The Daily Agenda: Don't mess with Arizona's beach!
The Daily Agenda: Don't mess with Arizona's beach!
Suddenly, everyone like open borders ... Bossing around the lawmakers ... Choking on food and liberal policies at the same time.
Puerto Peñasco, Sonora, is not, of course, “Arizona’s beach” despite the many clever marketing campaigns aimed at getting that moniker to stick. But at just under four hours away, it is our closest beach.
At least, it was until this morning.
Federal officials shuttered the border at Lukeville, that little plot of land with a gas station along the U.S. Mexico border between Arizona and Rocky Point, saying they needed the manpower elsewhere to keep up with the increasing number of asylum seekers and migrants showing up in the desert.
Now, travelers to and from Rocky Point will have to go through the lesser-traveled parts of Mexico — either an additional two hours out of their way through San Luis, or another four hours out of their way through Nogales and Caborca — to get to “Arizona’s beach.” The feds won’t say how long the closure will last.
Arizona’s politicians are pretty protective of “Arizona’s” beach, and our politicians are mad as hell about the closure.
Gov. Katie Hobbs and Arizona’s U.S. Senators fired off a statement aimed at nobody in particular blaming the federal government.
“This is an unacceptable outcome that further destabilizes our border, risks the safety of our communities, and damages our economy by disrupting trade and tourism,” they wrote, demanding the Biden administration send more resources.
Republicans, meanwhile, are putting the pressure closer to home, calling on Hobbs to deploy the Arizona National Guard to the border to solve the problem. Republican Sen. T.J. Shope on Friday demanded Hobbs deploy the National Guard, saying failure to do so would showcase her “complicity with Biden's irresponsible and dangerous agenda.” The issue is personal for Shope, whose wife was one of many Arizonans in Rocky Point when the sudden closure was announced.
“Forcing Arizonans to travel hours out of their way on routes vulnerable to cartel organizations, terrorists, and other criminals seeking to do harm is completely unacceptable,” Shope said in a press release. “I'm demanding swift action from Hobbs to protect our citizens and our communities.”
Arizona has a long history of sending the National Guard to the border, so Shope’s request to have guard members “federalized” and allow them to man the Lukeville Port of Entry may not sound too far-fetched.
But the guard has only ever served in a support role, usually with Border Patrol, which polices the border, rather than Customs and Border Protection, which handles the legal entry points. The National Guard has never singlehandedly manned a port of entry, as Capitol scribe Howie Fischer points out, and for good reason.
Processing people and goods through the nation’s ports of entry requires intensive training on federal and international law — it’s not like standing in the desert with binoculars and a radio.
So, sending the National Guard to run the Lukeville port, as Republicans want, is a bad plan. And yelling at the federal government to solve the problem, as Democrats are doing, isn’t much of a plan at all. Yet, there’s a pretty obvious compromise that nobody seems to be talking about: Offer up the Arizona National Guard in a support role if the federal government commits to re-opening the Lukeville port.
The bigger problem is Customs and Border Protection has been understaffed for years. Right now, the Morley pedestrian port in Nogales is still closed, beyond its planned reopening date, restricting the flow of people and hurting local businesses that rely on those cross-border shoppers.
Most Arizonans never experience the kind of “chaos at the border” that you see on the nightly national newscasts. Instead, we mostly benefit from our proximity to the border — whether that’s the cultural exchange, the massive economic investment that we receive thanks to the flow of goods and people across the border, or by having access to a low-cost beachfront vacation spot.
With Lukeville closed, other local ports will feel the pressure. More traffic will divert around Arizona. It’ll hurt our economy.
But perhaps losing “our beach” will spark some sort of political compromise and finally force a conversation about “border accessibility” instead of only border security.
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Telling lawmakers what to do: Former Gov. Bruce Babbitt, who signed Arizona’s Groundwater Management Act 45 years ago, took to the Republic’s editorial pages to say his law did a good job protecting urban Arizona, but now it’s time to protect rural Arizona with Gov. Katie Hobbs’ proposed Rural Groundwater Management Act. And the Republic’s editorial board called on lawmakers to speed up the election timeline so that Arizona doesn’t hold up the presidential election and create a “trainwreck,” as could happen if the vote is so close it requires a recount under the state’s new increased recount law. As Republican lawmakers threaten to hold any timeline legislation hostage for other election concessions, the editorial board urged lawmakers to craft a solution “that focuses exclusively on the procedural problem and eschews partisanship.”
They’ve been warned: As a bunch of other states look to copy Arizona’s universal voucher law, the Wall Street Journal warns that in Arizona and other states that have already tried it, the trend is clear: Most new voucher users are already in private school, and now the state is paying for it. Arizona doesn’t keep good data on ESAs but in Iowa and Florida Iowa, which both enacted universal vouchers this year, 60% and 69%, respectively, of new voucher recipients were already in private schools.
A journey of self-discovery: Saying he had found “additional information” about all his anti-abortion activism over the years, Arizona Supreme Court Justice and former Maricopa County prosecutor Bill Montgomery announced he will, in fact, recuse himself from the upcoming case deciding whether Arizona has a total abortion ban or a 15-week abortion ban, KJZZ’s Katherine Davis-Young reports. The reversal came about a month after he refused to recuse himself at Planned Parenthood’s request, and Montgomery didn’t explain what “additional information” changed his mind.
Protecting this kind of free speech: Two activists from Turning Point USA now face criminal charges for harassing and assaulting a queer teacher in October, though there was some mix-up over who, exactly, prosecutors were charging, 12News’ Brahm Resnik reports. Lawmakers are facing an $800 million shortfall in next year’s budget, and Freedom Caucus members, mad about the alleged lack of free speech on campus, are eyeing the universities. Republican Rep. Quang Nguyen is already working on a few bills to punish the universities, Center Square’s Cameron Arcand reports.
"But honestly, hitting the pocket is where it counts, right?” Nguyen
The SNL skit isn’t bad: Most of Arizona’s Republican members of Congress voted against expelling New York Republican U.S. Rep. George Santos, who allegedly stole campaign funds for things like spa treatments and OnlyFans subscriptions and lied about basically everything in his life. Juan Ciscomani and David Schweikert joined the bipartisan 311 yes votes, while Arizona’s other four Republican congressmen, Andy Biggs, Eli Crane, Paul Gosar and Debbie Lesko were among the 114 Republicans who had Santos’ back.
Unlike an OnlyFans subscription, an Arizona Agenda subscription is a totally legit use of campaign funds. Subscribe today, candidates!
Rest in peace: Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor passed away Friday at the age of 93. There are endless angles on her obit, including she paved a path for women on the Supreme Court, the best books about her, the last interview she did with the New York Times, and a profile of her ranch. We noticed the Republic dusted off a piece our former colleague Rachel Leingang wrote before she left the paper more than two years ago, and the Capitol Times is even sending around an advertising opportunity to pay to publish your memories of her. Classy!
We just want to salute Republican U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst from Iowa for finding a way to turn a near-death choking experience into an opportunity to own the libs.
The paragraph beginning "A journey of self-discovery:..." mischaracterized Justice Montgomery's stated reason for recusal. He did not say he found "additional information" about "all his anti-abortion activism over the years." Rather, he said it was "additional information related to the parties and respective counsel" that motivated his recusal. Your paraphrase changes the focus of his reason for recusal from his relationship to the parties involved and their counsel to his relationship to the issue itself.