As Indictments Pile Up, Trump Running Even or Better with Biden in New Polls

Despite facing three criminal indictments, former President Donald Trump is crushing his GOP presidential nominee competitors and running neck and neck with President Joe Biden, according to the latest polls.

In battleground Arizona, a new Emerson College poll finds Trump leading Biden by 2 percentage points in a hypothetical rematch of the 2020 presidential election.

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The 2024 Election Could Come Down to These Four States

The upcoming presidential election could potentially come down to Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Wisconsin, according to the Sabato’s Crystal Ball 2024 Electoral College predictions released Thursday.

The nonpartisan report, facilitated by the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, labels the four states as “toss-ups” based on the 2020 election and 2022 midterms. The 2024 landscape slightly favors the Democrats and will likely be another matchup between former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden, according to the report.

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REVIEW: Kari Lake’s New Book ‘Unafraid’ Is Chock Full of All the Juicy Details You’d Expect

Kari Lake released her new book, Unafraid: Just Getting Started, on Tuesday. The Arizona Sun Times was provided with a review copy in advance. In the book, which contains a forward by Donald Trump, Lake went over the bias she discovered while working in media, her race for governor, election fraud, and other issues like border security that she has championed.

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Nearly Half of U.S. States Now Have Measures Limiting Transgender Surgery for Minors, but Lawsuits Abound

At least 20 states have either restricted or banned transgender procedures for minors, with many of them facing lawsuits and temporary blocks by courts as a result, while future litigation is possible in states considering adopting such laws. 

The states that have enacted legislation against such procedures are: Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and West Virginia – essentially all conservative-leaning.

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DeSantis Enters Presidential Race with ‘Skewed’ Narrative He’s Better Positioned to Beat Biden than Trump

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis officially launched his presidential campaign Wednesday, ending months of speculation and ratcheting up what promises to be an intense battle for the Republican Party nomination. 

DeSantis enters the race as a top tier candidate, but still lagging far behind frontrunner Donald Trump, according to just about every poll out there. 

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Indiana Expands School Choice to Nearly All K-12 Students as Republican-Led States Continue Momentum

Indiana scored the latest school choice victory with nearly all, save for 3.5 percent of families with school-age children, qualifying for the state’s new voucher program, The Wall Street Journal editorial board noted last week.

“The hits keep coming on school choice in Republican-run states,” The Journal editors observed, detailing:

The new law raises the income cap to 400% of the free- and reduced-price lunch income level, which is now about $220,000 for a family of four. The bill also removes the other criteria for eligibility so that any family under the income limit can apply. Tens of thousands of additional students could qualify, and a legislative analysis projects that some 95,000 students might use the program in 2025, up from about 53,000 in 2023.

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Trump Strongly Hints He May Run for President Again at Arizona Rally for MAGA Candidates

Former president Donald Trump held a Save America rally in Mesa, Arizona on Sunday afternoon to support the MAGA slate of candidates he’s endorsed in the state and to talk about the attacks he’s under. He dropped multiple hints at Mesa’s Legacy Sports Park that he may be running for president again in 2024.

Trump said, “We’ll be making a decision soon. I think everyone is going to be really happy.” He added later during the event that he got more votes in 2020 “than any sitting president in history. Now we may just have to do it again. Stay tuned.”

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Commentary: Arizona’s New School Choice Bill Moves Us Closer to Milton Friedman’s Vision

“Our goal is to have a system in which every family in the U.S. will be able to choose for itself the school to which its children go,” the Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman stated in 2003. “We are far from that ultimate result. If we had that, a system of free choice, we would also have a system of competition, innovation, which would change the character of education.”

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Hoffman on Arizona: ‘We Are a Much Redder State than People Give Us Credit For’

Neil W. McCabe, the national political editor of The Star News Network, interviewed Republican state Rep. Jake Hoffman (AZ-12), the founder of the Arizona Freedom Caucus in the state’s House of Representatives, about the state of play for conservatives in the Copper State.

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Hoffman: Ducey Is Blocking My Anti-Grooming in Schools Bill

Neil W. McCabe, the national political director of The Star News Network, interviewed GOP state Rep. Jake Hoffman (AZ-12), the founder of the Arizona Freedom Caucus and a candidate for state Senate, about his bill to prevent teachers from sexualizing instruction and grooming students into non-mainstream lifestyles.

