In an escalation of pressure on Mexico, a U.S. grand jury indictment accuses 10 Mexican political and law enforcement figures of a years-long link to organized crime. The Bureau of Land Management has opened the process for companies to bid on public lands for oil and gas drilling in Arizona for the first time since 2018. The Pima County Board of Supervisors will not remove Sheriff Chris Nanos over allegations of perjury. Plus the latest metro Phoenix, education, indigenous affairs, and water news.
Transcript
TIARA VIAN: This is KJZZ, your news and information station in Phoenix and across Arizona. I’m Tiara Vian, and here are this week’s stories you don’t want to miss.
[Music plays]
TIARA VIAN: This is the podcast that's designed to catch you up on some highlights from around the region. Thanks for listening. Here are a few of the stories for the week of May 11, 2026.
In indigenous affairs: This year marks the centennial celebration of Route 66. A AAA nationwide survey shows more than a third of adults are planning road trips to visit the Main Street of America in 2026. Gabriel Pietrorazio explores the odd origins of Arizona’s stretch of the Mother Road.
[Route 66 song plays]
GABRIEL PIETRORAZIO: Long before all the neon diners, gas stations, and motels dotted this humming highway, the U.S. Army first charted a course along the modern-day path of Route 66, surveying Arizona's high desert terrain for a wagon trail with an unlikely companion: camels.
[Camel sounds]
FREDDY ANDREA: What they do is they throw their cud up on you. So, it's not like you see in the cartoons where they spit a little bit. They're accurate with it up to 20 feet. But these guys, you'd have to make them mad or scared, and they would throw up on you.
GABRIEL PIETRORAZIO: That's Freddy Andrea handling a dromedary camel named Crocket at the Phoenix Zoo.
FREDDY ANDREA: Now this one, we saddled Crocket—he may, last couple days, he’s made sounds, so maybe he’ll let go a “errr.” They sound a little bit like when a lion growls, you know, under his breath, kind of. Or maybe a little bit like Chewbacca.
GABRIEL PIETRORAZIO: And nearly two centuries ago, close to a dozen Middle Eastern cameleers helped ex-naval officer turned explorer, Edward Fitzgerald Beale, lug a caravan of camels through the arid American Southwest in the 1850s. Among them was Syrian Hadji Ali, who locals affectionately called Hi Jolly. Future Confederate President Jefferson Davis, who at that time served as U.S. Secretary of War, was behind the idea to create a camel corps. Davis even secured money from Congress to fund this pre-Civil War experiment by importing more than 70 camels from Northern Africa and the Ottoman Empire.
NATALIE COOK: I mean, they're serious about this. They were dead serious about making this work.
GABRIEL PIETRORAZIO: Tucson native Natalie Cook is a political geographer at Syracuse University.
NATALIE COOK: And so Beale sort of takes on this assignment and he became a true believer—like, he really thought the camels were the greatest.
GABRIEL PIETRORAZIO: In his War Department report, Beale went so far to say, "I look forward to the day where every mail route across the continent will be conducted and worked all together with this economical and noble brute."
CHESTER TAYLOR: Well, you can ride a horse off a cliff. I'd be willing to bet a great deal of money that you could never get a camel to go off a cliff.
GABRIEL PIETRORAZIO: Missouri-based camel ride manager Chester Taylor, who owns the camels at Phoenix Zoo, is convinced this long-legged mammal could have become an enduring symbol of the West, like how the horse is seen today.
CHESTER TAYLOR: It's definitely a better working animal. Lives longer, it's stronger, it eats less. But the horses were afraid of them, and as cowboy Americans, they were not super into the Bedouins.
GABRIEL PIETRORAZIO: He's talking about nomadic Arab tribesmen who were hired by the U.S. Army to join this journey. Neither the horses nor indigenous peoples would have encountered camels. It was something the Army was even counting on, says Cook.
NATALIE COOK: The camel always was a sort of military object for the American colonial project and taking over this territory that we now call Arizona. How do we scare off the indigenous people who are resisting our taking over of their land and resources?
