The Washington Post got its hands on an email exchange in which lawyer Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, “pressed” Republican secretary of state candidate and state Rep. Shawnna Bolick, the wife of Arizona Supreme Court Justice Clint Bolick, to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Arizona.
At this point, the emails aren’t shocking. Thomas sent a form email to House Speaker Rusty Bowers, too, and probably others, though the Post didn’t request beyond a few Arizona lawmakers.
But Bolick’s response to the news is.
Thomas’ email campaign to promote the fringe legal theory that state lawmakers could take the radical step of overturning election results based on claims of fraud that had not been proven in any court and never were proven has been well-documented. It caused a lot of pearl-clutching in March from Washington elites somehow shocked that other Washington elites believed this stuff.
And Bolick hasn’t been shy about her desire to overturn elections she doesn’t like. Immediately after the 2020 election, she sponsored legislation to allow Republicans in the Arizona Legislature to throw out the slate of presidential electors that voters chose in favor of one lawmakers prefer, though she now claims that the bill was just drafted wrong. She was going to make it bipartisan, she swears!
While it’s mildly interesting to learn that the families are friendly and that Clarence Thomas is the godfather to one of the Bolick sons (not the obnxious one from Twitter, but apparently a son who Bolick says is not her biological child)1, the story wasn’t exactly a blockbuster. Thomas sent form letters to officials around the country, including Bolick, who replied with her own form letter urging her to file a complaint with the attorney general, and the two exchanged pleasantries.
“Fun that this came to you! All part of our campaign to help states feel America’s eyes!!!” Thomas wrote.
But in response to the news, Bolick lashed out at the local press corps and her online critics, labeling them “socialists.” Then she posted a picture of her dog tearing up a stuffed animal, saying the Italian greyhound knows that “socialists need to be eradicated.”
For this, Bolick was briefly put in Twitter timeout and forced to remove the tweet, an outrage that Elon Musk will fix, her supporters cried.
The emails were troubling because they show how commonplace the idea of overthrowing election results extrajudicially has become in Republican circles, even among Supreme Court families.
But the tweet shows the ease with which Bolick escalates from justifying stealing an election to justifying eradicating her critics, and that’s a far more troubling prospect.
BREAKING: The New York Times did a data dive into which state’s Republican lawmakers are most likely to believe Donald Trump’s Big Lie. Arizona won.
Sitting to save democracy: Activists in Tucson plan to close down intersections today to protest U.S. Sen Kyrsten Sinema’s support for the filibuster. It’s coordinated with activists in West Virginia, who plan the same against their moderate Democrat U.S. Senator, Joe Manchin.
A different way to die: Frank Atwood, who is set to be executed on June 8, asked to use the renovated gas chamber, but with a different gas (nitrogen) from the one the state wants to use, the Republic’s Jimmy Jenkins reports.
Mom and pop renting a spare bedroom: Foreign investors get rich from leasing whole apartment complexes to re-rent as AirBnbs, putting the squeeze on Tucson and Arizona’s housing market. One such investor thought it was a good idea to explain his business strategy to the Arizona Daily Star’s Carol Ann Alaimo.
Bad news for Blake: Trump is “indefinitely” putting on hold his planned endorsement of Republican U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters, who has been anxiously awaiting the much-needed boost, after the TV personality he endorsed in Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate GOP primary is still locked in an undecided race, CNN reports.
Who’s replacing whom: As great replacement theory motivates mass shootings across the country, the Arizona Daily Star’s Tim Steller reflects on the “absurdity” of the theory from a city like Tucson, which came to be part of Arizona and the U.S. through conquest of Indigenous and Mexicans inhabitants.
“The gradual demographic change happening in the United States today, all under the same American constitutional system, is nothing compared to the conquests and upheavals of relatively recent history here,” Steller writes.
Man remains massively wealthy: Phoenix Suns owner Robert Sarver’s resignation as executive chairman of Western Alliance Bancorporation came after the bank cited him as a potential risk for “negative publicity” and “reputational harm” in public filings, the Republic’s Russ Wiles reports. Sarver is under investigation by the NBA over allegations he made racist and sexist remarks. And despite exiting his roles with the bank, he still has heaps of stock equating to more than $80 million in value, Wiles notes.
So are you for it or against it?: State Rep. Daniel Hernandez and former Sen. Kirsten Engel, the two leading Democrats running in Arizona’s new and competitive 6th Congressional District, which runs along the U.S.-Mexico border, disagreed whether there is a crisis at the border yet called for more border enforcement and agents, but fewer walls, in their debate on Arizona Horizon.
It’s good to be in the lead: Democratic gubernatorial frontrunner Katie Hobbs is dodging the only televised debate of the primary season. Her Dem competitors and Republic columnist Laurie Roberts called her a chicken and noted it doesn’t bode well for her ability to hold her own on a stage with Kari Lake.
