In the News
For now, the 2020 Census won't ask respondents, "Is this person a citizen of the United States?" On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court delayed the inclusion of the controversial citizenship question on the Census, calling the justification the Trump administration offered for adding the question "contrived."
The ruling was welcomed by Democrats in Arizona. President Donald Trump said on Twitter he is looking into delaying the Census to allow time for the court to reconsider the issue.
In a statement, Democratic U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego denounced the suggestion of a delay.
PHOENIX - Arizona Democrats celebrated the U.S. Supreme Court's decision Thursday to put a hold on the Trump administration's effort to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.
U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva praised the court's ruling.
"Despite Republican attempts to undermine our democracy & rig the Census against minority communities, #SCOTUS decided to uphold the integrity of both," he said in a tweet.
"I will continue fighting to ensure that every person is counted in the #2020Census."
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court handed a temporary victory Thursday to opponents of a citizenship question on the 2020 Census, saying the government will have to go back and make a better case in lower courts if it wants to include the question.
That could be difficult for the Census Bureau, which had said that it needed a final ruling by the end of June to have enough time to print the millions of Census forms that must be ready for 2020.
The bureau did not comment on next steps Thursday, saying only that it had taken the court's ruling under review.
WASHINGTON – The House voted mostly on party lines Tuesday to approve a bill that would protect millions of "Dreamers" from deportation and give them a pathway to citizenship, a bill Republicans said would only lead to more illegal immigration.
Just seven Republicans crossed the aisle to vote for the bill, which passed Tuesday evening on 237-187 vote. The vote from Arizona's delegation was even more cleanly partisan, with all five Democrats supporting the bill and all four Republicans opposing.
WASHINGTON – The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a bill that aims to give up to 2.5 million undocumented immigrants a pathway to U.S. citizenship.
The legislation – a top priority for the Democratic majority – would offer protections for undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children and others who are currently without permanent legal status.
H.R. 6, called the "American Dream and Promise Act," passed on largely partisan lines by a vote of 237-187. Seven Republicans broke ranks to side with Democrats to support the bill.
PHOENIX – One Arizona congressman said the American Dream and Promise Act was "right" and "smart." Another called it "disastrous."
As could be expected, local reaction to Tuesday's vote on the HR 6 immigration bill was split along party lines.
Democratic Rep. Greg Stanton spoke on the floor in favor of the legislation before the House approved it by a 237-187 margin.
Despite what party leaders say, ordinary people care about Trump's lawbreaking.
Until quite recently, Democratic House leaders justified their refusal to begin an inquiry into impeaching Donald Trump by saying that it wasn't something their rank-and-file voters cared about. "I can tell you I never hear somebody bring up the Mueller report," Representative Cheri Bustos, chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in Chicago last month.
U.S. Rep. Greg Stanton, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, said Thursday he now supports opening an impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump, a sign of growing Democratic concern after the release of the special counsel's report.
"This is a conclusion I reached only recently, and not one I reached lightly," Stanton said in a statement released Thursday.
Phoenix and Mesa rank among the top cities in America that would benefit from passage of the American Dream and Promise Act of 2019, according to a new report from the public policy research organization, the Center for American Progress (CAP) in Washington D.C.
The oft-revised and resurrected Dream Act – first introduced in Congress nearly two decades ago but never passed – offers a path to citizenship for 50,000 Dreamers and recipients of two other temporary status programs in Maricopa County, according to the CAP report.
On Wednesday morning, U.S. Rep. Greg Stanton (D-Ariz.) met with the parents of a woman who died in the March 10 Ethiopian Airlines plane crash before questioning the acting administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration about pilot training and the future of the Boeing 737 Max 8 airplane.