Fighting for fairness

A Q&A with Kelley Dupps … The House's secret basement studio … And taking a cue from Prince.

Kelley Dupps has spent 25 years advocating, but not always for the same cause.

He’s currently the inclusive policy director at the Education Action Alliance, which used to be GLSEN Arizona, and pushes for inclusivity in education.

Before that, Dupps worked for Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the U.S. Humane Society and Planned Parenthood Arizona — right up until the state Supreme Court ruled against the group and reinstated the territorial-era abortion ban.

For Dupps, there’s one thing that ties all those things together: “a profound sense of fairness.”

“I often heard as a young person, 'Well, the world's not fair.’ And my response is, ‘Well, it should be,’” he said. “As a trans person, I belong to a marginalized community, but also understanding the privilege that I have as a white person — really bringing those intersections to these spaces is really important.“

We cover a lot more ground in Q&As than what makes it into the newsletter, but you can watch the whole thing on YouTube.

And as a transgender man, Dupps has firsthand experience with the kinds of decisions politicians are making right now. The gender on his passport doesn't reflect his gender identity, “so (he’s) unable to really travel outside of the country.”

His work in inclusivity goes beyond moves to ban pride flags or books with gay couples in classrooms — it’s fighting the larger narrative that things like that create.

“What we often hear is that transgender young people are threats, right? That they are threats in bathrooms, school teams, locker rooms. … (But) transgender youth are young people who are just trying to live their lives just like any other young person,” Dupps said. “It's creating that normalcy of trusting and believing in people who are who they say they are, and not having to question everything.”

He’s seen nearly a decade of the Arizona Legislature, from when they first started pushing bathroom bills to keep transgender students from using the bathroom they want, to now, when transgender advocates have started avoiding the Capitol for fear of their safety amid the deluge of anti-LGBTQ+ bills this year.

But Dupps doesn’t think politicians actually care about where transgender people use the bathroom.

“It's really a political grift that politicians can pull out that bathroom ban and say, ‘Look, I tried to push this extreme regulation on this very small minority of students, and you should reelect me,’” he said. “It's exploiting that fear and unknown to folks who may not have met a transgender person or understand what it's like to be a transgender student.”

Like we always do with these Q&As, we asked Dupps five “fun” questions, which aren’t necessarily fun, but are at least less heavy than the main interview.

Q: What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever seen a school board do?

A: Mesa Public Schools’ gender dysphoria policy.

Q: Who's your current favorite politician?

A: Dupps said “politicians are not my favorite people,” but he can get on board with Democratic Rep. Brian Garcia and Pete Buttigieg.

Q: Who was the first queer icon that caught your attention?

A: Harvey Milk and Allen Ginsberg.

Q: What's your favorite news story you’ve been quoted in?

A: Dupps doesn’t have a specific story, so we’re picking our recent story about the online age-verification porn law taking effect soon, which LGBTQ+ advocates warn could ban non-pornographic material.

“The title of the bill and fanfare of the bill don't always take into account what else gets swept into the bill,” he said.

Q: What’s the weirdest or most unexpected place you've had a great political conversation?

A: West Palm Beach, Florida. Dupps canvassed there during John Kerry’s presidential bid, and spoke to voters at a trailer park where people would open their doors with guns.

“It works when you talk to people and when you engage them, and you say, ‘Hey, tell me about why you vote.’ … You get to understand people at a different level. It's that engagement that, for me, like, yes, I want you to vote my way, but I just want you to vote. And if it means you're voting the opposite direction from me, well then, welcome to America.”

Your tax dollars at work: House Speaker Steve Montenegro authorized building a new $630,000 recording studio in the House basement and spending another $115,000 a year for a video producer, the Republic’s Mary Jo Pitzl discovered through public records. Montenegro said the money came out of last year’s budget, and he spent it to provide lawmakers "a reliable, professional space to communicate directly with the people they represent.” It opened in late June and has an 18-foot-by-eight-foot LED screen where lawmakers can choose from a pre-approved folder of pictures for video backgrounds, like a spiffy flag display you can see in Republican Reps. Selina Bliss and Quang Nguyen’s legislative wrap-up video.

