Common Core opponents took a beating this week when two bills were killed in the Senate followed by a sparsely attended press conference in which one of the Legislature’s most ardent foes of the learning standards was a no-show.

Five Senate Republicans again helped Democrats kill two bills that would have undermined Common Core.

The international furor over SB1062 has led to a reassessment of the Evangelical Christian lobby behind the bill and whose power at the Capitol was considered to be unparalleled. Some said the Center for Arizona Policy and its president, Cathi Herrod, overreached and gave the state a black eye. Others say that even if its influence is undiminished.

The Senate approved a measure directing Arizona officials to advise residents how to prepare for a disaster of Armageddon-like proportions.

A trio of Arizona state senators urged Gov. Jan Brewer to veto a controversial “religious freedom” bill on Monday, just days after all three cast votes in favor of the proposal that opponents say will legalize discrimination.

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.

After three years of jockeying over how to spend the hundreds of thousands of dollars raised to construct a fence along Arizona’s border with Mexico, a state lawmaker is proposing to use those funds — and another $30 million — on a virtual fence to patrol the border.

When Gov. Jan Brewer used her 2013 State of the State address to announce she wanted to expand Arizona’s Medicaid program, she kicked off a clash that is still reverberating through the Republican Party.

When asked how his vote for Medicaid expansion could threaten his chances at another term in the Arizona Legislature, Senate Majority Leader John McComish points to an Arizona Capitol Times newspaper hanging in a frame behind his desk “The risk of defiance,” the headline reads. “What will GOP senators’ ‘no’ votes on immigration bills cost them?”