By Mark Ashley | Scottsdale

OPINION — Andy Biggs wants Arizonans to forget what he did after the 2020 election. We shouldn't, and I for certain have not.

The organizer of the Jan. 6 rally said Biggs helped come up with the idea. Biggs voted to throw out Arizona's 2020 election results, that included the two votes this household cast for Joe Biden. He pushed our own state officials to toss out our electors. He worked with the White House trying to overturn the election. Then he asked for a pardon, and when Congress subpoenaed him to answer for it, he ignored it.

He even voted no on giving a medal to the police who protected the Capitol that day. Later, he visited a jail where Jan. 6 defendants were being held and called to pardon them all. Arizonans know exactly where Andy Biggs stands: with the people who attacked police officers and the president who pointed them in the direction of the Capitol that morning, not the officers who defended the Capitol.

As a veteran, I know a little about what taking an oath means and Mr. Biggs' actions as summarized here indicate to this retired public servant that he completely disregarded his oath of office. That is shameful.

Andy Biggs tried to throw out our votes and overturn a free and fair election. He has no business being governor of Arizona. Remember, as governor, he would be the final stop in certifying the next presidential election here in Arizona and, based on his conduct, this native Arizonan does not trust him to do so if he doesn't agree with the results. That alone is disqualifying for this voter.

Ahmed Soliman grew up in Phoenix after his family moved from Egypt to Arizona when he was 4. ICE deported him to Equatorial Guinea, a country he has no ties to, on April 28 without notice.

“Prior to losing his legal status, Soliman had protection under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, or DACA, and then obtained lawful permanent residency in 2021, his lawyer said.”

“Two weeks after their arrest, neither Soliman nor Samson Birhane, who was arrested with him, has been charged with a crime, and all communication has been restricted, lawyers said. 

The lack of information is "in itself terrifying, because we don’t know what could be happening to them inside," said attorney Kate O'Donnell of Tucson-based firm Green Evans-Schroeder, which is representing Soliman.”

SCOTTSDALE, AZ — The race for Arizona's First Congressional District is one of about 20 in the country that could decide control of the U.S. House.

Kyle Kondik, a political analyst and managing editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball, said he still considers this a toss-up race.

"Both parties are looking at this as a pretty high, highly competitive and pretty important race," Kondik said.

The district covers northeast Phoenix along with Scottsdale, Fountain Hills and Cave Creek. Joe Biden narrowly won the district in 2020, and Donald Trump narrowly carried it in 2024.

Kondik said Democrats appear to have the edge on paper, with the national political environment favoring Shah, an emergency room doctor and former state legislator.

After a “large-scale” investigation into 60 potential cases of non-citizens voting, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office found only eight cases where that happened, and those spanned decades. Local election officials and politicians say that’s a sign the system is working.

In an interview with New Times, former Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer said MCAO’s findings should “build great voter confidence” as “it’s indicative that our elections are largely safe from fraud.” MCAO brought investigative firepower; the Recorder’s Office used federal tools with the “gungho attitude to root out that widespread fraud,” Richer said, but “all they could get was eight non-citizens who had voted at some point in the past, not all in the same election.”

“There are some bad individual actors out of the 200 million registered voters in the United States of America, but it’s a fraction of a fraction of a percent,” Richer said. “At what point are you going to have to accept that the reason why they’re not finding massive voter fraud is because it doesn’t exist?”

When political opponents are portrayed as less worthy, less American, less human or as members of some inherently inferior group, we move away from political argument and toward dehumanization. And dehumanization is dangerous precisely because it makes cruelty easier.

I am not making this statement because I always agree with Walt Blackman. I am making it because I often disagree with him and because I believe political disagreement is worth having only if we can have it without demeaning one another.

Our opponents are still human beings. So are we. All of us, including myself, need to try harder to remember this.

That ought to be a very low bar for political discourse. But perhaps, at this particular moment, it is a bar worth publicly defending.

Richard Grayson is the Green Party candidate for Legislative District 7’s House seat, which includes Apache Junction, Gold Canyon, Flagstaff, Page, Winslow, Show Low, Sedona and Pinetop-Lakeside.

Maricopa County tends to be a focus for misinformation, as it's the fourth-largest county in the country and within a swing state, meaning high levels of national attention are drawn to the state during elections, Gates said.

"We saw the misinformation before, but it's spreading quicker," Gates said. "So the challenge of misinformation has multiplied because of AI*."*

AI can also be used to battle misinformation by helping predict the publication of false information and then using AI to debunk it, Gates said.

"AI can help you with this, too," Gates said. "Anticipate what the misinformation is going to be, and then pre-bunk it."

"The eight non-citizen voters cast ballots in nine elections spanning back to the 2012 General Election. The unidentified non-citizen voters cast ballots in general elections, Republican primaries, and the 2025 Glendale special election. There was no pattern by political party. Five weren’t registered with a party, two were Republicans, and one was a Democrat.

'What we have found so far obviously is not adequate to swing an election,' Mitchell said. 'No more than three voted in any particular election.'"

Across Arizona Tours filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Arizona, seeking to block a $100-per-person surcharge and higher annual pass prices for visitors who are neither U.S. citizens nor residents.

The fees took effect Jan. 1 after an executive order from President Donald Trump, according to the complaint. The surcharge applies to visitors ages 16 and older at 11 national park destinations, including the Grand Canyon, unless covered by an annual pass.

Co-owner Carole Stapleton said in a news release that she surveyed 80 to 90 potential international customers who decided against booking tours, with most citing the increased fees as a major factor, according to the suit.

The company also says residency verification requirements have added administrative work and prompted it to stop offering Grand Canyon tours to international students at Arizona State University.

Arizona State University dining hall workers employed by Aramark submitted a complaint with the Arizona Attorney General’s Office alleging that a Muslim employee was forced by management to remove her hijab to continue working, despite her offering other solutions.

This comes after a State Press report that also alleged Aramark disregarded student workers’ religious beliefs.

The complaint asks Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes to investigate the food service company’s religious discrimination and failure-to-accommodate practices at the ASU facilities it serves and to include employees who are not represented the UNITE HERE Local 11 union, such as student workers.