Thousands of Arizonans now have a financial burden lifted off their shoulders, Gov. Katie Hobbs announced on Wednesday. According to the Democratic governor, $429 million in medical debt has been erased for more than 352,000 Arizonans as part of a partnership between her administration and national nonprofit Undue Medical Debt. In 2024, Hobbs announced an initiative to erase $2 billion in medical debt for up to one million Arizonans.
President Biden has issued a formal presidential apology to Native American communities for the atrocities committed against Indigenous children and their families during a 150-year era of forced federal Indian boarding schools. “After 150 years, the United States government eventually stopped the program,” the president said. “But the federal government has never, never formally apologized for what happened — until today. I formally apologize, as president of the United States of America, for what we did.”
Ayahuasca is a psychoactive brew traditionally used by Indigenous cultures in the Amazon and Orinoco. It is now often used to help treat depression, PTSD, trauma, and other mental illnesses and to promote spiritual and emotional development. The Church of the Eagle and the Condor is officially the first non-Christian church in the U.S to obtain legal protections to use it as a sacrament.
Arizonans 18 and older will soon be able to go to their local pharmacy and purchase oral contraceptives without a doctor’s prescription.
Council Delegate Crystalyne Curley, 37, who represents Tachíí/Blue Gap, Many Farms, Nazlini, Tsélání/Cottonwood, Low Mountain, has become the first woman to head the Navajo Nation Council.
The executive order goes beyond existing laws banning employment discrimination to include factors such as sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, culture, creed, social origin, and political affiliation.
The introduction of such a program, which is offered to any students registered to any of the state’s 22 federally recognized tribes, is the first of its kind in an Arizona public university.
At least nine states now allow students to take mental health days. Other states using less expensive solutions like in-class mediation, mindfulness exercises, and social-emotional training.
District Judge Rosemary Marquez’s decision applies nationwide, according to the Washington Post, and will protect drinking water and wildlife habitat for millions of Americans and billions of animals.
As reported by Vox, this practice leads to the disproportionate dismissal of jurors of color, and “multiple studies suggest that peremptory strikes play a major role in producing juries that are whiter than the population as a whole.”
