Arizona Legislature unanimously approves Turquoise Alert System for missing Indigenous people
The creation of the Turquoise Alert System cleared its final legislative hurdle on Wednesday when it passed the state House of Representatives unanimously
The new system, which would function similarly to the existing Amber Alert and Silver Alert notification systems, would coordinate alerts for missing Indigenous or endangered persons through the federally authorized Emergency Alert System.
The final passage comes less than a week after the state Senate amended the legislation, House Bill 2281, to include minors who go missing. The change allows the alert system to be activated in cases like Emily Pike's, an Indigenous teen whose disappearance and murder earlier this year was cited by lawmakers as the impetus for the measure.
SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Rep. Teresa Martinez, R-Casa Grande, said she introduced the bill before Pike's story became public, and that the Turquoise Alert could have prevented her murder.
'It breaks my heart that we, the State of Arizona, didn't even go looking for this little girl,' she said. 'We cannot let children go missing without somebody being alerted.'
Democratic Rep. Brian Garcia, a member of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, said the alert will save lives.
'One day, what happened to Emily won't happen to another child,' he said.
More than 10,600 Indigenous people were reported missing in the U.S. in 2023, roughly 3,300 of whom were 18 or older, according to the FBI.
The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System reported that more than 23,700 missing persons cases were in the database at the end of 2023, and 255 of those were for Indigenous people.
In 2021, Arizona was ranked as the state with the third-largest number of unresolved missing Indigenous people cases in the country, according to NamUs. There are currently 91 missing Indigenous people cases in the NamUs database for Arizona.
A study from the Urban Indian Health Institute found that Arizona also has the third-largest number of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in the country.
That study reported 506 known cases in 71 urban areas across the country, 54 of which were in Arizona, including 31 in Tucson.
There is still no single database that provides accurate numbers or data related to missing and murdered Indigenous peoples across the country. With no centralized database among the thousands of federal, state and tribal entities, the information available is limited.
The Turquoise Alert system has been a priority for Indigenous advocates for years, and was requested in 2019, when Arizona's first Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women study committee examined the crisis.
'Indigenous people go missing at a higher rate than any other ethnicity,' Elayne Gregg, whose 7-year-old daughter was abducted and killed in 2009, told the Arizona Mirror earlier this year. 'Because that rate is so high, something like this needs to happen.'
The bill has received broad bipartisan support as it moved through the legislative process, making it likely that Gov. Katie Hobbs will sign it into law. Hobbs has already directed the Arizona Department of Public Safety to develop a plan for implementing a new alert for Indigenous people by summer.
SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
The House is taking a summer break — and now the stock market can get to work
Last Tuesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson unexpectedly adjourned the U.S. House of Representatives until September. The next day, the S&P 500 SPX hit another all-time high. Coincidence? Several academic studies suggest not. That's because the stock market historically has performed better when Congress is out of session. America's 63 million family caregivers are mostly unpaid, stressed and begging for help 'His income is limited': Should I pay $800 a month towards my husband's $67,000 student debt? My ex-husband's benefit will be $2,600 at retirement age, and mine is $2,200. Can I claim on his record instead? One such study was conducted by Michael Ferguson, head of the department of finance at the University of Cincinnati's Carl Lindner College of Business, and Douglas Witte, a professor of finance, economics and risk management at Missouri State University's business school. In their study, titled 'Congress and the Stock Market,' they found that the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA from 1897 through 2004 produced the equivalent of a 13.8% annualized return when Congress was not in session, versus 2% when Congress was in session. They found a similar result for the period beginning in 1957, when the S&P 500 was created. Another study, which in effect constitutes an out-of-sample test of this result, focused on the Australian stock market from mid-1993 through late 2011. In a paper entitled 'The Effects of Political Uncertainty on Stock Prices,' the study's authors at the University of Melbourne (Yoni Cukierman, Asjeet Lamba and Carsten Murawski) found that 'returns in the Australian stock market are lower and more volatile whenever the Australian federal parliament is in session.' This year constitutes another out-of-sample test. Since the beginning of the year, as you can see from the chart above, the S&P 500 has produced far better average returns when Congress was not in session than when it was. Though these year-to-date results