Pop quiz

Calling all news nerds … Swinging at 1/100 … And he is the 1%.

Nearly every weekday, we arrive in your inbox with a curated round-up of the most important (and ridiculous) news from Arizona’s political sphere.

So today, we’re checking how closely you’ve been paying attention.

Last week alone, we saw lawmakers trying to get out of speeding tickets, Gov. Katie Hobbs issuing her first veto of the year and state Department of Economic Security employees admitting to accepting bribes.

A lot of other crazy things have happened, and it’s easy to forget about them. So if you can ace this news quiz, we have an Arizona Agenda sticker to send your way.

For the second year in a row, Democrats’ attempts to create an LGBTQ+ license plate were shut down.

Committee chairs refused to hear bills from Rep. Lorena Austin and Sen. Analise Ortiz, both Democrats, that would use the funds from LGBTQ+ plates to sponsor college scholarships for LGBTQ+ students.

Equality Maricopa, the group behind the scholarship program, has already raised the $32,000 needed for the Legislature to approve the rollout, per Lookout’s Tori Gantz.

Austin tried last week to amend the provision onto a separate bill. It failed. They tried again yesterday to amend the provision onto a bill to allow vanity license plates for sororities and fraternities, to no avail.

On the bright side, the same bill to create sorority and fraternity plates would also allow plates to fund 988 suicide prevention. That’s the suicide and crisis lifeline number. And it’s worth mentioning that LGBTQ+ youth are four times more likely to commit suicide than their peers, per the Trevor Project.

Arizona’s Motor Vehicle Division offers dozens of specialty plates for $25. For each plate, $17 goes to the following organizations, depending on what you buy:

• Alice Cooper’s Solid Rock Teen Centers

• Arizona 4-H Youth Foundation

• The Old Town Scottsdale Rodeo Museum

• The Amateur Radio Council of Arizona

• Rotary Clubs of Arizona

• Arizona Sportsmen for Wildlife Conservation

• Arizona Life Coalition (an anti-abortion nonprofit)

For the third year in a row, the Arizona House of Representatives passed legislation allowing a monument on the Capitol lawn honoring murdered journalist Don Bolles.

This year, our little experiment in reality journalism passed by larger margins than ever!

As usual, Republican Rep. Alexander Kolodin took the opportunity to sing a little love song to the modern press corps.

“I hope that when the Arizona Republic writes a story about this bill at the behest of their corporate masters, that they will note that I called out their cowardice,” he said. “And that every day when those sorry excuses for reporters walk past this statue of Don Bolles, something deep within their conscience troubles them and tells them that they’ve fallen so very far short of what we expect of our media.”

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Whatever gets you there, Alex!

At least Charlie Brown tried: Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly vomited words about how Democrats should deal with the Trump administration that, at best, amounted to an attack on Elon Musk while pledging to work with Trump and extolling the virtues of government cuts and deportations. While his responses to KJZZ’s Lauren Gilger’s questions were only marginally informative, the interview was actually a perfect encapsulation of his party’s indecision about what exactly it is they’re doing here.

“You know if you’re swinging at every ball that’s thrown, (chuckles) I think it would be cartoonish because there’s so many out there that you’d be overwhelmed,” he said.

The other kind of pedo: A member of the Avondale City Council who called Tom Hanks a “pedo” last week and got retweeted by Elon Musk is now facing an ethics inquiry from a fellow board member, the Republic’s Shawn Raymundo reports. Jeannette Garcia now claims she was using “pedo” as in the Spanish word for fart, not to imply the actor is a pedophile, which is some kind of QAnon conspiracy in line with many others that she has spread on social media.

When in doubt, tax the poor: The City of Phoenix is considering increasing its sales tax rate by a half-cent to 2.8% to help solve a potential $85 million shortfall in the upcoming fiscal year, ABC15’s Anne Ryman reports. The city blames cutbacks in state-shared revenue and lawmakers’ decision last year to ban cities from imposing sales taxes on rent. The council is aiming for a vote next month.

Saving a few bucks thanks to the rental tax repeal? Consider reinvesting that money in local news by clicking this button today.

The plot of Footloose: Gila River Indian Community Governor Stephen Roe Lewis set a 7 p.m. curfew for people under the age of 18, saying youth crime is on the rise. Last year, he banned dances after a cop was fatally shot while responding to a disturbance at a child’s birthday party, the Associated Press reports.

“The extent of the increase in violent crime was unclear, as was whether one specific incident resulted in the tribe’s decision. The police department and the tribe declined to comment,” the AP wrote.

Cuba is lovely this time of year: The Trump administration pulled back on a plan to hold migrants at Guantanamo Bay, CNN reports. The tents that officials put up in recent weeks don’t have air conditioning, or even electricity, which doesn’t meet detention standards. U.S. officials have housed migrants at Guantanamo Bay in the past, but only people who were picked up at sea. The Trump plan was the first time officials planned to bring migrants from the interior of the U.S. to facilities there.

A deadly arsenal: The Phoenix New Times’ TJ L’Heureux dives into new Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap’s spat with the Republican-led board of supervisors and his loose relationship with the truth, writing that in this battle, Heap’s “arsenal is primarily stocked with bullshit.”

Happy Llama Day to those who celebrate: Ten years ago yesterday, a pair of llamas led police on a llama-speed chase across Phoenix, gripping newsrooms and daytime TV viewers across the nation. Fox10 marked the decennial celebration of Llama Day by reminding us of those simpler times.

After Republican Sen. Jake Hoffman continued to block Gov. Katie Hobbs’ picks to lead almost all state agencies, Hobbs delivered a mean “come at me bro,” saying if “unindicted fake elector Jake Hoffman” wants to be in charge of picking agency directors in Arizona, “then I welcome him into the governor’s race — because that is my job.”

Coincidentally, Hoffman’s name was generously included¹ in a recent Noble Predictive Insights poll, where he came in last place in a hypothetical six-way Republican primary to challenge Hobbs.

Hoffman garnered just 1% of the vote. He was labeled the least electable of the hypothetical field and had the lowest approval ratings of the bunch.

The poll showed that about 70% of voters had never heard of him or had no opinion of him.

Which is surprising, given that every cop in the East Valley apparently knows who he is.

1. Hoffman isn’t running for governor — as far as we know, he’s seeking reelection.