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Tag: Donald Trump

Arizona officials urge counties to refuse grand jury subpoenas for voter records

Key Points:
  • Arizona officials tell counties to refuse grand jury subpoenas for voter records
  • Attorney General Kris Mayes and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes cite ongoing federal lawsuit
  • Arizona officials released documents contradicting claims of widespread election fraud

Fearing an end-run around the courts, two top state officials are telling counties to refuse to comply with any grand jury subpoenas for their voter records.

In a joint letter to county recorders, Attorney General Kris Mayes and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes remind them that there is already a lawsuit in federal court over whether the Department of Justice is entitled to a full, unredacted list of voter information. There is no date set for a hearing.

But what has changed since the lawsuit was filed, they said, is that Senate President Warren Petersen, responding to a grand jury subpoena, turned over records related to the Senate’s audit of the conduct and results of the 2020 election. And that, they warned, appears to be part of an end-run around the federal court for the Trump administration to get the documents it wants — regardless of what a federal judge rules.

That’s not all. It also comes as the Department of Homeland Security, apparently conducting its own probe, has asked Mayes’ office for some documents it has related to the 2020 election.

Richie Taylor, a spokesman for Mayes, said it surrendered both a report that was done reviewing the audit by her predecessor, Mark Brnovich, as well as some documents that Brnovich did not make public before he left office at the end of 2022.

Taylor said there was no subpoena, as all those documents are public records. But he said that nothing else has been provided to Homeland Security.

All that, according to Mayes and Fontes, leads them to believe that federal agencies will use the grand jury process — and the ability of prosecutors to subpoena documents — to circumvent the question before the federal judge of whether the agencies have a legal right to demand what they are seeking. And the two Arizona officials said they want to be sure that county recorders do not play a role in letting that happen.

“We reiterate our offices’ position here just in case you may be contemplating disclosure,” the pair wrote. “We write to inform you that doing so would violate both federal and state law.”

The disclosure of the Homeland Security inquiry drew a sharp response from Gov. Katie Hobbs who was the secretary of state in 2020.

“Arizona’s 2020 election has been investigated and verified in Republican-led audits,” she said in a comment March 10 night posted on social media. “Pulling agents off serious work like combating human trafficking to chase debunked election conspiracies is irresponsible and a threat to public safety.”

This all comes as the Trump administration has shown renewed interest in revisiting the 2020 election, particularly in states where he was outpolled by Joe Biden. That occurred in enough states, including in Arizona, to deny him the electoral votes needed at that time for a second term.

Now back in office, Trump has expressed frustration that Attorney General Pam Bondi has not done more to investigate his claim that the election was stolen from him.

Arizona is among 29 states and the District of Columbia where the Department of Justice has filed suit to demand full voter files after state officials refused to comply. That includes not just things that are public like name and party registration, but also what Fontes said is legally protected private information like birth dates, driver license numbers, signatures and the last four digits of Social Security numbers.

The agency, however, has said it is not investigating any particular violations of law but simply fulfilling its mission to be sure that states are keeping voter rolls updated.

Fontes, however, told a federal judge it appears the real goal is for the federal government to amass a national centralized database on millions of Americans. And he said that appears to be part of a plan to check the immigration status of those on the voter rolls.

And now there is the request by Homeland Security to Mayes for information about the 2020 race.

Taylor said that Mayes did turn over some findings released in 2022 by Brnovich in which he claimed his office had “uncovered instances of election fraud by individuals who have been or will be prosecuted for various election crimes.”

That, however, wasn’t all Mayes turned over to Homeland Security. Taylor said they also got a follow-up report she released after taking office in 2023, a report that included evidence that Brnovich and his top aide had been told by their own staffers, even before releasing the 2022 report, that there was no basis for such claims of fraud.

And Taylor said that, in response to further requests from Homeland Security, the Attorney General’s Office last week even prepared a Power Point presentation. But he said that there has been no further cooperation with Homeland Security since then.

Now Mayes and Fontes want to be sure that county recorders aren’t providing anything that is not already a public record — even if they are served with a subpoena.

“I implore you to fulfill your oath by declining any such illegal demands,” the letter to the recorders says.

“If your office receives a federal grand jury subpoena demanding that you turn over voters’ private data, we urge you to notify our offices immediately,” they wrote. “The grand jury should not serve to circumvent Arizona’s ongoing lawsuit, and our offices will pursue all legal actions available to prevent the Department of Justice from misusing the grand jury process.”

What makes the  information Mayes turned over to Homeland Security significant is that it represents two different views of what did and did not happen in the 2020 election — views that Homeland Security could choose to use or ignore as it pursues any investigation.

Brnovich, a Republican, was running in 2022 for U.S. Senate. And his report included various allegations that signatures may not have been properly verified on early ballot envelopes and that “there are problematic systemwide issues that related to early ballot handling and verification.”

But Mayes, a Democrat who won her 2022 election to replace Brnovich, disclosed in her 2023 report information she said Brnovich had withheld from the public, including a memo from the agency’s Special Investigations Section — information she said showed that her predecessor knew there was no basis for what the attorney general was reporting in 2022,

That 2022 memo said that agents and support staff had spent more than 10,000 hours investigating and reviewing alleged instances of illegal voting submitted by various private parties. Those came not only from Cyber Ninjas, the private firm without any election auditing experience hired by Senate President Karen Fann to conduct the audit, but also True the Vote which has been at the forefront of denying the results of the 2020 election.

“In each instance and in each matter, the aforementioned parties did not provide any evidence to support their allegations,” that memo stated. “The information that was provided was speculated in many instances and when investigated by our agents and support staff, was found to be inaccurate.”

And there was something else in the memo.

The investigators said that there were elected officials who had made public statements asserting that voting fraud had occurred and that fraud was a factor in the outcome of the 2020 election.

Yet when actually questioned by investigators — under circumstances where they were told they could be prosecuted for making false reports to law enforcement agencies — “the elected officials did not repeat or make such assertions.”

That included Mark Finchem, at the time a Republican representative from Oro Valley and now a state senator from Prescott. Finchem had publicly stated he had a source reporting that more than 30,000 fraudulent or fictitious votes were registered in Pima County during the 2020 general election. Investigators then requested to speak with him.

“During that meeting, Mr. Finchem did not repeat those allegations, specifically stating he did not have any evidence of fraud and he did not wish to take up our time,” the investigators reported.

What he did provide were four ballots he said was evidence of a flawed process for mailing and counting ballots.

The investigators, however, said they found the ballots had been mailed to prior residents of the address on file, the residents had moved, the ballots cannot be forward and they were unopened and not counted.

They also said that Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, who had alleged widespread fraud in the 2020 election “refused to meet with us, saying she was waiting to see the ‘perp walk’ of those who committed fraud during the election.”

Federal probe examines debunked 2020 Arizona election audit

Key Points:
  • Federal grand jury subpoenas records from 2020 Arizona election audit
  • Senate President Warren Petersen complies with federal subpoena for audit records
  • Attorney General Kris Mayes calls the grand jury inquiry “weaponization”

A federal grand jury apparently is looking at the results of a long-ago-debunked “audit” of the 2020 Arizona election.

Senate President Warren Petersen said in a social media post on Monday that he “received and complied with” a federal grand jury subpoena for records related to the Senate audit of Maricopa County results following the 2020 election. That is a race where Joe Biden outpolled Donald Trump.

