A Maricopa County judge reinstated an order requiring Recorder Justin Heap and the board of supervisors to sit down with an independent mediator to solve their ongoing election dispute. The nation’s nearly 600 federally recognized tribes are now eligible for conservation grants from the National Park Service. Valley Metro and the city of Phoenix are planning a light rail extension west down Indian School Road, and have asked the community to help shape the route. Plus a journey to find one of the largest populations of urban bats in the country.
Transcript
BRIDGET DOWD: This is KJZZ, your news and information station in Phoenix and across Arizona. I'm Bridget Dowd. Here are this week's Stories You Don't Want to Miss. It's the podcast 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 June 22, 2026. Arizona was a frequent topic during hearings held four years ago by the select committee to investigate the Jan, 6 attack on the United States Capitol. And an Arizona congressman allegedly tied to its planning and a pardon request is now running for the GOP nomination for governor. KJZZ's Wayne Schutsky and Matthew Casey report.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Andy Biggs was subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 committee, and his name shows up repeatedly in its final report issued in 2022. Here's then Rep. Adam Schiff at a hearing questioning former state House Speaker Rusty Bowers.
ADAM SCHIFF: Did you also receive a call from U.S. Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona on the morning of Jan. 6?
RUSTY BOWERS: I did.
ADAM SCHIFF: And what did Mr. Biggs ask you to do?
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Biggs didn't testify and says he was never served. Here's Bowers.
RUSTY BOWERS: And he asked if I would sign on both to a letter that had been sent from my state and/or that I would support the de-certification of the electors, and I said that I would not.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Then Biggs came up again at the next hearing two days later. Here's then Rep. Adam Kinzinger.
ADAM KINZINGER: Witnesses told the select committee that the president considered offering pardons to a wide range of individuals connected to the president.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Kinzinger then played a montage of deposition tapes. Witness Cassidy Hutchinson said Biggs and other Republican congressmen sought a pardon. The former White House aide also testified some of the congressmen were at a January 6th planning meeting. At another hearing weeks later, then Representative Stephanie Murphy counted Biggs among the group.
STEPHANIE MURPHY: According to White House visitor logs obtained by the committee, members of Congress present at the White House on Dec. 21 included Congressman Brian Babin, Andy Biggs...
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Unflinching loyalty to Trump got Biggs the president's endorsement in the upcoming Arizona governor's race where polling shows he is the frontrunner to win the GOP nomination and challenge incumbent Katie Hobbs. Wayne Schutsky recently caught up with Biggs. In an interview with KJZZ, Biggs denied many of the allegations made during the Jan. 6 committee hearings, including claims that he asked Trump for a pardon.
ANDY BIGGS: And the bottom line is, I had nothing to do with J6.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: He also denied putting pressure on anyone to de-certify the election, saying he only asked Bowers to sign a letter backed by other Republican legislators seeking to delay certification. But Biggs dodged questions about the purpose of that letter, and he still won't say who he thinks won the 2020 election. He called it a silly question when asked by reporters earlier this year.
ANDY BIGGS: And the reason I say that is this: when I've been asked that I said, "You know what? You know who was sitting in the White House for four years? It was Joe Biden."
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Exit polling in 2022 found Hobbs won by winning a majority of independent and moderate voters, including those who believed Biden legitimately won the 2020 election. More recent polling shows the issue isn't front and center for many Arizonans today. But Tyler Montag, an East Valley Republican activist, says it could still matter in Arizona where the last governor's race was decided by less than one percentage point.
TYLER MONTAG: Who's it an issue with? Swing voters. OK? Your college-educated, traditional Republican voters.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Montag has long been a critic of Biggs, who he accused of pivoting away from conspiracy theories after election deniers like Kari Lake lost several high-profile statewide races. But Montag says Biggs' past positions should be disqualifying for a candidate for governor because he either believed unproven conspiracy theories about election fraud or purposely spread misinformation to score political points.
TYLER MONTAG: If you believe them sincerely, your analysis, you're not smart enough to be our leader. And if you're cynical enough to lie to people about it to win the primary because you can win that primary on the Republican side, you're not honest enough to be our leader.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Biggs says he doesn't want to look back at the past. He says only journalists and Democratic politicians, not voters, care about 2020.
ANDY BIGGS: I've done meetings with 300 people where I'm taking questions for an hour. And you know what? Not once have I been asked about the 2020 election. Not once.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Instead, he says he wants to move forward and promised to do that as governor by signing Republican-backed legislation he thinks will improve voter confidence.
ANDY BIGGS: I want to make sure we have the best election so that everybody, regardless of party, can say, "I feel comfortable about the election win, lose, or draw."
