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Jeremy Duda, Arizona Mirror

It's probably wishful thinking ... All about Hell Week ... And a Tennesseean lawmaker we wish lived here instead.

It took the county more than three months to issue its detailed response, but the results are thorough. The county’s elections department declared 22 of the Ninjas’ claims misleading, 41 inaccurate and 13 outright false. The full report, called “Correcting the Record,” is available on the county’s website.

Throughout the lengthy hearing, Richer, and less frequently a supervisor or two, made pointed remarks about the Ninjas and the Arizona Senate for perpetuating false claims about the 2020 election, while elections experts with the county addressed the specifics of allegations about Sharpies, signature verification, duplicated ballots and more. We won’t go through each claim here, but the Republic’s Jen Fifield has a rundown of some of the big ones.

The county did find a handful of cases of potential voter fraud — mostly people allegedly forging their deceased spouses signatures to vote on their behalf — as happens every year, and forwarded the cases on to the Attorney General’s Office for investigation and possible prosecution.

Out of 53,304 ballots claimed questionable by the #azaudit cyber ninjas, @MaricopaVote will be forwarding 32 for further investigation by @GeneralBrnovich after a 3 month long investigation.

— The AZ - abc15 - Data Guru (@Garrett_Archer) January 5, 2022

More Ducey money for COVID-19 school closures ... The election "audit" news is never-ending ... And an unexpected Bruce Willis aside.

As students return to classrooms following the winter break, and lawmakers return to the Capitol following their long summers, education is again at the forefront of the political agenda.

So far, lawmakers have mostly stuck to hot-button topics like requiring written parental permission to join LGBTQ student clubs, picking on trans kids in sports and otherwise, and teaching kids to denounce communism.

We’re still waiting to see a bill that addresses the much bigger issue of the constitutional cap on school spending that’s screwing schools out of $1.2 billion in funding that they already have because enrollment was artificially low last year during the pandemic. Lawmakers need to suspend that cap by March, or schools budgets will be thrown into chaos.

But Republican lawmakers are hesitant to raise or suspend that cap because doing so would undercut their legal arguments against Proposition 208, the 2020 Invest in Education initiative, which increases taxes on high earners to pay for education and is still working its way through the courts.

And while lawmakers are largely focused on sex, communism and sports, Gov. Doug Ducey announced a new “preemptive action” yesterday to pay parents to take their kids elsewhere if schools close.

Ducey set aside $10 million from the federal American Rescue Plan Act to give parents up to $7,000 to cover child care, school transportation, online tutoring and even private school tuition if they meet income requirements and their school or classroom closes “even for one day.”

We’re making sure in-person learning remains an option for all Arizona families and students. That’s why we’re taking preemptive action and launching the Open for Learning Recovery Benefit. 1/

— Doug Ducey (@dougducey) January 4, 2022

Karamargin emphasized that Ducey has long been a proponent of the public education system. But he couldn’t say if Ducey plans to use his State of the State speech Monday to advocate for increasing the spending cap that has schools worried about future layoffs.It’s a lot like the plan he announced at the beginning of the school year to pay families to change schools if their school requires masks. That proposal also set aside $10 million, or $7,000 per student, and the Governor’s Office told us has doled out $600,000 so far. (For the math-challenged, that’s about 100 kids in a state with more than a million students.)

“Our expectation and our hope is that Arizona schools will remain open to the greatest extent possible. And many of them are sincerely working toward that goal,” Ducey spokesman C.J. Karamargin told us, adding that there’s a broad consensus among educators and politicians, including President Joe Biden, that schools should remain open.

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Courtesy photo

U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva: "This violent, failed coup was sanctioned by a sitting president, aided and abetted by Members of Congress and other elected representatives, all of them members of the Republican Party."

As we remember January 6th and the dark actions of the mob attack on our nation’s Capitol, we fully realize that this insurrection was a calculated conspiracy to overthrow our democracy. It was a fascist attempt to, by force and lies, overturn a legitimate election. This violent, failed coup was sanctioned by a sitting president, aided and abetted by Members of Congress and other elected representatives, all of them members of the Republican Party.

The dangers posed by this fascist power grab have not dissipated. The forces responsible for Jan. 6 continue to jeopardize our nation. The behaviors that fomented this insurrection persist, and we see it as Republican office holders and extremist/supremist groups continue to plot to establish a form of government that relies on fear and lies to secure power for a minority of Americans at the expense of the rights and voices of the majority.

Republicans continue to utilize and expand the 2020 election playbook by demonizing the media, politicizing science and facts, questioning the legitimacy of judicial rulings, downplaying the insurrection, and perpetuating the Big Lie that the outcome of the 2020 election was stolen. Across the country, former President Trump, the Republican Party and his allies continue to fan flames of subversion, enact undemocratic policies and legal challenges, threaten elected officials who disagree with the outcome of the election, illegally gerrymander their way into power, and seek key statewide offices that oversee elections in swing states like Arizona that will enable Republicans to overturn the will of the people in future elections.