“The FBI has the records,” Petersen said.

He declined to comment further.

This comes just weeks after the FBI raided Fulton County, Ga. — another state where Trump lost in 2020 — seizing their election records from that year.

Both events come amid ongoing claims by Trump, who lost the 2020 election, that there was extensive fraud. And he has publicly urged his Department of Justice to investigate.

“Great!!!” the president posted on social media in response to the reports of the subpoena in Arizona.

There was no immediate response from the FBI.

But what Trump — or his agency — hopes to get out of it remains unclear.

In fact, Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, who reviewed what he got in 2022 from then-Senate President Karen Fann, found the report prepared by Cyber Ninjas as deeply flawed.

Brnovich for example, noted that the report claimed that 282 people who had allegedly died in early October 2020 cast ballots in the November general election.

“Our agents investigated all individuals that Cyber Ninjas reported as dead,” he said. “Many were very surprised to learn they were allegedly deceased.”

In fact, the attorney general said, only one of 282 listed voters on that report actually was deceased. The others were not only quite alive but also current voters.

But it wasn’t just what Cyber Ninjas had provided that Brnovich concluded was largely unfounded.

He said his agency’s Election Integrity Unit looked at the names of another 409 allegedly dead voters that came from other sources. And then investigators went through yet another report of 5,943 names, which made no distinction between dead voters and dead registrants.

“Once again, these claims were thoroughly investigated and resulted in only a handful of potential cases,” Brnovich told Fann.

“Some were so absurd the names and birth dates didn’t even match the deceased,” he reported. “And others included dates of death after the election.”

And Brnovich said while his agency has previously prosecuted other instances of dead people voting, even those cases “were ultimately determined to be isolated incidents.”

Of note is that the audit also included a hand count of the 2.1 million Maricopa County ballots. And it found that Biden actually outpolled Trump by an even larger margin than the official tally.

Responding to the reports of a grand jury subpoena, Kris Mayes, the current attorney general, cited the Brnovich investigation into the Cyber Ninjas report. And she said that complaints and allegations submitted to the AG’s office “were also unsupported by factual evidence.”

“Warren Petersen knows all this,” she said. “He has known it for years.”

Mayes also said that Petersen, who is running to be the GOP nominee for attorney general to take her on in November, has been “an unrepentant election denier.” She pointed to a rally he had after the election in 2020 claiming “we certified the vote prematurely.”

Petersen then co-chaired the oversight of the Cyber Ninjas inquiry with Fann.

Mayes also took a shot at the president, saying that what his administration appears to be pursuing is not a legitimate law enforcement inquiry.

“It is the weaponization of federal law enforcement in service of crackpots and lies,” she said.

The 2022 report by Brnovich was only one of several that concluded that Cyber Ninjas’ findings, which had never conducted an election audit before being hired by Fann, were misleading or outright wrong.

Other claims had since been debunked, including people voting duplicate ballots, machine-filled-in ballots, missing signatures on absentee ballots, and tallying machines linked to the internet.

For example, Doug Logan, CEO of Cyber Ninjas, claimed that the county logged 74,232 more early ballots than the number of requests sent out.

County spokesman Fields Moseley, whose staff worked with the county recorder to research the claims, said in response at the time, there were two problems with that.

First, he said the records show there were 2,364,426 requests for early ballots, with 1,918,024 returned.

“So the claim is not just wrong but completely wrong,” he said.

Aside from that, Moseley pointed out that there are two ways to vote early: with a mail-in ballot or going directly to one of the early voting locations. And in the latter case, people are handed ballots that are prepared there but lumped into the early ballot category.

“So it’s not unusual that we would have more early votes than mail-in ballots sent,” Moseley said.

There even was a lawsuit over a related issue of whether the tabulation machines were properly recording votes when ballots, which had been damaged or had extra marks, had to be redone by hand so they could be fed through counting machines.

In that case, Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Brutinel said that a random check of 1,626 of these ballots, ordered by a trial court, found an error rate of as low as 0.37% or as high as 0.55%.

But the justice said that extrapolating that out to the 27,869 ballots that had to be duplicated to be able to be counted would have gained Donald Trump just 103 votes or, at best, 153 votes, “neither of which is sufficient to call the election results into question.”

Highway renaming sparks debate over Trump and Epstein files in Arizona Senate

Key Points:
  • Sen. Wendy Rogers wants to rename a state road as the Donald J. Trump Highway
  • Proposal sparked debate over life and actions of the President
  • Legislators are also considering honoring slain activist Charlie Kirk by naming a highway

What’s coming out in the Epstein files spilled over to the state Senate on Tuesday.

And it’s all because Sen. Wendy Rogers wants to rename a state road as the Donald J. Trump Highway.

The 193-mile stretch of State Route 260 from Cottonwood to Eagar is now designated as the General Crook Trail, named after the original dirt road built in the 1870s as a military supply wagon road. Now, the Flagstaff Republican wants the Arizona State Board on Geographic and Historic Names to replace that with the name of the president.

Her SCM 1001 lists a host of reasons she believes Trump deserves the honor, ranging from the construction of additional border walls, his role in enacting tax relief, and his withdrawal from the United Nations Paris Climate Agreement.

But when the measure came to the Senate floor on March 3, Sen. Analise Ortiz, D-Phoenix, had questions.

Rogers wouldn’t agree to respond. So Ortiz laid out her case for why such an honor is misplaced.

That specifically includes reports from the New York Times claiming the president’s name appears more than 38,000 times in the Epstein files. And she specifically mentioned Trump’s name appearing in an FBI tip sheet with what she said was an allegation that Epstein years ago introduced a 13-year-old girl to Trump who, in turn, was accused of trying to force the girl to perform a sex act.

There has been no independent corroboration of that incident, and Ortiz’s comment was ruled out of order by Sen. Frank Carroll, who was presiding. 

But that did not stop Ortiz from saying that there’s more in the files that should make lawmakers question whether the state should honor him with a road.

“These files … dictate horrific sexual abuse, the most heinous sex trafficking ring possibly in history,” she said.

“President Trump has been hiding these documents,” Ortiz said. “His Department of Justice has been scrubbing these documents from the law that he passed to make these public.”

What’s needed before the state takes any action to honor Trump, she said, is the full disclosure of what else is in the Epstein files, “and the truth about his involvement in this ring of pedophiles.”

“We should not even be entertaining or talking about this right now,” Ortiz said.

But given Republicans’ support — and their control of the Senate — none stood up to defend the move. The measure gained preliminary approval on a voice vote.

While Rogers did not defend her measure on Tuesday, she did rise to its defense when the proposal first went before a Senate panel in January.

“Needless to say, our president is bigger than life,” Rogers told colleagues. 

That, in turn, provoked a response from Sen. Mitzi Epstein.

“We should name our public places after people who have led exemplary lives, not after a person who has led a disgraceful personal life,” said the Tempe Democrat. And she said this isn’t partisan, saying there are many Republican politicians who could be honored in this fashion.

“But not this one,” Epstein said.

She also said it’s not just about what’s in the files.

Epstein also mentioned the 34 convictions of falsified business records which prosecutors said were designed to conceal payments made by Trump to cover up an extramarital affair. And he was found liable in a civil trial for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll and then defaming her when he denied the allegations, and was ordered to pay $5 million in damages.

And then, Epstein said, there was the overheard comment about how he could “grab women by the, you’ve heard of it.”

