Thursday, August 6, 2020
Pima County had seen 17,293 of the state’s 183,647 confirmed cases.
A total of 4,002 Arizonans had died after contracting COVID-19, according to the Aug. 6 report.
Arizona hospitals remain under pressure although the number of patients has declined from a peak last month. ADHS reported that as of Aug. 5, 1,879 COVID patients were hospitalized in the state, down from a peak of 3,517 on July 13.
A total of 1,136 people visited ERs on Aug. 5 with COVID symptoms. That number peaked at 2,008 on July 7.
A total of 593 COVID-19 patients were in ICU beds on Aug. 5. The number in ICUs peaked at 970 on July 13.
Trump praises Ducey’s response
Gov. Doug Ducey met with President Donald Trump and the White House COVID-19 Task Force in the Oval Office yesterday.
Trump praised Ducey’s response to COVID-19, saying Ducey had demonstrated how to get soaring COVID-19 cases under control without shutting down the economy.
Ducey lifted Arizona’s stay-at-home order in mid-May and allowed bars, gyms, movie theaters and other spaces where people congregate to reopen. Arizona’s numbers then skyrocketed as the virus became widespread and hospital beds filled. Under pressure, Ducey then allowed local authorities to enact measures requiring the wearing of masks, though he did not issue such an order himself. He also closed down gyms, theaters, water parks and some bars and limited restaurants to 50 percent capacity. Arizona’s numbers began to plateau in mid-July but the virus remains so widespread in Arizona that schools are unable to reopen for in-class sessions this month and instead will be conducted online.
Although Ducey has been out of town this week, the Ducey administration is set to unveil contagion metrics to guide school reopenings by tomorrow.
Wednesday, August 5, 2020
On Friday, July 31, armed border patrol agents entered a No More Deaths camp near Arivaca and detained an estimated 30 undocumented migrants in what the humanitarian aid organization is describing as a “military style raid.” The encounter occurred after a series of escalations between the two organizations, and the detained migrants’ whereabouts are currently unknown.
“They immediately detained all our volunteers and took their phones,” said Paige Corich-Kleim, a representative for No More Deaths. “It was a heavily armed presence, with agents in fatigues, masks and assault rifles drawn. It was as if they were entering to neutralize a threat.”
According to No More Deaths, one day prior, on July 30, Border Patrol agents entered the Byrd Camp without a warrant and detained one migrant. In the following hours, agents established 24-hour surveillance, surrounded the property, and a drone was spotted circling the camp.
This led up to the raid on July 31, when Border Patrol entered the camp with a warrant. Agents operated multiple vehicles including a helicopter, an armored vehicle, ATVs and dozens of trucks. Although no No More Deaths volunteers were taken from the camp, they were handcuffed and had their phones taken while agents arrested the migrants.
No More Deaths experienced a similar raid by Border Patrol in 2017. However, Corich-Kleim says a key difference is that in 2017 No More Deaths volunteers were allowed to film the agents, whereas their only photos of Friday had to be taken with a phone that wasn’t yet confiscated.
“It’s like they were entering a war zone, not a medical aid station,” Corich-Kleim said.
After the confrontation, No More Deaths volunteers found their aid station had been "ransacked," with tents torn apart, medical supplies destroyed and power to their well disconnected.
According to the warrant, items to be seized by Border Patrol agents included cell phones, computers, US and Mexican currency, photographs and "maps and other papers relating to the transportation, harboring, and smuggling of illegal aliens."
“On a daily basis those who migrate through the Arizona desert are targeted, terrorized, detained, and deported,” said No More Deaths volunteer Scott Warren, who was previously charged with and acquitted of felony charges for harboring migrants. “Last night we witnessed these tactics deployed against people who sought medical care and relief at our Byrd Camp aid station. As always when humanitarian aid in the borderlands is targeted, those who seek care are the ones that face the brunt of these violent escalations.”
Tucson Weekly is awaiting comment and further information from the Border Patrol.
Hamill penned the introduction to Tucson author Tom Miller's collection of essays and articles Revenge of the Saguaro. The Weekly is reprinting it with the kind permission of Miller in Hamell's honor.
Tom Miller found his way west from Washhington, D.C. during the late 1960s, that time in America when revolt was in the air along with a demand for renewal, both fueled by the music of rebellion. Young Americans were saying a collective No to the war in Vietnam. Parents were rejected, the suburbs were rejected, racism was rejected.
But that immense No also contained a very large Yes. The young, Miller among them, were trying very hard to make something new—that is, to establish values and social codes that were more humane, more open, more free. They talked about new ways of living. They started communes. They talked about the land. Some of it was foolish, much of it was adolescent, but a lot of it was touching and real.
