Arizona

President Trump’s pardon of controversial Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, scourge of illegal immigrants and a promoter of the “birther” conspiracy theory about Barack Obama, made the front of Sunday’s New York Times. Legal reporter Adam Liptak began the chorus of disapproval with “President Pardon of Arpaio Follows the Law, Yet Challenges It.” Yet the same paper treated another controversial…

New York Times reporter Simon Romero covered the violent aftermath of Tuesday night's Trump rally, as left-wing protesters, many violent, faced off with Trump fans: “Trump Rally in Phoenix Touches Nerves in City As Opposing Sides Meet.” Besides seeming to blame Trump’s “divisive” speech for hot tempers (including assaults on police officers), Romero suggested the police were at fault.

Reacting with horror to President Trump’s Tuesday night rally in Phoenix, on Wednesday’s NBC Today, correspondent Kristen Welker proclaimed: “President Trump is waking up here in Arizona after unleashing a 77-minute fiery and divisive speech here overnight. It was taking aim at his detractors and it was a major reversal after calling on the country to come together just one day earlier.”  

MSNBC’s Hardball host Chris Matthews left viewers on Tuesday night with a rather disturbing image of Matthews grunting and stretching while giving his best Incredible Hulk impression ahead of a Phoenix Trump rally that he insinuated could turn violent. The Atlantic’s Rosie Gray was noting the difference between Trump with a Teleprompter versus without when Matthews interjected that the latter is…

Throughout the day on Tuesday, MSNBC sounded the alarm that President Trump’s planned rally in Phoenix, Arizona could lead to violence. Hour after hour, hosts, pundits, and correspondents hyped “concerns about people’s safety” and the “combustible situation” that was supposedly being created by the presidential visit.

The New York Times’ recently launched Race/Related project produced yet another piece aimed to appeal to the broad social justice warrior faction among its readership: “What Racial Terms Make You Cringe?” The short answer for over-sensitive Times reporters: Any term used in a conservative talking point. Among those “cringing” NYT staffers was immigration-beat reporter and Phoenix bureau chief…

Desperately hyping up any instances of alleged “Islamophobia” it can find, the New York Times on Wednesday covered tensions between students living in a high-rise at the University of Arizona, and the members of an adjacent mosque. There’s not much newsworthy going on, but reporter Fernanda Santos managed to spin it into the lead story of Wednesday’s National section: “University of Arizona…

New York Times Phoenix bureau chief Fernanda Santos gave out surprising praise to Republican Gov. Doug Ducey in Wednesday’s edition -- though it’s less surprising when you realize why. Like her newspaper, Santos has a history of trying to discredit Republicans on illegal immigration. In August 2014, Santos suggested Arizona citizens who showed up to a forum to express concerns about border…

To the relief of sex offenders throughout the state, Arizona Democratic gubernatorial candidate Fred DuVal, during a Tuesday forum at Redemption Church in Gilbert, said that, in the words of an unbylined Washington Free Beacon story, "he is opposed to mandating parental consent for a girl as young as 14 years old to get an abortion." This is a non-story in the establishment press, which made it…

In two weekend stories, the New York Times did its best to discredit Arizona Republicans fighting illegal immigration both on the border and the ballot box. First up, Fernanda Santos's Saturday report, "As Primary Nears, Governor Candidates Turn Eyes to Border." Right off Santos suggested Arizona citizens who showed up to a forum to express concerns about border security were misguided…

There those damn conservatives go again, trying to pass a bill to regulate abortion clinics and maybe save unborn lives in the process. Don't they know that sensible, moderate Republicans like Arizona governor Jan Brewer have had it with their shenanigans and want to get on to business that is less, well, controversial? That, essentially, is the gripe of Fernanda Santos's page A16 story in…

The nature of Arizona's SB 1062 -- a bill to expand the parameters of the state's religious freedom protections -- was "egregiously misrepresented by many of its critics," according to a bipartisan group of constitutional law experts who wrote to Gov. Jan Brewer (R) prior to her Wednesday veto of the bill. By extension, as we've noted in our reporting, the liberal media glommed onto the bill'…

Soon after Arizona governor Jan Brewer vetoed S.B. 1062 -- a Religious Freedom Restoration Act that would have given business people the right to cite religious beliefs when refusing service to homosexuals -- gays and liberals began cheering and celebrating the decision, which received extensive coverage in the three network morning shows. However, many people who disagreed with the veto…

Talking to Democratic Senator Patty Murray during her noontime MSNBC show on Thursday, host Andrea Mitchell gloated over Arizona Governor Jan Brewer vetoing a proposed religious freedom law in the state: "Clearly she was responding to some heavy pressure, economic interests, national economic interests, major corporations, the Super Bowl, Major League Baseball. States cannot take these kinds of…