But her objections gained no traction.

Sen. Mark Finchem, R-Prescott, responded with just two words: Bill Clinton, a reference to issues that the former president faced about his own sexual activities when he was in the White House.

Sen. Vince Leach had his own reason for supporting this designation for Trump. Consider, the Tucson Republican said, President Lincoln whom he called perhaps “the most divisive in our history.”

“And yet he is recognized all over this country,” Leach said, including his name on roads.

And Senate Majority Leader John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, called Epstein’s comments an “unjustified and untrue slandering of our president.”

SCM 1001 still requires a final roll call vote in the Senate before going to the House.

Because of the way the measure is worded, it would not require the approval of Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs.

It also offers no guarantee that the State Board on Geographic and Historic Names will honor the request.

It has independent authority to decide what names are appropriate, and the board has a policy of not naming geographic features after individuals until they have been dead for at least five years.

That differs from the proposal by Senate President Warren Petersen to designate a highway in Maricopa County as the Charlie Kirk Loop 202 in honor of the slain co-founder of Turning Point USA. That one simply directs the Arizona Department of Transportation to erect signs with the name along the 78-mile road.

SB 1010, which has been approved by the Senate on a party-line vote, awaits action in the House.

But as a bill, it would need Hobbs’s approval. She has yet to comment on the issue.

Fontes talks GOP election efforts, federal data demands

Key Points:
  • Secretary of State Adrian Fontes denies federal requests for sensitive voter data
  • Gives opinion and official perspective on GOP voting measures 
  • Comments highlight tension between state and federal election officials ahead of 2026

Arizona’s top election official isn’t giving in to federal requests for state voter data, standing by his decision to tell federal officials to “pound sand.”

Secretary of State Adrian Fontes spoke at an event hosted by the League of Women Voters of Arizona on federal administrative overreach for sensitive voter roll data and several bills that would affect how Arizona runs its elections. 

Fontes recapped the U.S. Department of Justice’s request for Arizona’s voter roll information, which started last summer. The request was repeated three times and denied three times by Fontes, who at one point, told the department to “pound sand.”

Publicly available voter data exists and includes information such as name, street address, birth year, political affiliation and the elections they voted in. However, the DOJ never made a request for that data, he said. 

They requested sensitive information that includes month and date of birth, Social Security Number, driver’s license number or non-operating identification number, Indian census number, father’s name or mother’s maiden name, state or county of birth, voter signatures and email addresses, he said. The department did not disclose how the data would be used, Fontes added.

The department cannot obtain the information from other federal agencies either, due to the Privacy Act of 1974, he said, and each agency has restrictions on how it can obtain and use data.

“I can’t justify handing over, to an administration that’s careless, Arizona’s voter data, particularly the sensitive stuff that I’m barred from turning over,” Fontes said. “I kept saying no, because as you can see through the list, that’s some pretty sensitive information, and if it got out, your identity could be subject to being stolen, and that’s not something that I really want to happen to Arizona’s voters.”

Under Arizona law section 16-168, subsection F, sensitive data is not permissible to be disclosed. It reads in part, “… shall not be accessible or reproduced by any person other than the voter by an authorized government official in the scope of the official’s duties for any purpose by any designated entity of the Secretary of State.”

At first, the department said they wanted to make sure Arizona complied with several congressional acts, including the Voter Registration Act, Civil Rights Act of 1960 and the Help America Vote Act to get the data, but Fontes said it wasn’t a legitimate request and he wasn’t going to subject himself to a potential felony. 

In January, the department filed a lawsuit against Arizona and cited all three congressional acts to turn over voting records. Fontes said he expects to hear something about the case within 30 to 60 days. Several similar cases in five states have been dismissed based on merit or procedural grounds. Those include West Virginia, Georgia, California, Oregon and Michigan. 

Eleven states did turn over their voter rolls, and Fontes said he’s worried about what will happen to those voters, but Arizona will continue to refuse the request under his leadership. 

Fontes talks about recent state legislation on elections

The secretary of state also discussed two bills that have recently moved through the state Legislature. 

The first is the striker amendment to Senate Bill 1570 (diversity; equity; inclusion; training; prohibition), which would have allowed federal agents into polling locations under an agreement with a county recorder and county board of supervisors and with federal immigration agencies. 

The bill is effectively dead because Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, who filed the amendment, did not hear it in the Senate Judiciary and Elections Committee before the deadline on Feb. 20. It could come back as a striker amendment to another bill. The original bill was filed by Sen. Jake Hoffman, R-Queen Creek, but Rogers said they couldn’t hear it because Hoffman was ill and unavailable to present it, though many bills are heard in committee without the sponsor present.

“Some people are saying, ‘Oh it’s just political.’ Some people are saying ‘Oh, it’s just a fundraising thing,’” Fontes said. “I think it’s an absolute acknowledgement that ICE agents are not allowed into polling places in Arizona.”

Fontes did not elaborate but said his office, the Governor’s Office and the Attorney General’s Office are working on scenarios in case those issues, among others, arise. Later on Feb. 25, Fontes said in a statement that according to a call with federal election officials, Immigrations and Custom Enforcement (ICE) agents would not be at polling locations. 

“I think we have to understand the fact that we are having this conversation tells us that we are not living in a regular democracy that we would understand 18 months ago,” he said. 

He also alleged that the Trump administration was using ICE “as a cudgel against this weird fantasy that they have that the illegals are taking over the world.”

He pointed to a study by the Heritage Foundation that found a ballot has been cast by non-citizens 68 times since the 1980s. The Heritage Foundation is a conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. 

“Think about the billions of votes that have been cast,” he said. “You’re talking about all the municipalities, all the county courts, of all the county commissions and boards of supervisors, all of the state legislatures, all of the presidential races, all of the congressional races.”

Other bills that have caught Fontes’ attention include ones that would dismantle or alter the state’s mail-in voting system. About 80% of Arizonans send their ballots by mail, according to the Clean Elections Commission. 

“That means only 20% of your voters are voting in person right now,” he said. “That means you would have to increase by five-fold all of the resources that you spend, all of the spaces where people vote because you’re basically relegating everybody to standing in line in one day and having to show their ID. But nobody’s done the fiscal analysis on that.”

Each location would need a minimum of seven non-volunteer employees to staff each polling location, he said. 

“Take the number of polling places and the amount of money that you spend per ballot for in-person voting and multiply that by five. We don’t have the money for that,” he said. “We literally don’t have the ability to pay for them. The counties aren’t going to absorb that cost.”

Another bill, SCR 1001, filed by Sen. Shawnna Bolick, R-Phoenix, proposed to end early voting no later than 7 p.m. on the Friday before Election Day and prohibit contributions to candidates or ballot measures from foreign nationals. If passed by lawmakers, it would send the decision to voters. 

Fontes concluded his comments and said, “I’m going to do everything that I can within the law so that I can make sure that we kind of preserve and protect the systems that we’ve got.”

Arizona Republicans push for citizen-only census to redraw legislative districts

Key Points: 

  • Republican lawmakers propose a citizen-only census in 2030
  • The census aims to draw legislative districts favoring Republicans
  • The proposed citizen-only census would not affect Arizona’s US House seats

Republican state lawmakers are moving to have the state conduct its own census in 2030 — one that would count only those who are citizens.

And Sen. Jake Hoffman, R-Queen Creek, acknowledged at least part of the reason he is pushing for a citizens-only census is political: He believes it will give Republicans an advantage.