The Yes played itself out in the American West. The East came to symbolize decay: physical decay, the collapse of industry and cities, the end of the immigrant myth. The migration into open places was an American migration, with millions of Americans leaving one version of the country and going to another. Tom Miller embraced the borderlands of the Southwest, as if sensing that his own subject matter lay in the buried templates of that beautiful, empty region that had once been Mexico.
He started writing for alternative newspapers, the many weeklies that grew up in the era in homage to—or imitation of—New York’s Village Voice. Those newspapers defined themselves by attitude and tone. They made no pretensions to an impossible objectivity; that was a time, after all, for choosing sides. But they intensely covered those subjects that got scant (or clumsy, or baffled) coverage in the mainstream press: the anti-war movement, drugs, racism, feminism, music, and the people who lived on the margins of the so-called American dream.
Miller was somewhat different; he embraced the subject matter without adopting the furious tone. He was too good a reporter and too fair a man to fall easily into glib ideological ranting, substituting rhetoric for seeing. He loved the Southwest because of what it was, instead of what it was not. But he wasn’t a booster out of the chamber of commerce either. He loved the border towns, from which Mexico had never departed, and celebrated their disorder and danger and tawdriness. He loved the austere pleasures of life in the desert. He loved places like Bisbee, the site of so many heartbreaking nights in the struggle to establish unions. And he wrote about those places with affection for the people who shared his own visions.
Brian Hastings, a top Border Patrol official, stared grimly at the television cameras.
It was July 1, 2019, and Hastings was facing down a scandal: News reports had revealed that Border Patrol agents were posting wildly offensive comments and memes in a secret Facebook group.
Agents had shared crudely manipulated images of men sexually assaulting Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat and frequent antagonist of the Border Patrol; joked about migrants who died while trying to enter the United States; and made racist insults about Central Americans. The group called itself “I’m 10-15,” Border Patrol radio code for “aliens in custody,” and included some 9,500 current or former agents.
Critics of the agency — already concerned about the separation of migrant families and deplorable conditions in detention facilities — saw the vulgar Facebook posts as further evidence that a culture of casual racism and misogyny was festering within the Border Patrol.
Nearly half of all incarcerated people housed inside the Whetstone Unit of the Tucson state prison complex have tested positive for COVID-19, the Arizona Department of Corrections announced Tuesday evening.
The department indicated that 517 people out of the total 1,066 population have the virus. They are currently being housed together in a separate living area and are receiving “appropriate medical care.”
“They will not be allowed back into the general population until they have been medically cleared,” the department said in a press release. “In addition to measures that are already in place, all inmates at Whetstone will receive meals and all required medication and medical services in their housing units.”
Tags: COVID-19 , Coronavirus , Arizona Department of Corrections , Tucson , Whetstone Unit , Image
Pima County had seen 16,964 of the state’s 182,203 confirmed cases.
A total of 3,932 Arizonans had died after contracting COVID-19, according to the Aug. 5 report.
Arizona hospitals remain under pressure although the number of patients has declined from a peak last month. ADHS reported that as of Aug. 4, 1,945 COVID patients were hospitalized in the state, down from a peak of 3,517 on July 13.
A total of 1,171 people visited ERs on Aug. 4 with COVID symptoms. That number peaked at 2,008 on July 7.
A total of 618 COVID-19 patients were in ICU beds on Aug. 4. The number in ICUs peaked at 970 on July 13.
July: Downward trend but a rough month
Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry noted on Friday, July 30, there’s evidence that Pima County’s ordinance requiring masks or face coverings is lowering COVID-19’s spread in the region.
Huckleberry pointed to data showing that two key coronavirus trends measured by week began moving in a positive direction after the county passed the ordinance: The number of positive tests peaked at 2,351 the week after the mask ordinance was passed and dropped to 1,393 two weeks later, and the percentage of people visiting hospitals with symptoms of COVID or pneumonia had dropped from nearly 12 percent to less than 4 percent.
Despite those positive trends, Tucson City Councilman Steve Kozachik warned that the virus remains widespread. In his weekly newsletter, Kozachik pointed out that Pima County saw 7,747 confirmed cases of COVID in July. That’s nearly as many cases as the 7,780 cases the county saw in total over the previous four months of March, April, May, and June.
Tags: claytoonz , maga , trump , mail , voting , political , cartoon , Image
Tuesday, August 4, 2020
Conover had 57 percent of the vote when the batch of ballots was released today.
Jonathan Mosher, a prosecutor in the office who had LaWall’s endorsement, won 37 percent of the vote.
He conceded the race via email just before 10 p.m.
