Tag: arizona

Immediate Manhunt Underway in Arizona for Man Who Threatened to Shoot Trump During his Southern Border Visit

Authorities in Arizona have announced an urgent manhunt for a man who allegedly threatened to shoot former President Donald Trump during his visit to the southern border on Thursday.

Ronald Lee Syrvud is wanted for a reported assassination attempt plot in Cochise County, Arizona where Trump is scheduled to visit.

According to police, the 66-year-old has multiple warrants out for his arrest in two states for separate charges. He has a warrant in Wisconsin for a DUI and failing to appear in court and a warrant in Arizona for failing to register as a sex offender and a felony hit and run.

Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels informed the Daily Mail that authorities have increased security ahead of Trump’s speech. He said that the decision was “based on the threats made” and due to the speech taking place “in an open venue.”

Syrvud is said to be six feet tall, weighing in at 220 pounds and wears glasses. His last known address is in Benson, Arizona.

Dannels told the outlet that the threats were received via social media and was unsure about the exact nature of the threats.

“We have zero tolerance for any kind of threats or intents of violence, so we find him. He’ll go to jail,” said Dannels. “He’s a registered sex offender here in Cochise County, and we were looking for him. He’s out of compliance as part of his violations. So we’re looking for him on that.”

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DOD defies order to clean up ‘forever chemicals’ in Arizona

In Dr. Strangelove, the fictitious base commander Jack D. Ripper orders a first-strike nuclear attack on the Soviet Union to enact revenge for contaminating American water to “impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.” The satirical film poked fun at rampant Cold War conspiracy theories about fluoridating our water supply. But as it turns out, America’s water was being contaminated — not by the Russians, but by the Pentagon.

Not long after American audiences packed into theaters to watch the bleak Cold War comedy, the Department of Defense ramped up its use of a fire suppressant called AFFF, knowingly contaminating the drinking water of millions of Americans.

Now, the Department of Defense is refusing to take accountability.

This week, the Air Force claimed it has no legal obligation to comply with an order from the Environmental Protection Agency in May to abate the threat of “forever chemicals” to the drinking water of Tucson, Arizona. The EPA order required the Air Force to create a system designed to treat high levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — synthetic chemicals known as PFAS that are linked to weakened immunity and other health risks — in drinking water, estimated to cost $25 million.

Testing at the Tucson International Airport Area Superfund Site has revealed PFAS levels of up to 5,300 times beyond the drinkable limit, which is “likely to enter into the Tucson public water system,” according to the EPA. These chemicals likely originated from the use of AFFF at airports and military sites, such as nearby Davis-Monthan Air Force Base and Morris Air National Guard Base.

The EPA also identified other chemicals that migrated into the groundwater from a weapons manufacturing facility just south of Tucson operated by RTX (formerly known as Raytheon).

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RNC Asks Supreme Court to Reinstate Arizona’s Citizenship Check Voting Laws

The Republican National Committee (RNC) is asking on the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate an Arizona law requiring voters to prove their U.S. citizenship for the upcoming presidential election.

In an application for emergency relief filed on Aug. 8, the RNC asked Justice Elena Kagan to block a previous lower-court ruling that put the state law on hold.

The Committee centered much of its filing around how the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals handled the matter.

The laws at the center of the debate are H.B. 2492 and H.B. 2243—collectively known as the “Voting Laws”—which were passed by the Arizona Legislature in 2022.

Among other things, they require that people who register to vote in Arizona using a state form provide “satisfactory” proof of citizenship or residency, such as a birth certificate, to be eligible to vote.

The laws also require individuals to include their state or country of birth and mandate that counties conduct citizenship checks and remove non-citizens from the rolls.

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Election 2024: Arizona and Michigan Train Clerks To Report AI Deepfakes To Law Enforcement

The AI (and specifically, deepfakes) panic is playing a prominent role in this US election campaign, with the states of Arizona and Michigan introducing a scheme to train election clerks in identifying content branded as such.

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes and Michigan and Minnesota counterparts Jocelyn Benson and Steve Simon, all three Democrats, are among those pushing an initiative called the Artificial Intelligence Task Force, launched by the NewDEAL Forum.

NewDEAL Forum is a Washington-based NGO whose board is populated by Democrat-associated figures, and which states it set out to “defend democracy” by developing tools and methods to help election officials and voters not only identify but also flag “malicious AI-generated activity” like deepfakes and “misinformation.”

Arizona and Michigan are considered to be swing states and there this effort is happening in the form of tabletop exercises that teach participants how to inform law enforcement and first responders about flagged content.