However, several Democratic lawmakers say a second census will only lead to confusion, inaccuracy and fear from families with “mixed status” households. But Hoffman, who pushed the measure through the Republican-controlled Senate on Feb. 24, said it’s a simple matter of accuracy.

Consider, he said, if he went to Los Angeles to see a football game.

“I’m not a citizen, I’m not a resident of California, nor would I ever expect to be counted in their population,” he said.

“Similarly, the 20-plus million illegal aliens who invaded this country … they are also not citizens,” Hoffman continued, saying “they should be deported and sent back.”

Pew Research Center said the number of undocumented immigrants hit a peak of 14 million in 2023, but predicted a decrease in 2025. And the Migration Policy Institute’s own 2023 estimate put the figure at 307,000 for Arizona.

More to the point, his SCR 1031 means their presence would not be taken into account when dividing up the state’s 30 legislative districts.

By law, the Independent Redistricting Committee is legally required to create districts of approximately equal population. And it uses figures from the U.S. Census Bureau’s decennial count.

During his first term, President Trump sought to have a citizenship question included in that count.

But his plan was sidelined when the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross lied about why he wanted that information.

So the census was conducted without the question. And both congressional and legislative lines were drawn with the full population, citizen, permanent resident or undocumented — or at least what the agency reported.

Nothing in Hoffman’s measure would affect how many more seats Arizona gets in the U.S. House, with that still determined by official Census Bureau numbers. There are currently nine representatives from the state — preliminary estimates say the state will pick up at least one more after 2030.

But what a citizen-only count would do is affect how the 30 legislative districts in Arizona — a number set in the Arizona Constitution — are drawn. Put simply, it would mean that areas with a large population of non-citizens — whether here legally or not — would lose population, requiring them to be redrawn to be geographically larger to take in more residents.

And that would make the remaining districts, those composed largely of citizens, geographically smaller. That, Hoffman concluded, would mean more Republicans in office. 

The GOP does have an edge in both chambers, but their margins are not large, with 17 of 30 senators being Republicans; and 32 of 60 members of the House belonging to the party.

Those margins, however, have been narrower in the past. In fact, Democrats controlled the Senate for two years in the 1990s, and a subsequent Senate was split 15-15 in the 2000 election.

The House, by contrast, has not been run by Democrats since 1964.

Hoffman said it’s no surprise that Democrats oppose his plan.

“They like when illegal aliens are included for the purpose of apportionment,” he said. “It gives them undue representation that they are otherwise not owed if we were only counting U.S. citizens.”

But Senate Minority Leader Priya Sundareshan said it is the Republicans who are playing politics.

The Tucson Democrat said the Census Bureau already is doing the work.

“I can’t believe we want to waste millions of dollars in this state just so you can have your own count that’s separate from that already conducted by the federal government so that you can draw legislative districts differently and stack them the way you’d want,” she said, with one estimate putting the price tag at $50 million.

Sen. Analise Ortiz said there’s a more practical problem: accuracy.

The Phoenix Democrat said that when the U.S. Census Bureau was considering adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census, a report found that it would have decreased overall voluntary self-response by 2% — and by 8% among mixed-status families. Doing that in Arizona, Ortiz said, means the citizens in those households are going to be undercounted “out of fear.”

“This is nothing more than a Republican driven and funded door-to-door ‘show me your papers’ campaign,” she said.

And that’s not her only concern.

“This language would allow the Legislature to designate “any untrained, unqualified person to go door-to-door, demanding proof that someone is a citizen,” Ortiz said. “What could go wrong?”

Hoffman’s measure is crafted so it cannot be vetoed by Gov. Katie Hobbs, who, less than a week ago, quashed another GOP measure requiring hospitals that accept Medicaid payments to ask patients for their immigration status. Instead, SCR 2031 would go on the November ballot if it is approved by the Republican-controlled House where it now goes.

Taylor Robson quits Arizona governor’s race

Key Points:
  • Karrin Taylor Robson ended her campaign for the Republican nomination for governor
  • Taylor Robson warned Republicans must avoid a “divisive primary”
  • U.S. Reps. Andy Biggs and David Schweikert are now the main contenders in the primary

Karrin Taylor Robson suspends her campaign for governor, citing her desire to avoid a “divisive Republican primary.” 

In a statement, Taylor Robson said she is stepping back from the race to help the Republican Party win back the governorship from incumbent Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs. 

“… we cannot afford a divisive Republican primary that drains resources and turns into months of intraparty attacks,” Taylor Robson said. “It only weakens our conservative cause and gives the left exactly what they want: a fractured Republican Party heading into November. With so much on the line in 2026, I am not willing to contribute to that outcome.”

Taylor Robson’s exit leaves U.S. Reps. Andy Biggs and David Schweikert as the main contenders for the Republican nomination to lead the top of the ticket in Arizona. The state’s primary is set for July 28. 

“I want to thank Karrin Taylor Robson for a well-run campaign and for her many contributions to keeping our state red,” Biggs wrote in a post on X. “This is a critical time for our party to unite and avoid a costly, divisive primary as the weak and ineffective Katie Hobbs continues to hurt Arizonans.”

Meanwhile, Hobbs’ campaign took a victory lap in a statement from her campaign manager Nicole DeMont.

“Karrin Taylor Robson saw the writing on the wall and knows that Gov. Katie Hobbs is going to win re-election because of her bipartisan record of lowering costs, securing the border, and protecting healthcare,” DeMont said. “No matter who emerges from this chaotic primary, we will stay focused on building a winning coalition of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents who believe in putting Arizona first.”

Taylor Robson ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination in 2022, losing to Kari Lake. She entered the Republican primary for the 2026 election in February 2025 after President Donald Trump endorsed her at Turning Point USA’s 2024 conference in Phoenix. 

Trump’s endorsement of Robson drew ire from the more conservative members of the Arizona Republican Party, like Arizona Freedom Caucus Chair and Sen. Jake Hoffman. Eventually, Trump gave a second endorsement to Biggs when he launched his campaign in March.

Taylor Robson ran as a moderate, anti-Trump foil to the ultraconservative Lake in 2022, but attempted to court the president’s favor — and his voters — for her second gubernatorial run. However, many Republicans were wary of Taylor Robson’s shifting alliances and threw their support behind Biggs. 

Known for self-funding her campaigns, Taylor Robson had the largest campaign warchest in the Republican primary, with $1.2 million in cash on hand, according to campaign finance reports from January. Taylor Robson pledged to continue supporting Republican candidates in 2026 and much of her campaign cash will likely be funnelled to other races. 

Schweikert’s campaign did not release a statement or immediately respond to a request for comment.

Republican lawmakers and operatives took to social media to thank Taylor Robson for her work on the campaign and supporting Republican candidates and the party in Arizona. 

“I look forward to continuing to work with you in the future to hold the line and expand our majorities in the Arizona Senate & House,” Sen. T.J. Shope said in a post on X. “Let’s unite our party behind (Biggs) so we can win the big battle in November!”

Arizona Senate panel votes to limit police use of license plate readers

Key Points:
  • Senate panel votes to restrict police use of license plate readers
  • SB1111 sets storage and access requirements for license plate reader data
  • Police chiefs argue that license plate readers can help solve otherwise cold cases

A Senate panel has voted to impose the first-ever restraints on police use of license plate readers to locate and track people.