“Tonight, the voters of Pima County have spoken," Mother said. "I congratulate Laura Conover and her supporters, and give my sincere thanks to everyone who worked so hard to bring our campaign of meaningful reform to the people. It has been an honor to serve the families of Pima County.”
Coming in third place was Mark Diebolt, who has had a long career as a prosecutor in LaWall’s office.
Pima County Sheriff
In the Democratic primary for Pima County Sheriff, Chris Nanos, who was appointed the seat in 2015 but lost it after a procurement scandal erupted on his watch, had captured 65 percent of the vote against Deputy Kevin Kubitskey, a union leader whose campaign erupted in scandal in July after his daughter accused him of abusing her. Kubitsky had 35 percent of the vote.
The winner of the race will face Republican Mark Napier, who managed to win heavily Democratic Pima County four years ago against Nanos.
Pima County Recorder
In the race between two Democrats who are seeking to replace the retiring F. Ann Rodriguez as Pima County's chief keeper of records, Gabriella Cázares-Kelly, an organizer with Indivisible Tohono, had won 62 percent of the vote. Kim Challender, who has worked as Rodriguez’s chief deputy, has 38 percent of the vote.
The winner of the Democratic primary will face Republican Benny White, a longtime GOP activist who has served on the county's Election Integrity Committee.
Pima County Assessor
In the race to replace the retiring Assessor Bill Staples, Suzanne Drobie had 58 percent of the vote, compared to 23 percent for Brian Johnson and 19 percent for Dustin Walters.
These early returns represent the early ballots that were tabulated as of today. Throughout the evening, we’ll update as today’s ballots are tabulated. More results are expected in the coming days as the Pima County Recorder’s Office validates more early ballots.
A handful of Pima County constable positions are up for grabs this year, and the primary election’s early results are revealing who will be the elected officials delivering court papers and handling evictions throughout Pima County.
As of 10 p.m. on election night, incumbent Constable Bennett Bernal of Precinct 6 is ahead of his Democratic opponent Roberto Ponti with 57 percent of the vote.
Constable Joe Ferguson of Precinct 9 has lost to his opponent, George Camacho, who has won 65 percent of the vote.
Ferguson, a Democrat, was appointed to the position by a 3-2 vote from the Board of Supervisors after Colette Philip retired in February. Camacho was the other option at that time, and decided to run for constable after the supervisors denied him the position.
Camacho was a long-time employee of the Constable’s Office until he was fired in April based on a harassment complaint that accused him of threatening and degrading behavior towards women in the office.
The other constable primary races consist of candidates running unopposed: Republican John Dorer in Precinct 1, Democrat Oscar Vasquez in Precinct 4, Republican Thomas Schenek in Precinct 7, Democrat Kristen Randall in Precinct 8 and Republican Michael Stevenson in Precinct 10.
Tags: Arizona Primary Election , Constable , 2020 , Image
These early returns represent the early ballots that were tabulated as of today. Throughout the evening, we’ll update as today’s ballots are tabulated. More results are expected in the coming days as the Pima County Recorder’s Office validates more early ballots.
Arizona Senate
In the Democratic primary for the Senate seat in Legislative District 11, retired Marine Joanna Mendoza has captured 57 percent of the vote, while former high school teacher and school administrator Linda Patterson has 43 percent.
The winner of the race will face Sen. Vince Leach, the Republican incumbent who did not face a primary race.
The district includes Oro Valley, parts of Marana as well as areas of Pinal County and the town of Maricopa.
Arizona House of Representatives
Legislative District 2
In the Democratic primary for the two House seats in Legislative District 2, state Rep. Daniel Hernandez is leading the ticket with 32 percent of the vote.
Meanwhile, Andrea Dalessandro is in second place with 30 percent of the vote as she attempts to move to the lower chamber after she reached her term limit in the state Senate.
Army veteran and attorney Luis Parra was coming in third with 19 percent of the vote. Former ACLU attorney Billy Peard is in fourth with 17 percent.
The district includes Downtown Tucson, Green Valley, Sahuarita, and Nogales.
Legislative District 3
The incumbents were leading with the release of the first batch of early votes in Legislative District 3, which covers Tucson’s west side. Rep. Alma Herndandez had 46 percent of the vote and Rep. Andrés Cano had 37 percent of the vote, while challenger Javier Soto had 17 percent.
Legislative District 10
In the three-way race for two House seats in midtown Tucson’s Legislative District 10, Rep. Domingo DeGrazia was leading in early returns with 41 percent of the vote as he seeks reelection. Stephanie Stahl Hamilton had captured 36 percent of the vote for second place, while union leader Paul Stapleton-Smith was in third with 21 percent.
