Note: Some of the following content was repurposed from live reports from the courthouse. For regular updates during breaks in the proceedings, follow @stephenlemons on Twitter/X. The defense in the Backpage trial called its first witness on Tuesday in Phoenix’s…

Pink Elephant

After a half-day of trial on Friday, Sept. 15 in Phoenix, wherein federal proecutors made numerous references to children and child sex trafficking in the Backpage case, Joy Bertrand, attorney for Joye Vaught, a former Backpage employee, renewed the defense’s…

On Friday, at the final pretrial hearing in the Backpage case, federal Judge Diane Humetewa in Phoenix shot down a defense suggestion that the prosecution not use the terms “sex trafficking” and “child sex trafficking” during the Aug. 29 trial…

U.S. District Court Judge Diane Humetewa

In an order issued on Monday, July 24, federal Judge Diane Humetewa in Phoenix granted prosecutors significant wins on a series of motions affecting the retrial of veteran newspapermen Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin, set to begin on Aug. 8….

handcuffs

In the two-week runup to Super Bowl LVII, more than 100 law enforcement officers from nearly 20 local, state and federal law agencies — including the FBI and  DHS — participated in a massive operation in Metro Phoenix ostensibly targeting…

CindyMcCainInstitute

If Arizona State University gave degrees in gaslighting, Cindy McCain and her lackeys at ASU’s McCain Institute would have long ago earned their PhDs in public chicanery. Case in point: A recent op-ed authored by two McCain Institute flunkies and…

A coalition of sex worker-rights organizations will demonstrate from 5-8 p.m. today, Monday, Feb. 6, outside the Footprint Center in Downtown Phoenix as part of a “public and media education action” ahead of Super Bowl LVII in Glendale, now less…

serverandprotect

Despite more than a decade of research, reports, editorials, magazine articles and even police accounts debunking the odious myth that the Super Bowl is a magnet for sex trafficking, this zombie lie remains catnip to local politicians, police and media…