Congressman Ruben Gallego, the Democratic candidate vying for Krysten Sinema’s seat, denounced Iran’s largest missile attack against Israel on Tuesday. Iran fired nearly 200 missiles in a two-wave attack, which U.S. and Israeli defenses largely repelled.
During his time in Congress, Gallego repeatedly voted against funding Israel’s defense against Iran, sanctioning Hamas, and disengaging from or condemning Israel boycotts—rather than punishing Hamas, the terrorist entity controlling the Gaza Strip.
“Today, Iran carried out a second significant attack on our key democratic ally in the Middle East, Israel, endangering the lives of innocent civilians,” said Gallego. “The U.S. remains steadfast in its support of Israel in the face of Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.”
Iran’s attack comes nearly a year to the day after their last major terrorist attack that escalated fighting between the two nations.
Today, Iran carried out a second significant attack on our key democratic ally in the Middle East, Israel, endangering the lives of innocent civilians. The U.S. remains steadfast in its support of Israel in the face of Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.
Even though Israel suffered mass casualties of its civilians under that attack, Gallego voted against a bill providing funding to Israel the next month.
The congressman did the same two years prior in 2021, rejecting emergency funds to cover Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system. Earlier that same year, Gallego voted against sanctions on Hamas.
And that year, Gallego enjoyed an $84,000 trip to Qatar paid for by a special interest nonprofit seeking to strengthen trade relations. The Qatari government supports terrorism against Israel, including entities opposed to the Jewish faith responsible for terroristic attacks against the country: the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.
When the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel picked up in 2019, Gallego voted against efforts to condemn or prevent participation. That same year, Gallego voted to give funding to the Palestinian Authority, a primary financier of terrorism against Israel.
The year after Hamas broke a short-lived peace with Israel a decade ago — it fired off rockets at Israel for a revenge killing on a Palestinian after its members kidnapped and killed three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank — Gallego voted to delay presidential authority to waive, suspend, or reduce sanctions on Iran for two years pursuant to an agreement on the nuclear program of Iran.
For years, Gallego supported the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an entity of the Muslim Brotherhood linked to Hamas activity. That all changed within the last year. Gallego pivoted on his sentiments about CAIR last December in response to remarks made by the organization’s executive director and co-founder about the Hamas attack on Israel, Nihad Awad. The CAIR leader said the terrorist attack was a cause for celebration he was “happy to see” occur.
“Statements made by CAIR’s Executive Director regarding the Hamas attack on Israel are despicable and downright antisemitic, and I strongly condemn them,” said Gallego. “The October 7th attack was utterly evil, and any effort to describe it any other way is disgusting. He must resign.”
Statements made by CAIR’s Executive Director regarding the Hamas attack on Israel are despicable and downright antisemitic, and I strongly condemn them. The October 7th attack was utterly evil, and any effort to describe it any other way is disgusting. He must resign. https://t.co/JR6qC0t5Sv
In June, Gallego voted for an amendment to the 2025 budget prohibiting the State Department’s reliance on death toll statistics given by the Gaza Health Ministry. CAIR condemned this vote.
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Reports have emerged that voters may have had their registration addresses moved by Arizona’s Motor Vehicles Division (MVD) without their consent, potentially jeopardizing their ability to vote.
Such unintended disenfranchisement occurred for thousands of voters in the 2022 midterm election.
The renewed concern for the eligibility of an untold number of legal voters emerged after GOP congressional candidate Abraham Hamadeh’s counsel, Jen Wright, brought up their discovery from earlier this year that the MVD moved the voter registration address for thousands of voters without their consent.
🚨ATTN: ARIZONA VOTERS🚨
In @AbrahamHamadeh’s case we found THOUSANDS of voters’ registration address was moved based on ANY interaction with MVD.
CHECK YOUR REGISTRATION NOW TO CONFIRM YOU ARE REGISTERED AT YOUR CURRENT, PRIMARY RESIDENCE.https://t.co/So7VKN545E
Wright was referencing the Hamadeh v. Mayes case, which the Arizona Court of Appeals decided in April.
