Move over Andrew Jackson, abolitionist Harriet Tubman is going to be the new face of the $20 bill—making her the first woman prominently featured on U.S paper currency. 

Unfortunately, we've got some waiting to do: The designs won't be made public until 2020, and will likely take more time to make it into circulation.

Last year, Tubman was expected to replace Alexander Hamilton on the face of the $10. Since then, the Broadway musical Hamilton has exploded, leading to increased popularity for the former treasury secretary. 

The back of the $10, which currently displays a picture of the U.S. Treasury Building, is expected to get a redesign featuring important women from U.S. history. 

Until the new bills roll out, let's celebrate Tubman's latest accomplishment by remembering all the good she did when she was alive:

Jon Favreau’s delightful and funny take on the Rudyard Kipling’s tale of a boy raised by wolves is an all around winner. Kids and adults will love the talking and sporadically singing animals, while adults and some of the cooler kids will like the movie references and clever Easter eggs.

The story is pretty simple: A young boy raised in the jungle is pursued by a pissed off tiger (Idris Elba) who had his face burned by a human when he was young (shades of Darth Vader). When plans to leave for a human village are rudely interrupted, Mowgli (newcomer Neel Sethi) winds up staying in the jungle longer than he planned, and he must keep wearing the same pair of red baggy shorts. He encounters Kaa (Scarlett Johansson), an evil temptress snake, and other perils while building a special friendship with a big bear.

And, as far as I could see, he never stops to wash those red shorts. A swim in the river doesn’t count. You need detergent.

Bill Murray is, indeed, a masterstroke of vocal casting as Baloo, the big bear who befriends Mowgli on his extended jungle trek. Casting Christopher Walken as King Louie, the Kong-sized master of all apes in the jungle, actually tops the Murray casting feat. It gives Favreau’s film an opportunity to become truly weird, very funny, and even a little scary.

While not a bona fide musical, Favreau does find some clever ways to mix musical performance into the movie. Baloo and Mowgli happily sing a part of “The Bare Necessities” together while floating down a river, accompanied by a full orchestra led by John Debney. It’s great, but it’s not the film’s musical highlight. The highlight comes when Walken’s King Louie, portrayed with undertones of Brando’s Colonel Kurtz, suddenly busts out “I Wanna Be Like You.” Walken is perfect for the song and perfect for the character, making the scene an instant classic. The special effects are topnotch.

The story is in service of some incredible special effects that seamlessly mesh live animals, motion capture work, and puppetry. The talking animals actually look like they are really talking as opposed to animals with cartoon mouths yapping away.

Sen. John McCain doesn't want to go to Cleveland for his summer vacation. The Hill reports:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who is facing perhaps the toughest reelection race of his career, will skip the Republican presidential nominating convention in Cleveland in July.

McCain says he will be focusing instead on his own race against Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick. He also has to worry about a late primary, which is scheduled for Aug. 30.

“I have to campaign for reelection, and I have always done that when I’m up,” he said. “We have a late primary in Arizona.” 

Team Kirkpatrick spokesman D.B. Mitchell doesn't miss the chance to once again link McCain to Donald Trump and Ted Cruz:

Ann Kirkpatrick has John McCain in the toughest reelection fight of his career, and all McCain really did today was reiterate that he would still support a ‘dangerous’ Donald Trump or ‘wacko bird’ Ted Cruz for president. Arizona voters see right through McCain now after 33 years in Washington, and hiding from the convention for the first time in three decades won’t change that.

CNN has a retrospective of McCain's many speeches at the GOP convention.

With a pair of 5-1 votes, the Tucson City Council voted to move forward with a plan to widen Broadway Boulevard to six lanes between downtown and Country Club Road.

The decisions allow the city to move forward with acquiring more property along the corridor to make room for the expansion, as well as to seek funding for the project from Regional Transportation Authority, which—along with Pima County—is footing most of the bill for the $72 million project.

Councilman Steve Kozachik was the sole vote against the project.

Tonight's vote was the latest step in a decades-long push to expand the central-city corridor and caps years of meetings that have resulted in an eight-lane project reduced to six lanes. But even the six-lane plan had many vocal opponents who complained that the project will knock down too many historic structures and diminish Broadway's "sense of place."

But the majority of the council said the project was a compromise and further delay would not result in significant changes to width of the corridor, although they did invite local architect Bob Vint to work with a team from the University of Arizona to tweak the project moving forward.

After the meeting, Vint—who had pushed for a different vision for the corridor—said it "remains to be seen" whether he could still have a significant impact on the future of the corridor.

This is incredible. Last year, the state budget cut $99 million from our three state universities. This year, among the possible scenarios for the state budget is an extra $5 million for the university's three "economic freedom centers." Whoever inserted that item into the budget isn't talking. No one will admit they know how it got there.

