This past week, Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) declared opposition to parental consent laws concerning abortions for minors. In remarks given to National Review, Kelly said he wouldn’t be an “arbiter of age,” insisting no age limit exists for when a minor should receive an abortion without parental consent.
“As a parent myself, somebody who has raised two daughters who are now in their mid-20s, I take this very seriously. But ultimately, I feel that young women at a certain age should have the right to make these kinds of decisions with their doctor,” said Kelly. “I’m not going to be the arbiter of an age and a timeline and red line [….] You know, people ask, ‘Is there a red line here?’ No. But I think it’s important for women to be able to make these decisions on their own, and not a bunch of folks in Washington making them for them.”
Kelly also admitted that he didn’t know or believe to be his concern the potential implications of a bill he’d voted for, the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA), on parental rights enshrined in Arizona’s parental consent law concerning abortions received by minors. Kelly suggested that concerned individuals such as the National Review reporter pose that question to Capitol Hill researchers.
“I think that’s something that you could, you know, reach out to the Congressional Research [Service] folks and figure out,” said Kelly.
Although Kelly argued that no age limit exists for when a minor no longer needs parental consent to receive an abortion, he’s argued that abortion on demand at any time in gestation, or “reproductive rights,” should be codified, effectively nullifying all state laws on abortion.
For almost 50 years, Roe v. Wade has guaranteed abortion access — and that can't change now.
I've co-sponsored the Women's Health Protection Act because we need to codify reproductive rights into law.
According to OpenSecrets, Planned Parenthood endorsed Kelly and donated nearly $10,000 to his campaign — the most they offered candidates’ campaigns. After his election, the Arizona political action arm of the national organization celebrated him.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich requested Cochise County Attorney Brian McIntyre to investigate the two-week suspension of the secretary of state’s signature-gathering system for candidates, E-Qual. The March 17 suspension lasted until Wednesday, five days before the April 4 deadline, disabling sections of the system for legislative and congressional candidates to submit their ballot-qualifying signatures.
Yesterday, our office referred a matter to the Cochise County Attorney to investigate and take any appropriate actions (civil and criminal) regarding the Arizona Secretary of State taking down the online E-Qual system. pic.twitter.com/izJsLPYbMf
Secretary of State Katie Hobbs warned candidates in January that she would suspend the system up until the signature-gathering deadline once the Independent Redistricting Commission (IRC) certified the new district maps. The forewarned shutdown not only caused backlash due to its impact on candidates’ signature-gathering efforts to qualify for the ballot — Attorney General Mark Brnovich warned Hobbs that such a shutdown would be illegal. In a letter, Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright warned Hobbs that she could face a class 3 misdemeanor — up to 30 days in jail and a $500 fine — for not fulfilling her lawful duties, or even a felony with up to a year in prison for taking down E-Qual.
Upon receipt of the letter, Hobbs sued to prevent any prosecution. The courts didn’t take her side. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Joan Sinclair ruled that Wright’s letter wasn’t legal action, but rather a notification of Hobbs’ legal duties.
“The letter itself notifies the Secretary that in the [attorney general’s] opinion, taking E-Qual offline during the candidate filing period would be ‘contrary to law.’ It further informs the Secretary that when a duty is imposed by Title 16 on a public officer, knowingly failing or refusing to perform that duty can be either a class 6 felony or a class 3 misdemeanor,” wrote Sinclair. “While the Secretary clearly viewed this as a threat, the letter did not promise or guarantee prosecution and thus does not create a controversy properly before the court.”
Despite warnings from the attorney general’s office, the sections of E-Qual for legislative and congressional candidates were suspended on March 17. Two weeks passed. Then on Wednesday, just five days before the signature-gathering deadline, Hobbs announced that the legislative and congressional candidates’ sections of the system were back online. She conceded that the shutdown had to do with necessary redistricting updates.