In that case, Hamadeh’s counsel explained that they discovered voters who owned other properties in addition to their primary residence and found themselves disenfranchised.
“[A]fter interviewing hundreds of those voters, we found that many are voters who have connections to properties outside of their home county; and due to no fault of their own, but instead changes to the statewide computer system, their registration was moved from their county of residence to the county where they had some connection without the voter’s express knowledge, consent or intent in a way that lacks a requisite procedural due process requirement necessitated before depriving someone of their sacred right to vote,” stated counsel. “[I]t appears that more than 1,100 election day provisional voters were, we believe, wrongly disenfranchised. Turns out, with many of these declarations we have their voting record and history, and we can see when and how it was changed, and it was not by their own intent; and we know their intent because they did not show up to vote in the secondary county that was assigned to them.”
The MVD process that impacted those 1,100 voters went into place in April 2020. The court of appeals said that those Arizonans’ votes still couldn’t count since their registrations reflected an address outside the precinct they attempted to vote in, regardless of the change being made by MVD without the knowledge or consent of the voters.
“[E]ven if voters cast provisional ballots in the wrong precinct because of the alleged faulty but unchallenged election procedure, the voters still were not registered to vote in the precincts where they cast those provisional ballots,” stated the court. “Arizona law simply does not authorize opening the envelopes and counting those ballots.”
This hasn’t been the only case recently in which MVD interactions jeopardized Arizonans’ right to vote.
Last month, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that nearly 100,000 longtime Arizona voters caught up in an MVD coding error were allowed to vote, despite a challenge from Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, who put the blame on voters and asked that they be limited to voting a federal ballot only.
The Arizona Supreme Court ruled that those voters were eligible to vote. Chief Justice Ann Scott Timmer ruled that the fault was with the state, not the voters, for their registration changing.
“[A] state administrative failure permitted the Affected Voters to be registered without confirming that they provided DPOC when they received their driver’s licenses and where there is so little time remaining before the beginning of the 2024 General Election,” said Timmer.
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Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer and State Senator Ken Bennett filed amicus briefs in defense of a Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) ballot initiative with the Arizona Supreme Court last week.
Bennett served as the secretary of state from 2009 to 2015. He filed his brief jointly with Helen Purcell, the former Maricopa County recorder who served nearly 30 years.
Richer said in his filing for Smith v. Fontes that the votes should be counted for RCV, or Prop 140, the “Make Elections Fair Act” — regardless of the existence of a disqualifying number of duplicate signatures gathered — because the “election has already begun” and, he says, state law prohibits the prevention of counting votes cast.
“Hiding the results or attempting to prevent the vote from being tabulated is an inequitable result,” said Richer. “And it is at odds with Arizona public policy that demands government transparency. Not counting the vote does not mean it did not happen.”
Richer said all arguments concerning the initiative’s qualifications to be on the ballot were rendered moot after the deadline passed to certify and print the ballots.
“To be resolved with a high degree of certainty may not be currently possible given the election time constraints,” said Richer. “The issue has now, at least partially, gone to the people. The Recorder believes there is benefit to allowing the vote to occur, and assuming it is otherwise constitutional, to count.”
Richer stated that his office had already printed over 21,500 different ballot styles and mailed many of them out to in-state residents as well as military and overseas voters, some of which have been returned: over 1,100 out of about 8,500.
“Recorder submits that once the ballots are printed, the time for signature challenges must end,” said Richer.
Richer also said that state law prohibits the destruction of any public record of a vote, and that Maricopa County’s tabulation machines would tabulate the votes returned.
The recorder noted that state law does allow for courts to enjoin the certification and printing of ballots, but not the power to enjoin the counting of votes.
“[I]f the voting tally is a public record, the Recorder does not see how Maricopa County can either destroy it or fail to release it,” said Richer.
