Vice Presidential Blues

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 Gov. Hobbs has racked up more than 100 vetoes, rejecting Republican-backed bills that criminalized homelessness, banned ranked-choice voting, and a bill that created penalties for filming sexually explicit acts on school property - but also threatened educators with prison. 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»   

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»   

The bellwether trial over PFAS contamination of public water systems was expected to offer legal observers their first glimpse into a sprawling case that could rival the asbestos crisis in its impact, but the case is on hold as attorneys told the court they were nearing a settlement. Read more»   

Republican Arizona Sen. Jake Hoffman is urging the Arizona governor to sign a bill that would end the “practice of filming pornography in K-12 schools,” something that is currently not allowed or encouraged at public schools in the state. Read more»   

Abortion is set to be a major issue in 2024’s most competitive Senate races, but abortion rights groups could stay on the sidelines in Arizona after a party switch by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, whose seat is up next year. Read more»   

For two days, unionized reporters at the Arizona Republic and 24 other newsrooms and across the country will walk off the job in order to send a message to parent company Gannett about unfair working conditions. 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»