PHOENIX — Voters in Arizona, sharply divided over which candidates should represent them, found broad agreement Tuesday on a different matter — those candidates should not take office propelled by major sums of undisclosed money.

That was the message sent by an emphatic victory for a ballot measure to curb undisclosed spending in political races, sometimes referred to as “dark money.” The money is veiled because it travels through nonprofits, which are exempt under current law from disclosing their donors.

The measure, Proposition 211, requires any group making independent expenditures of at least $50,000 in statewide races or $25,000 in other races to report donors contributing more than $5,000.

Voters favored that idea by a lopsided margin, with about 73 percent backing the measure based on ballots tabulated by Wednesday afternoon. The Associated Press declared the measure a winner. Only uncontested races and a handful of state legislative and judicial contests had wider margins in incomplete results.

The new disclosure rules were embraced despite Republican misinformation about their effects. In a bid to turn voters against the measure, the Arizona GOP falsely warned residents that it “would create a new tax for certain business activities,” according to a sample ballot mailed to voters and obtained by The Washington Post. A spokeswoman for the state party did not respond to a request for comment about the messaging.

Governor Kate Brown
@OregonGovBrown

Justice is not advanced by taking a life, and the state should not be in the business of executing people— even if a terrible crime placed them in prison. Today I am commuting all death sentences in Oregon to life without parole, so we no longer have anyone facing execution here.

The death penalty is immoral. Since taking office in 2015, I have continued Oregon’s moratorium on executions. I am taking this final action for the 17 individuals with death sentences before I leave office to ensure that none of them will be put to death by the state.

Read my full statement: https://oregon.gov/newsroom/Pages/NewsDetail.aspx?newsid=76509

In the latest of a series of unexpected twists and turns, the Broward School Board on Tuesday handed Superintendent Vickie Cartwright her job back — at least temporarily.

The eight members of the nine-member board voted 5-3 to rescind Cartwright’s Nov. 14 termination. That firing came in a late-night vote after the five members appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis terminated her contract in a 5-4 vote. Four of the five are no longer on the board.

The eight board members present at the School Board meeting Tuesday agreed to revisit Cartwright’s performance come Jan. 24, the deadline initially set in late October by the former board for a 90-day improvement plan by Cartwright.

The members also decided to keep the national search for a new superintendent going, in case they end up dismissing Cartwright, 52, next month.

In the latest of a series of unexpected twists and turns, the Broward School Board on Tuesday handed Superintendent Vickie Cartwright her job back — at least temporarily.

The eight members of the nine-member board voted 5-3 to rescind Cartwright’s Nov. 14 termination. That firing came in a late-night vote after the five members appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis terminated her contract in a 5-4 vote. Four of the five are no longer on the board.

The eight board members present at the School Board meeting Tuesday agreed to revisit Cartwright’s performance come Jan. 24, the deadline initially set in late October by the former board for a 90-day improvement plan by Cartwright.

The members also decided to keep the national search for a new superintendent going, in case they end up dismissing Cartwright, 52, next month.

MIAMI (AP) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Tuesday that he plans to petition the state's Supreme Court to convene a grand jury to investigate “any and all wrongdoing” with respect to the COVID-19 vaccines.

The Republican governor, who is often mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2024, gave no specifics on what wrongdoing the panel would investigate, but suggested it would be in part aimed to jogging loose more information about the vaccines.

He made the announcement following a roundtable with Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo and a panel of scientists and physicians, in which some discussion centered on the fact that pharmaceutical companies have not provided their data on the COVID-19 vaccines to independent researchers.

“We’ll be able to get the data whether they want to give it or not,” DeSantis said. “In Florida, it is illegal to mislead and misrepresent, especially when you are talking about the efficacy of a drug.”

Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee to a federal court in Texas, spent much of his career trying to interfere with other people’s sexuality.

A former lawyer at a religious conservative litigation shop, Kacsmaryk denounced, in a 2015 article, a so-called “Sexual Revolution” that began in the 1960s and 1970s, and which “sought public affirmation of the lie that the human person is an autonomous blob of Silly Putty unconstrained by nature or biology, and that marriage, sexuality, gender identity, and even the unborn child must yield to the erotic desires of liberated adults.”

