AZ Legislature ends 2026 session after late-night GOP push to send conservative agenda to voters
The Arizona Legislature adjourned for the year early Saturday morning, after four days of rapid-fire votes on hundreds of pieces of legislation and a marathon last day that saw Republicans send a series of measures to the November ballot in the hopes that voters let them enact policies Gov. Katie Hobbs won’t.
Legislators started the day around 10:30 a.m. and voted on many of the proposals late into the night, when most of their constituents were likely asleep or had stopped paying attention. The Arizona Senate voted to end the annual legislative session at around 12:30 a.m. Saturday, and the House of Representatives finally wrapped up its work at 4:45 a.m.
Democratic Rep. Alma Hernandez, of Tucson, also blamed her own party for the late night voting, saying her colleagues shouldn’t have agreed to support a bipartisan budget without a guarantee that Republicans would end the legislative session after the budget vote on Thursday. Hernandez was among a handful of Democrats who opposed the annual spending plan.
“We knew this was going to happen, and here we are, bringing all the bills that never made it, or either died, and then they came back to life, and then we’re here at 3:36 a.m. passing bills that the governor has no ability to veto,” she said, referring to the ballot referrals, which circumvent the governor’s veto pen. “So, now we’re going to continue just making the ballots longer and longer and longer. And we truly did this to ourselves.”
https://azmirror.com/2026/06/13/az-legislature-ends-2026-session-after-late-night-gop-push-to-send-conservative-agenda-to-voters/