Clean Elections debates kick off with GOP gov. candidates

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes sent a letter stating he is concerned that moving forward would would put the county’s election officials in “serious legal jeopardy,” after Mohave County supervisors voted to request a plan to hand-count ballots in the 2024 presidential election. Read more»   

Hearing-impaired residents will now have better access to the Tucson City Council, as a new on-screen captioning system will provide more accurate real-time transcriptions of what elected leaders and others say during meetings. Read more»   

A 9th Circuit panel heard arguments over whether the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service must once again rewrite its recovery plan for the endangered Mexican wolf, as conservationists argued the new plan didn’t include site-specific management data and is too similar to the old one. Read more»   

Arizona claimed qualified immunity as a child sex abuse victim argued for partial summary judgment in a negligence suit against the state over its placement of foster children in the care of former civilian army leader David Frodsham and leaving him there despite numerous complaints. Read more»   

The U.S. has lost a variety of living options because of the homogenization of zoning policies, as well as developers’ desire to have inexpensive and easily replicated building plans - but an additional unit of housing on a single lot should again become a more common housing option. Read more»   

Peering into the scrying mirror — depicting a world equally grotesque and apocalyptic — Tucson artist Daniel Martin Diaz's new book “Iconoclasm: AI and The Devaluation of Humanity's Achievements” makes inquiries into the impact of artificial intelligence on the arts and the shape of things to come. Read more»   

Tucson City Manager Mike Ortega makes it plain that the city's budget does not short-change climate relief. All told it reaches up to $80.5 million. Plus, more in local government meetings this week. Read more»   

More than 1,200 hate and anti-government extremist groups were active across the U.S. in 2022, according to a Southern Poverty Law Center report on the prevalence of extremists who target people of color, LGBTQ people, Jewish communities and other religious minorities. Read more»   

A DHS official testified that staffing shortages and a surging workload at the Southwest border have depleted morale among customs and border officials, leaving many ready to quit - but the DHS and Democrats pushed back, saying his findings were based on a flawed survey. Read more»