Arizona Capitol Times Your Inside Source for Arizona Government, Politics and Business

A second lawsuit challenging Arizona’s same-sex marriage ban was filed in a federal district court in Phoenix on Wednesday, arguing that the ban violates the U.S. Constitution’s mandate of equality and is akin to anti-miscegenation laws.

Barely a year after winning a hard-fought battle to put Arizona’s 9th Congressional District in the Democratic column, U.S. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema faces a fork in the road.

Behind the legislation that engulfed Arizona in a firestorm over the treatment of gays is an influential Evangelical-Christian lobby that is deep in the trenches of America’s culture wars.

In a move that is certain to send Democrats into a mad scramble, U.S. Rep. Ed Pastor, 70, today announced that he is retiring from at the end of the current term, when he completes his 23rd year in Congress.

In the three years since the ouster of conservative icon Russell Pearce from the state Senate, the conversation on illegal immigration has shifted. More Republicans now embrace the idea of extending citizenship to undocumented immigrants who were brought to America as children, and some public colleges even offer in-state tuition rates to those children.

The pro-immigration rights group that spearheaded the successful recall and ouster of conservative icon Russell Pearce almost three years ago is going after one of his allies in the Legislature – with a toilet.

Republican legislators who are facing a backlash from the conservative right for approving the expansion of Medicaid tapped into a vast network of supporters to easily outraise colleagues and opponents last year.

Republican legislators facing a backlash from the conservative right for approving the expansion of Medicaid tapped into a vast network of supporters to easily outraise colleagues and opponents last year.

Sen. Leah Landrum Taylor, a Phoenix Democrat, is dropping her bid to become the next secretary of state.

Like a toddler with a water hose, the monsoon brings the rain in bursts, unevenly spraying but never quite quenching Arizona’s dry earth.

Often, the season’s thunderstorms unleash an apocalyptic scene — a wall of dust, with its tinge of yellow and red against the setting sun, rushing to swallow the Valley whole and enveloping its homes with its unwelcome sandy mist. Free from crippling polar vortexes or earthquakes, the sandstorms are nature’s reminder to Arizona of its sweeping powers.