(Before I go further, I have to give a shout out to Hank Stephenson who wrote the article about this possible giveaway in the Capitol Times. Stephenson earned the wrath of David Gowan when he wrote about the House Speaker's travel on the state's dime—actually, "the state's $12,000" is more accurate than "the state's dime"—which led to Gowan's revenge-banning of reporters from the House floor, an order that was later rescinded. This story might earn Stephenson another black mark from Republican legislators, but I say he deserves an award of journalistic valor for his recent reporting.)

You can't get a degree at the "economic freedom centers," which are wholly owned subsidiaries of the Koch Brothers: UA's Center for the Philosophy of Freedom and ASU's Center for the Study of Economic Liberty and Center for Political Thought and Leadership. The Charles Koch Charitable Foundation put up most of the money to fund the centers.

The state currently funds $500,000 per year for the UA center. Someone in state government who thus far has decided to remain anonymous wants to boost that number to $5 million. Our local state senator Steve Farley noted the irony of the state subsidizing privately-funded centers that push free market ideas.

“Why do we need to spend taxpayer money on an institute to study free markets? Shouldn’t they go to the free market for that?” Farley asked.

To that I would add, the move is in keeping with Republicans' self serving double standard. They squeeze state budgets for education and state services, pleading fiscal poverty, then manage to find $5 million lying around to spend on three privately funded conservative-libertarian propaganda mills embedded in our state universities.

Revolutionary Grounds continues their "Ideas for Change" series tomorrow night with a discussion on whether or not marriage is racist.
 

UA professor V. Spike Peterson, who is "critical of most things conventional," according to the event's Facebook page, will debunk why an institution as seemingly sweet as marriage is actually pretty sour. Peterson will also talk about the various problems marriage perpetuates, including the transmission of property and citizenship and inequality in general. The discussion is affiliated with the UA's Department of Gender and Women's Studies, International Studies, Institute for LGBT Studies and Center for Latin American Studies. 

Show up with an open mind at 5:30 p.m. tomorrow, April 20, at Revolutionary Grounds (6060 N. 4th Ave.) if you're interested in hearing about marriage from an angle we as a society don't usually talk about.
 

The devastating 7-plus magnitude earthquakes in Ecuador and Japan in the last week have left thousands upon thousands missing, injured and displaced and hundreds more dead.

According to AP, more than 400 people are estimated to be dead following the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit the country on Saturday, April 16. The Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa is estimating $3 billion in damage—3 percent of the country's GPD. Rebuilding after this massive natural disaster could take years and crews are still searching for survivors in the wreckage, while humanitarian aid groups are working on getting clean water, food, temporary housing and mosquito nets (which are needed especially now due to the Zika infection risk in the area) to those who need them.

Over in Japan, twin earthquakes have left over 100,000 still in temporary housing and thousands injured days after the final earthquake stuck on Saturday. The streets of the Japanese city Fukuoka were coated in a mysterious foam following the event.

Here in Tucson, Yume Japanese Garden (2130 North Alvernon Way) is hosting a candlelight vigil in remembrance of the victims of the earthquakes that will also serve as a fundraiser to help those who have survived the devastation. 

The Weekly reported yesterday that Democrat Victoria Steele, who is facing fellow former state lawmaker Matt Heinz in the August Democratic primary that will decide who faces Republican Congresswoman Martha McSally in the November general election, had a lousy fundraising quarter and could be losing her campaign manager.

We heard back to Team Steele after we posted our story. It turns out that a shake-up is in the works. Campaign manager Keith Rosendahl is leaving the campaign, although new spokesman Ed Dunin-Wasowicz tells the Weekly that the parting was amicable.

Dunin-Wasowicz said he and Karen McGarrity would be taking over management of the campaign and a new field director, Nicholas Yollich, has arrived in town from Florida this week.

Steele herself, in a statement via email, downplayed the significance of her fundraising numbers. (She raised less than $40,000 in the first quarter of the year and spent nearly as much, leaving her with less than $45,000 in the bank.)

"Do not underestimate the power of grassroots campaigns," Steele said. "We are a community movement that will take our district back. One issue that I will fight the hardest for in Congress will be cleaning up the corrupt financing system that has candidates begging for checks instead of earning votes."  

Fans of fried food, petting zoos and carnival rides, pay attention: You've got one week/weekend of county fair possibilities ahead of you.

The fair is in town through this Sunday, April 24 and we're giving away tickets good for any day. Find event details here and enter to win tickets below:

Tucson art people, you need to show up to the Best of Tucson digital party. Last year we go TONS of comments from upset readers who wanted to know why their favorite educational art institutions didn't make it to the finals.

Well, I'll tell you why: the Best Art Classes category is being a little neglected in terms of votes. 

So, art fans, listen up. Head over to your Best of Tucson ballot. Tell us where to take art classes, eat Indian food and shop for children's clothes. Tell us about everything in Tucson you love.