Plot twist: compromise
Don’t pop the champagne yet ... That's not the border ... And she didn't invent bullshit, she just spreads it.
Minutes after the state Senate passed two House-brewed budgets yesterday, Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed them both.
Yet, things are finally looking up for keeping the state government running.
After the double veto, House Speaker Steve Montenegro introduced the budget that Hobbs says she’ll actually sign. That’s the one she negotiated with the Senate, and the Senate has already approved.
It’s scheduled for a committee vote today, followed by a vote from the full House, hopefully sometime before Tuesday morning, when the state government will shut down in lieu of a budget.
Still, just because the House has finally agreed to hear the Senate budget doesn’t mean it’s a done deal.
Some House Republicans adamantly opposed the Senate budget, and it may need some serious amending before enough House members vote to pass it. In fact, the budget could be unrecognizable by the time it reaches Hobbs’ desk.
House Republicans are skipping the Appropriations Committee — and amendments will come at the last minute from the House floor. That means taxpayers will have zero opportunity to weigh in on the plan before lawmakers vote to spend $17 billion of their money.
The Freedom Caucus particularly hates the spending plan, and some Democrats refuse to support it because of funding earmarked for immigration enforcement.
But as the state moves dangerously close to a government shutdown, Hobbs’ series of vetoes seems to have been the dose of reality Republican leaders in the House needed to stop debating budgets that are dead on arrival to the governor, and start looking at the negotiated compromise budget instead.
“For months, I worked with leaders of both parties, in both chambers, to craft a bipartisan, balanced, and fiscally responsible budget that garnered support from the majority of Senate Republicans,” Hobbs wrote in her budget veto letter. “It's now time for House Republican leadership to set the political games to the side and work with their colleagues in a productive fashion to deliver a bipartisan solution for the people of our state.”
Today, the House Rules Committee will hear the Hobbs/Senate negotiated budget (that’s Budget Version 2.0, for those of you following along). Lawmakers hope to send it to the full House for debate and amendments tonight and take a final vote on the budget as soon as 12:01 a.m. tomorrow.1
The Senate has to approve any final changes before Hobbs signs off.
Meanwhile, Senate President Warren Petersen stands at the ready, having reconvened the Senate after its fake sine die last week.
But the absolute highlight of yesterday’s budget shenanigans had to be Petersen’s floor speech, where he clapped back at the Republicans who’ve criticized him for negotiating with Hobbs on the budget, including David Livingston, the House’s budget leader, who called Petersen a “RINO” on Twitter.
It was a pretty epic rebuke of the political environment and his party-mates at the Capitol.
“It doesn't take competence or courage to pass a budget that only has Rs on it, because that is how you live and achieve and score short term political points. And with the help of shock jocks and troll farms, you can fool some of the people some of the time…” he said. “A few of the inexperienced legislators have been hoodwinked by charlatans. But it has been mind boggling for me to witness experienced legislators allow the emperor to wear no clothes.”2
The last few weeks have been full of budget news, even though the budgeting process started months ago.
In case you’re lost in the budget weeds, here’s a quick timeline of what’s happened so far:
Jan. 17: Gov. Katie Hobbs introduces her budget proposal. Republicans declare it dead on arrival for containing some school voucher reforms.
May 7: The House and Senate announce they’re taking a break to hammer out the budget. They come back intermittently to vote on some bills.
June 11: The House drops budget version 1.0, which it created without negotiating with the governor’s office or Senate (the two other key players of the budget-making process). It outlines $17.3 billion in spending and has a bunch of conservative priorities.
June 17: The Senate drops its $17.6 billion spending plan (budget 2.0). This version is considered the frontrunner because it was actually negotiated.
June 19: The Senate passes its budget, then adjourns for the session as a middle finger to the House.
June 20: House Speaker Steve Montenegro announces the House doesn’t have the votes to pass the Senate budget and says he’ll put up a short-term continuation budget instead. Hobbs announces she’ll veto it.
Tuesday: House Republicans pass the continuation budget (version 3.0).
Wednesday: The Senate says “just kidding” about the adjournment thing and also passes the continuation budget. Hobbs vetoes it. We’re back to budget 2.0.
Tuesday, July 1: The state government shuts down if lawmakers and Hobbs can’t agree to a budget.
(Everywhere but the) Border Patrol: The Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma is taking over a narrow strip of land along the Arizona-Mexico border as part of President Donald Trump’s militarization of the border regions, the New York Times reports. The Arizona strip and another strip in Texas will be the third and fourth “national defense areas” the Trump administration established in order to charge migrants with the crime of crossing them, and allow the military to pick migrants up and hand them over to Border Patrol agents. Meanwhile, as the number of migrants attempting to cross the border plummets, Border Patrol agents are increasingly straying north, the Associated Press reports. Agents already have broad authority to conduct warrantless vehicle searches within 100 miles of an international border — including any coastlines — an area that includes roughly two-thirds of the U.S. population, per the ACLU.
