Stay ConnectedHelping you keep up with what matters in Arizona’s political news. Each week we interview politicians, public figures or journalists to break down one local issue and how it affects your life in Arizona.
Coming to you every Wednesday morning, The Gaggle is hosted by The Arizona Republic’s national political reporters Ron Hansen and Stephanie Murray, and is produced by Amanda Luberto.
It's something we can all feel right now at the gas pump, the aisles of the grocery store and just about anywhere you spend money: prices are high.
President Donald Trump's foreign tariffs and the war in Iran have put pressure on American consumers
In addition, the administration's immigration crackdown and higher fees for foreign travelers have turned off tourists from other countries.
This week on The Gaggle, we're joined by an economic expert for a state and nation wide look and the mayor of a small town near the Grand Canyon to talk about how the lack of foreign tourism is impacting them.
Email us! thegaggle@arizonarepublic.com
Leave us a voicemail: 602-444-0804
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Guest: Jim Rounds, Mayor Clarinda Vail
Hosts: Ron Hansen, Stephanie Murray
Producer: Amanda Luberto
Additional audio in this episode comes from C-SPAN
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As we move toward another Fourth of July, it feels especially urgent to revisit the American Revolution through the lives of people who rarely make it into our textbooks or monuments.
Art historian Zara Anishanslin does exactly that by recasting the founding era through the artists — many of them women, enslaved people, and immigrants — who used art, espionage and activism to shape a new nation from unexpected places, including London.
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In my home, the founding era has long been a family affair — something talked through on early‑morning walks to school, road trips to historic sites, and debates about what the nation’s promises actually mean in practice for each new generation.
That personal history is the backdrop for this Outspoken conversation with my son, Blake Burton, a financial crimes analyst and deeply read student of history and philosophy.
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As president of Arizona State University since 2002 and the architect of what he calls a New American University, President Dr. Michael Crow has spent 2 decades trying to design a public institution that aligns itself with the country’s founding promise of government by and for the people — not by and for the already‑privileged few.
In this Outspoken conversation, Crow argues that if America was born in conscious rejection of hereditary power, its universities should be just as intentional about breaking from the exclusionary, class‑bound traditions they inherited from Britain and Europe
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Gov. Katie Hobbs and the Arizona Legislature worked across the aisle for an $18 billion state budget.
It includes the end of tax exemptions for data centers, nearly across the board cutbacks on state agencies, and implementing a historic tax cut that makes Arizona the first state to put President Donald Trump's tax cuts into action.
This week on The Gaggle, we are joined by two state politics reporters for the Arizona Republic to break down what's inside, the most dramatic day of the session and what parts will impact Arizonans right away.
Email us! thegaggle@arizonarepublic.com
Leave us a voicemail: 602-444-0804
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Guest: Stacey Barchenger, Ray Stern
Hosts: Stephanie Murray
Producer: Amanda Luberto
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At the Goldwater Institute in Phoenix, the word "liberty" has a very specific meaning: the individual’s right to make the key choices in his or her own life without interference from the state.
Timothy Sandefur, the institute’s vice president for legal affairs, is one of the clearest contemporary defenders of that vision.
In this Outspoken conversation, we asked him how that understanding of liberty connects back to the Declaration of Independence — and where he thinks the country has drifted away from what Jefferson and his contemporaries had in mind.
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Democratic incumbent Kris Mayes is seeking reelection as Arizona's attorney general this fall, but the Arizona Republican Party is searching for the right candidate to win them back the office in November.
On their primary ballot, Republican voters have their choice between two contenders: current Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen and private attorney Rodney Glassman.
In this bonus episode of The Gaggle, state politics reporter Stacey Barchenger walks you through the similarities and differences between the Republican candidates running for Arizona's attorney general for the chance to rival Mayes later this year.
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In grievance 27 of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson denounces “the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is the undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”
For Native nations, those words were more than rhetoric; they helped license a policy of removal and erasure that would define the next century of U.S. expansion.
In this Outspoken conversation, we ask historian Donald Grinde Jr. how that clause shaped American attitudes toward Native peoples and what the founders also learned, and borrowed, from Indigenous governments.
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Former Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb is running for Congress with the coveted endorsement from President Donald Trump. Generally, this is a sure fire way to win the election.
But Lamb is facing an uphill battle after an Arizona Republic investigation found him at the center of multiple controversies.
This previously low-suspense race to replace Congressman Andy Biggs, who vacated his seat to run for governor, has turned on its head weeks before primary voting begins.
This week on The Gaggle, we are joined by the two Republic reporters who broke this story. They join the show to walk us through what their investigation found and what the future of CD 5 could look like.
Email us! thegaggle@arizonarepublic.com
Leave us a voicemail: 602-444-0804
Follow us on X, Instagram and Tik Tok
Guest: Laura Gersony, Robert Anglen
Hosts: Ron Hansen, Stephanie Murray
Producer: Amanda Luberto
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Few of us ask what the words of the Declaration of Independence actually meant to the men who wrote them — or how much help they had from places like Havana and Madrid.
Renowned author and historian Felipe Fernández‑Armesto has spent his career studying colonialism, empire and the Hispanic roots of the Americas.
In this Outspoken conversation, he helps us see the Declaration through 18th‑century eyes and reminds us that the United States has always been more Latin American than we tend to admit
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