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Blake Masters: ‘Political Hack’ Mark Brnovich Wanted Trump to Lose in 2020 for AG’s Personal Political Gain

Neil W. McCabe, the national political editor of The Star News Network, interviewed Arizona GOP Senate hopeful Blake Masters about his primary opponent Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s failure to pursue evidence of election misconduct in the 2020 election.

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Blake Masters: Everyone Is Asking Me Why We Are Sending $40 Billion to Ukraine

Neil W. McCabe, the national political editor of The Star News Network, interviewed the former president of Thiel Capital and Arizona GOP Senate hopeful Blake Masters about what voters are telling him and why he is running to replace Democrat Sen. Mark Kelly.

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Arizona U.S. Senate Hopeful Jim Lamon: I Will Shut Down Senate Until Border Fixed

Neil W. McCabe, the national editor of The Star News Network, covered the Sun City, Arizona, town hall hosted by Republican Senate hopeful Jim Lemon, with his special guest Thomas Homan, who was President Donald J. Trump’s acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

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21 States Join Lawsuit to End Federal Mask Mandate on Airplanes, Public Transportation

Twenty-one states have filed a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s continued mask mandate on public transportation, including on airplanes.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Attorney General Ashley Moody are leading the effort. Moody filed the suit in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida along with 20 other attorneys general. DeSantis said the mask mandate was misguided and heavy-handed.

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Three More States Consider Bills Banning Men from Women’s Sports

Arizona, Kentucky and Oklahoma are the latest states considering bans on biological males participating in girls’ and women’s sports, with all three states passing legislation Thursday addressing the issue.

The Arizona legislature passed two bills addressing transgender issues that currently await Republican Gov. Doug Ducey’s signature. If enacted, one bill will ban biological males from girls’ sports teams while the other will ban gender reassignment surgeries for minors.

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Renowned Constitutional Scholar: Ongoing Border Crisis Fits Constitution’s Definition of an Invasion

A renowned constitutional scholar said what is happening now at the southern border does constitute an “invasion” under the U.S. Constitution.

“The kind of organized entry that we are seeing now where you got some of the gangs down in Mexico facilitating it and getting paid to put people across the border, that does qualify as an invasion even when no arms are involved,” Rob Natelson, the Independence Institute’s senior fellow in constitutional jurisprudence, said.

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Trump Blasts Pence’s Claims About January 6: Vice Presidency Not an ‘Automatic Conveyor Belt for Old Crow Mitch McConnell to Get Biden Elected President’

Former President Donald Trump released a blistering attack Friday afternoon on former Vice President Mike Pence’s claims earlier in the day about the January 6, 2021 Joint Session of Congress over which Pence presided at which Electoral College votes submitted by the states were counted.

In a speech before the Florida Chapter of the Federalist Society in Orlando on Friday, Pence asserted, “There are those in our party who believe that as the presiding officer over the joint session of Congress, I possessed unilateral authority to reject Electoral College votes. And I heard this week that President Trump said I had the right to ‘overturn the election.’ President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election.” (emphasis added)

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Sixteen States File New Lawsuit Against Federal COVID Vaccination Mandate

Sixteen states again are challenging a federal COVID-19 vaccination mandate for health care workers who work at facilities that receive Medicare and Medicaid funding.

Friday’s filing in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana comes after the issuance of final guidance on the mandate from the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS), arguing the guidance is an action that is reviewable.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled by 5-4 vote Jan. 13 against the original Louisiana challenge to the mandate and a similar Missouri filing.

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Exclusive: Cyber Ninjas CEO Says Arizona Senate Shut Down Firm Not Leftwing Judge

The Founder and CEO of Cyber Ninjas, the cybersecurity firm tapped by the Arizona State Senate to audit Maricopa County’s 2020 presidential election tallies, told The Star News Network his company shut down because the Republican-controlled State Senate did not fulfill its contractual obligations to the firm.

“At the end of the day, this is the call of Senator Fann,” said Doug Logan, speaking of Arizona State Senate President Karen Fann. Logan told employees in early December that the company would close its doors unless the State Senate fulfilled its contractual obligations.

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Analysis: The Top Governor’s Races to Watch This Year

Democrats four years ago rode a blue wave to governors’ mansions across the country, flipping Republican-held seats in the Midwest, Northeast and West alike.

Now, however, many of those governors face Republican challengers amid a political environment that looks potentially promising for the GOP, meaning that contentious races may lie ahead in some of the nation’s most pivotal battleground states. Republicans have already had two strong showings in states that lean Democratic, flipping the governor’s seat in Virginia and coming surprisingly close in New Jersey, a state that voted for President Joe Biden by 16 points in 2020.