GABRIEL PIETRORAZIO: Beale’s wagon road became obsolete, but his camel-plotted blueprint really paved the way for gas-powered automobiles driving Route 66 nearly seven decades later. Still, this ancient corridor was already well-traveled by indigenous peoples centuries prior. Sherry Rupert is CEO of the American Indian Tourism Association. She and her group designed an all-indigenous guidebook ahead of the Route 66 centennial.
SHERRY RUPERT: Because prior to it becoming the Mother Road, it was travel routes for many of our tribes to trade with each other along that very long stretch.
[Route 66 song plays]
GABRIEL PIETRORAZIO: Today, more than half of the 2,400-mile long interstate traverses Indian Country, including the reservations of over two dozen tribes, from the Hualapai to the Navajo in Arizona. Gabriel Pietrorazio, KJZZ News, Phoenix.
[Route 66 song plays]
TIARA VIAN: KJZZ will be covering the Route 66 centennial throughout the year. Check out the collection of stories at route66.kjzz.org.
In Fronteras news: In an escalation of pressure on Mexico, a U.S. grand jury indictment accuses 10 Mexican political and law enforcement figures of a years-long link to organized crime. From the Fronteras desk in Hermosillo, Nina Kravinsky has more on the politics behind how this could shake out.
NINA KRAVINSKY: In a video statement to announce he was stepping down as governor of the Mexican state of Sinaloa, Rubén Rocha Moya doubled down on his innocence.
RUBÉN ROCHA MOYA: Tengo la conciencia tranquila.
TRANSLATOR: I have a clear conscience. The accusations against me are false and malicious, Rocha Moya said.
NINA KRAVINSKY: For years, the calls about Rocha Moya's links to organized crime have been coming from inside the house. Mexican journalists have long documented links between officials in Sinaloa and the drug cartel that's based there, as well as uncovered similar ties in other parts of the country.
DAVID SAUCEDO: Esta es una relación que tiene muchos años, incluso décadas.
TRANSLATOR: This is a relationship that goes back decades, says Mexican security expert David Saucedo.
NINA KRAVINSKY: But the latest allegation is coming from the north, in the form of a DOJ indictment accusing Rocha Moya and nine other former and current public officials of accepting bribes and political aid from the Sinaloa cartel. The grand jury indictment says former and current officials, including Rocha Moya, have received a combined millions of dollars in bribes in exchange for protection from investigation and prosecution. Vanda Felbab-Brown is with the Brookings Institution.
VANDA FELBAB-BROWN: Trying to dismantle, unravel the deep connections of criminal groups to politicians and government officials in Mexico is fundamental.
NINA KRAVINSKY: But actually doing that has long posed challenges for the U.S.’s and Mexico’s justice systems and the relationship between the two countries. Rocha Moya is an important character in Mexico's ruling political party as an ally of the former Mexican president, who is current President Claudia Sheinbaum's political mentor. Sheinbaum says her government won't protect anyone who's committed a crime, but that the United States hasn't provided enough evidence for Mexico to fulfill a request to detain the accused for extradition. She says her own government is investigating, and if irrefutable evidence is found, they should be tried in Mexico, not the U.S.
CLAUDIA SHEINBAUM: Con Estados Unidos, cooperamos, nos coordinamos, pero lo he dicho muchas veces, nunca nos vamos a subordinar. Es una cuestión de dignidad.
TRANSLATOR: We coordinate and collaborate with the United States, but we are never going to be subordinate. It's a matter of dignity, Sheinbaum says.
NINA KRAVINSKY: Rocha Moya and other Morena party loyalists have described the accusations as a deliberate effort by the United States to dismantle their political movement. Arturo Sarukhan is a former Mexican ambassador to the U.S.
ARTURO SARUKHAN: President Sheinbaum is between sort of a rock and a hard place. Sheinbaum is having to walk a tightrope between leaders of the party that brought her to power and a counterpart to the north who's known for strong-arming neighbors.
NINA KRAVINSKY: The indictment comes in the months after U.S. forces captured Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro and brought him to the United States to face prosecution.
ARTURO SARUKHAN: Whether it's a drone strike or it's actually going in and a la Maduro, grabbing a governor that they've indicted—and if any of that happens, it's going to put the U.S.-Mexico relationship in a tailspin.