Hobbs wants payback: Gov. Katie Hobbs wants the feds to reimburse Arizona for nearly $200 million that then-Gov. Doug Ducey spent on a storage container border wall, Capitol scribe Howie Fischer writes. There’s $10 billion in Trump’s spending bill for state-level border security measures, which Texas senators got into the federal bill to reimburse the $11 billion they said Texas has spent on border measures. Arizona has yet to be reimbursed for the $512 million in border spending Hobbs requested from the Biden administration in 2023.

Humanitarians to hostages: Two Tucson humanitarian-aid volunteers allege plain-clothed Homeland Security Investigations agents pointed assault rifles at them and detained them on the Arizona side of the border wall in March, per the Daily Star’s Emily Bregel. The duo thought the agents were border vigilantes and filed a court claim against ICE seeking about $540,000 for emotional damage and attorneys’ fees.

Hands off the cybertrucks: Far-right Republican Sen. Jake Hoffman successfully championed getting a measure on the 2026 ballot that bars state and local governments from imposing taxes “based on the vehicle miles traveled,” and it could hinder future road projects, Fischer reports. Electric car drivers don’t pay the 18-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax that goes toward road maintenance, but Hoffman (who drives a Tesla Cybertruck) said, “The ability to tax is the ability to control by force.”

Some humbling: 300,000 Arizonans are bracing to lose Medicaid benefits under Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” and recipients have until the end of 2026 to comply with new work requirements and eligibility determinations, the Arizona Mirror’s Caitlin Sievers reports. Will Humble, executive director of the Arizona Public Health Association, is telling advocates not to panic, but to use the time before all the cuts go into effect to get Congress to reverse the cuts. Rural hospitals will lose the most from tax cuts for providers, and Humble thinks they’ll aggressively lobby to get the cuts reversed. Gila, Navajo and Apache counties rely the most on state Medicaid, and rural hospitals already operate at a 1-2% profit margin because of uninsured patients, Peter Aleshire writes for the Payson Roundup.

Powering down: Arizona’s largest electric utility provider said Phoenix doesn’t have the infrastructure to support the energy required from data centers consuming electricity and water 24/7, and is turning away new data center customers, AZFamily reports. APS saw its highest energy demand ever last summer, and Phoenix’s City Council recently passed an ordinance to regulate where data centers can set up shop.

Push this button to keep journalism powered up 24/7.

Poor taste: Maricopa County Recorder chief of staff Sam Stone took to Twitter to joke about using a missile to kill a New York pro-Palestine activist, the Phoenix New Times’ TJ L'Heureux reports. Mahmoud Khalil is suing the Trump administration for $20 million or “an official apology” after he was detained in Louisiana for 104 days for pro-Palestine activism. Stone asked: “Can we send him an Official Hellfire Missile instead?” He also tweeted after the Jan. 6 riots that “Political violence is not acceptable.”

During the fallout of this year’s budget chaos, some Senate Republicans sided with the House GOP after they crafted a rogue budget plan without negotiating with the governor and pushed the state to the brink of a shutdown.

That group of Senate Republicans included Majority Leader Sen. Janae Shamp. That is, former majority leader.

The day the Legislature adjourned, Shamp announced on Twitter that Sen. John Kavanagh, who spearheaded the Senate’s budget, would take over as majority leader.

The position comes with setting caucus priorities and keeping the caucus in line, and Shamp said Senate Republicans “wanted a Majority Leader who would champion the process and product and they have the absolute right to get what they want.”

Don’t worry too much about Shamp, though. She’s already updated her Twitter display name to “AZ Senator Formerly Known as Majority Leader,” which is honestly more grace than most politicians show after a demotion.