In Arizona, we have the former Liar-in-Chief hosting a rally on January 15th to move the Big Lie movement and fascism forward in our nation. We must defend our democracy and pursue efforts to ensure that our democracy is protected and our right to vote remains free and fair. I will continue to push our Senate colleagues to pass critical voting rights legislation and measures that protect our system of government from corruption and weaponization by any future president. We must support the January 6th Committee to complete its work swiftly to hold the insurrectionists and those Republican officials and individuals who aided in the failed coup accountable. The Biden administration and Department of Justice must do much more to protect our democracy.

As the former President’s event comes closer, it’s time for Arizonans to get involved, register to vote, volunteer, and​civically engage in protect​ing our democracy. We must fight back and resist state-level attempts to make voting more difficult and organize to oppose enactment of anti-democratic state laws. I urge Gov. Ducey and the community to exercise caution and restraint to maintain public safety and keep people safe regardless of political views or party affiliation.” 

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Genesis Sandoval, Cronkite News

Tucson Police Chief Chris Magnus, right, is introduced by Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., at the beginning of Senate Finance Committee hearing to consider Magnus' nomination to be the next commissioner of Customs and Border Protection.

WASHINGTON – The Senate voted by the slimmest of margins this week to make Tucson Police Chief Chris Magnus the next commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, confirming his appointment almost eight months after he was first nominated by President Joe Biden.

The 50-47 vote Tuesday came with just one Republican, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, joining 49 Democrats to approve the nomination. Despite the lopsided vote, Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., welcomed what he called the bipartisan confirmation of Magnus to take over at a challenging time for the agency.

“Chris Magnus brings experience and understanding of Southern Arizona that will be important for his new role leading CBP as we continue working to secure the border, upgrade our ports of entry, and ensure a more orderly and humane process at the border that doesn’t fall on Arizona communities,” Kelly said in a prepared statement.

But critics called Magnus the “wrong man at the wrong time” for CBP, which reported a record 1.7 million migrant encounters at the southwest border in fiscal 2021.

Republicans in his Senate Finance Committee nomination hearing in October repeatedly tried to get Magnus to call the border situation a “crisis,” which he declined to do.

While he called the border situation “one of the most serious problems that we face right now,” Magnus said he wanted to spend time working to fix a broken system and “a little less time debating what the terminology is.”

GOP senators also pointed to a Magnus opinion piece in the New York Times in 2017 opposing a Trump administration proposal that would have withheld federal funding from immigration “sanctuary cities,” a move Magnus said then, and during his hearing, would threaten local public safety.

Magnus also came under fire for his criticism of then-President Donald Trump’s decision to send Department of Homeland Security officers into Portland, Oregon, to protect the federal courthouse there during the 2020 protests, a deployment that state and local officials had also opposed. None of those positions assuaged opponents of his nomination.

“As the Border Patrol is overwhelmed with record numbers of people crossing our border illegally – compounded by vast amounts of lethal drugs being smuggled into our country – the men and women who serve in that agency deserve a leader who will provide them with the proper support and resources they need to protect the American people,” said a statement from Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. “Chris Magnus is most assuredly not that guy.”

Proposals from the mayor of Yuma, a coalition of Latino Democrats and a person with the username mango1 took center stage as the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission returned to action and took the first steps in crafting the boundaries of what will become the final congressional and legislative districts the state will use for the next decade.

On Monday, the commission held its first mapping meeting following a month of hearings in which members of the public voiced their concerns about the proposed districts. The hearings were part of a 30-day public notice period mandated by the Arizona Constitution.

>>VIEW THE DRAFT LEGISLATIVE MAP HERE<<
>>VIEW THE DRAFT CONGRESSIONAL MAP HERE<<

The commissioners opened their day with the two predominantly Latino congressional districts that the AIRC is drawing to comply with the Voting Rights Act. The Arizona Latino Coalition for Fair Redistricting, a group representing Hispanic Democratic interests, submitted a revised version of its proposed congressional map, which the commission debated.

During the first round of meetings that resulted in the AIRC’s draft maps, the majority of the commission was opposed to letting the new 7th Congressional District, which covers much of southern Arizona from Yuma to Tucson, stretch into the western Phoenix suburbs of Avondale and Tolleson, where the coalition had hoped to bring in heavily Latino areas.

Chairwoman Erika Neuberg, however, said she’s warmed to the idea, and now supports doing so. 

“I changed my mind,” Neuberg said. “They convinced me, the Latino Coalition. That’s what this whole process is about.”