NINA KRAVINSKY: A lack of cooperation with the U.S. could also beget more indictments, experts say. In an interview with NewsNation last week, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche suggested more indictments were coming.
TODD BLANCHE: So one consequence of having a lot of the leaders of some of these cartels brought here over the past year in our cooperation with the Mexican government is some of them will likely want to cooperate, and that cooperation could lead to additional charges.
NINA KRAVINSKY: Mexico has handed over dozens of suspected cartel members to face prosecution in the United States over the past year. Mexican security expert David Saucedo says there are several Mexican states, including some on the border, that could see U.S. indictments of high-level officials.
DAVID SAUCEDO: La corrupción política en México y la narcopolítica tiene muchos años, pero no habíamos visto acusaciones como ésta.
TRANSLATOR: Political corruption in Mexico and narco-politics have many years, but we haven't seen indictments like this one, Saucedo says.
NINA KRAVINSKY: Donald Trump changed the framework. Nina Kravinsky, KJZZ News, Hermosillo.
TIARA VIAN: And this is the Stories You Don't Want to Miss podcast. Thanks for listening.
UNNAMED HOST: Rio Salado College, in partnership with ASU and Penn State University, is offering a free 12-week semiconductor manufacturing training. The next session begins August 24. More information at riosalado.edu/veterantraining.
TIARA VIAN: In business news: The Bureau of Land Management has opened the process for companies to bid on public lands for oil and gas drilling in Arizona for the first time since 2018. As Greg Hahne reports, the agency just opened a public comment period.
GREG HAHNE: BLM is taking public input on potentially 80,000 acres of land over 40 parcels near the Nevada and Utah borders. After the comment period, developers would still need to lease the land and send projects for BLM review and approval. President Trump’s major spending package called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed last year promotes expanded oil and gas production nationwide. A report from the Federal Energy Information Administration says Arizona has no significant oil or gas reserves. Public comment ends June 11. Greg Hahne, KJZZ News, Phoenix.
In education news: State auditors have identified a litany of issues with the state’s $1 billion school voucher program that they say could put public dollars at risk. Wayne Schutsky reports.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: The Arizona Auditor General’s Office accused the Department of Education of failing to properly administer the Empowerment Scholarship Accounts program that is now used by more than 100,000 students to pay for private or homeschool costs. That includes allegations that the department did not always follow up on potentially problematic purchases and is haphazardly applying its own policy that automatically greenlights smaller transactions before reviewing them later. State Superintendent Tom Horne dismissed the claims and says the state is running the program appropriately. But the Department of Education did tell auditors it needs more state funding to hire enough staff to keep pace with voucher enrollment, which has grown by more than 700% since 2022. Wayne Schutsky, KJZZ News, Phoenix.
In politics news: The Pima County Board of Supervisors will not remove Sheriff Chris Nanos over allegations of perjury. Kathy Ritchie reports.
KATHY RITCHIE: Those allegations stem from how Nanos answered questions about his work history prior to joining the Pima County Sheriff's Department in the 1980s. The board also had concerns over Nanos's current management of the department. On Tuesday, Pima County Supervisor Rex Scott made a motion not to declare Nanos's position vacant or to have him removed from office. Rather:
REX SCOTT: I move that we refer allegations of potential perjury by the sheriff to the Arizona Attorney General's Office and to direct the county administrator to do so on behalf of the board.
KATHY RITCHIE: Nanos has also faced criticism over his handling of the disappearance of 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie. Kathy Ritchie, KJZZ News, Phoenix.
TIARA VIAN: And this is the Stories You Don't Want to Miss podcast. Thanks for listening.
In water news: Arizona leaders say they plan to return to the negotiating table with the seven states that share the Colorado River. But as Alex Hager reports, they're not optimistic about reaching an agreement.
ALEX HAGER: The lower basin states of Arizona, California, and Nevada submitted a proposal that would keep the river flowing normally through 2028. Their upstream counterparts have not released their own. State leaders say the next round of talks could include a mediator to help bridge their divides, but Arizona’s negotiator Tom Buschatzke says even a mediator likely won't pull all seven states together before a federal deadline in July.