Thanks to a colossal effort by #SOS staff & county officials, E-Qual is back up ahead of schedule after necessary redistricting updates for Congressional & Legislative candidates. Voters can sign E-qual petitions for Statewide, Legislative, Congressional, & some local candidates. pic.twitter.com/irEOsn1rWq
— Secretary Katie Hobbs (@SecretaryHobbs) March 31, 2022
Just the day before, the entire E-Qual system experienced an outage anticipated to last past the April 4 deadline. Hobbs communicated that the outage was caused by a hardware malfunction. However, that unplanned outage was fixed within several hours.
Secretary of State Alert: the agency is experiencing a system-wide outage. Updates will be provided as more information becomes available. pic.twitter.com/uyUh0NivOv
— Secretary Katie Hobbs (@SecretaryHobbs) March 29, 2022
The anticipated outage would’ve most heavily impacted Maricopa County attorney candidates; the former attorney, Allister Adel, resigned last Friday, giving candidates just two weeks’ notice to gather enough signatures to qualify for the election.
NEW: In an emergency public meeting today, the Board of Supervisors accepted the resignation of County Attorney Allister Adel and called for an election to fill the upcoming vacancy. Read the full statement below: https://t.co/4lroRe7F7rpic.twitter.com/615FjQBOUB
Hobbs didn’t respond on social media to Brnovich’s requested investigation. Instead, the secretary of state opted to post about the International Transgender Day of Visibility.
Today is International Day of Transgender Visibility. Let's stand with the trans community, whose rights are currently under attack. The two bills signed by Gov. Ducey do nothing but limit their ability to live their lives as they so choose. #TransDayofVisibilitypic.twitter.com/ZFpXehnAgU
— Secretary Katie Hobbs (@SecretaryHobbs) March 31, 2022
In a statement to the Arizona Daily Star, Hobbs called Brnovich’s request to investigate her for not doing her job “ridiculous.”
“The attorney general’s continued attacks on election officials across the state for doing our jobs is ridiculous,” said Hobbs.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA), an activist organization that’s pushed for a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants, sued Arizona over the latest election integrity law passed, HB2492, which requires proof of citizenship in order to vote. LUCHA describes itself as a nonpartisan social justice nonprofit.
The nonprofit’s complaint alleged that applicants would have the county election officials using “outdated” citizenship data from “unreliable” sources. Therefore, LUCHA claimed, the government would only succeed in intimidating individuals born outside of the country that are citizens, not preventing any non-citizens from voting.
LUCHA also claimed that millions of Americans lack ready access to documents that prove their citizenship status. They stretched their argument to frame the new law as having a greater burden and therefore discrimination on the elderly, the poor, and black Americans.
LUCHA made headlines last fall for its members following and filming Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) while in an Arizona State University (ASU) bathroom. The activists were upset with Sinema’s lack of support for President Joe Biden’s reconciliation bill.
As AZ Free Newsreported earlier this week, another social justice organization, Mi Familia Vota, also sued Arizona officials over the new law. The organization received help from the lawyer behind the Russiagate hoax, Marc Elias.
Attorney General candidate Andrew Gould opined that the lawsuits were unsubstantiated. Gould asserted that the bill was a “neutral, reasonable, non-discriminatory restriction” affecting non-citizens.
“The current lawsuits appear to assume that it is unconstitutional to disenfranchise non-citizens. Of course, non-citizens have never had a right to vote under the Constitution, and so it is absurd to argue that HB2492 takes away a legal, constitutional right to vote from anyone,” wrote Gould. “[I]n these lawsuits, the parties appear to argue that ANY restriction whatsoever on registering to vote is unconstitutional. They are wrong on the facts and the law.”
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
With the help of Hillary Clinton’s Russiagate hoax lawyer Marc Elias, the Phoenix-based Latino activist organization Mi Familia Vota filed a lawsuit Thursday to challenge Arizona’s newly-enacted law requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration. Republican legislators and Governor Doug Ducey have reiterated that the legislation, HB2492, doesn’t apply retroactively to Arizonans who registered to vote without providing proof of citizenship before 2004, meaning those individuals won’t have to re-register to vote. There’s contention to that provision in question: opponents of the law argue that the new definition of a qualified voter requires all registered voters to have submitted proof of citizenship.