are not statistically significant in and of themselves, they corroborate the two studies referenced above. Though we can only speculate as to why the stock market performs better when Congress is in recess, most hypotheses trace to the economic and political uncertainty that exists when Congress is in session. As humorist Will Rogers famously wrote a century ago in a letter to the editor of the New York Times: 'This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as we do when a baby gets hold of a hammer. It's just a question of how much damage he can do with it before we take it away from him.' Mark Hulbert is a regular contributor to MarketWatch. His Hulbert Ratings tracks investment newsletters that pay a flat fee to be audited. He can be reached at More: How Trump's policies are boosting tech stocks — and helping to inflate a bubble As latest meme-stock drama unfolds, there's one thing that is different this time around 'If I was writing the checks at Coke, I wouldn't write the check for this,' one expert says about cane-sugar Coke Homeowners in these states are the winners if Trump ends capital-gains taxes for home sellers Newly built homes are cheaper than previously owned homes as builders ramp up price cuts Sign in to access your portfolio
Hamilton Spectator
7 hours ago
- Hamilton Spectator
Auditor general to study hiring, promotion of public servants with disabilities
OTTAWA - The federal auditor general is planning to study the recruitment, retention and promotion of people with disabilities in the federal public service. Documents obtained by The Canadian Press through Access to Information indicate that the audit is expected to be tabled in the spring. Claire Baudry, a spokesperson for the Office of the Auditor General of Canada, said in an email that while auditor general Karen Hogan expects to table the report in Parliament in 2026, the audit is in the planning phase and any comment on its scope or timelines now would be 'premature.' Hogan's office sent a letter to Secretary of the Treasury Board Bill Matthews on March 7 notifying him of the upcoming study. The most recent employment equity report for the public service says that since March 2020, the number of people with disabilities has increased steadily in the core public service — the federal government departments and agencies that fall under Treasury Board. But that number remains below the rate of 'workforce availability' — the metric used by the government to measure the share of the national workforce that is eligible for federal public service work. As of 2024, 21,089 people with disabilities were working in the federal public service, up from 17,410 in 2023, 14,573 in 2022 and 12,893 in 2021. The report also found that representation of people with disabilities among government executives was above the rate of workforce availability. As of March 2024, 9.7 per cent of federal executives were people with disabilities, up from 4.6 per cent in March 2019. The employment equity report also looked at promotions in the core public service. It found that 2,517 federal public servants with disabilities were promoted in 2024. The report also tracked 1,642 promotions of Indigenous public servants, 1,788 promotions of Black employees, 8,115 promotions of members of visible minorities and 19,578 promotions of women in the core public service. Nathan Prier, president of the Canadian Association of Professional Employees, said he hopes the report will take into account the impact of the government's return-to-office mandate on people with disabilities. The government has gradually increased the number of days public servants must be in the office since the end of the pandemic. As of last fall, most public servants are expected to work in-office at least three days per week, while executives are required to be there at least four days per week. 'We hope to see from the report a snapshot before and after the forced return to office took place to see how many workers with disabilities are leaving the federal public sector and taking their expertise with them, while other workers struggle with increasing workload and now cuts — all when we had an easy and workable solution in front of us this whole time,' Prier said. 'During the pandemic we saw on a large scale how telework worked well for so many workers with disabilities, and we've been disappointed to see that, since the forced and mismanaged return to office, those same people have not been getting accommodations or have been made to jump through hoops in a long, drawn-out process,' he said. Rola Salem, a spokesperson for the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, said in an email that the Government of Canada has committed to building an accessible and inclusive public service and, in 2024, exceeded its goal of hiring 5,000 people with disabilities. Salem said the secretariat welcomes the opportunity to work with the Office of the Auditor General on the planned audit. The Employment Equity Act defines 'persons with disabilities' as people who have a long-term or recurring physical, mental, sensory, psychiatric or learning impairment and who consider themselves to be disadvantaged in employment or believe that an employer is likely to consider them disadvantaged. The definition also includes people whose limitations have been accommodated in the workplace. This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 26, 2025. Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .
Los Angeles Times
18 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
Texas Democrats meet with Newsom to stop Trump's push to ‘rig' the 2026 election
Gov. Gavin Newsom stood alongside six Democrats from the Texas Legislature on Friday and joined them in accusing President Trump and Republicans of trying to 'rig' elections to hold onto congressional seats next year. 'They play by a different set of rules and we could sit back and act as if we have some moral authority and watch this 249-, 250-year-old experiment be washed away,' Newsom said of the nation's history. 'We are not going to allow that to happen.' The Texas lawmakers and the governor spoke with reporters after meeting privately at the Governor's Mansion in Sacramento to discuss a national political fight over electoral maps that could alter the outcome of the midterm elections and balance of power in Congress. At the urging of President Trump, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called his state Legislature into a special session this week that includes a call to redistrict the Lone Star State to help Republicans pick up seats in Congress. The move is part of a gerrymandering effort pushed by Trump to prevent the GOP from losing control of the House of Representatives next year. If Democrats take the House, they could derail the president's agenda, which has so far included a crackdown on undocumented immigrants, tariffs on imports, rescinding efforts to combat climate change and undercutting state protections for the LGTBQ+ community, among other policy priorities. Newsom has threatened to mirror Trump's tactics and said he's in talks with leaders of the California Legislature to redraw the state's congressional districts to favor electing more Democrats and fewer Republicans. Texas Democrats, who said they traveled to California to meet with the governor and explain the state of play in Texas, pledged do everything in their power to push back against Trump's plan. 'We're going to use every tool at our disposal in the state of Texas to confront this very illegal redistricting process that is going to be done on the backs of historic African American and Latino districts,' said Texas state Rep. Rafael Anchía. Another group of Texas lawmakers are expected to meet with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker in Chicago. Changing the maps to benefit Democrats is a massive departure from California's work over the last decade to remove political partisanship from the redistricting process. California voters in 2010 gave an independent Citizens Redistricting Commission the power to determine the boundaries of voting districts for the U.S. House of Representatives instead of leaving that authority with the state Legislature. To redistrict before the midterms, the most legally sound option is for state lawmakers to send a constitutional amendment to voters that seeks to allow changes to the voter map outside the boundaries of California's independent redistricting process. The vote would need to happen in a special election before the June primary. Newsom has said he's also exploring a potential legal loophole that could allow the California Legislature to redraw the congressional maps themselves with a two-thirds vote. The governor's office said state law charges the redistricting commission with crafting new maps after a census, which is conducted about every 10 years. But they say the law is silent on everything that happens in between that time period. Newsom's lawyers believe it could be possible for the Legislature to redistrict congressional seats mid-decade on its own without going to the ballot. The governor's call to fight Trump using his own gerrymandering tactics has drawn a mixed response. Newsom argues that Democrats will continue to lose if they remain the only party that plays by the rules. But others worry about the integrity of electoral outcomes across the nation if political parties in every state resort to naked political gamesmanship to gain control. Texas Republicans have long been accused of crafting political maps to dilute the power of Black and Latino voters, which led to an ongoing lawsuit from 2021. Newsom's effort in California would effectively seek to increase the share of Democrats in Republican-held districts. Redistricting experts in California say redrawing the maps in the Golden State could create the potential for Democrats to flip at least five of the seats held by GOP incumbents. Democrats may have the potential for greater gains from gerrymandering, particularly in places such as California that have attempted to practice nonpartisan redistricting, compared to states such as Texas, where maps are already drawn in favor of Republicans. 'It should be no surprise to anybody who covers Texas that every decade since 1970 Texas has been found to discriminate against people of color in its redistricting process,' Anchía said. 'In trying to do this, it is going to create great harm, not only to the people we represent, to the voters of the state of Texas, but also potentially to all Americans,' he said about Trump's plan. It's common for the party in control of the White House to lose seats nationally in the first election after a presidential contest. Republicans hold majorities in the Senate and the House, and losing power to Democrats could be detrimental to Trump's presidency. Trump's job approval rating dropped to a second-term low of 37% in a Gallup poll conducted earlier this month. The dip is just above his lowest approval rating ever of 34% at the end of his first term. Trump has said publicly that he thinks it's possible for Republicans to redistrict and pick up five seats in Texas, with the potential for gains in other states that redraw their maps.
