Good morning, readers!
The eyes of Arizona’s political world turned to the Capitol yesterday as Gov. Katie Hobbs delivered her fourth (final?) State of the State Address, which you can read all about in today’s edition of the Arizona Agenda.
But there was plenty more going on elsewhere, from the newest chapter of the Project Blue story to the potential arrival of ICE and Border Patrol crews to Arizona cities.
Today, we’re doing a lightning round of the big news in Southern Arizona.
But before we dive in, a quick thank-you for bearing with us as we migrate to a brand-new publishing platform.
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We’ll be working through them all week.
The first raindrops
Democratic U.S Sen. Ruben Gallego got into a Twitter spat with the Border Patrol official who wreaked havoc on the streets of Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis and supposedly Phoenix sometime soon.
Gallego called out Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino, last spotted in the Agenda wearing what was widely described as a Nazi-esque uniform, for bringing a dozen masked, heavily armed federal agents with him as he went to the bathroom at a Target store in St. Paul, Minnesota.
“What US citizen wants to go shopping on a Sunday and see armed masked men walking around?” Gallego said. “Target on a Sunday morning is not a war zone. Treating it like it is creates the tension you see here.”
It’s easy to dismiss a Twitter spat as superficial, but it’s actually at the core of what the Trump administration does in each Democratic-run city it targets.
Each time the Trump administration sends Border Patrol and ICE agents to a city, government camera crews follow them around as they arrest, harass and intimidate migrants, protesters and even people hosting a Halloween parade for kids.
Those videos often surface as propaganda material on the social media accounts of the White House and the Department of Homeland Security.
Don’t be surprised to see a deluge of posts from federal officials that pull video footage from the coming crackdown in Phoenix, and potentially Tucson.
Gallego’s posts on Sunday also signal that he’s trying to lead the official pushback to immigration raids in Arizona.
Last week, he told reporters in Phoenix “there needs to be reforms at ICE” and during his spat with Bovino, Gallego said “when Trump is gone, goons like this will have to be put in check. Stripped of pensions, fired and prosecuted for abuse of power.”
TEP fires back
A week after Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes announced she was contesting an agreement between Tucson Electric Power and the developers of Project Blue, TEP sent out a press release Monday “setting the record straight.”
Mayes pointed to a “loophole created for the developers of this data center to secretly set electricity rates” without oversight by the state’s main energy regulator, the Arizona Corporation Commission.
TEP fired back on Monday, saying the implication that TEP can “set secret rates in back room” is “patently false.”
The utility also said the agreement with the developers was “created specifically to add more consumer protections than required,” in response to Mayes calling the agreement a “dangerous recipe for massive price hikes for Arizona consumers.”
Mayes wants a full evidentiary hearing before the ACC to ensure the commissioners’ decisions are “grounded in a complete record and made in the public interest.”
Cochise County lawmakers keep busy
The opening bell has rung and the legislative session has begun.
Democratic lawmakers from the Tucson area haven’t filed any bills yet. (In fact, as of yesterday evening, Democrats had only filed 17 of the 442 bills at the Capitol)
But Republicans from Cochise County are coming out swinging. The three lawmakers representing Legislative District 19 already introduced more than 60 bills.
Republican Rep. Gail Griffin, the powerful gatekeeper for state water laws, is focusing on issues like water rights in the Willcox active management area and turning brackish groundwater into potable water, which officials would need to figure out if they try to lean on desalination to solve the state’s water woes.
She also threw in a piece of legislation asking U.S. Congress to would block foreign governments “operating under communist or authoritarian systems” from owning real property in the U.S.
Republican Rep. Lupe Diaz has a similar bill in the works, but his focuses on the governments of China, Iran, North Korea and Russia specifically. Another one of his bills would block companies based in China from contracting with state agencies.
And Diaz is going after the Arizona Attorney General’s Office. Under his bill, the AG could be held liable for damages if the AG brings a “public nuisance action” that a court finds lacks a reasonable basis.
