PHOENIX – As Arizona broke records Wednesday for new COVID-19 cases and deaths reported in a single day, Vice President Mike Pence flew in to assure Gov. Doug Ducey that the federal government “will spare no expense” in helping the state.

Pence’s trip originally included a visit to Tucson and a rally with supporters, but those events were canceled as the vice president continues to tour states hard hit by COVID-19, including Texas last weekend and a trip to Florida on Thursday.

“We say to the people of Arizona, we are with you and we are going to make sure that Arizona has whatever it takes to meet this moment, to slow the spread and flatten the curve to save lives,” Pence told reporters, standing on the tarmac at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.

On Wednesday, July 1, the Arizona Department of Health Services reported a record 4,878 new cases of COVID-19 and 88 deaths in the state, bringing total deaths to 1,720. It said 20,151 tests for COVID-19 have been completed in public and private labs in Arizona, and 24.2% of tests have come back positive for the virus that causes the disease.

Pence, in response to calls for more health care workers to relieve those now on the front lines, said he has instructed Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf to send 500 medical personnel to the state, in addition to 62 workers sent to Tucson earlier this week.

“Help is on the way,” Pence said. “We are going to spare no expense to provide the kind of reinforcements that you will need to all across this state should this coronavirus continue to expand in Arizona.”

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Smart and Safe Arizona, the citizens' initiative to legalize recreational marijuana, filed 420,000 signatures with the Arizona Secretary of State's Office on July 1 in an effort to secure its place on the upcoming Nov. 3 ballot.

However, Smart and Safe Arizona could still be challenged before making the November ballot.

"It's great to be done," said Senior Vice President of Strategies 360 Arizona Stacey Pearson, the PR firm handling the initiative. "I anticipate someone to challenge but given the size of our margin, they would not be successful."

The initiative collected 180,000 signatures more than the 237,467 signatures needed to qualify for the November ballot and filed them a day before the state's July 2 deadline.
Pearson said they wanted to collect and file the symbolic number of signatures because it was appropriate to the cause and to illustrate Arizona's desire to legalize recreational marijuana. 

"It seemed fitting," Pearson said. " We knew we were going to have over 420,000 signatures and the number seemed appropriate to file."

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Click here to read their biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

It’s been almost 10 years since Republicans, riding the Tea Party wave, took control of the House of Representatives and started hacking at the IRS’ enforcement budget. Down it went, some years the cuts were steep, some not, as Republican lawmakers laughed off dire warnings about the consequences of letting tax cheats run free.

For the past couple years, ProPublica has been cataloging the descent of the IRS. We’ve watched as audits of the rich and the largest corporations have plummeted and become less aggressive, while audits of poor taxpayers have remained comparatively high.

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PHOENIX – Just days after President Donald Trump was in Yuma to praise construction of the border wall last week, a federal court reaffirmed its ruling that the administration’s method of funding that construction was “unlawful.”

The ruling Friday by a divided panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that the administration’s plan to divert $2.5 billion in Defense Department funds toward construction of the border wall – funding Congress had specifically rejected – was unconstitutional.

But in a dissent, Judge Daniel P. Collins said the transfers were lawful, repeating his earlier stance in this case, which has already been to the Supreme Court once and sent back to the 9th Circuit for review.

Calls seeking comment from the departments of Justice, Defense and Homeland Security were not immediately returned. But border wall opponents hailed the decision as a “critical step in upholding the checks and balances that are integral to our democracy.”

“We welcome the … court’s decision to permanently stop Trump from building his dangerous and deadly wall,” said Vicki Gaubeca, director of the Southern Border Communities Coalition, in a statement Monday.

As COVID-19 cases continue to skyrocket, Gov. Doug Ducey has ordered the closing of bars, gyms, movie theaters, water parks and river tubing activities for at least one month.

Ducey also said Arizona would delay the start of the school year to Aug. 17.

Ducey warned that Arizonans will see more cases of COVID-19 before the numbers begin to decrease.

“Our expectation is, our numbers will be worse,” said Ducey, who repeated his call for Arizonans to mask up when in public, stay home as much as possible, wash their hands and keep a physical distance from others.

The Department of Health will also activate its “crisis standards of care” and cancel non-emergency surgeries.

Ducey's new moves come as the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Arizona crossed the 74,000 threshold as of Monday, June 29, after the state reported 625 new cases this morning, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services.

That said, Arizona Department of Health Services tweeted earlier this morning that not all new cases are reflected in this total, and that a higher number is to be expected tomorrow because of this.

Pima County had seen 7,568 of the state's 74,533 confirmed cases.

Cases in Arizona have more than tripled since June 1, when the state had 20,123 confirmed cases.

A total of 1,588 people have died after contracting the virus, including 268 in Pima County.

Maricopa County has more than half the state's cases, with the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases hitting 45,178.

This morning's Arizona Department of Health Services report shows that as of yesterday, 2,721  Arizonans were hospitalized, more than double the 1,009 hospitalized on June 1.