The complaint filed by Elias on behalf of Mi Familia Vota alleged that HB2492 was “confusing, discriminatory, and unconstitutional,” as well as “voter suppression,” claiming it would prevent those already registered without proof of citizenship from voting. The complaint also claimed that HB2492 shared the same faults as Proposition 200, a voter-approved initiative in 2004 that required county recorders to reject any application for registration that didn’t include satisfactory evidence of U.S. citizenship.
The Supreme Court (SCOTUS) struck down Proposition 200, ruling that it was a violation of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) which doesn’t require proof of citizenship when registering to vote. However, as Arizona Free Enterprise Deputy Director Greg Blackie explained during the State Senate hearing of the bill, this law was designed to fall within the bounds of SCOTUS precedent because the NVRA doesn’t prohibit states from denying registration if there’s proof that the applicant isn’t a citizen.
Mi Familia Vota’s complaint further insisted that the new law would undermine early mail-in voting, due to the fact that it would negate the ease of voting provided by that method. The complaint also claimed that around 200,000 registered voters would have to locate and present proof of citizenship in order to vote. For that claim, the complaint cited an opinion piece in the Arizona Republic, which didn’t make a definitive claim that those voters would be scrutinized.
“If you registered to vote in Arizona before 2004 and never provided proof that you’re a U.S. citizen — a number that includes close to 200,000 voters who got their driver’s licenses before October 1, 1996, in the days before proof of citizenship was required — you, too, could be suspect. In the eyes of the GOP-run Arizona legislature, that is,” stated the article. [emphasis added]
Setting aside the potential difficulties presented to voters, the complaint argued that Arizona had no compelling interest to justify requiring proof of citizenship of its voters. It claimed that the lack of proof of non-citizens who’d voted proved that point.
In terms of requested relief, the complaint asked the court to find the new law to be in violation of the rights to vote and due process as outlined in the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Arizona’s school counselors will soon be joining other school counselors nationwide to be trained in social-emotional learning (SEL) and other social justice topics for their 25th annual National School Social Work Conference. The conference takes place next week in Chicago, Illinois.
As AZ Free News has reported previously, SEL incorporates a wide swath of controversial theories and ideologies, such as comprehensive sex education (CSE), critical race theory (CRT), and culturally responsive education (CRE).
Nearly all of the topics at hand focus on handling and integrating various social justice issues in K-12 schools.
Keynote session topics are titled as follows: “Leveraging Transformative Social and Emotional Learning… From Imagining to Actualizing an Educational System Rooted in Love and Justice,” focusing on SEL implementation; “Building Authentic Alliances Through Critical Conversations,” focusing on intersectionality, a driving concept behind CRT; and “What is Safety from the Lens of Teens,” focusing on systematic and institutional racism.
Pre-conference forums will include discussions on racial and social equity. Breakout sessions will include discussions on integrating restorative justice mimicking progressive criminal justice reforms, SEL, equity, CRE, mental health therapies, inclusion, sexuality, gender identity, mass-shootings, interventions, racism, adultism, ableism, and social justice activism.
The training that Arizona’s school counselors will receive on SEL falls in line with standards set forth by the Arizona Department of Education (ADE). Last December, the department encouraged educators to expand on their SEL implementation.
#ICYMI: ADE's Social Wellness Committee recently shared a new resource for educators, school leaders, and administrators – our monthly social and emotional learning (SEL) newsletter! Read the first newsletter now to gain internal and external resources: https://t.co/7N35jpCOGT. pic.twitter.com/ONnSeHK25Z
— Arizona Department of Education (@azedschools) March 23, 2022
Governor Doug Ducey appears to support SEL as well. In August, $1.6 million of the $65 million for learning programs went to fund SEL. Additionally, over $6.3 million was allocated for SEL programs as part of the AZCares: Flexibility and Funding For Schools and Families in 2020.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