Kari works hard, but Stacey works harder: The Republic’s Stacey Barchenger, fresh off her star turn in GOP guv candidate Kari Lake’s campaign video where the former TV anchor accused Barchenger of not reporting on her border plan, reports on the GOP candidates’ border plans in depth (bombing tunnels, militarizing state troops, installing tent cities), followed by the Dem candidates’ border plans (more visas, citizenship for DACA recipients, differing views on Title 42). Then, Barchenger talked with Gov. Doug Ducey, who hit back at Lake’s criticism of him on the campaign trail, a rarity for Ducey, who’s also the chair of the Republican Governors Association. He said Lake had no new border ideas and was “making things up” about his record on immigration. And he said he might endorse in the Republican primary, but it’d be at the “at the time and place of my choosing.”
Prepare to hear way too much about this: While the profiteers behind “2000 Mules” claim their film spurred Yuma County action on voter irregularities, Yuma County Sheriff Leon Wilmot told the Arizona Mirror’s Jerod MacDonald-Evoy that the film has nothing to do with ongoing investigations of voter misconduct cases there. (And to add to the heap of factual problems with the movie, the geolocation data it uses is “misleading,” the Washington Post reports.) And in another piece of news you’ll hear from your most conspiratorial friends, someone somewhere maybe raided a nonprofit of some kind, and that is apparently news, but no, there are not any more details than that, according to right-wing fake newsers.
Hard out there for teachers these days: A Tucson mom allegedly assaulted her kid’s teacher at Da Vinci Tree Academy, injuring the teacher and another child who tried to intervene, the Arizona Daily Star’s Genesis Lara reports.
Water dystopia roundup: It won’t affect your home water usage yet, but the City of Mesa is cutting back on water use at its facilities as the state’s water problem becomes more extreme, 12News reports. Former Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt, who was also once the U.S. Interior Secretary, is calling for the Colorado River compact to be renegotiated to reflect the ongoing drought and overallocations, the Los Angeles Times’ Ian James reports. And in Sonoita, the lack of water could hit residents’ wallets, with the local water company saying it needs to increase rates because their supply is dwindling, the Nogales International’s Angela Gervasi reports.
We swear it was undercounted though: Arizona was not significantly undercounted in the 2020 Census, despite the local belief that the state would have gained a 10th congressional seat as newcomers arrive here in droves, the U.S. Census Bureau said in a follow-up report. The report found some states were overcounted, while a handful — most significantly Arkansas — were undercounted.
We’re sure she cares: The Arizona Republic’s editorial board called on the state Senate to expel Republican Sen. Wendy Rogers over her hateful and conspiracy-laden tweets, saying while she’s previously crossed lines, the “fed boy summer” tweet was “so bereft of decency it can’t be tolerated.”
“The Arizona Senate needs to defend itself, to defend the institution from Rogers’ fevered mind. Her words echo the ravings of far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who tortured the grieving parents of Sandy Hook Elementary School by claiming that shooting was a false flag – that it never happened. Those parents sued Jones for defamation.”
Speaking of the Editorial Board: Elvia Díaz takes over the helm of the Republic’s opinion pages from Phil Boas, who will continue to write columns and remain on the paper’s editorial board. Díaz is the first Latina to serve as editorial page editor in the paper’s history.
About time: A Willem de Kooning painting stolen three decades ago from the University of Arizona’s art museum then recovered by an antiques dealer a few years ago will soon be on display at the Getty in Los Angeles, then at the UA again, the Republic’s Anne Ryman reports.
More than 20 states use same-day voter registration, where a person can sign up to vote on Election Day and then vote that same day. Arizona is not one of them.
But that didn’t stop a bill from Republican Rep. Jake Hoffman that bans same-day voter registration. The bill is waiting for a signature or veto from Gov. Doug Ducey.
As Capitol Media Services’ Howie Fischer notes, the bill will have “no practical effect.” The bill will ban something that does not exist, and future lawmakers could easily remove the ban if they decide to use same-day registration, Fischer writes.
House Bill 2237 passed both chambers on party lines.
In Arizona, you have to be registered 29 days before an election in order to be eligible to vote in it. If you’re not registered, get on it!
A reader sent us this video of Arizona Corporation Commissioner Jim O’Connor diggin’ deep into the back of his skull searching for boogers during a virtual meeting of the commission last week.
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We tried to find the origin of the whole godfather thing. We came up with this LA Times profile of Clint Bolick from 1997, which says Bolick’s “younger son considers as his godfather Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.” There’s also this 2002 Phoenix New Times profile of Bolick by local journalist Amy Silverman, which says “Thomas is godfather to Bolick's younger son.” Though, given these stories are from more than 20 years ago, “younger” probably wouldn’t refer to Bolick’s son who is in college now. We’ve now spent too much time on this, and it doesn’t really matter much.
The booger news made me laugh out loud!