Governors in less competitive states are also facing primary challengers from the left and right, making for multiple bitter, closely-followed primaries between candidates from different wings of the same party.

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Trump Confidant Kerik Surrenders Memos to January 6 Panel, Vows to ‘Eviscerate’ Democrat Narrative

Then-President Donald Trump’s team assembled a 10-day pressure campaign in December 2020 hoping to shame governors and state legislators into officially investigating allegations of Election 2020 irregularities, according to memos newly turned over to Congress by former New York Police Commissioner and Trump confidant Bernard Kerik.

The strategy called for “protests” at governors’ mansions and the homes of politicians ranging from secretaries of states to “weak” congressional members in key battleground states, the memos show.

The documents, turned over Friday night under subpoena to the House’s Jan. 6 commission, are remarkable in part because they show the primary focus of the Trump team leading up to the Jan. 6 certification of the 2020 vote – an event that turned violent when pro-Trump protesters stormed the Capitol – was to get “support for hearings” to probe allegations of voting irregularities Trump’s team had received but not vetted.

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October Southern Border Encounters See 129 Percent Increase over Last Year

Crowd of immigrants

Border Patrol agents encountered 129.7% more people at the southern border this year than last, according to new data published by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The greatest number of encounters was in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas and the greatest percentage increase was in Yuma, Arizona.

Illegal border crossings have skyrocketed since President Joe Biden took office in January.

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Manchin Objects to Dems’ Billionaire Tax, Saying They ‘Create a Lot of Jobs’

West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin came out against his party’s plan to tax billionaires in order to finance their social-spending package just hours after it was first released.

“I don’t like it. I don’t like the connotation that we’re targeting different people,” Manchin told reporters Tuesday morning, describing billionaires as people who “contributed to society and create a lot of jobs and a lot of money and give a lot to philanthropic pursuits.”

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Independent Canvassing Effort in Maricopa County, Arizona Finds 34 Percent of Votes Missing or Lost

A grassroots canvass of Maricopa County voters in the 2020 election found that over 34 percent of those canvassed said they voted even though the county didn’t have a record of their vote.

Liz Harris, the Arizona resident who organized the independent canvass talked to Steve Bannon about her Voter Integrity Project findings on the Wednesday morning edition of the “War Room.”

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Report on Arizona’s Maricopa County Ballots in 2020 Election Delayed, Auditors Have COVID, Report

The report of ballots cast in the 2020 presidential election in Arizona’s Maricopa County has been delayed because the chief executive and two other employees of the audit team reportedly have COVID-19 and are “quite sick.”

A draft report of the findings was expected to be delivered Monday to Republicans in the state Senate, who hired the Florida-based firm Cyber Ninjas to conduct the audit.

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Commentary: Reject Federal Takeover of Elections – Again

Yogi Berra once said, “It’s déjà vu all over again.”

That is exactly how Americans must feel as they learn that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is trying to ram through another bill orchestrating a federal takeover of elections, despite the previous failed attempt in the Senate.

The bill, H.R. 4, is expected to come up in the House of Representatives this week, and it is stunning in its breadth. In short, Pelosi would give broad, sweeping powers to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division to rewrite every state and local election law in the country.

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Commentary: With Arizona’s Election Audit Completed, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, New Hampshire, and Michigan Could be Next

Arizona likely has gotten the most attention because it has moved the furthest along in pursuing an audit. Most of the other states discussing audits have not taken concrete action to get started yet, while Arizona’s audit is almost complete.

Arizona’s audit has focused on Maricopa County. In the run-up to the 2020 election, many experts saw Maricopa as a bellwether county for the winner of the state and the election itself. Maricopa is Arizona’s largest county and accounts for over half of the state’s population. Joe Biden carried the county, and with it the state.

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Enforcement of Arizona Senate’s Maricopa Subpoena ‘Unlikely’ with Reported GOP Holdout

The enforcement of the Arizona Senate’s second subpoena of election materials from the state’s Maricopa County depends upon achieving a majority vote in the chamber that one Republican senator says is “unlikely” due to a reported GOP holdout.

State Senate Republicans this week issued a fresh subpoena to the county, demanding a fresh wave of documents related to the 2020 election there as an ongoing forensic audit of results approaches a conclusion.

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Arizona Gov. Ducey Urges Continuation of Title 42 Border Restrictions

Gov. Ducey Title 42

Gov. Doug Ducey has called on Arizona’s congressional delegation to urge the Biden administration to maintain Title 42 restrictions, which allow federal officials to prohibit entry into the U.S. for those posing a potential health risk.