A total of 992 people arrived at emergency rooms with COVID-like symptoms on June 28. Previous to June, the number of people seeking help in emergency rooms never topped 667.

A total of 679 COVID-19 patients were in ICU beds yesterday.

More details to come.

PHOENIX – Arizona elections officials disputed President Donald Trump’s latest attacks on mail-in voting, which he leveled Tuesday at a Students for Trump rally in north central Phoenix.

Because of voting by mail, Trump told the crowd, the November election would be the “most corrupt election in the history of our country.”

“And there is tremendous evidence of fraud whenever you have mail-in ballots,” Trump said, repeating unfounded claims widely debunked by media outlets. “And frankly, if we are really going to protect our elections – and some people don’t want to hear this – we must have voter ID.”

Trump, a Florida resident who has voted by mail, went on to say that mail carriers could be robbed of ballots, which then could be duplicated by foreign or domestic enemies, according to The New York Times. The security concerns – along with other claims Trump has made about mail-in voting – are false, according to numerous outlets, including NPR, CNN and NBC.

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs also disagreed that mail-in ballots aren’t safe.

“He’s flat out wrong,” Hobbs said of the president’s claims. “We have a long track record of successful and secure voting by mail in Arizona. Ballots are tracked when they leave the county recorder’s office to go to voters, and voters can find out the status of their ballots once they return it. So there’s a lot of safeguards in place.”

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Just as the Trump administration was asking the Supreme Court to toss out Obamacare, Politifact was out yesterday with a new assessment of appointed Sen. Martha McSally's claim in a recent ad that she "will always protect people with preexisting conditions. Always."

Yesterday, PolitiFact rated that claim, based on McSally's own voting record, as "false."

You can read the details here, but here's the central takeaway:

In her new TV ad, McSally claims she will "always protect those with preexisting conditions."

But nothing in her voting record, which tracks closely with the Republican repeal-and-replace philosophy, supports this claim. And she has continually declined opportunities to oppose a pending legal threat to the ACA, including its provisions related to preexisting conditions, by a group of GOP governors and supported by the Trump administration.

Meanwhile, the legislation her campaign cited to justify her stance falls short in terms of meaningfully protecting Americans with preexisting medical conditions.

McSally has not in the past or present taken actions that back up her statement. We rate it False.

McSally has been trying to rewrite her history on Obamacare for years now. In 2018, she admitted that she was getting killed on the healthcare issue, mainly because of her voting record: She has repeatedly voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which protects people with pre-existing conditions. In fact, she urged her fellow House members to repeal it in 2017 with the cry of "Let's get this fucking thing done"—a quote she celebrated in her Senate campaign ads in 2018.

As much as McSally likes to point to bills that haven't gone anywhere as examples of how she supports preventing insurance companies from discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions, her efforts to get rid of the one thing that prevents said discrimination flies in the face of her claim that she's committed to "always" protecting those with pre-existing conditions.

The PolitiFact "false" rating comes the same week as the Trump administration's filing of legal arguments asking the Supreme Court to toss Obamacare—based on that big ol' deficit-doubling tax cut bill supported by McSally that eliminated the penalty for not having health insurance. McSally has repeatedly declined to oppose the lawsuit to toss Obamacare, saying it's none of her business. Again, her actions doesn't sound like she will "always" protect those with pre-existing conditions.

In fact, the Trump administration said in legal filing that McSally, along with the other Republicans who voted in favor of the bill, knew that they were also repealing the Affordable Care Act. As the Washington Post reports:

The Trump team’s core argument is that every Republican who voted for the tax cuts three years ago knowingly voted to destroy the 2010 law in its entirely, not just to get rid of the mandate that individuals buy health insurance. And, because the Supreme Court previously upheld the constitutionality of the law on the grounds that the individual mandate is a tax, Trump’s lawyers say that the whole system became invalid once Congress got rid of the penalty for not carrying health insurance.

“Nothing the 2017 Congress did demonstrates it would have intended the rest of the ACA to continue to operate in the absence of these ... integral provisions,” Francisco writes in his brief, which is co-signed by four other Trump appointees at the Justice Department. “The entire ACA thus must fall with the individual mandate.”

Democrat Mark Kelly, the former astronaut who has been leading McSally in the polls, said today that stripping protections from people with pre-existing conditions is a terrible idea, especially in a pandemic.

“Arizona is battling the coronavirus and the last thing we need is for millions of Arizonans with pre-existing conditions to lose their health care protections,” said Kelly in a prepared statement. “As more Arizonans are getting sick and many more lose their jobs and health insurance, we have to make sure all Arizonans can get the testing and health care they need to protect public health and slow the spread of the virus. That’s what our leaders should be working on, not this partisan effort that would throw hundreds of thousands of Arizonans off of their health plans, harm Arizonans with pre-existing conditions, and make our fight against this virus more difficult.”