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A Republican lawmaker who watched as Trump supporters broke into and ransacked the U.S. Capitol in 2021 wants to send Arizona protesters to prison for rioting if they damage property.

Under the proposal from state Sen. Mark Finchem, R-Prescott, Arizona’s legal definition of a riot would be changed to include when two or more people “recklessly use force or violence” in a way that damages another person’s property. Currently, a riot is limited to when two or more people use force or violence to disturb the public peace.

That would mean protesters could get charged with a class 5 felony, which carries with it between 6 months and 2 years in prison. On top of that, the proposal would also add inciting a riot to the legal definitions of racketeering and conspiracy, which could allow prosecutors to charge protesters with organized crime felonies, lengthening a prison sentence even further.

Arizona prosecutors have previously sought to lock up protesters by using laws aimed at cracking down on street gangs and organized crime. After a 2020 protest for police reform in downtown Phoenix, Maricopa County prosecutor April Sponsel told a grand jury that 15 people arrested were part of a street gang called ACAB — an acronym for the protest chant “All Cops Are Bastards.”

There was no such gang, but Sponsel told the grand jury that it was comparable to notorious street gangs like the Bloods, Crips, Hells Angels and the Mexican Mafia. The 15 people were indicted, but a media firestorm and subsequent investigation revealed Sponsel had lied about the evidence, and the charges were dismissed.

The State Is Escalating Charges Against Protesters. Labor Must Defend Them.

Finchem’s Senate Bill 1093 has yet to undergo a final vote in the Arizona House of Representatives, but it earned preliminary approval from the chamber’s Republican majority on Wednesday, signaling its likely passage. Democrats, meanwhile, have been staunchly opposed to it, foreshadowing its ultimate defeat. Gov. Katie Hobbs has consistently vetoed legislation that fails to win bipartisan approval.

Rep. Nancy Gutierrez criticized the bill for seeking to make it more difficult for Arizonans to exercise their constitutional rights. The Tucson Democrat warned that criminalizing protests would dissuade people from making their voices heard.

“This is an anti protest bill,” she said. “We’ve seen a few of these this session and what they’re intending to do is make it harder for us to protest, to have our First Amendment right of free speech and protest.”

During a February debate of the proposal in the Senate, Democrats were similarly concerned about the impact on Arizonans seeking to exercise their First Amendment rights to assemble.

And some underscored the irony of the bill’s sponsor having attended the Jan. 6 riot. Sen. Analise Ortiz, D-Phoenix, said it was hypocritical to punish protests that involve property damage in Arizona while at the same time remaining silent about the fact that President Donald Trump pardoned more than one thousand people involved in ransacking the nation’s Capitol.

“We’re going to say with (this bill) that it’s a serious classified felony for engaging in a riot and damaging another person’s property while allowing that to have happened in the nation’s Capitol during January 6 — an event that the sponsor of this bill was present for?” Ortiz questioned, shortly before voting against the bill.

Sen. Mark Finchem, who has touted the proposal as a necessary safeguard against efforts to “bus” protestors into the state to cause violent disruptions — something there’s no proof of — can be seen in video footage of the Jan. 6 insurrection walking in front of the Capitol’s east steps after pro-Trump rioters had broken through barricades and police lines and were breaching the building.

The Prescott Republican waved away comparisons to the Jan. 6 riot during a vote on the bill in the state Senate, saying the bill is confined to Arizona

“This isn’t about January 6th,” he said. “It didn’t happen here, it happened in Washington, D.C.”

Instead of targeting protestors, Finchem claimed it’s intended to penalize out-of-state efforts that transport paid protestors to demonstrations in Arizona with the goal of hoodwinking local politicians into believing their constituents are upset with their policy decisions. Republicans have frequently claimed, without evidence, that the mass protests organized against the Trump administration over the past year have been paid for by a shadowy liberal cabal in a bid to ignore them.

“You have people busing people in from out of state to astroturf a body like this and make us think that there is a widespread protest,” Finchem said. “That’s just not true. “

Millions of people opposed to Trump and his Republican supporters have poured into the streets across America for three separate No Kings protests. An estimated 5 million people showed up at protests in June 2025, and 7 million protested in October 2025. At the most recent No Kings protest last month, organizers estimated more than 8 million people joined 3,300 demonstrations.

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Gloria Gomez joined the Arizona Mirror in August 2022. She graduated in 2022 with bachelor’s degrees in journalism and political science, with a Spanish minor. Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

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