Hank Stephenson

1 week ago | arizonaagenda.com | Nicole Ludden |Hank Stephenson

As the state House was passing its rogue budget last week, budget leaders assured us that the House’s $17.3 billion spending plan wasn’t far off from the budget that the Senate and Gov. Katie Hobbs were negotiating. House budget guru, Republican Rep. Matt Gress, said at the time that the Senate’s plan “is very close to what we're voting on right now.”Republican Sen.

1 week ago | arizonaagenda.com | Hank Stephenson |Joe Ferguson |Nicole Ludden

Ballots are in the mail for the biggest election of the year — the special election to fill Raúl Grijalva’s seat in Southern Arizona’s sprawling Congressional District 7. Five candidates are running in the Democratic primary, though only three of them have a chance of winning:Odds-on-favorite Adelita Grijalva, a former Pima County supervisor who served two decades on the Tucson Unified school board before that.

2 weeks ago | arizonaagenda.com | Peter Aleshire |Nicole Ludden |Hank Stephenson

Three Arizona congressmen are leading the crusade to outlaw any federally funded “transgender” experiments on lab animals. But “transgender” experiments probably aren’t what you think — and it’s almost certainly not what they think. The term applies to assorted experiments focused on things like whether the hormone treatments used in gender-affirming care might increase the risk of breast cancer, or make the HIV vaccine ineffective.

2 weeks ago | arizonaagenda.com | Nicole Ludden |Alysa Horton |Hank Stephenson

The budget bills are here. Republican Rep. Matt Gress made good on his promise to deliver the sprawling pages of confusing numbers yesterday afternoon. The House Appropriations Committee is set to meet at 10:30 a.m. today to go through the budget in (hopefully) digestible language. As House members voted on a few remaining bills yesterday, Gress made his way to the media table for an impromptu press conference on the budget.

2 weeks ago | arizonaagenda.com | Nicole Ludden |Hank Stephenson

Jeanne Woodbury’s past lives include being the head of a nonprofit, a math tutor and a Republican. Now, she works at one of the most progressive lobbying firms in the state. Woodbury is a partner at Creosote Partners and represents groups like Planned Parenthood and the ACLU at Arizona’s Legislature. She’s argued against bills about 20 times this year. In March, she told Republican lawmakers why they shouldn’t support a bill increasing provider liability for gender-affirming procedures.