TOM BUSCHATZKE: We're too far apart, and the time's too short.
ALEX HAGER: The federal government was involved in crafting the lower basin states’ proposal and appears likely to approve at least parts of it to keep the Colorado River system working for at least a couple years. Alex Hager, KJZZ News, Phoenix.
TIARA VIAN: And finally, from KJZZ’s original production, The Show. A lithium mining boom is coming to the Southwest, and it will likely hit tribal communities hard. Here's co-host Lauren Gilger with the conversation.
LAUREN GILGER: Lithium is a key metal for electric vehicle batteries, and there is a global push to find new sources of it. There's currently only one lithium mine operating in the United States, but that is about to change, and drastically. Companies have already staked claims to more than 100 new lithium mine projects. By 2030, at least six new mining projects are projected to be operating on American soil, and they're mostly located right here in the arid Southwest. Wyatt Myskow is a Phoenix-based reporter for Inside Climate News, and he and his colleagues at Columbia Journalism Investigations are out with a story digging into the future of lithium mining and finding out who will be impacted most by it. Good morning, Wyatt, thanks for coming in.
WYATT MYSKOW: Thanks for having me.
LAUREN GILGER: All right, so you compiled this kind of first-of-its-kind database that shows there are 100 lithium mining projects on the horizon in the country. That's a lot. Just begin for us with a little bit about how big the demand for lithium is right now, where it's coming from.
WYATT MYSKOW: Yeah, well, as you said in the intro, right, lithium is expected to demand in production in the next decade or so, and demand for it is going to double as well. And so there's this huge push to get more of it. Um, in the U.S. is currently—there's three or kind of three regions of the world that produce a lot of it: China, Australia, and then what we call the Lithium Triangle down in South America. And the U.S. produces very little of its own lithium right now. And there's been a big push both under the Trump administration and the Biden administration to source more of our own domestic lithium, to have more of our own supply chain so we don't have to rely on these other countries that we'd rather not do, I guess, in these cases. And so there's been a big push at the federal level to incentivize companies to mine here in the U.S. Now, this is a long process—those 100 projects in the U.S., many of them are nowhere near mining. Um, only a handful are going to start digging maybe in the next couple years. Most of them are what we call exploration, where they're drilling into the earth, taking samples, seeing if it's financially viable to mine this lithium and if the lithium's good enough quality to do it. But this lithium powers, you know, electric vehicles, but it's also used to store energy for, you know, solar—for solar power and wind power. And so there's quite a few uses for it and a big demand for it.
LAUREN GILGER: Right, so that—I mean, that's a good thing in some ways, right? Like you're looking at a clean energy future and what will power it—it's this mineral is going to be necessary for that. But that of course involves mining the mineral from the earth. You talked about the Trump administration, the Biden administration sort of touting our energy independence in lithium, trying to jump-start this industry. I mean, Trump is famous for, you know, "drill, baby, drill." What's this look like under his administration?
WYATT MYSKOW: Yeah, well, it's "drill, baby, drill," but also "dig, baby, dig" is what he has said and what his administration has said on the mining aspect. And in the Trump administration—again, this has been a bipartisan issue mining for the past decade, but it's really ramped up over the last year under the second Trump term. Um, one of the first things the Trump administration did was, you know, put out an executive order saying that on the nation's federal public lands, the number one use of that land is mineral extraction—mining for critical minerals like lithium. And there's scores of others. Um, and so what the Trump administration's done is one, incentivize that, you know, push it forward. Another key thing—you know, the Biden administration was putting out loans, they were doing some fast-tracking of projects—the Trump administration's really ramped that up. Um, they—they—they’ve rolled back regulations of their National Environmental Policy Act that regulates any federal project that needs federal approval, any like any mine that might be on federal land. Um, and that means there's been less public comment for a lot of these projects that are coming through now under whereas before there was more public comment, both under the first Trump administration and obviously the Biden administration. That's been rolled back. You know, one of the projects we looked at in this series—typically when you have a public comment period for a project, we're talking about at least a month to for, you know, community members and stakeholders to give their public comment on their thoughts on a project. One of them got rolled back to just five days, and public feedback prompted them to change that. Um, but that project's now being sued, in partially because of these rollbacks.
