Four more years!

No, not him … Ruben goes Kyrsten on us … And let’s move Agenda HQ to Cochise County.

Hey, reader!

It's been a while since we updated you on our experiment in building a tiny (but mighty) local news organization.

And considering the update is “not great,” we thought we should take a minute to tell you about it.

Why “not great,” you ask?

Well, we’re seeing a concerning number of paid subscribers cancel.

But not for the reasons you might think.

We’re still churning out first-rate newsletters, and people are still loving it. Our number of free subscribers continues to grow at a healthy clip.

But as we near our four-year anniversary, we face a problem: Most credit cards only last three years.

Unsubscribes are a natural part of the newsletter game. People come and people go. The trick is ensuring more people come in than leave (and not taking it personally when people do leave).

Sometimes people unsubscribe because we write something that pisses them off. That’s fair! More often, our unsubscribers leave notes saying they’re moving out of state or cutting back on expenses. Also fair.

Even the unsubscribers are usually nice!

But the number one reason we lose paid subscribers is that credit or debit cards expire.

And lately, that number has spiked.

We knew it would be a problem heading into this summer.

But it still stings — and frankly, it scares the hell out of us.

For the first time ever, we are losing slightly more paid subscriptions than we’re gaining.

And if our newer free readers don’t upgrade to paid subscriptions and replace those whose credit cards expired, we’re gonna be in some trouble.

So we’re once again asking for your support.

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Here’s how you can help

If you’re a paid subscriber: Please take a moment to check if your credit card is about to expire. Here’s a simple explanation of how to do that. And if you’re already logged in, the button below will take you right to the page.

If you’re a free reader: Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. This experiment only works with your support.

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And here’s why you should help

The Agenda has (almost) never put up a paywall.¹ We provide this daily blast of Arizona politics and government news for free to anyone who wants it.

We don’t spam you. We don’t sell your data. We don’t even send you promotional emails (except for occasional business updates like this).

Unlike a lot of “free news” organizations, we don’t rely on ideological philanthropists, corporate donors, billionaire sugar daddies, political PACs masquerading as nonprofits, venture capitalists or private equity firms.

We’re a truly independent local newsletter organization run by a few veteran journalists who took huge risks to leave jobs at corporate newspapers to do something different.

People pay for subscriptions to the Agenda not because they have to, but because they want to support our efforts and strengthen the local news ecosystem.

We get notes like this all the time and they warm our little hearts.

It’s kind of an insane business model.

But so far, it has worked.

In the three-plus years² that we’ve been doing this, we’ve been able to grow the Arizona Agenda and hire more journalists and build cool and exciting new news lanes, including with the Tucson Agenda, and our new weeklies, the Water Agenda, the A.I. Agenda and the Education Agenda.

All of those publications, like the Arizona Agenda, are free to anyone who wants them.

And it’s all possible because of readers like you who value what we do enough to pay for it.

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This model only works if it’s sustainable

But being a scrappy, independent news outlet means we’re always on the edge of collapse.

A single bad decision, a few bad months of bad revenue numbers or a few hundred unsubscribes could put us literally out of business.

Luckily, there’s a simple solution: Implement a hard paywall.

Thousands of people read this email every single day — and have for years — yet they don’t pay for it.³

Isn’t it nice to not run into this paywall all the time?

We’re pretty confident that if we put up a hard paywall, we’d reach an all-time record number of subscribers tomorrow.

Every single newsletter guru we speak to tells us to put up a paywall. They also urge us to raise our prices.

We’ve resisted because we're reporters at heart, and we fundamentally believe that news and information are essential to a functioning democracy. We want it to be free!

But we also have to be realistic.

Unlike most things considered in the public interest — think libraries, fire departments, even the internet — local news doesn’t receive any government handouts or subsidies.

It’s up to you to support the kind of media that you want to see in the world.

If enough of you upgrade to a paid subscription, the Agenda will stay free.

If not, well…

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Still not convinced?

The Agenda is a weird, daily political insider newsletter that helps political outsiders understand and get involved in local politics. We’d humbly suggest that it occupies an important niche in the local news ecosystem and there’s nothing else quite like it in the Grand Canyon State.

But luckily, we don’t actually have to say that — because other media companies have said it for us.

Besides winning the respect of our competition, our reporters have won a host of awards for their work here — including being named Arizona’s “journalist of the year” in two of the three full years that the Agenda has existed.

We’re very proud of that.

We’re more proud of our small role in helping to spur a new era of local independent news outlets.

The Republic is a shell of its former self. Many of the newspapers old-time Arizonans relied on don’t even exist anymore, or exist in name only. And when newsrooms vanish, they take watchdog coverage, institutional memory and civic accountability with them.

We get asked all the time to talk to reporters, activists and students who want to start their own version of the Agenda. And we always make time. Because the local news infrastructure we grew up with is collapsing — and someone has to figure out what comes next.

We don’t think the Agenda is the only answer. But we do think it’s one part of the solution.

We built the Agenda with no institutional backing,⁴ no billionaire funders, and no one telling us what to cover. And it’s still working.

That alone has been enough to give other journalists — especially the ones staring down the next round of layoffs — a little bit of hope.

Hell, it gives us hope. (And we’re pretty jaded.)

But more than all the awards, or the headlines or the calls from people wanting to create their own Agendas, we’re proud of earning your support.

We just show up and write this thing. You readers have made it a success.

Thank you!

