25-05-2025
Kris Mayes must drop her case against Arizona's bumbling fake electors
The judge has sent the fake electors' case back to the grand jury. Now, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes needs to call it quits.
The case never should have been brought in the first place. The 'alternate' slate of electors was a dumb Republican stunt that didn't fool anyone.
It's doubtful that the so-called fake electors even thought their plot would work. Were they nuttier than we think?
It's been four years since the original sin. Nobody got hurt, and I'm pretty darn sure I wasn't deprived of my right to vote and to have my vote counted.
Jim McManus, Phoenix
It is graduation time. As a retired teacher with 17 years of experience in Arizona public schools, I worry.
I've witnessed firsthand how unprepared many students are when it comes to managing money. They leave high school knowing how to dissect a frog but not how to make good investments, read a credit-card statement, create a budget or understand interest rates.
That has to change.
We are ill serving our young people and ourselves by failing to provide basic financial education as early as elementary school. Personal finance — budgeting, saving, credit, loans and taxes — should be required before graduation. Arizona's entire economy will benefit from it.
The Legislature should act to make financial literacy a high school graduation requirement. Let's stop sending students into the world financially illiterate.
Why should the children of the wealthy be the only one to know the secret to financial success?
Mary Patton, Tucson
House Speaker Steve Montenegro is blocking the bipartisan Senate Bill 1234 that would define basic standards of care for animals in Arizona. It passed the Senate 22-4 and cleared a House committee, yet Montenegro won't allow a floor vote.
This is not leadership. It's sabotage.
This bill addresses a serious gap in Arizona law exposed by the Chandler 55 case, where dogs endured suffering because food, water and shelter weren't clearly defined.
SB 1234 protects companion animals while explicitly exempting agricultural, working and unhoused individuals' animals. It defines water as suitable for drinking, food as appropriate for the species and fit for consumption, and shelter as natural or artificial that keeps the dog from injury or disease.
By refusing to move this forward, Speaker Montenegro is siding with cruelty over compassion. Is that really the Arizona we want?
The people of Arizona — and their pets — deserve better.
Douglas Abramowitz, Scottsdale
Last week I took a road trip to Manzanar in the Owens Valley of California. It was the site of an internment camp that held more than 120,000 Japanese-American prisoners.
It's a beautiful setting for such a sad chapter in our nation's past.
More letters: Republicans are turning Arizona into a Christian nanny state
Touring the museum brought tears to my eyes, seeing what the inhabitants endured, and how they made the best of the situation.
Some appealed their cases all the way to the Supreme Court, and several won. There's also a short auto tour, passing various sites (gardens, barracks, cemetery). It was a worthwhile trip, and a very relevant history.
Bekke Hess, Bullhead City
Ashli Babbitt was the only person to die during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Which was tragic.
But now there are reports that the Trump Justice Department will pay her family $5 million to settle a lawsuit. That is completely wrong.
If we recall, she was at the door of a hallway that leads to the House floor. The door's window was shattered, and the Capitol police officer stationed there repeatedly warned the rioters — including Babbitt — not to enter.
She ignored those warnings, and the officer shot her.
She is not the 'martyr' that Trump claims her to be; she was a criminal who ignored the law and multiple warnings.
Giving her family any kind of settlement, let alone $5 million, is another attempt by Trump and his minions to rewrite the history of that horrible day, a day instigated by Trump himself, a day designed to overturn a free and fair election.
It was not the 'beautiful day' that Trump calls it. It was an American tragedy saved by Mike Pence's heroic stand against Trump's unconstitutional desires.
Mike McClellan, Gilbert
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Fake electors pulled a dumb stunt. Arizona should let it go | Letters