Senate Bill 1111 would put into law new requirements for how license plate data collected by law enforcement must be stored, who can access it, and what penalties there are for unlawful disclosure. And legislators acknowledged that, for the moment, police departments are already using all that and more — all without any guidance or limits other than those they impose on themselves.

Yet it is what is absent from the measure that worries opponents more. 

Sen. Lauren Kuby, D-Tempe, pointed out that, as written, it does not allow people to access the information the police are collecting about them. Nor is there any limit on how long all that tracking information can be kept, allowing police to create a database on where people have been and where they go for months — if not longer.

“I’m having a hard time seeing where there’s actual guardrails,” Kuby said.

Consider, she said, reports that a law enforcement agency in Texas tapped into a network of 83,000 license plate readers owned by Flock Safety, a company that contracts with local police, to try to track down a woman who was trying to get an abortion and had fled to another state where the procedure is legal.

And that’s not all.

“There’s a string of scandals over data being accessed by immigration authorities racing to fulfill Donald Trump’s deportation agenda,” Kuby said. “Why not safeguards that would prohibit that from being used by ICE or being used by anti-abortion states to track women who are coming to Arizona for a lawful abortion.”

Senate Majority Leader John Kavanagh, a former police officer, was not sympathetic to Kuby’s ideas and took particular exception to restricting local police from sharing their databases with ICE.

“When you say ‘protections,’ would you also protect illegal immigrants who have criminal warrants on them?” the Fountain Hills Republican asked.

But it was Sen. Mark Finchem, another former police officer, who pointed out the difficult decision facing his colleagues who are not happy with the level of restrictions being proposed: There are currently no laws at all limiting how police can deploy the fixed and mobile readers, how long they can keep the tracking data, and with whom they can share that.

“This is something, setting up guardrails and standards for something that’s already out of the barn,” said the Prescott Republican.

“It’s the Wild West,” Kuby conceded.

Paul Avelar, an attorney with the Institute for Justice, did not dispute any of that. But he said that shouldn’t force lawmakers to accept a plan proposed by police chiefs and sheriffs from around the state, simply because it might be better than nothing.

The problem, he said, starts with the fact that these automated license plate reader cameras are indiscriminate, noticing — and recording — everything that they see.

Consider, he said, a lawsuit brought by the Institute for Justice against the city of Norfolk, Va., over cameras that recorded the locations of multiple residents multiple times, often on the same day.

“The city effectively built a virtual police force of cameras operating silently all the time,” Avelar told lawmakers.

“That’s not routine law enforcement,” he said. “It is mass surveillance and it is unconstitutional.”

Avelar later conceded that the lawsuit was thrown out but remains on appeal.

Several police chiefs and officers told lawmakers how the cameras can help solve crimes that might otherwise go unresolved.

One involved someone in a truck stolen from Flagstaff that was driven through Sedona.

But it was stopped only in Cottonwood, a city with license plate readers that alerted police to the stolen vehicle. And the result was not just the recovery of the truck but also an underage girl who said she had been kidnapped.

Finchem also dismissed the idea that there should be some hard-and-fast deadline by which police would have to erase the records and information gathered with the cameras.

He said there is national data saying that it takes anywhere from 61 to 326 days to close out an investigation of a missing child. And that’s just part of the problem.

“Sometimes you don’t even know the person is missing for weeks, until somebody reports them missing,” Finchem said. He said police need to be able to access the records for as long as needed — though he indicated a 90-day limit might be acceptable.

And there’s something else.

Kavanagh said many people who are concerned about being tracked and about what information is being gathered think nothing of signing up for an “affinity” card at a grocery chain. Using that identification allows customers to get discounts and other specials.

“People go into supermarkets to get a couple of bucks off their grocery bill and enter their phone number and let the store know how much alcohol they buy, how much beer they buy, what nonprescription medicines they buy,” Kavanagh said. “People go on Amazon and they know everything you’re buying, even more personal on that thing, no one cares about that.”

And consider not just phones that can be tracked but even someone’s computer location if they don’t protect themselves with a “virtual private network.”

“This is like virtually nothing in the overall scale,” he said of the use of license plate cameras.

“It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t put reasonable safeguards around it,” Kavanagh said. But if the bill dies, that means “no limits, everything goes.”

There will likely be negotiations among the various interests to see if a deal can be crafted before the measure goes to the full Senate.

Judge seems skeptical of legal justification for Pentagon’s punishment of Sen. Mark Kelly

Key Points:
  • Federal judge questions Pentagon’s censure of Sen. Mark Kelly
  • Kelly’s attorneys argue Pentagon violated his First Amendment rights
  • Judge Richard Leon will issue a ruling on the case by Feb. 11

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge said on Feb. 3 that he knows of no U.S. Supreme Court precedent to justify the Pentagon’s censuring of a sitting U.S. senator who joined a videotaped plea for troops to resist unlawful orders from the Trump administration.

Sen. Mark Kelly had a front-row seat in a courtroom as his attorneys urged U.S. District Judge Richard Leon to block the Pentagon from punishing the Arizona Democrat, a retired U.S. Navy pilot. Leon didn’t immediately rule from the bench on Kelly’s claims that Pentagon officials violated his First Amendment free speech rights.

But the judge appeared to be skeptical of key arguments that a government attorney made in defense of Kelly’s Jan. 5 censure from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

“You’re asking me to do something the Supreme Court has never done,” the judge told Justice Department attorney John Bailey. “Isn’t that a bit of a stretch?”

Bailey argued that Congress decided that retired military service members are subject to the same Uniform Code of Military Justice that applies to active-duty troops.

“Retirees are part of the armed forces,” Bailey said. “They are not separated from the services.”

Benjamin Mizer, one of Kelly’s lawyers, said they aren’t aware of any ruling to support the notion that military retirees have “diminished speech rights.” And he argued that the First Amendment clearly protects Kelly’s speech in this case.

“And any other approach would be to make new law,” Mizer added.

Leon, who was nominated to the bench by Republican President George W. Bush, said the Pentagon’s actions against Kelly could have a chilling effect on “many, many other retirees who wish to voice their opinion.”

The judge said he hopes to issue a ruling by Feb. 11. Kelly shook hands with two government attorneys after the hearing.

In November, Kelly and five other Democratic lawmakers appeared on a video in which they urged troops to uphold the Constitution and not to follow unlawful military directives from the Trump administration.

Republican President Donald Trump accused the lawmakers of sedition “punishable by DEATH” in a social media post days later. Hegseth said Kelly’s censure was “a necessary process step” to proceedings that could result in a demotion from the senator’s retired rank of captain and subsequent reduction in retirement pay.

The 90-second video was first posted on a social media account belonging to Sen. Elissa Slotkin. Reps. Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander and Chrissy Houlahan also appeared in the video. All of the participants are veterans of the armed services or intelligence communities.

The Pentagon began investigating Kelly in late November, citing a federal law that allows retired service members to be recalled to active duty on orders of the defense secretary for possible court-martial or other punishment.

Hegseth has said Kelly was the only one of the six lawmakers to be investigated because he is the only one who formally retired from the military and still falls under the Pentagon’s jurisdiction.

Gina Swoboda considers run for Arizona secretary of state

Key Points:

  • Ex- Republican Party chair files to run for Arizona secretary of state
  • Gina Swoboda may face state Rep. Alexander Kolodin in GOP primary
  • Swoboda’s congressional bid for CD 1 has drawn multiple Republican challengers

A potentially heated race is shaping up among Republicans who want to take on incumbent Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes.