So, in retrospect, it’s unsurprising that Kacsmaryk would be the first federal judge to embrace a challenge to the federal right to birth control after the Supreme Court’s June decision eliminating the right to an abortion.

Last week, Kacsmaryk issued an opinion in Deanda v. Becerra that attacks Title X, a federal program that offers grants to health providers that fund voluntary and confidential family planning services to patients. Federal law requires the Title X program to include “services for adolescents.”

The plaintiff in Deanda is a father who says he is “raising each of his daughters in accordance with Christian teaching on matters of sexuality, which requires unmarried children to "practice abstinence and refrain from sexual intercourse until marriage.” He claims that the program must cease all grants to health providers who do not require patients under age 18 to “obtain parental consent” before receiving Title X-funded medical care.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — An effort to ban most abortions in Iowa was blocked Monday by a state judge who upheld a court decision made three years ago.

Judge Celene Gogerty found there was no process for reversing a permanent injunction that blocked the abortion law in 2019.

Gov. Kim Reynolds said in a statement that she would appeal the decision to the Iowa Supreme Court.

Current state law bans abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, but Reynolds asked the courts to reverse the 2019 decision that blocked a bill she had signed into law the previous year. That law prohibited abortions once cardiac activity can be detected — the “fetal heartbeat” concept — which usually happens around six weeks of pregnancy and is often before many women know they’re pregnant.

Reynolds argued that because of decisions earlier this year by the U.S. Supreme Court and the Iowa Supreme Court that found woman have no constitutional right to abortion, the Iowa judge should reverse the 2019 decision blocking the abortion law.

Steve Vladeck
@steve_vladeck

Ken Paxton has filed *another* lawsuit against a Biden policy (here, an HHS rule barring recipients of federal funding for foster care/adoption services from discriminating on the basis of gender identity, sexual orientation, or same-sex marriage status):

https://texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/images/press/Filed%20New%20SOGI%20Complaint.pdf

The suit was filed in Galveston, where it has a *100%* chance of being assigned to (Trump-appointed) Judge Jeff Brown:

https://txs.uscourts.gov/file/6673/download?token=4ib6qD9Y

Once again, Paxton picked a single-judge division to challenge to a federal policy rather than filing where he actually *is* (Austin).

It's been awhile since I ran the numbers, but this is at least the *21st* lawsuit that Paxton has filed challenging Biden policies in Texas district courts. And the next one he files in Austin (or Houston/Dallas/San Antonio/El Paso) will be the first:

https://supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-58/238509/20220922104355438_22-58%20tsac%20Vladeck%20revised.pdf

The top-ranking Republican in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives asked a court late Friday to prevent voters from filling three vacant seats in February that will determine majority control of the chamber.

Rep. Bryan Cutler of Lancaster, who served as speaker until Nov. 30, asked Commonwealth Court to issue an injunction, naming the Department of State, acting Secretary of State Leigh Chapman and the Allegheny County Elections Board as defendants.

Cutler’s filing came days after his Democratic counterpart as floor leader, Rep. Joanna McClinton of Philadelphia, claimed the mantle of the chamber’s presiding officer and sent the state orders scheduling the elections for Feb. 7.

Helped by redrawn district maps and strength at the top of the ticket in gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races, Democrats won a net of 12 seats in the November election, barely enough to retake control of the House, 102-101, after more than a decade in the minority.

When parents refused to push forward with an open heart surgery for their 6-month-old baby out of concern that remnants of the COVID-19 vaccine would negatively impact the infant, New Zealand courts intervened and pushed the lifesaving operation forward, CNN reported.

The baby, whose only identification is Baby W, had a life-threatening congenital heart defect but — despite the urgency — the parents insisted on delaying his operation until they found a donor without the COVID-19 vaccination, CNN added.

"We don't want blood that is tainted by vaccination. That's the end of the deal — we are fine with anything else these doctors want to do," the father of the child said, according to The Guardian.

With more than 83% of New Zealand's population being vaccinated for COVID-19, the majority of blood, which was needed for the operation, would contain COVID antibodies.

With doctors and the parents unable to come to an agreement, New Zealand's health service, Te Whatu Ora, submitted an application to the High Court in Auckland under the Care of Children Act in late November. They sought temporary guardianship of the infant, which allowed the operation to go forward, according to The Guardian.