Happy Friday, readers!
Today, Gov. Katie Hobbs releases her annual budget proposal, and the Agenda crew will be there to get the deets.
This weekend, we’ll be tinkering to keep improving your experience in our new email system.
And on Monday, it’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day. As longtime readers know, we strictly observe all federal holidays — it’s a matter of respecting our laws.
We’ll be back in your inbox bright and early on Tuesday!
In the meantime, this button wishes us good luck on our long working weekend.
With the opening week of the 2026 legislative session under wraps, the newest member of our team now has a week in the Agendaverse under his belt.
In celebration of the fact that he neither quit nor had to be fired, we wanted to take some space for our readers to get to know TJ L’Heureux better.
TJ joins us from Phoenix New Times, where he made a name for himself in the local media market by reporting on a number of topics, including police departments and Republican politics.
We never actually did a formal interview with TJ (we hire purely on quality of clips, no questions needed!), so here are some of the questions we would have asked him if we did.
Our art intern, ChatGPT, calls this “A portrait of a confident young man.”
Q: We’ve gotta ask, how do you say your last name?
The way my family says it is “Luh-ROO,” which is a horrible butchering of the French — so bad that, as my father and I have both learned when in France, those who speak the language simply burst out into laughter at that pronunciation.
My ancestors were early French-Canadian settlers of Quebec, but centuries later they relocated to Nebraska after the Civil War to take advantage of Lincoln’s Homestead Acts. Any French-speaking abilities died off a long time ago.
But if I’m in a mischievous mood and want to befuddle people, I’ll respond with the French pronunciation — which sounds a lot like you’re trying to pass a sizable chunk of food lodged in your throat.
Q: And what do your initials stand for?
Timothy Jose, but again, sometimes I’ll tell people they stand for “Trader Joe” and that I’m the heir to Trader Joe’s fortune. If they actually believe the first statement, they know I’m messing with them by the second.
(Another tidbit: A few days ago, former lawmaker Anthony Kern asked me how I spell “TJ.”)
Q: Where’d you go to college and what’s your undergrad degree in?
I went to UChicago — crescat scientia; vita excolatur. A while back a group of students famously quipped it’s “where fun goes to die,” but I had plenty of fun there with those nerds and still love that city.
I double majored in Public Policy and Latin American Studies. The former interested me because it’s at the nexus of economics and political science while the classes were a lot more practical than those in the other disciplines. I studied Spanish and pre-Columbian history down in Ecuador and Mexico to quench my thirst for travel, and after that only needed a few more classes to notch a second major.
Q: What do you like to do?
Art is my main hobby, and that manifests itself in several forms. I play guitar, bass, piano and harmonica and love to jam with other musicians. A good museum is a thrill for me. I love literature, too, and am always on the hunt for great writing. But recently, I’ve been really interested in exploring Arizona, its strange towns and its beautiful outdoors.
TJ looking especially cool strumming his six string.
Q: Who’s your favorite writer?
My all-time pick is Roberto Bolaño, a Chilean exile who isn’t super well-known to English readers but took the Spanish-speaking world by storm in the late 90s and early 2000s. He published almost nothing before being diagnosed at 40 with a fatal liver disease, but unleashed a torrent of works up to his death at 50. His 2666 is a masterpiece.
Borges, Steinbeck, Baldwin, Nabokov and Simone de Beauvoir are my other favorites.
Q: You worked as a political flack for a little while. What did you learn on the dark side that you bring to journalism?
That’s right. I worked as a press aide for Pete Buttigieg during his presidential run and for Mark Kelly in the first U.S Senate election, so I learned all about how politicos make the sausage behind the scenes.
The calculus on a campaign is that if you want to win, it’s best to stick to the talking points that have been tested in focus groups. Thus, the messaging for major political figures like that is kept really tight, and it felt like I was kind of writing the same thing over and over again everyday.
That’s part of why I wanted to leave politics and move to journalism. I was more interested in exploring truth from an independent perspective than assisting in a game of chess.
Q: What was Mayor Pete like as a human?
A little awkward. But he’s extremely affable and comfortable in his own skin, which can come off as aloofness. I just don’t think he’s that concerned about what people think about him. He’s a fun guy to have a conversation with because his breadth of knowledge is impressive. I remember talking with him at length about James Joyce.
A young TJ staring lovingly at his first political boss.
Q: What was Mark Kelly like as a human?
Interestingly enough, I still have never met Kelly and so don’t feel any personal connection to him. I worked for his campaign in 2020 at the height of the pandemic, so we were in digital mode. From the stories I heard from other staffers, he’s really serious and direct. The only emails I ever got from him were one or two words — so I’d add acerbic, too.
Q: You spent a solid two years at Phoenix New Times. What were your favorite stories you wrote there?
I loved writing the “Clown car” profile of the GOP primary in the 8th Congressional District, which was one of my first stories. The other ones that come to mind are the series of interviews I did with the QAnon shaman, breaking the story about Mylie Biggs saying women shouldn’t hold office, a postmortem on Kari Lake’s political career in Arizona (the top photo still cracks me up), and untold police accountability stories, like one detailing how the city of Phoenix’s leaders undercut their own watchdog agency.
At New Times, I also had the opportunity to write about music. Assigned to review French electronic duo Justice, I serendipitously happened to meet the two while they were out and around Phoenix after their performance. My ex-girlfriend derailed the interview when she, not knowing who they were, walked up and asked, “Can we leave now?”
Q: Why did you decide to come over to the Agenda?