Gallego's immigration gambit: Democratic U.S. Sen. Ruben Gallego released a sweeping plan to reform the immigration system by hiring more Border Patrol agents, adopting fentanyl-interdicting technology and reforming the asylum process, per the Associated Press. Congress hasn’t adopted meaningful immigration reform in years, and it shut down a plan led by Gallego’s predecessor, Kyrsten Sinema, which also suggested hiring more Border Patrol agents while toughening asylum rules for migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border. Parts of Gallego’s plan could have bipartisan support, but not so much for other parts, like moves to give legal residency to people here illegally. Meanwhile, a contract for an airline to start deportation flights out of Mesa Gateway Airport started yesterday, ABC15 reports.

A Bigg problem: Arizona gubernatorial contender and U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs’ support for cutting Medicaid benefits for tens of thousands of Arizonans could hurt his election chances, not to mention create serious budgeting issues if he does nab the governor’s spot, the Republic’s Stephanie Murray reports. Biggs was the state Senate president when Arizona expanded Medicaid, but he opposed the effort. More recently, he has supported a temporarily tabled congressional proposal to cut spending to fund tax cuts. Current estimates say Arizona could lose $1.9 billion in funding if the Medicaid cuts go through.

The dark money dilemma: The Arizona Supreme Court agreed to hear a case from Republican groups to shut down the dark money law Arizona’s voters approved in 2022 to require organizations that spend more than $50,000 on a statewide race to disclose donors who give them $5,000 or more, per Capitol scribe Howie Fischer. The Goldwater Institute argues the law violates the free speech clause of the state constitution, but two lower courts have ruled the law is constitutional. The law came from Prop 211 to make independent expenditure groups reveal their donors, but as we wrote last fall, it’s still ridiculously hard to find the source of big campaign donations.

Unlike Arizona’s campaigns, we’re very clear about where our money comes from: the people who support our work through paid subscriptions.

Gress is more: Republican lawmakers sent a bill to Gov. Katie Hobbs’ desk to make hotels publicly alert customers that they house homeless people and offer full refunds to people who don’t want to stay, per the Capitol Times’ Jamar Younger. It’s one of several bills Republican Rep. Matt Gress ran this year that target progressive solutions to homelessness. Meanwhile, Hobbs vetoed Gress' bill to make school districts implement a 90-day public comment period before terminating leases, which he sponsored as a direct response to the Phoenix Elementary School District not renewing its lease with Arizona State University's charter school network, the Republic’s Madeleine Parrish reports. Phoenix Elementary recently closed two schools over declining enrollment and won’t renew its lease with ASU Prep. Gress’ bill would’ve made the district retroactively open public comment for that decision.

Twitter threats: Trump ally Roger Stone said Arizona U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly should be “charged with treason and if convicted executed,” on social media in response to the Senator’s post about Trump raking in money from his crypto coins. Kelly said he’s taking the threat seriously, per KJZZ’s Ben Giles.

“What Roger Stone said is really, really dangerous,” Kelly said. “My wife Gabby Giffords was nearly assassinated – she was shot in the head. Political violence is a real thing, and they’re trying to make it worse.”

Mesa’s tariff-free playground: The customer base for a warehouse in Mesa has exploded this year as companies flock to the foreign-trade zone to store items they don’t have to pay tariffs on until they’re sold, the Wall Street Journal reports. SKU Distribution’s 110,000-square-foot building lets businesses import products tariff-free, and while it only had one customer last year, it’s now full of things like gun safes, ice picks and carabiners from sellers avoiding Trump’s tariffs. Commerce Department data shows Arizona’s foreign-trade zones employ more workers than any other state.

Copper vs. sacred ground: The Trump administration won’t be able to hand over sacred Native American land to a copper mining company after a federal judge temporarily blocked the move, the Republic’s Debra Utacia Krol reports. The plaintiff, grassroots group Apache Stronghold, says the land swap would cause irreparable environmental damage to a 2,200-acre site about 60 miles east of Phoenix. But the Trump administration has prioritized mining in the area to increase domestic mineral production. Now, it’s up to the U.S. Supreme Court to take on the case.

After pro-Palestinian protests swept through college campuses last year, several Arizona lawmakers set out to block them from causing such a ruckus ever again.

That led to months of back-and-forth among lawmakers, and Gov. Katie Hobbs signed a bill last week to clamp down on the encampments that protesters used last year.

It’s been quite a debate.

Some said the protests were anti-semitic and the bill would help Jewish students avoid harassment.

Others said the bill would chill free speech, or that it was so broad that it would pull in everybody from pro-life campaigners to immigrant rights activists.

And behind all of it lurked the Trump administration’s push to arrest international students who protest on campus.

Subscribe to the Education Agenda today (it’s free!), and you’ll get all the ins-and-outs of the debate delivered right to your inbox!

If you’re in the market for a $225,000 hillside home in Willcox, Arizona, you’re in luck.

The Sidewinder Ranch is literally built into the side of a hill and has a stream running through the center of it. But the 40-acre property “needs some work,” 12News’ Kyle Simchuk writes, and snakes are frequent visitors.

The home went viral on Zillow Gone Wild, which wrote, “Looks a little dusty but we can make it work!!!!”

If you’re interested, hit up listing agent Clay Greathouse. Yes, that’s his real name.

1. Yes, we have threatened to put up a paywall a few times, and even did it semi-consistently for a few months in 2024. But we hated doing it and we dropped it after a few strong months of growth. We’re not greedy — we just want to keep this operation alive.

2. Technically, it’s three years, eight months and 25 days since we launched. Or around 815 editions. But who’s counting?

3. Substack breaks down reader activity into categories of zero to five stars. We have more four- and five-star free readers than paid subscribers.

4. We received a $100,000 advance from Substack to launch the Agenda in 2021 as part of a worldwide competition, but we gave them 85% of our revenue for the first year in exchange for that advance. So it was pretty much a wash.