LOS ANGELES – The intersection of sports and politics took center stage again Monday night when a campaign ad featuring a Northern Arizona football player aired during ESPN’s broadcast of the Arizona Cardinals-Dallas Cowboys game.

Tristen Vance, a Hamilton High School graduate and linebacker for the Lumberjacks, expected to play his final season this fall before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The Big Sky Conference postponed its football season until the spring, pushing Vance’s true senior season back to next fall.

“I’ve been working my whole life towards a dream to play professionally,” Vance, 23, says in a 30-second ad supporting Joe Biden. “Missing this season puts those dreams in jeopardy.”

WASHINGTON – Arizona’s Senate race is now the state’s most expensive campaign, with the latest Federal Election Commission filings showing the two candidates have pulled in a staggering $133.7 million so far.

Republican Sen. Martha McSally had raised $50.9 million as of Sept. 30, while Democratic challenger Mark Kelly reported raising $82.8 million by that point, according to FEC reports posted Monday.

McSally reported having $12.1 million on hand for the remaining weeks of the campaign to Kelly’s $18.8 million.

Jason Rose, an Arizona political consultant, said the race “is definitely breaking records in terms of money raised.”

New photos show the Trump Administration's border wall constructed across the San Pedro River, formerly the last major free-flowing river in Arizona. The photos, taken where the San Pedro crosses into Mexico from Cochise County, were shot by Robin Silver, co-founder and board member of the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity.

The wall's construction has proved controversial in Southern Arizona, prompting one of the largest political demonstrations in Cochise history against the destruction of the San Pedro floodplain. In addition, local governments officials have expressed frustration over the lack of communication by the Department of Homeland Security regarding construction specifics.

One of the main concerns about the construction is its impact on wildlife. According to CBD, the wall is blocking one of the best remaining wildlife corridors in the region, and is likely to clog the river with debris during monsoons.

Congresswoman Ann Kirkpatrick says she has sent multiple letters to the Department of Homeland Security requesting transparency on the border wall construction, all of which have gone unanswered.

At a February board meeting, the Cochise County Board of Supervisors approved a letter supporting Kirkpatrick's efforts encouraging DHS to engage with local agencies and the general public to offer information about their border construction. According to the Board of Supervisors, Cochise County had "not been made aware of, or consulted on, any site plans or construction timelines." 

For months now, we here in Arizona have said that health care is on the ballot this November—and that is even more true today than it was six months ago when this pandemic began.

The dual public health and economic crises from the coronavirus have raised the stakes even higher when it comes to the importance of having quality, affordable health care coverage,  especially in our rural and border communities.

As someone who has worked in public health for 35 years, I know how important it is for working families across Arizona to have the peace of mind that comes with quality, affordable health care coverage.

So when I see Donald Trump and the Republican Party try to rush through a Supreme Court appointment just to overturn the Affordable Care Act, especially in the middle of a pandemic, I am as confused as I am horrified. Why fight to undermine something that has benefitted so many people?

The Affordable Care Act helped more than 400,000 people in Arizona gain coverage and led to a 42 percent reduction in the uninsured rate.

But if Trump and Republicans have their way, the Supreme Court will decide to rip away health care from 363,000 Arizonans and strip away protections from 2.8 million people in Arizona with preexisting conditions. To make matters worse, overturning the ACA would jeopardize protections for people with pre-existing conditions at a time when complications from COVID-19, like lung scarring and heart damage, could become the next deniable pre-existing condition.

By continuing his crusade to dismantle the ACA, Trump is gutting the protections that so many Arizonans families in our rural, border, and foothills communities depend on. We have worked so hard over the last several years to create a safety net infrastructure among our communities in Arizona with critical access hospitals, rural health clinics, and our community hospitals.

We can’t let Trump undo the progress we’ve made. Arizonans deserve so much better. We need leaders who will fight to protect our care and put working families first. That’s Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will protect and build on the Affordable Care Act to give Americans more choice, reduce health care costs, and make our health care system less complex. This will greatly benefit families in our border and rural communities who depend on the ACA to keep themselves and their families safe and healthy.

Biden and Harris also have a plan to help rural, border, and foothills communities like ours across Arizona meet the pressing health challenges they are faced with. When elected, Joe and Kamala will adequately fund our rural hospitals, double funding for community health centers, and help build new clinics and deploy telehealth in rural communities.

These common-sense solutions will help our neighbors and families stay healthy, especially as we continue to battle COVID-19.

We can’t afford four more years of attacks on our health care. I’ve seen the faces, I’ve seen the devastation, I’ve seen the work that my doctors do every day to save lives. Dismantling the Affordable Care Act and ripping away health care coverage is not an option. We cannot let it happen—and that starts with voting for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris this November.

Former Arizona State Senator Amanda Aguirre presently serves in the capacity of President & CEO of the Regional Center for Border Health, Inc. since 1991 and its subsidiary San Luis Walk-In Clinic, Inc., a primary care rural health medical center. Ms. Aguirre has been involved for more than 35 years in health care and business administration.

WASHINGTON – Native Americans may face barriers to voting in general, but that is not enough to require that ballots mailed from the Navajo Nation get 10 extra days to be counted, a federal appeals court said Thursday.

The ruling by a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel upheld a lower court that rejected the suit by six Navajo voters. The courts said the plaintiffs failed to show that their voting rights would be harmed by postal delays or helped by an extension – or even that they planned to vote by mail this election.

The ruling is the latest in a flurry of election challenges heard by the court in recent weeks. It was welcomed by election officials in northern Arizona who said an extension for Navajo ballots would be neither fair nor practical.

“I just don’t think it’s really feasible and we would want to do it for all voters, not just voters on the Navajo Nation,” said Coconino County Recorder Patty Hansen. “That to me would be not correct” because most of the county is rural, not just the part that is Navajo Nation land.

PHOENIX – A prominent health expert expressed worry Wednesday about rising COVID-19 numbers across Arizona, saying the trend is reminiscent of early summer conditions that preceded a spike in cases and rollback of measures to reopen businesses.

“This is a moment to sort of stop and take measure and think hard about: What can we do to prevent this?” said Joshua LaBaer, executive director of Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute, which is tracking case trends across Arizona’s 15 counties, as well as in the state overall and the nation.

LaBaer said 902 new cases were reported Wednesday morning by the Arizona Department of Health Services, and “we haven’t seen that in a while.” One week ago, that daily number of new cases was 786.

Cases are rising in Maricopa, Yuma, Navajo and Coconino counties, among others, he said.

“In terms of numbers of new cases, we are on a path headed toward exponential growth,” LaBaer said. “The tricky thing about exponential growth is that it doesn’t look like it’s growing very fast at first. The numbers day over day don’t look like they’re big changes. But then all of a sudden, it really can take off. And so I am concerned.”