“I am writing to you today to share details of the impact this dangerous and misguided idea would have on Arizona and to request your assistance on behalf of the people of Arizona in urging the Biden administration to maintain these critical protections,” Ducey wrote last week in a letter to Arizona’s 11 members of Congress.

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Counting of Paper Ballots in Maricopa County Has Concluded, But There’s Still Work to Do Before Report is Released

The counting and examination of paper ballots in Maricopa County, Arizona concluded on Friday, but there is still more work to do before the full results are made public. According to one report, however, preliminary results could be released as early as this week.

The Maricopa County Audit Twitter account announced that they had finished counting paper ballots Friday evening.

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Trump Pledges to Never Give Ducey His Endorsement

Former President Donald Trump released a statement blasting Arizona Governor Doug Ducey for his lack of support in examining concerns of election security for the November 2020 election. 

Additionally, Trump pledged to never give Ducey his endorsement, should Ducey elect to run for another office. The two-term Governor is prevented from running for re-election due to the state’s term limit rules. 

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Kyrsten Sinema Reaffirms That She Will Not Support Abolishing the Filibuster

Arizona Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema reaffirmed her opposition to abolishing the 60-vote Senate filibuster, rebuffing progressives who have decried the legislative rule and called for its removal.

Sinema argued that scrapping the Senate rule would erode “democracy’s guardrails,” writing in The Washington Post that doing so would lead the nation to “lose much more than we gain.”

“It’s no secret that I oppose eliminating the Senate’s 60-vote threshold,” Sinema wrote. “I held the same view during three terms in the U.S. House, and said the same after I was elected to the Senate in 2018.”

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Arizona Gains 66,000 New Taxpayers, Mostly from California

Phoenix, Arizona cityscape

Taxpayers are coming to Arizona from other states by the tens of thousands and bringing billions of dollars in annual earnings with them. 

The Internal Revenue Service released its annual migration statistics, a record of address changes by filers and their dependents between tax years. The data released in late May reflects changes from the 2018-2019 tax years, which symbolize moves that occurred between 2017 and 2018. Nationwide, 8 million people relocated to either another state or county. 

Arizona gained 218,736 new taxpayers in that time. Having lost 152,769, that’s a net gain of 65,967 exemptions from one tax year to the next. That’s nearly 1,000 more than the previous tax year.

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Greg Abbott Says He’ll Suspend Lawmakers’ Pay After Democrats Walk Out on Election Bill

Greg Abbott

Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said Monday that he would veto funding for his state’s legislature after Democrats delayed the passage of an expansive elections bill.

Democrats in the state House quietly left the floor late Sunday with just hours to spare in the legislative session, preventing the bill from coming up for a vote. If signed into law, Senate Bill 7 would enhance voter ID provisions, empower partisan poll watchers and ban ballot drop boxes and drive-thru voting centers, which were used disproportionately in Texas’ biggest counties.

It would also make it easier to overturn an election in the state, allowing courts to throw out the results of an entire election if the amount of illegally cast votes exceeds the margin between two candidates, regardless of which candidate received more fraudulent votes. In 2020, there were just 43 documented cases of voter fraud, according to the Houston Chronicle.

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Republicans Launch Election Investigations in Multiple States as Arizona Audit Forges Ahead

Governor Tony Evers gives his first State of the State address in Madison, Wisconsin, at the State Capitol building on Jan. 22, 2019. He addressed a joint meeting of the Assembly and the Senate. Seen here, from left, are Speaker Pro Tempore Rep. Tyler August, R-Lake Geneva, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester and President of the Senate Roger Roth, R-Appleton.

Republicans in multiple U.S. states are mounting investigations into the circumstances surrounding the 2020 election, moves that come amid the contentious ongoing audit of election results in Maricopa County, Ariz.

The Arizona audit — which includes a hand recount of over two million ballots — has reflected bitter partisan divisions in the state, with Republicans and Democrats squaring off in a series of volleys over the conduct of the audit and the political fallout surrounding it. Establishment media outlets have joined in Democratic attacks against the audit, with CNN claiming that the process is “bogus” and FiveThirtyEight calling it a “partisan inquisition.”

Nevertheless, efforts are underway in several states to undertake investigations similar to Arizona’s, though none are anywhere near as large in scope as is that in Maricopa, the state’s largest county.