Similarly, Bennett and Purcell argued that their combined expertise on elections made it clear that timeliness in elections takes precedence over validity.
Bennett and Purcell cited court precedent in their argument of mootness regarding the challenge to Prop 140’s validity. Secretary of State Adrian Fontes instructed county election officials to include Prop 140 on their ballots printed in late August.
“Courts have consistently upheld the principle that pre-election challenges must be resolved before the ballot printing deadline,” said the pair. “[And] as a practical matter, invalidating Prop 140 after voting has already begun would result in electoral chaos and damage voter confidence in the efficacy of their votes.”
That ballot printing deadline occurred a day after the Arizona Supreme Court remanded the case to the Maricopa County Superior Court for review, citing the exclusion of evidence pertaining to 40,000 duplicate signatures. The exclusion of those contested signatures reduce petition signatures to what is below the total required to qualify for the ballot.
Though the Maricopa County Superior Court did find that nearly all of the 40,000 signatures were duplicates, the court ruled that the state constitution didn’t allow for those votes cast on Prop 140 to be ignored. That ruling led to the appeal which the Arizona Supreme Court now considers, and with which Richer and Bennett disagree.
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Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne issued a statement of support for a lawsuit challenging Attorney General Kris Mayes’ restrictions on the state’s school choice program.
Horne said that he maintains concerns that Mayes will demand the return of Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) funds from families based on her interpretation of the laws governing allowable expenses.
In July, Mayes advised the Arizona Department of Education (ADE) that, per her interpretation of the law, parents should no longer be reimbursed for supplementary educational materials not expressly outlined in curriculum.
Though Mayes acknowledged that the statute on which she based her interpretation didn’t offer a definition of “supplemental materials,” she argued in her letter to Associate Superintendent John Ward that the State Board of Education’s definition of the term should apply: “relevant materials directly related to the course of study for which they are being used that introduce content and instructional strategies or that enhance, complement, enrich, extend or support the curriculum.”
Mayes’ application of this definition requires explicit mention of all supplies required within a curriculum: even things like pencils and erasers. The ADE handbook doesn’t require documentation of items “generally known to be educational” in their purpose, such as pencils and erasers.
The attorney general directed Ward to provide documentation of total supplementary material expenditure from 2019 to present, as well as funds spent on curriculum materials without curriculum documentation and approved textbooks lacking proof of requirement by a qualified school or eligible postsecondary institution.
In response to Mayes’ directive, the Goldwater Institute sued on behalf of ESA mothers Velia Aguirre and Rosemary McAtee. The two mothers homeschool their children: Aguirre homeschools all three of her children, while McAtee homeschools seven of her nine children.
In their argument, the Goldwater Institute argued that Mayes’ directive was not only in violation of the law, it was a jeopardy to the existing backlog of tens of thousands of purchase orders — an issue that would inherently impact the education of many children relying on those ESA funds.
The Goldwater Institute also pointed out in a press release that not even public and private school curriculums necessarily list supplementary items such as pencils and erasers.
In a statement, Horne expressed hope that the Goldwater Institute would prevail in its lawsuit.
“The Department of Education concedes the argument of the Goldwater Institute. When this issue first arose in July, my concern was that the Attorney General could force Empowerment Scholarship Account holders to return funds if they did not comply with her office’s interpretation of the law. This lawsuit will settle the issue in court and my sincere hope is that the arguments made by Goldwater will prevail.”
Horne had issued an anticipatory show of support for a hypothetical lawsuit from the Goldwater Institute in a response on the ADE page for ESAs immediately following Mayes’ letter. Horne clarified that a prior court decision bound ADE from having the standing to file lawsuits.
The superintendent said that he doesn’t agree with Mayes’ interpretation that supplementary materials are required to be tied to curriculum. However, Horne said that Mayes’ directive was one his department advised him that he couldn’t challenge and win.
As of Monday, over 78,600 students were enrolled in the ESA Program.
