Early voting begins
Early voting has started for the Nov. 3 general election, with some early voting sites open and hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots on their way to voters in Pima County. Find out more about how to cast your ballot before or on Election Day with our voter guide. Learn more about what's on your ballot from AZPM's coverage of the 2020 election.
You can stream Wednesday's vice presidential debate here. The pandemic is again expected to take center stage as the candidates face off.
Senate candidates face off in debate
AZPM The first debate between Republican Martha McSally and Democrat Mark Kelly covered a wide range of topics.
The first was the one on everyone's mind for much of 2020: the COVID-19 pandemic. McSally touted her record in the Senate. Kelly does not have a congressional voting record to point to. But he did point the finger at the White House and the Republican-led Senate as being too slow to react when trying to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Learn more here.. Watch the full debate here..
TUSD approves updated hybrid-learning plan, no official start date
AZPM
The Tucson Unified School District governing board approved a plan Tuesday night to bring students back to schools for hybrid learning, but with no official start date for the plan yet.
Board members disagreed on when to send kids back to school and sought to find a balance between giving teachers and parents enough time to prepare to return to school and waiting to see if Pima County COVID-19 cases decrease.
The plan was approved, and a decision on when to implement it was delayed. Learn more here.
Border Patrol storms humanitarian aid camp, no criminal charges filed
Fronteras Desk
U.S. Border Patrol agents raided a humanitarian aid camp in Southern Arizona on Monday evening in an escalating tension between the federal agency and No More Deaths, a nonprofit organization that was created when the U.S. government couldn’t slow the number of migrant deaths along Arizona’s border.
Advocates rush to register voters after judge extends deadline 18 days
Cronkite News
WASHINGTON – Arizona nonprofits are working “nonstop” to register voters before opponents can overturn a federal judge’s ruling that extended the state’s voter registration deadline from Monday to Oct. 23.
U.S. District Judge Steven Logan agreed with voter advocacy groups that COVID-19 restrictions imposed by the state earlier this year may have cost “possibly tens of thousands of voter registrations” and that the best way to fix that was by extending the deadline.
Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who had originally tried to block the suit, said late Monday that she would not appeal Logan’s ruling. But national Republican groups that had joined the case said through a spokeswoman Tuesday that “we respectfully disagree” with the ruling and would be “moving expeditiously to appeal.”
UA School of Journalism starting diversity scholarship
AZPM
The University of Arizona School of Journalism hosted a webinar Tuesday that focused on how racial and social justice issues are being addressed by the news media in 2020.
The forum promoted a Diversity in Journalism Scholarship honoring Robert Maynard and his wife Nancy. They became the first African Americans to own a major city newspaper, and later created and ran the UA-based Editing Program for Minority Journalists for 20 years.
Pima County 'wall of shame' stays up
AZPM
A Pima County supervisor Tuesday tried to take down the so-called "Wall of Shame," a county web page listing businesses that have been cited for lax enforcement of COVID-19 safety measures such as masks and social distancing.
Republican Steve Christy wants the county to back off on efforts to enforce measures to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Christy said county enforcement has been uneven, and businesses have been unfairly shamed for not following mask and social-distancing requirements.
What Christy called "the snitch line" is a web page where the public can report potentially unsafe business practices. County Chief Medical Officer Dr. Francisco Garcia says county inspectors do everything they can to help a business pass inspection.
"We bend over backwards in fact to try to get to 'yes,' and sometimes we are not able to get there," Garcia said.
Republicans see 'grim' Senate map and edge away from Trump
AP
WASHINGTON — Vulnerable Republicans are increasingly taking careful but clear steps away from President Donald Trump in the final stretch of the 2020 election.
It's a sign of GOP anxiety that their leader’s crisis-to-crisis campaign could bring down Senate candidates across the country. GOP strategists eyeing dire internal polling say the distancing reflects a marked decline in support for Trump over the last 10 days, from his ferocious debate performance through his dramatic return from the hospital to the White House.
The race for the Senate majority centers on four seats Democrats must flip to win.
McSally releases tax returns ahead of Senate debate
AP
PHOENIX — Republican Sen. Martha McSally made just under $288,000 last year and paid an effective tax rate of 22%.
That's according to tax returns she provided Tuesday to The Associated Press ahead of her only debate against Democrat Mark Kelly. McSally says she released five years of tax returns in the interest of transparency and called on Kelly to do the same.
She and her GOP allies have relentlessly criticized Kelly's income sources since he retired from NASA in 2011. A spokesman for Kelly says the retired astronaut has made all required financial disclosures.
Trump halts COVID-19 relief talks until after election
AP
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has called an abrupt end to negotiations with Democrats over additional COVID-19 relief, delaying action until after the election despite ominous warnings from his own Federal Reserve chairman about the deteriorating conditions in the economy.
Trump tweets that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is “not negotiating in good faith” and says he has asked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to direct all his focus before the election into confirming his U.S. Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett. The unexpected turn could be a blow to Trump’s reelection prospects and comes as his administration and campaign are in turmoil.
Agency gives closer look to development outside Grand Canyon
AP
FLAGSTAFF — The public soon will have a chance to weigh in on a request for an easement that would pave the way for development in a tiny town outside the Grand Canyon's South Rim.
Tusayan wouldn't exist without the millions of people who drive through it each year on the way to the national park. An Italian real estate company has been seeking to capitalize on the tourist traffic for decades. Its plans for hundreds of homes, hotels, a cultural center and commercial space are getting a closer look after the U.S. Forest Service agreed to conduct an environmental analysis.
Stilo Development Group USA is seeking access through the Kaibab National Forest to land it owns in Tusayan.
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