Gina Swoboda, who just stepped down as chair of the Arizona Republican Party, filed a “statement of interest” on Feb. 3 to be the GOP nominee to become the state’s chief elections officer. That filing allows Swoboda to begin gathering signatures to have her name on the Aug. 4 primary ballot.

But whether Swoboda intends to take on state Rep. Alexander Kolodin, R-Scottsdale, remains in question.

“Exploring my options,” she said in a statement to Capitol Media Services.

“Elections have always been a passion for me,” Swoboda said. “I love that office.”

Swoboda actually worked in the Secretary of State’s Office under both Republican Michele Reagan and Democrat Katie Hobbs.

Aside from running the state party for two years before quitting last month, Swoboda was also a policy adviser for the state House.

In October, she announced plans to run for the U.S. House after Republican Congressman David Schweikert said he was vacating that seat in a bid to run for governor. That district includes parts of north Phoenix, Scottsdale and Fountain Hills.

Swoboda also got the backing of President Trump in that bid.

Kolodin, for his part, dismissed the possibility of having to wage a primary race. He even said that Swoboda, before her latest move, endorsed his bid for secretary of state.

“I’m the most qualified candidate in the race and the voters know it,” Kolodin told Capitol Media Services. And he said there’s a good reason for her not to abandon her congressional bid.

“Gina should focus on her CD 1 primary so that she isn’t the reason Republicans lose the (U.S.) House majority,” Kolodin said.

The move also drew the ire of Sen. Jake Hoffman. The Queen Creek Republican is chair of the Arizona Freedom Caucus, of which Kolodin is a member.

“Gina Swoboda is a Democrat,” he said.

Hoffman also accused her of attacking “school choice.”

That stems from the fact that Swoboda, as chair of the Arizona Republic Party, said there need to be more “guardrails” around the voucher program which provides tax dollars for parents to send their children to private and parochial schools and to home school their children. Swoboda cited reports of parents buying items like lingerie, jewelry and home appliances and said there need to be protections against abuse.

More recently, Swoboda drew ire from Republicans after saying that Trump had lost the political argument about immigration enforcement, not because of the deportations, which she said remain popular, but because of the increased reports of tactics being used.

With Schweikert not seeking reelection, that race for CD 1 has become crowded.

Also in the hunt is former Arizona Cardinals kicker Jay Feely. He, too, was endorsed by Trump.

So is state Rep. Joseph Chaplik of Scottsdale.

Other Republicans who have filed statements of interest include Jason Duey, Dusko Jovicic, Kaitlin Purrington, Paul Reeves, Brandon Sowers, Brandon Sproles and John Trobough.

Lawmakers face re-election amid shifting political landscape

Key Points:
  • Democrats see 2026 as their best chance to gain majority in state Legislature
  • Republicans hold 17-13 Senate majority and 33-27 House majority
  • Democrats are targeting seven legislative districts in their re-election efforts

State lawmakers are running for re-election this year, and after a red wave in 2024 that expanded Republicans’ majorities in both legislative chambers, Democrats are confident they can gain ground in November. 

“This year truly is the best chance that Democrats have at taking the majority,” House Minority Leader and Arizona Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee Co-Chair Oscar De Los Santos told reporters and constituents in a Zoom call on Jan. 5. “The conditions are there. The country is fed up with Donald Trump’s obsession with petty politics and nonsense and distractions.”

The Governor’s Office and several other federal and state executive offices will be up for grabs in November, as well as the entire state Legislature. Republicans currently hold a 17-13 majority in the Senate and a 33-27 majority in the House. 

De Los Santos said the state Democratic legislative campaign committee is targeting seven legislative districts.

Legislative District 2

The north Phoenix district is represented by two Republicans and one Democrat. Sen. Shawnna Bolick, R-Phoenix; and Reps. Justin Wilmeth, R-Phoenix; and Stephanie Simacek, D-Phoenix, have all filed statements of interest with the Secretary of State’s Office to run for re-election. 

Bolick defeated former Democratic state Rep. Judy Schwiebert in the 2024 election by more than 3% of votes when Schwiebert tried to move seats from the House to the Senate. Simacek got the most votes in the district’s House race and Wilmeth just finished ahead of fellow Republican Ari Bradshaw by .10% of votes. 

Bradshaw has also filed a statement of interest to run again for the House in LD2, but Simacek is the only Democrat to have filed so far. Other candidates include Republicans Linda Brickman, Neil DeSanti, Danielle Skranak and Arizona Independent Party candidate Tom Simes. 

Two Democrats, Krista Andrews and Daniel Toporek, have filed statements of interest to run for the Senate in the district, and two other Republicans, Timothy Ferrara and Christian Hinz, have filed paperwork to run against Bolick. 

Republicans make up about 35% of registered voters in the district, according to the most recent report from the Secretary of State’s Office published in October. Another 26% of voters are registered Democrats and the rest are registered as independents or affiliated with other parties. 

The Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission has labeled LD2 as a highly competitive district, giving Republicans a 3.80% advantage. 

Legislative District 4

This Scottsdale and northeast Phoenix district flipped entirely to Republican control after the 2024 election when it was previously represented by two Democrats at the Legislature in the prior election cycle. 

Reps. Matt Gress, R-Phoenix; and Pamela Carter, R-Scottsdale, defeated Democrats Kelli Butler and Karen Gresham. Carter had the closest race and beat Butler by 1% of votes, while Sen. Carine Werner, R-Scottsdale, defeated former state Sen. Christine Marsh by almost 4% of votes. 

Aaron Lieberman, a former Democratic state representative who unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2022, has filed a statement of interest to challenge Werner for the LD4 Senate seat. 

The district’s House race has six candidates who are interested in running, including Gress, Carter and Gresham. Republicans Sandra Christensen and Jeffrey Nelson have also filed statements of interest along with Democrat Tank Hanna. 

Republican voters make up about 39% of registered voters in the district, and Democrats account for 26%, but a sizable independent voter base could determine how the district is represented after 2026. 

The Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission also considers LD4 as highly competitive, with Republicans holding a 3.42% advantage.

Legislative District 9

The west Mesa district of LD9 was the only competitive district in 2024 where Democrats took all three legislative seats. 

Reps. Lorena Austin, D-Mesa; and Seth Blattman, D-Mesa, both narrowly defeated their Republican opponents, Kylie Barber and Mary Ann Mendoza, in 2024, with Austin emerging as the top candidate with 26% of the vote. 

Blattman announced in December that he won’t seek re-election to instead pursue a new professional opportunity with greater “long-term stability” than his House seat and endorsed Democrat Jacob Martinez to replace him.

“Serving the people of LD 9 has been the honor of my life,” Blattman said in a statement. “Together we launched Arizona’s first Micro-Business Loan Program, putting many mom-and-pop shops on a more solid footing, and supported our public schools. I’m proud of what we accomplished and confident that Arizona’s best days are ahead.”

Austin has also filed a statement of interest to run again for her seat, and Republican Bradley Bettencourt is the only Republican seeking a House seat in LD9 so far. 

Former Democratic state Sen. Eva Burch beat Republican Robert Scantlebury by more than 3% in 2024, but Burch resigned during the 2025 legislative session. Her appointed replacement, Sen. Kiana Sears, has filed a statement of interest to run against Republican Bridget Fitzgibbons for the Senate. 