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The nation’s largest university is balking its years-long trend of growth and expansion with the closure of one of its campuses.
Arizona State University (ASU) announced earlier this week that it will close its Lake Havasu campus in the summer 2025, affecting over 200 students and 20 faculty members. The Lake Havasu campus opened just over a decade ago in 2012.
The university will also be increasing tuition for those on campus: full-time students will pay another $350, with part-time students to pay a lower, “proportional” amount.
ASU blamed state budget cuts for the campus closure in its Monday announcement, citing an $11 million reduction in funding. ASU President Michael Crow said this latest reduction was part of a longtime refusal by the state legislature and governor to fund higher education adequately.
“These necessary actions reflect the continuing lack of public investment from state government for higher education in Arizona,’’ said Crow. “ASU simply cannot be asked to fund the expansion of higher education across the state without state investment as a part of the financial structure to do so. These budget cuts put the state of Arizona even further behind in ensuring that Arizona has the talent and workforce necessary to advance its economy.”
Governor Katie Hobbs — often at odds with the slim Republican majority of the state legislature — was supportive of this most recent budget, including the cuts to higher education and nearly all other agencies.
“[T]his bipartisan, balanced budget puts our state on solid financial ground,” said Hobbs at the time.
A spokesperson for Hobbs told outlets that the governor remains supportive of the budget, but didn’t elaborate whether the governor was supportive of ASU’s decision.
However, lawmakers have refuted this claim. House Majority Leader Leo Biasiucci, who resides in Lake Havasu City, issued a joint statement with Republican State Rep. John Gillette expressing disappointment with ASU’s decision and concern for the lack of public discussion or stakeholder involvement.
“ASU’s strong financial health simply does not justify its action. The State Legislature has made significant investments in ASU over the past few years,” said the lawmakers. “ASU’s budget has increased by 22 percent since FY20, and by 40 percent since 2015, with $408 million allocated to the university this year, reflecting our commitment to higher education, even while difficult decisions were made to balance the budget.”
Gillette also added the speculation in a separate post of his own that ASU’s decision was politically motivated.
“When times are good, it will receive new funds; when times are tough, it should tighten its belt — just like every other agency that serves the public,” said Gillette. “We call on ASU to immediately reconsider this closure and urge the Arizona Board of Regents to take a much closer look at this decision as it looks very politically motivated this close to the election.”
We are deeply troubled by ASU’s surprise decision to close the Lake Havasu campus,even more frustrating is that ASU’s financial standing clearly doesn’t justify such drastic action. The legislature prioritized higher education with significant investments in ASU over the past…
According to Lake Havasu City leadership, ASU kept the city out of their decision to close the campus. It was members of the community and city leadership that served on the committee that brought ASU to the city over a decade ago.
Mayor Cal Sheehy toldHavasu News the city wasn’t given the opportunity to seek an alternative to closing the campus.
“It’s really sad that ASU has made the decision to close the college at Lake Havasu City, but the real challenge is that we haven’t had a chance to discuss any alternatives,” said Sheehy. “They believe the legislature put them here, but Lake Havasu has shown we are innovative, starting with the $2 million it took to get it here in the first place, and a conversation about what solutions could be there and what the opportunities are.”
One of the committee members, business owner Steve Greeley, also didn’t buy ASU’s claim that financial woes had forced their hand.
“I saw the quote by President Crow in regards to the Legislature cutting back on funding. I understand that, but you would think they would have a workaround before making a decision so burdensome,” said Greeley. “It was a huge effort by the community all those years ago, that took a lot of time, resources and money. I’m hoping something can be resolved.”
Havasu News editorial staff reported that their community raised $2 million in an effort to assist ASU in coming to their city.
“Our community deserved a seat at the table,” said the outlet. “We should be angry about this. The closure will affect students, families, and local jobs. And ASU’s promise to relocate students doesn’t make up for the loss of a school that became a part of our town. ASU has broken its promise to Lake Havasu City, and they owe us more than a simple goodbye.”
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