The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Michael A. Chihak
Silly, sillier, silliest.
Those three words summarize much of what’s occurring at the Arizona Legislature, one month into the 2026 session. Silliness abounds, while significant issues — water supply, affordable housing, equitable taxation, public school funding — get short shrift.
Let’s start with what’s just silly. Wendy Rogers, Republican senator and white nationalist consort, introduced a bill requiring Arizona hospitals to ask patients’ citizenship and immigration status. The silliness: “This has been misrepresented as an immigration bill," Rogers said.
Her not-an-immigration bill is for data collection, she told a Senate committee. “It's an accountability measure so Arizonans know how much money is being spent in hospitals for those who are not citizens,” the Arizona Republic quoted Rogers saying. That rationale brims with absurdity, making her silly.
Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed similar legislation last year, and she likely will again. That’s more silliness: a waste of the governor’s and the Legislature’s time and energy.
Even sillier is a bill that would ban Sharia law, the law of Islam. Like many bills that legislators introduce, it’s redundant. Arizona already has a statute saying the state’s courts may not use foreign laws to make their decisions, Capitol Media Services reported.
Whoops! Does that mean throwing out most of the state’s legal code, which legislators for more than a century have derived from British law, including English common law? Won’t it be silly if lawmakers decide to replace all those foreign-origin statutes with “made in America” laws?
Perhaps silliest of all is revival of 2025’s bills to ban atmospheric spraying of chemicals. The idea has its roots in the laughable claim that the water vapor streaks we see high in the sky are “chemtrails” wreaking havoc on the populace.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency posted a web page last year saying some believe that airplane contrails – water vapor, same as clouds – are chemical drops intended for "a variety of nefarious purposes, including population control, mind control or attempts to geoengineer Earth or modify the weather,'' Capitol Media Services reported.
Mind control we can believe, because how else would legislators be willing to back a whole series of bills on this silliest of matters?
Choosing these as the silly, sillier and silliest goings on at the Legislature was not easy, because of strong competition from much other silliness, including:
• Republican Sen. Janae Shamp’s bill requiring the Department of Health Services to study the “origins, manifestations and long-term effects on individuals, communities and the public discourse” of that raging mental health issue, “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” Silly and pathetic.
• Two Republican bills dealing with lab-grown meat. One would ban it; the other would require labeling it as such. Rep. Lupe Diaz, sponsor of the bill that would ban it, said of lab-grown meat, “I just don’t trust it.” Then, just don’t eat it, silly!
• Three Republican bills to restrict or penalize abortion. That’s silly, because 61.6% of Arizonans voted in 2024 to amend the state Constitution “to establish that every individual has the fundamental right to abortion.”
• Republican Rep. Nick Kupper’s bill to eliminate the speed limit on part of Interstate 8 as a test to determine if other state highways should be speed limitless. Silly and dangerous.
• Myriad bills for election integrity in Arizona, where of course elections already have integrity. Any perception of lost integrity comes from the undermining of elections by those who dislike the results. This integrity push is beyond silly; it’s undemocratic.
How much sillier can our state legislators get? Oh, much; it’s still early in the session.
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