That “public nuisance” phrase was the basis of Mayes’ lawsuit against Fondomonte, a Saudi-owned alfalfa company that pumped huge amounts of groundwater in La Paz County.
Several of the first bills from Republican Sen. David Gowan deal with death benefits, including spouses of first responders and covering burial costs through workers’ compensation benefits.
Gowan also wants to fund the construction of a new wing of the Arizona State Hospital and require every school to develop a cardiac emergency response plan.
We use our legislative intelligence service, Skywolf, to track bills introduced by lawmakers from Southern Arizona. You can follow along by checking out our tracking list, which automatically updates as each bill makes its way through the legislative process.
IN OTHER NEWS
Pumping the brakes: Gov. Katie Hobbs announced a plan to charge data center companies for the water they use, as well as end $38 million worth of tax breaks for data centers. The announcement comes as data centers are popping up all over the state, including in Marana and Project Blue near Tucson.
“More than a decade ago, we made a strategic decision to grow data centers by creating a tax exemption for them – I voted for it,” Hobbs said. “Now, Arizona is a national leader in this sector. We must ask ourselves: should taxpayers continue subsidizing the data center industry?”
Rallying the team: The Old Pueblo was well-represented at the opening day ceremonies at the state Capitol yesterday — we spotted Tucson Mayor Regina Romero, City Council members Selina Barajas and Miranda Schubert, and Pima County Supervisor Andres Cano in attendance. And University of Arizona basketball coach Tommy Lloyd addressed the crowd of politicians, the Arizona Daily Star’s Bruce Pascoe reports.
"Arizona has all the ingredients to be the best place in the country to attract, develop and retain talent in athletics and academics and in the corporate world," Lloyd said. "But our true competitor, our true competitive advantage, will not be our weather or our geography. It will be our culture. ... It will be whether people believe this is a place where leadership is steady, people are good, institutions are trustworthy and success is pursued the right way.”
A hopeful sign: Fentanyl-related deaths keep trending downward in Pima County, KGUN’s Andrew Christiansen reports. County medical examiner’s records show 90 fewer deaths from fentanyl overdoses in 2024 than the previous year, and provisional data shows a similar drop from 2024 to 2025.
Not enough kids: Amphitheater Public Schools officials are set to ask the district governing board to close four elementary schools — Copper Creek, Donaldson, Nash and Holoway — at the end of the school year, per Tucson Sentinel columnist Blake Morlock. The main culprit is falling birthrates in Arizona, which have dropped 36% since 2007, district officials said.
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Swords into plowshares: The nuclear missile silos near Green Valley were converted (temporarily) into a training ground last week for local firefighters to practice rope rescues in the 146-foot silo, per the Green Valley News. That training could come in handy when people are trapped in places like mines or underground electrical vaults.
WHAT WE’RE LAUGHING AT
Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne backtracked on his criticism of the Trump administration’s $100,000 visa fee for international teachers, apparently after he realized he’ll need President Donald Trump’s endorsement to win another term as superintendent.
It all went down in Elgin, a small town in Santa Cruz County that depends on foreign teachers, the Nogales International’s Graham Krewinghaus reports. The $100,000 fee will make it much harder for rural schools to recruit teachers and Horne told reporters in Elgin last week he opposed the fee.
Apparently, Horne realized that might upset Trump and tried to pull an about-face.
“Following that discussion, Horne approached a Nogales International reporter and asked that he not publish his remarks in opposition to the policy, saying that he would be ‘screwed’ if Trump were to endorse his primary challenger, State Treasurer Kimberly Yee,” Krewinghaus reported.
A few days later, Horne wrote a letter to the editor saying he misunderstood which visa was being discussed. He said most foreign teachers in Arizona use a visa that wouldn’t be affected by the $100,000 fee.
"I apologize for my misstatement. I enthusiastically support all of President Trump's policies on education and am doing everything I can to implement them here in Arizona,” Horne wrote.