newsbot

What's going on in Tucson, Arizona this weekend: night markets, plant sales, Oktoberfest, ghost tours, free live music and more in Tucson, Marana and Oro Valley.

The Barbie Truck Tour returns to Tucson with a stop at La Encantada. The colorful truck is stocked with exclusive Barbie-themed merch.

  Doug Emhoff, husband of VP Kamala Harris, made a campaign stop in Tucson just hours after Donald Trump’s appearance Thursday. Emhoff spoke about fighting for reproductive rights in Arizona, where abortions are illegal after 15 weeks.

  Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack highlighed more than $600 million in recent financing to support renewable energy in rural Arizona, including $83.5 million to Trico Electric Cooperative to expand battery storage and increase the reliability of electricity for residents on the Pascua Yaqui Reservation.

  Former president Donald Trump told a Tucson crowd Thursday that undocumented immigrants and refugees were "raping and sodomizing" American women, and "walking off with pets." "We are being conquered and occupied by a foreign element," said the Republican candidate.

  The mother of two underage girls married to religious leader Samuel Rappylee Bateman testified Wednesday in the trial of two Arizona men accused of aiding and participating in Bateman’s child sex abuse ring.

  LGBTQ+ voting rights advocates are raising concerns over Arizona’s strict voter ID laws that were reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court last month. The reason? The law inadvertently makes it harder for transgender people to vote.

  Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes wants Attorney General Kris Mayes to provide elections officials guidance on how Arizona can enforce part of a voter registration law that the U.S. Supreme Court recently allowed to go into effect, even as another court weighs its constitutionality.

  States have imposed a wide range of abortion rules since the Supreme Court ended constitutional protection more than two years ago,and voters in Arizona and nine other states will decide whether to move in that direction in November..

  Facing a fiscal deadline in just over two weeks, House Republicans on Wednesday abandoned plans to vote on a budget patch that would have kept the government funded into the new year after support for the plan cratered.

  Arizona may be the next state to implement a ban on cell phones in classrooms, but parents and teachers say they have doubts about whether legislation is the solution.

  Election deniers are now putting energy into grassroots organizing, a quieter version of the loud-and-proud campaigning led by former President Donald Trump that occurred in the movement’s nascent days.