LAUREN GILGER: Interesting. I want to talk before we run out of time here, Wyatt, about about who's impacted, right? Because you mapped that basically. And you were able to prove that socially, economically vulnerable communities are are going to bear the brunt of this boom, and that often intersects with tribal lands.
WYATT MYSKOW: Yeah, no, exactly. So we mapped using S&P Global data, um, where these projects are and then we overlaid that with data of tribal reservations and then also um social—the CDC's social vulnerability index, which measures counties that are socially vulnerable, as the name suggests, to climate and public health risks. Um, so 70% of the projects we mapped in the U.S. are within 35 miles of a reservation, and two-thirds of these projects are in highly vulnerable communities to climate and public health risks. And so what that means is that these projects are going into communities that are already facing kind of the brunt of impacts from, you know, wildfires, drought, public health risks in general from, you know, whatever it might be. Um, and a lot of these communities have already faced this before. A lot of these communities already have poor drinking water quality. Um, and so what we really wanted to do with this project was show, okay, one, who's behind these projects, but second, what are the impacts looking like? And it's very clear even in these early stages that communities are being impacted. You know, where mines use a lot of water, they pose public health risks, and those impacts are already being seen on the ground.
LAUREN GILGER: Tell us about one situation here in Arizona, uh, where there was a kind of a legal battle between a lithium mining project and the Hualapai tribe, right? This is kind of up near Wikieup. They were successful in that legal challenge, it sounds like, the tribe was.
WYATT MYSKOW: Yeah, they were, and it's one of the very rare cases where a tribe has, you know, so far won in their legal challenge against a mine. But, you know, um, this project was Arizona Lithium’s at the time, Arizona Lithium's Big Sandy project, and it was near a sacred spring to the tribe, near Wikieup. And for years during the permitting, the tribe had warned the Bureau of Land Management that this site was one, designated as a cultural property under the National Register of Historic Places, and they had concerns that this spring would be affected by the drilling that would happen, right? When these companies drill into the earth, it can puncture aquifers, it can change water flow, and there was concern that this spring would be affected. Um, the BLM ignored that, even though other federal agencies during public comment had said, "Hey, you really need to evaluate this." That was ignored. Um, they permitted the drilling, and when the company started drilling, the spring went dry. Fissures broke open in the earth. Um, I have—some of the Hualapai sources I had had shared these photos and videos with me, it's really quite striking. Um, and so the Hualapai sued, and they said, "Hey, the Bureau of Land Management had a responsibility here to consult with the tribe and to protect this property that is protected." Yeah, and they won that case. It's one of these rare, rare cases—I've—I've been to a lot of court cases for mines, um, very rarely do for situations like this, very rarely do the tribes win. They won here, though, because it was such a blatant example of how these projects can impact even when they're early, right? This was not a mine that this project was not going to be mined tomorrow. They they weren't even guaranteed that they would mine; they were just testing to see if this would work, and the impacts were already there.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. Last 30 seconds for you, Wyatt. I mean, like, how many—how what could this look like in Arizona? Do we know how many mining projects might end up on in our state?
WYATT MYSKOW: Yeah, well, we mapped seven potential lithium projects in Arizona. Most of these are all of these are in the very early stages. It's kind of hard to tell how many might end up becoming mines. That Big Sandy project was the one that was kind of the most developed. That one's now on pause; the company that was behind it sold it off. It’s now owned by the Navajo Energy Transitional Company. Um, will they move forward with that? It's really hard to say. Um, but for right now, um, the jury's still out on Arizona.
LAUREN GILGER: Okay. All right. Lots to watch for. Wyatt Myskow with Inside Climate News. Thank you so much for your reporting here, I appreciate you coming in.
WYATT MYSKOW: Thank you.
TIARA VIAN: This has been the Stories You Don't Want to Miss podcast, made possible in part by the Katina Foundation and Basis Charter Schools, Palo Verde Generating Station, SRP, and the Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust. Thank you for listening and for your generous support. I’m Tiara Vian. This is KJZZ. Listen more, learn more, online and on the KJZZ mobile app.