While LD9 was Democrats’ greatest performing competitive district in 2024, Republicans still hold a voter registration advantage of nearly 32% compared to Democrats’ near 29%. 

LD9 has one of the tightest advantages among highly competitive districts. The redistricting commission gives Democrats a 2.6% advantage over Republicans despite Republicans leading in voter registration. 

Legislative District 13

The Chandler district of LD13 was another that lost all Democratic representation in the Legislature in 2024, with all three seats going to Republicans. 

Reps. Jeff Weninger, R-Chandler; and Julie Willoughby, R-Chandler, both defeated their Democratic opponents, Brandy Reese and Nicholas Gonzales, in 2024, as both Republicans received nearly 26% of the vote each to lead all candidates in that race.

Willoughby is now seeking to flip chambers as Sen. J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler, will be termed out of his seat after this year. Weninger is running for Chandler Mayor, and current Republican Chandler Mayor Kevin Hartke is running for the state House in LD13. The only other candidate running for Senate in the district is Democrat Kristie O’Brien.

Weninger’s wife, Janet Weninger, announced in September she’s running for the state House as a Republican in the district. 

“As a mom, foster care advocate, and entrepreneur, I have spent my life helping others succeed. Arizona is well-positioned for success, but there is more work to be done. From repairing the Department of Child Safety, to fighting for law enforcement, to ensuring parents can make decisions in the best interest of their kids, our best days lie ahead,” Janet Weninger said in a statement when she launched her campaign.

Reese and Democrat Racquel Armstrong will be running for the House and Republicans Debra Schinke and Joe Granado have also filed statements of interest for House seats.

Despite Republicans accounting for almost 36% of registered voters in the district, LD13 has an even tighter redistricting commission vote spread than LD9, with Republicans holding a 1.56% advantage in the highly competitive district. Democrats make up about 27% of registered voters in the district.

Legislative District 16

Republicans also took all three seats in LD16, which includes Casa Grande. 

Former Democratic state Rep. Keith Seaman lost his 2024 bid for reelection by about 2.5% of votes to Rep. Chris Lopez, R-Casa Grande. Rep. Teresa Martinez, R-Casa Grande, took home the most votes in the House race and Seaman’s daughter, Stacey Seaman, lost to Sen. T.J. Shope, R-Coolidge, by 12% of votes.

Shope is running for re-election and Democrat Elaine Aldrete is the only other candidate in the Senate race. 

De Los Santos said some districts would only see one Democratic candidate running as a “single-shot” candidate for the House in an attempt to focus the voter pool on one candidate for at least one House seat. Only Democrat Dean Dill has filed paperwork to run for the House, while Martinez and Lopez are the only Republicans who are running so far. 

About one-third of registered voters in the district are Republicans and 27% are Democrats. LD16 is another one of the redistricting commission’s highly competitive districts and Republicans have a 3.62% advantage. 

Legislative District 17 and Legislative District 23

Neither of these districts is considered competitive by the redistricting commission, but both saw upset victories over the parties that held advantages in each. 

In LD17, which includes Oro Valley, Marana and Tucson, Rep. Kevin Volk, D-Tucson, beat former Republican Rep. and Freedom Caucus member Cory McGarr by more than 2% of votes in the district as a single-shot candidate despite Republicans holding more than 8% advantage in the district, according to the redistricting commission. 

Volk is running for re-election along with his seatmate, Rep. Rachel Jones, R-Tucson. Democrat Matthew Coelho has also filed a statement of interest for a House race, but Democrats narrowly lost to McGarr and Keshel in 2022 when they ran two House candidates instead of single-shotting. 

Republicans Kirk Fiehler, Avery Block and John Winchester have also filed statements of interest for the House. 

Sen. Vince Leach, R-Tucson, is not seeking re-election in LD17. He beat the late Democrat John McLean by 2% of votes shortly before McLean’s death. 

Republicans Christopher King and Anthony Dunham have filed paperwork to run for the Senate in LD17, along with Democrat Hunter Holt.

In LD23, Rep. Michele Pena, R-Yuma, has won both her 2024 and 2022 elections despite Democrats having nearly a 17% advantage, according to the redistricting commission. Pena was the top vote-getter in the district’s House race with more than 34% of votes while Rep. Mariana Sandoval, D-Yuma, took the other House seat.

Pena is joined by two other Republicans, Gary Garcia Snyder and James Holmes, in filing paperwork to run for the House. Sandoval is running for re-election and Democrats Emilia Cortez and Juan Manuel Guerrero are also running for the House.

This holiday season isn’t very merry for consumers, an AP-NORC poll finds

Key Points:
  • Americans struggle with higher prices for groceries, electricity, and holiday gifts
  • Half of Americans find it harder to afford holiday gifts this year
  • Few Americans expect the economy to improve meaningfully in the next year

WASHINGTON (AP) — This holiday season isn’t quite so merry for American shoppers as large shares are dipping into savings, scouring for bargains and feeling like the overall economy is stuck in a rut under President Donald Trump, a new AP-NORC poll finds.

The vast majority of U.S. adults say they’ve noticed higher than usual prices for groceries, electricity and holiday gifts in recent months, according to the survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Roughly half of Americans say it’s harder than usual to afford the things they want to give as holiday gifts, and similar numbers are delaying big purchases or cutting back on nonessential purchases more than they would normally.

It’s a sobering assessment for the Republican president, who returned to the White House in large part by promising to lower prices, only to find that inflation remains a threat to his popularity just as it did for Democrat Joe Biden’s presidency. The poll’s findings look very similar to an AP-NORC poll from December 2022, when Biden was president and the country was grappling with higher rates of inflation. Trump’s series of tariffs have added to inflationary pressures and generated anxiety about the stability of the U.S. economy, keeping prices at levels that many Americans find frustrating.

The president has insisted there is “no” inflation and the U.S. economy is booming, as he expressed frustration that the public feels differently.

“When will people understand what is happening?” Trump said Thursday on Truth Social. “When will Polls reflect the Greatness of America at this point in time, and how bad it was just one year ago?”

Most U.S. adults, 68%, continue to say the country’s economy is “poor,” which is unchanged from December 2024, before Trump returned to the presidency.

Americans are feeling strained as they continue to see high prices

White House officials plan to send Trump barnstorming across the country in hopes of bucking up people’s faith in the economy before next year’s midterm elections. But the president this week in Pennsylvania defended the price increases tied to his tariffs by suggesting that Americans should buy fewer dolls and pencils for children. His message is a jarring contrast with what respondents expressed in the poll, even among people who backed him in the 2024 election.

Shoppers browse through Kohl’s department store for Black Friday deals, Nov. 28, 2025, in Woodstock, Ga. (AP Photo/Megan Varner, File)

Sergio Ruiz, 44, of Tucson, Arizona, said he is using more buy now, pay later programs to spread out over time the expense of gifts for his children. He doesn’t put a huge emphasis on politics, but he voted for Trump last year and would like to see lower interest rates to help boost his real estate business. He believes that more Americans having higher incomes would help to manage any affordability issues.

“Prices are up. What can you do? You need to make more money,” Ruiz said.

The poll found that when they do shop, about half of Americans are finding the lowest price more than they would normally. About 4 in 10 are dipping into their savings more than at other times.

Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say they’re cutting back on expenses or looking for low prices, but many Republicans are budgeting more than usual as well. About 4 in 10 Republicans are looking for low prices more than they usually would, while a similar share are shopping for nonessential items less than usual.

Views are largely similar to when Biden was president

People felt similarly dismal about holiday shopping and the economy when Biden was president in 2022. Inflation had spiked to a four-decade high that summer. Three years later, inflation has eased substantially, but it’s still running at 3%, a full percentage point above the Federal Reserve’s target as the job market appears to have entered a deep freeze.

A Utah Food Bank volunteer carries groceries at a mobile food pantry distribution site Dec. 21, 2022, in Salt Lake City. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File)

The survey indicates that it’s the level of prices — and not just the rate of inflation — that is the point of pain for many families. Roughly 9 in 10 U.S. adults, 87%, say they’ve noticed higher than usual prices for groceries in the past few months, while about two-thirds say they’ve experienced higher prices than usual for electricity and holiday gifts. About half say they’ve seen higher than normal prices for gas recently.

The findings on groceries and holiday gifts are only slightly lower than in the 2022 poll, despite the slowdown from an inflation rate that hit a four-decade peak in the middle of that year.

Consumer spending has stayed resilient despite the negative sentiments about the economy, yet Trump’s tariffs have caused changes for shoppers such as Andrew Russell.

The 33-year-old adjunct professor in Arlington Heights, Illinois, said he used to shop for unique gifts from around the globe and buy online. But with the tariffs, he got his gifts locally and “this year, I only bought things that I can pick up in person,” he said.

Russell, who voted Democratic in last year’s election, said he worries about the economy for next year. He thinks the investment in artificial intelligence has become a bubble that could burst, taking down the stock market.

Little optimism about an economic rebound in 2026

Few people expect the situation to meaningfully improve next year — a sign that Trump has done little to instill much confidence from his mix of tariffs, income tax cuts and foreign trips to attract investments. Trump has maintained that the benefits from his policies will begin to snowball in 2026.

Goldie Getter, the wife of a civil service employee who was furloughed due to the government shutdown, unpacks groceries her husband received from a food bank, in Gulfport, Miss., Monday, Nov. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

About 4 in 10 U.S. adults expect next year will be economically worse for the country. Roughly 3 in 10 say conditions won’t change much. Only about 2 in 10 think things will get better, with Republicans being more optimistic.

The belief that things will get better has slipped from last year, when about 4 in 10 said that 2025 would be better than 2024.

Millicent Simpson, 56, of Cleveland, Ohio, said she expects the economy to be worse for people like her who rely on Medicaid for health care and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Simpson voted Democratic last year and blames Trump for the greater economic pressures that she faces going into the winter.

“He’s making it rough for us,” she said. “He’s messing with the government assistance for everybody, young and old.”

___

The AP-NORC poll of 1,146 adults was conducted Dec. 4-8 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Judicial Watch drops lawsuit against Hobbs over immigration records

Key Points:
  • Judicial Watch drops claim against Gov. Katie Hobbs
  • Hobbs’ aides provided no records of deportation order
  • Governor’s Office says DPS will follow federal law on deportations

A national organization known for filing public records requests against government officials is quietly dropping its claim against Gov. Katie Hobbs.

Michael Bekesha, an attorney for Judicial Watch, told Capitol Media Services on Dec. 10 that he is now convinced that aides to the governor did not lie when they said they have no records of any order by Hobbs telling the Department of Public Safety not to cooperate with efforts to deport people who are not here legally. 

“Since we filed suit, the Governor’s Office conducted searches and located no responsive records,” Bekesha said. He also said Hobbs’ office has now provided a draft declaration and additional information about the search it conducted, “satisfying its burden under the law.”

“Based on the representations of the Governor’s Office, it does not appear that the governor has issued any directive or order to DPS telling the agency not to cooperate with federal immigration officials,” Bekesha said.

But he said the new information also shows something else politically about Hobbs and statements she has made about the role of the state in immigration enforcement.

“It appears that the governor is simply leading the public to believe that she is resisting,” Bekesha said.

Gubernatorial press aide Christian Slater had a different take on all of this.

“From Day One, it was obvious this lawsuit was nothing more than an exercise in partisan gamesmanship by Judicial Watch,” he said. And Slater insisted that, despite anything the governor has said about not wanting to work with federal agencies deporting long-time Arizona residents, she has never issued a directive to DPS not to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

What caused the legal dust-up — and the demand for records and the lawsuit that followed — were statements Hobbs made to ABC News about a week after the 2024 election that was won by Donald Trump.

During the campaign, Trump made multiple statements about deporting those not here legally. And while some of those comments centered around focusing on criminals, Trump also said he would seek to remove everyone without authorization to be in this country.

“What I will unequivocally say is that as governor I will not tolerate efforts that are part of misguided policies that harm our communities, that threaten our communities, that terrorize our communities,” Hobbs said. “And Arizona will not take part in those.”

The governor also predicted at the time it would lead to “people hiding in fear,” similar to what happened when the Republican-controlled Legislature adopted SB1070 in 2010 which was designed at least in part to require police to ask people they stop about their immigration status.

“It harmed communities, it tore families apart,” Hobbs said. “That’s not going to happen on my watch.”

The governor made similar comments days earlier at a press conference in Phoenix, saying she will “stand up against actions that hurt our communities.” But she dodged a question at that time of whether she would use her powers to prevent the wholesale deporting of those living in Arizona who entered the country illegally.

Judicial Watch, a conservative nonprofit organization, first requested the records a year ago, citing the governor’s comments. It demanded documents on orders, directives or even suggestions to DPS that reflect “your official non-participation position,” as reported.

Bekesha said when no response was received after nine months, Judicial Watch decided to sue.

The lawsuit said the information is critical because any directive from Hobbs telling agencies not to cooperate would run afoul of a state law that says that no official or agency of the state or local government “may limit or restrict the enforcement of federal immigration laws to less than the full extent permitted by federal law.”

That statute actually was part of SB1070. While much of that law was voided by the U.S. Supreme Court, that section was never challenged and remains on the books.

Slater said the governor has been “extremely clear” about her views on immigration enforcement.

“She will work with the federal government to secure the border, stop drug smuggling and human trafficking, and get criminals off the street,” he said. But Slater said there are limits.

“She is not interested in working with federal agents who go after Dreamers,” he said.

These are people who arrived in this country as children and were given protected status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program created by President Obama by executive order in 2012. President Trump stopped new people from enrolling in 2017, but there are still about 20,000 people with that status in Arizona.

The name “dreamer” comes from subsequent federal legislation called the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act which would have incorporated DACA and set up a path to permanent residency. It never was approved by Congress.

Slater also said that Hobbs does not want to work with federal agents who pursue “people who have lived in their communities for years, pay taxes, and follow the laws.”

But none of that, he said, is an official policy. And that, said Slater, is why Hobbs never provided the records that Judicial Watch demanded.

“There are no responsive records because the Governor’s Office has directed DPS to follow the law,” he said, saying Hobbs never issued any order telling the agency to refuse to work with ICE on deportations.

Still, there is a policy of sorts.

“Unless a state crime has been committed that falls under the jurisdiction of DPS, our personnel … do not conduct direct immigration enforcement,” Jeffrey Glover, director of the agency, said in June. He said if a state crime is committed and someone’s immigration status “becomes relevant,” officers may notify federal agencies “in accordance with existing laws and protocols.”

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