, all that’s standing between Arizona’s beloved Salt River horses and state protection is the governor’s signature. After months of negotiation, the House of Representatives voted 53 to 3 (with 4 representatives not voting) to pass an amended version of House Bill 2340, which makes it illegal to…
Arizona’s main marijuana-legalization campaign was the butt of jokes and stereotypes on network TV on Wednesday — which is totally cool when the comedian is Jimmy Fallon. Fallon, host of The Tonight Show, gave a shout-out during his Wednesday-night monologue to the clever billboards rolled out in Phoenix and Tucson this…
The Phoenix Police Department is launching a series of anti-DUI memes to go along with a Cinco de Mayo enforcement effort this weekend. Using photographs well-known for their meme-making potential, the department’s “web ‘guru,'” Officer T. “Chad” Amos, created a series of 14 public-service announcements that will launch at 5 p.m. on the PPD’s…
Surveys of Arizona voters in recent months showed that a measure to legalize marijuana for all adults 21 and older — likely to materialize on this November’s ballot — could use some help. Donald Trump to the rescue? Possibly. Now that Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee, supporters of marijuana…
Tucson police enforcing the controversial “show me your papers” section of Arizona’s SB 1070 are routinely prolonging traffic stops in order to investigate a person’s immigration status, according to a new American Civil Liberties Union investigation. The U.S. Supreme Court specifically warned against such action in 2012 when it allowed…
The Arizona Department of Public Safety should not have granted private-investigator licenses last month for two photo-enforcement companies, anti-photo-radar activists claim. Local attorney Shawn Dow says he and the Arizona Campaign for Liberty are calling on DPS director Frank Milstead “take action,” alleging that “multiple factors should have automatically disqualified…
Voters this year may be asked not only to decide whether Arizona should raise the minimum wage, but also by how much. Two groups on opposite sides of the issue are pushing November ballot measures to address the issue: the workers’-rights organization Arizonans for Fair Wages and Healthy Families; and…
Of the 150 largest cities in the nation, the one with the highest median income for Hispanics is…Gilbert, Arizona! That’s according to a recent analysis by WalletHub. The personal-finance website found that when adjusted for cost of living, median income for Hispanics in Gilbert is four times higher than the figure for Hispanics…
Editor’s note: This piece is excerpted from the book My Heart Can’t Even Believe It: A Story of Science, Love, and Down Syndrome by Phoenix New Times managing editor Amy Silverman, published this spring by Woodbine House. By third grade, my daughter Sophie had become a bit of a tattletale. “Someone…
Half Life: America’s Last Uranium Mill, a new short film from the Grand Canyon Trust, highlights how the White Mesa Uranium Mill in Utah could contaminate the drinking water supply for much of southeastern Utah and northern Arizona. The White Mesa mill is a part of the uranium mining and…
National advertising and digital-marketing company AdCellerant and Voice Media Group, parent company of the Phoenix New Times and six other newsweeklies, have launched a programmatic advertising network for cannabis businesses. Programmatic advertising refers to a variety of methods by which display ads are purchased and published automatically, with the idea…
The solar-powered airplane Solar Impulse 2 landed at a Phoenix-area airport on Monday night, completing a leg of its around-the-world goal to cheers from an enthusiastic crowd of well-wishers. Slowly but surely, the electric airplane is making history: It is powered solely by the solar panels that cover its wings,…
Our health is our most precious resource, yet our health-care system’s more adept at mining wallets than making us healthy. We pay one-and-a-half to two times what other countries pay for health care without appreciably better outcomes. America spends more than $9,500 per person annually, more than one-sixth of our…
For weeks a rumor has been circulating that when Phoenix’s main emergency shelter for women closes later this summer, the hundreds of women it serves will have nowhere else to go. It’s a situation that certainly seems plausible, given Maricopa County’s decision to shut down the Men’s Overflow Shelter last…
As an otherwise staid Arizona Republican Convention in Mesa wrapped up Saturday, Donald Trump’s campaign chair in Arizona, State Treasurer Jeff DeWit, sputtered into what best can be described as a Trump-style meltdown. Enraged by the results of an electronic election held that afternoon for 28 at-large delegates at the…