There’s gold in them ‘burgs: There’s a new 330-acre gold mine going up on public land just outside of Wickenburg, despite some locals’ concerns that not enough research was done on the potential impact to Sonoran Desert tortoises and the water quality and supply, per the Republic’s Joan Meiners.
A decision you Musk be happy about: A federal judge said the Trump administration must send money that Congress approved for electric vehicle charging infrastructure to 14 states, including Arizona, per The Hill. The administration can still appeal.
Unfortunately, Congress has not decided to send money to news organizations, so no judge can enforce that decision. It’s up to you to fund the local, independent news organizations that you want to survive.
More Obama, less Biden: Former Ruben Gallego strategist Rebecca Kirszner Katz penned an oped in the New York Times about the Democratic establishment’s failure to embrace progressive Zohran Mamdani, who won the New York City mayoral primary on Tuesday. The party stifles some of its most exciting new voices and dismisses their victories as flukes, she writes, including by writing off Gallego early on.
“Although Mr. Gallego was the only Democratic candidate in the race, we struggled to get buy-in early on from the Washington Democratic establishment. It saw his blunt-spoken style as too risky for Arizona. He went on to outperform Kamala Harris by eight points,” she writes.
Fight the power: Mobile home residents can see outrageous spikes in their electric bills thanks to “sub-metering,” which is when the utility only monitors the mobile home community’s total power and lets the landlord divvy up the costs. As the Arizona Luminaria’s Yana Kunichoff explains in a great feature piece, that means the users aren’t actually customers of the utility, so they can’t get answers about why their bills are spiking. And when electricity is billed as part of rent, people can get evicted for not paying.
“We’re talking about hundreds and thousands of people that are being overbilled,” Tucson-area organizer Kim Lucas said. “To me, this is unconscionable, predatory elder abuse.”
When Kari Lake went before the House Foreign Affairs Committee yesterday to talk about her new role as a senior advisor to the U.S. Agency for Global Media, it was mostly a very friendly hearing.
After all, the hearing was titled, “Spies, Lies, and Mismanagement: Examining the U.S. Agency for Global Media’s Downfall.” They even let Republican U.S. Rep. Abe Hamadeh, who is not actually on the committee, sit in and apologize for all Lake has had to endure since her first election was stolen from her.
“We all know what happened with our elections in 2020 and 2022 and the tentacles of the Chinese Communist Party,” he told her.3
But we did enjoy watching Democratic U.S. Rep. Greg Stanton tear into her history of lying and spreading conspiracies — still, to this day — about her multiple electoral losses.
“Ms. Lake, your new role requires you to tell the truth. For decades, whenever authoritarians and dictators suppressed their people and claimed victory in fraudulent elections, Voice of America countered their lies.
I can’t imagine how people fighting for democracy today around the world can trust someone who lied so shamelessly about her own election.
Ms. Lake, to regain a semblance of your credibility, are you finally ready to admit you lost the 2022 Arizona governor election?”
We’ll give you three guesses as to her reply. Good guess! It did start with Lake continuing to insist our elections are rigged and the courts are, too.
“I just have one more question for you: You lost to Governor (Katie) Hobbs in 2022. You lost badly to Senator (Ruben) Gallego in 2024. Well, Arizona has another election for governor next year. Can you do us all a favor and run again?” Stanton quipped.
The always-classy Lake used her time to bring up an old, homophobic smear campaign about Stanton.
“I remember the stories about you when you said you have a gay lover. … Those kind of lies could be broadcast today,” she said, broadcasting those lies in a congressional hearing.
As 12News reporter Brahm Resnik smartly notes — the “stories” Lake remembers don’t exist because no reporters actually wrote about that because it’s a bullshit homophobic rumor, and broadcasting it would be irresponsible.4
Lawmakers objected to Lake’s attempted smear, but the chairman stepped in to say he’d allow her comments because Lake specifically noted that those claims are untrue.
“That’s what (Stanton) says,” Lake cut in.
To ensure that bills aren’t slammed through the process in one day, the state Constitution requires lawmakers to wait three days before passing a bill (except with a supermajority vote). Voting just after midnight is one of the many workarounds lawmakers use to slam bills through the process.
We’re thinking that “troll farm” comment is a reference to Sen. Jake Hoffman’s company that spreads mass disinformation. And we’d humbly suggest that if Petersen really wants to stick it to Hoffman, he should put the Don Bolles monument bill up for a vote in the Senate.
Notice Hamadeh didn’t mention the 2024 election. He won his congressional seat in 2024 — the same year Lake lost her bid for U.S. Senate.
Skari Lakes continued existence as a life-form is a poisonous farce. I see her head...I think yard tools, construction implements, and the ever popular Louisville Slugger. Don't bunt into a squeeze play...go for the bleachers.
You can also trim a day off of the three day read constitutional mandate by striking the bill onto a bill in committee that was already first read.