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Arizona Rep. Mark Finchem in Tennessee: Our Elections Have Been Open to Manipulation and for Much Longer Than We Knew

FRANKLIN, Tennessee — Arizona State Rep. Mark Finchem (R-District 11) told a group of nearly 100 gathered in middle Tennessee that it has been revealed that our elections have been open to manipulation and for much longer than we knew, long before November 2020. 

Finchem said that “While many might think it’s a curse, America has been given a gift.”

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Commentary: The Real Significance of the Arizona Audit

A lot of people on both sides of the political aisle seem to be missing the whole point of the ongoing election audit in Maricopa County, Arizona.  

This process isn’t about “proving” fraud or overturning an election. Rather, it’s about determining what, if anything, went wrong with the election process in 2020 and providing a road map for further investigation. In other words, it’s about determining the right questions to ask as we work to restore confidence in our electoral process. 

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Arizona Adopts Election Reform Bill That Stops Some Voters from Automatically Receiving Absentee Ballots

Arizona Republican Gov. Doug Ducey signed an election reform bill Tuesday that could stop thousands of voters from automatically receiving an absentee ballot ahead of an upcoming election.

SB 1485 would remove voters who have not participated in Arizona’s last four elections from its permanent early voting list, which allows them to automatically receive absentee ballots ahead of elections. Partisan primaries are included as separate elections, meaning that a voter could be removed if they fail to vote back-to-back election cycles, but they must also first fail to respond to mail notices alerting them.

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Arizona’s Democratic Senators Want More Homeland Security Personnel on the Southern Border

Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly

Arizona’s Democratic senators called on President Joe Biden’s administration to increase the number of Homeland Security personnel on the southern border to better respond to increasing number of migrants.

In a letter Wednesday, Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly also requested that the White House reimburse Arizona for its deploying of approximately 500 National Guard members to better respond to the crisis.

“From recent conversations with local community leaders, law enforcement, and local Department of Homeland Security officials, it’s clear that their resources, staffing and capabilities are strained,” they wrote. “While additional resources were passed in the American Rescue Plan and provided by FEMA and DHS, additional personnel are needed at the border to ensure our communities are protected, and migrants are treated fairly and humanely.”

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Election Integrity Bill Fails in Arizona Senate After One Republican Betrays Party

Kelly Townsend

Abill that was set to strengthen election integrity in Arizona by cracking down on voter fraud failed in the Republican-led State Senate, after a Republican member went against the party and voted it down, as reported by ABC News.

The bill, SB 1485, would have made it easier to remove inactive names from the state’s early voting list by removing the word “permanent” from the state’s definition of said list. Following this change, anyone on the list who did not vote in the state’s elections after a certain period of time could have their names removed completely. Inactive names remaining on a state’s voting rolls, such as in Arizona, can lead to a greater chance of voter fraud when those names are used to sway an election in a crucial swing state.

But a single Republican state senator, Kelly Townsend (R-Ariz.), voted with the Democrats against the bill. Her reasoning, ostensibly, was to wait for the results of a GOP-led audit of all 2.1 million ballots in Maricopa County from the 2020 election.

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Arizona House Passes Bill Banning Abortions Based on Genetic Abnormality

Susan B. Anthony List State Policy Director Sue Liebel

The Arizona House passed a bill Thursday that bans abortions based on diagnosis of genetic abnormality, such as Down syndrome.

S.B. 1457 states that the rights of “an unborn child at every stage of development” must be acknowledged and prohibits abortions based on the sex, race, or genetic abnormality of the child. The bill makes exceptions for medical emergencies.

“A person who knowingly” performs such an abortion “is guilty of a class 3 felony,” according to the legislation.

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21 States Sue Biden Admin for Revoking Keystone XL Permit

A group of red states sued President Biden and members of his administration on Wednesday over his decision to revoke a key permit for the Keystone XL oil pipeline, The Hill reported.

The lawsuit is led by Montana and Texas, and backed by 19 other states, including Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

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Efforts Underway in Key Battleground States to Return Voting Systems to Pre-2020 Rules

Significant legislative attempts are underway in multiple U.S. states, including key battleground states, to roll back major changes in voting rules and regulations to various pre-2020 status quo antes. The efforts come after an historically chaotic election process that has left millions of Americans doubtful of election fairness, security, transparency and accountability.

Changes to election rules — some of them enacted prior to 2020 and others put in place in response to the COVID-19 pandemic last year — have included expansive mail-in voting, expanded early voting, relaxation of verification rules, and extensions to ballot receipt deadlines.

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