That’s not the only recently launched “project:” there’s liberal voting rights and media Democracy Docket platform, which is quoting Jocelyn Benson as saying that Michigan now has a law making “knowingly distributing materially-deceptive deep fakes” a felony.

But this applies only if this activity is seen as intending to harm a candidate’s reputation or chance at success, the Michigan secretary of state explained. However, it wasn’t immediately clear how transparent and precise the rules around determining the intent behind a deep fake are.

If applied arbitrarily, such legislation could catch a lot of things in its net – like satire and parody.

And it’s not an insignificant distinction when talking about AI, and deepfakes for that matter, since both have been around for a while, the latter notably in the entertainment industry.

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Hillary Attorney Marc Elias Backs Mysterious News Site Asking Arizona Regulators to Hide Campaign Finance Disclosures – Site Believed to be Funded by Democrat Super PAC to Promote Democrats

A Marc Elias-backed media organization is asking Arizona regulators to ensure that it is not subject to campaign finance disclosures despite the site’s leftwing tilt, ties to the Democratic party, and promotion of candidates through social media advertisements.

This reporting comes as Trump holds a steady lead over Biden in the state, and Democrats are expected to pull more dirty tricks in another election.

Per Semafor:

Star Spangled Media operates a series of left-leaning websites including the Morning Mirror, a difficult-to-find, barebones blog that for the last few months has periodically published a few unbylined stories about seemingly random topics. Its “About Us” page simply reads: “Welcome to the Morning Mirror—where reliability meets fresh insight. Stay informed with us as we deliver on the matters that impact your life.”

Over the last few weeks, Star Spangled Media has started spending a modest amount to boost Morning Mirror stories on Facebook that tout the pro-abortion rights records of local Democratic candidates running for Michigan House seats.

The site is low on content, but it has the backing of the law firm led by Marc Elias, perhaps the Democratic Party’s best known elections litigator and a central player in 2024’s politics. And Elias’ law firm is moving to ensure the odd blog is treated as a journalistic operation, not a political one.

In a letter to the state’s campaign finance regulator, the Arizona Citizens Clean Election Commission, in late May, Jonathan S. Berkon, an attorney at the Elias Group, asked the state finance regulator to opine on whether the state’s campaign finance law applies to Star Spangled Media. The company’s activities, argued Berkon, do not constitute campaign media spending, and it shouldn’t have to report extensive financial info to state or federal campaign finance regulators.

Similar to this website, Arizona is also home to far-left nonprofit propaganda rag Arizona Mirror, which is funded by the Obama and Soros-tied Hopewell Fund.

While Star Spangled Media and its Morning Mirror are for-profit companies, the parent company does take money in the form of grants “from nonprofit organizations that are interested in funding the type of news coverage that Star Spangled Media undertakes and building an audience for the news coverage via targeted advertising,” Elias attorney Jonathan S. Berkon admits in his letter to the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission.

According to Berkon, these nonprofit grants are “treated like any other revenue derived from a commercial transaction.”

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Judge Rules Rancher George Alan Kelly Who Allegedly Killed Illegal Immigrant on His Property Can’t be Retried for Murder

Arizona rancher George Alan Kelly, 75, will not face a retrial for the alleged killing of Gabriel Cuen-Buitimea, a Mexican national found dead on the elder’s property in January 2023. 

The New York Post reported that Santa Cruz County Superior Court Judge Thomas Fink made the decisive ruling on Tuesday, denying the prosecution’s request to keep the case open.

Kelly’s case sparked an intense debate over border security and property rights.

It initially ended in a mistrial in April when jurors failed to reach a verdict, Resist the Mainstream previously reported.

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Arizona authorities investigating theft of device to access vote tabulators

Arizona authorities on Tuesday said they were investigating whether a 27-year-old temporary election worker in the state’s largest county had political motivations when he stole a fob that would allow him access to vote tabulators just before the July 30 primary.

“This is not your average theft,” Maricopa County Sheriff Russ Skinner said at a news conference in Phoenix, adding that he had no information yet on the suspect’s beliefs.

Skinner said authorities were reviewing Walter Ringfield’s social media feeds and phone to determine whether he was working with anyone when he took the small black fob that allows access to the tabulators used in the county, which has been the subject of election conspiracy theories ever since President Joe Biden narrowly beat former President Donald Trump in the state four years ago.

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Arizona Governor Signs Bill To Allow Workers’ Compensation For MDMA Treatment, Despite Vetoing Psilocybin Proposal

The governor of Arizona has signed a bill into law that would allow firefighters and peace officers with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to get workers’ compensation coverage for MDMA therapy if it is federally legalized.

While Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) vetoed a separate proposal to legalize psilocybin service centers this week, she gave final approval on Tuesday to legislation that would authorize the Industrial Commission of Arizona to provide public safety officials who have PTSD with compensation for a one-course treatment of MDMA if the drug is approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The measure is being enacted weeks after an FDA advisory committee recommended against approving a new drug application for MDMA-assisted therapy, drawing criticism from advocates and certain lawmakers, including a GOP congressman who personally benefitted from psychedelic treatment.

The Arizona bill from Sen. David Gowan (R) is fairly limited in its scope, especially compared to the psychedelics services legislation the governor vetoed this week. Not only would it require FDA approval of MDMA, but it also doesn’t create a framework for therapeutic administration. It simply allows officials to approve workers compensation for a course of MDMA-assisted treatment sessions.

“If an independent medical examination reveals a treatment protocol of midomafetamine is deemed a reasonable and necessary treatment and follows the treatment guidelines established by the Industrial Commission of Arizona, workers’ compensation coverage may include on complete course of a treatment protocol of midomafetamine as prescribed by a psychiatrist,” the bill text says.

The commission would also be required to submit a report about the costs of the MDMA treatment to the Joint Legislative Budget Committee each year starting on or before January 1, 2026.

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Arizona’s Democratic Governor Vetoes Bill To Legalize Psilocybin Service Centers

The Democratic governor of Arizona has vetoed a bill to legalize psilocybin service centers where people could receive the psychedelic in a medically supervised setting.

Less than a week after lawmakers gave final approval to the legislation, Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) rejected it on Tuesday, arguing that while the psychedelic may hold therapeutic potential, “we do not yet have the evidence needed to support widespread clinical expansion.”

“Arizonans with depression and PTSD deserve access to treatments that may be seen as outside the mainstream, but they should not be the subject of experiments for unproven therapies with a lack of appropriate guardrails,” the governor said in a veto message.

She also said that the bill’s estimated cost is $400,000 per year, which wasn’t accounted for in the budget.

Under the now-vetoed legislation, the Department of Human Services (DHS) would have been authorized to license psilocybin-assisted therapy centers in the state, where trained facilitators could have administered the psychedelic.

The measure would have significantly expanded on Arizona’s existing research-focused psychedelics law that provides $5 million in annual funding to support studies into psilocybin therapy.

Hobbs cited that research funding in her statement, saying the goal is to “ensure that those who seek psilocybin treatment are doing so confidently and safely under proper supervision of qualified professionals with documented and verified research to support the treatment.”

She said that money “will be allowed to continue with this year’s budget,” with a separate funding bill she signed into law on Tuesday protecting those dollars, which are exempt from lapsing appropriations provisions.

The vetoed proposal, meanwhile, would have established an Arizona Psilocybin Advisory Board, comprised of members appointed by the governor and legislative leaders. Representatives of the attorney general’s office and DHS, as well as military veterans, first responders, scientists with experience with psilocybin and physicians would have been among the members.

The board would have been responsible for establishing training criteria for psilocybin service center staff, making recommendations on the implementation of the law, and studying the science and policy developments related to psychedelics.

Sen. T. J. Shope (R), the bill’s sponsor, told The Center Square that the veto is a “disappointing result after months of hard work and the overwhelming bipartisan support this received in both houses of the Legislature this year.”

The senator added that if lawmakers were still in session, he’d be pushing for a vote to override the veto, but he’ll have to “settle for trying again next year.”

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‘Can you take the dogs?’ Apache County deputy shoots 7 dogs that were abandoned and the county had no place for them

The deputy knew it was going to be bad.

“This is going to suck,” the bodycam records him saying.

He had corralled seven dogs that had been abandoned into a fenced-off area on their owners property.

And then he shot them, loaded their bodies into a truck and left them near a set of railroad tracks.

The incident happened in September 2023 in Adamana, an unincorporated community in Apache County about 26 miles northeast of Holbrook. The county doesn’t have animal control services and residents often complain about a problem with wild and stray dogs; one candidate for sheriff even has campaigned on a platform of dealing with the county’s abandoned dog problem.

The absence of animal control services in Apache County means that when there are dog issues, they’re often referred to a sheriff’s department whose policy is to try and place them with adoptive agencies. And sometimes, they can’t.

According to the deputy’s report, the couple that owned the dogs was going through a divorce and left the property with no plans of returning. During one visit, the deputy counted 10 dogs on the property. They had no food or water.

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