I’ve been reading the Agenda since I came home to Arizona for grad school back in 2022, and I’ve always really enjoyed the mix of entertainment and in-depth, digestible breakdowns of what’s going down at the Legislature, in terms of politics and process and policy.
Being a generalist at New Times was fun, but I jumped at the opportunity to focus a little bit more on and dive deeper into government, whether that's at the Capitol or city halls around the state.
Q: What are you going to cover here?
I’ll keep a focus on the Legislature, but I’m really interested in local government and want to bring some original reporting on Phoenix and other Valley municipalities into the fold at the Agenda.
Q: Last one: How do you style your hair every day? Is that straight out of bed or do you use a pick?
It depends, but I prefer to take a shower at night and be ready to go in the morning. My girlfriend has taught me to brush my hair while the conditioner's in. It helps the curls pop, I guess.
TAX STANDOFF, CONTINUED
Republican lawmakers passed a new state tax plan yesterday that Gov. Katie Hobbs has already signaled she’ll veto.
But before the final vote tally, House Speaker Steve Montenegro stared down the Capitol’s livestream camera to appeal to the governor directly.
“Madam governor, you have a choice,” Montenegro said. “Sign the bill … or veto the bill and prepare for the chaos you create.”
While the whole thing felt kind of menacing, it might be the first time the legislative majority and the Governor’s Office have communicated all year.
Both sides blame the other for failing to negotiate on a tax conformity plan before the session began, leaving Arizona’s taxpayers in limbo.
The GOP plan passed yesterday would cost the state more than $1 billion in revenue over the next three years, and it includes the various tax breaks for businesses that Hobbs’s version of a tax conformity plan leaves out.
While both plans adopt some of the new federal tax write-offs in Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” the Republicans’ version is a closer match, and it carries a larger revenue hit.
“We have responsibilities by taking on this job. We have duties to take care of our schools … to make sure our citizens are safe,” Democratic Sen. Mitzi Epstein said. “These things cost money, and to simply cut revenue wildly is irresponsible and foolhardy.”
Further complicating matters, the Arizona Department of Revenue has already issued tax forms that assume full federal conformity. Short of adopting that approach, the department would have to reissue the forms to match either the Republicans’ plan or Hobbs’ version.
Republican Sen. JD Mesnard offered the only clear advice:
“If the governor vetoes this bill, you must not file your state taxes,” he said.
TODAY’S LAUGH
There’s one hell of a story in Law360 detailing former Arizona U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema’s psychedelic-fueled, taxpayer-funded sex bender with a former member of her security detail, Matthew Ammel, a now-divorced man and father of two.
In fact, you’re probably gonna wanna read the whole legal complaint from Ammel’s now ex-wife, who’s seeking monetary damages from Sinema for breaking up their marriage under an obscure North Carolina law.
It confirms your suspicion that Sinema is among the worst human beings to ever represent Arizona in DC.
Here’s the very brief bullet point version of the complaint (because even we don’t wanna frolic around in this muck for too long):
Ammel started working for Sinema in 2022, and by late 2023, the head of her security detail resigned and encouraged Ammel to do the same because Sinema was “having sexual relations with other security members” (yeah, multiple). He said he needed the job and stayed on.
Besides working as security for her campaign, she also hired him as a “defense and national security fellow” on U.S. Senate staff.
Sinema suggest that Ammel — a veteran with PTSD and a traumatic brain injury — should bring MDMA (ecstasy) with him on work trips so she could guide him through psychedelic experiences.
She offered to help him work through his mental health issues and paid for a psychedelic treatment for him.
In 2023, Ammel told his wife Sinema was getting handsy with him and he invited his wife to a work trip (read: a U2 concert) with Sinema to introduce them and “set boundaries.”
The trio hung out at Cindy McCain’s hotel room, where Sinema asked the wife “Did you ever think you’d be drinking Dom Perignon in Cindy McCain’s suite?”
By that time, he was regularly traveling alone with Sinema, including to concerts by Green Day and Taylor Swift, and staying alone with her, including at her house in Scottsdale.
Sinema started sending him “lewd and lascivious” messages, including a pic of her in a towel, a note about how missionary-position sex with him with the lights on would be too “boring!” and a message that she keeps waking up and “reaching over for his arms to hold her.”
When Ammel texted her that he was going to start a “fuck the troops” chant at a baseball game, Sinema replied that she would “fuck the hot ones.”
When Ammel asked why Sinema wasn’t at the State of the Union speech, Sinema said she didn’t need to listen to some old man (Joe Biden) talk about legislation she had written.
Fun fact not in the complaint: Ammel became Sinema’s poster boy for the benefits of psychedelics for veterans with PTSD — he did several press interviews about how it helped him and even testified to a legislative committee last year to help get that $5 million for ibogaine funding tied to “not lobbyist” Sinema.
Not so fun fact: It appears Ammel was arrested in North Carolina and charged with felony assault and strangulation last November.
But there’s another wrinkle to this wild story about this sex- hallucinogen- and power-crazed shitty person.
And, yes, of course it involves ASU.
You see, Sinema and ASU have been tied at the hip for decades now. She’s a multi-degree-holding alumni who has been teaching there ever since she became a power player in Arizona’s political scene. (ASU will give a job to just about anyone with influence.)
And you’ll never guess who else works there now, holding the nebulous do-nothing title of “university fellow” in the Office of University Affairs.
ASU didn’t respond to any of our questions about what Ammel does, how much he gets paid, when he was hired, if he was fired after the strangulation arrest, and the big one: whether Sinema used her considerable influence within the university to get him that job.
But the last one is really more of a rhetorical question anyway.