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: But for many voters and public officials in Arizona, 2020 won't go away because of ongoing federal investigations and lawsuits prompted by President Trump's repeated attempts to rehash debunked conspiracies about his loss to Biden. Wayne Schutsky, KJZZ News, Phoenix.
BRIDGET DOWD: A Maricopa County judge reinstated an order Wednesday requiring Recorder Justin Heap and the Board of Supervisors to sit down with an independent mediator to solve their ongoing election dispute. From KJZZ's politics desk, Wayne Schutsky reports.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Last week, Judge Scott Blaney ordered Heap and the supervisors to meet for a settlement conference with a mediator. But he canceled that directive after the Arizona Court of Appeals issued a stay in the case. That paused a previous order that handed Heap a significant victory and required the board to return certain election functions to the recorder's office. The Arizona Supreme Court later modified the appeals court stay to let mediation continue. In his new order, Blaney directed Heap and the supervisors to meet with Judge Christopher Coury to engage in, quote, "good faith negotiations." Wayne Schutsky, KJZZ News, Phoenix.
BRIDGET DOWD: This is the Stories You Don't Want to Miss podcast. The city of Prescott's population has been steadily increasing since 2020, and with that comes some growing pains. KJZZ's Kathy Ritchie was in the area and has this snapshot.
KATHY RITCHIE: Prescott has four mild seasons, plenty of outdoor activities, and lots of history. City Manager Dalan Kimball says that's made it a popular place, not just to visit, but to live.
DALAN KIMBALL: It's really risen quickly, especially in these post-COVID years.
KATHY RITCHIE: But for some longtime residents —
DALAN KIMBALL: Folks are finding themselves maybe priced out of areas that they've lived in in the past.
KATHY RITCHIE: Kimball says the city is working to address the housing shortage by building more apartments, condos, and townhomes. Access to healthcare is another issue. There aren't enough providers.
DALAN KIMBALL: And so folks find themselves having to travel to Phoenix or sometimes Flagstaff to get the care that they need. Obviously, as you get older, that's less and less ideal.
KATHY RITCHIE: In fact, 40% of the people who live in Prescott are 65 and older. The city is also building new police and fire stations, as well as more retail to keep up with the demand. Still, change often means give and take between long-time residents and newcomers.
DALAN KIMBALL: There is a way of doing things in Prescott, and now the people who are kind of the ambassadors of that way are outnumbered by people who are coming from other places.
KATHY RITCHIE: With different ideas and sometimes politics. Kathy Ritchie, KJZZ News, Prescott.
BRIDGET DOWD: The nation's nearly 600 federally recognized tribes are now eligible for conservation grants from the National Park Service. And as KJZZ's Gabriel Pietrorazio reports, a new digital tool is designed to help them navigate the bureaucracy.
GABRIEL PIETRORAZIO: The Land and Water Conservation Fund has been around since 1964.
STARLIN ROSE MILLER: It receives about $900 million each year from offshore oil and gas royalties, not taxpayer dollars, to support conservation and outdoor recreation nationwide. And yet, I had never heard of the program.
GABRIEL PIETRORAZIO: Starlin Rose Miller is from the Little Shell Chippewa Tribe of Montana. She's with the nonprofit Wilderness Society, which launched the new online hub.
STARLIN ROSE MILLER: Tribal governments are so busy. We thought if we could put a hub up designed in partnership with Indigenous-led orgs, agencies, non-profits, that it could be helpful.
GABRIEL PIETRORAZIO: The fund has aided more than 47,000 projects in nearly every county nationwide. Gabriel Pietrorazio, KJZZ News, Phoenix.
BRIDGET DOWD: This is the Stories You Don't Want to Miss podcast. Valley Metro and the city of Phoenix are planning a light rail extension west down Indian School Road and have asked the community to help shape the route. KJZZ's Connor Greenwall reports.
CONNOR GREENWALL: More than 100 people gathered at Maryvale High School on Wednesday to share their thoughts on the proposed extension, which could connect the rail network to Desert Sky Mall. Among the topics were where residents want the extension to join with the existing lines. Ishmael Morales, a local transit influencer known online as "the LA Guy in Phoenix," says he prefers an Indian School alignment that intersects with Central Avenue.
ISHMAEL MORALES: The more options that you provide to residents here in Phoenix, especially Maryvale, it could provide access to not just downtown but to the East Valley.
CONNOR GREENWALL: Morales, who works in Maryvale, says the West Valley community is in need of high-volume transit. Connor Greenwall, KJZZ News, Phoenix.
BRIDGET DOWD: Looking for something cool to do in the early evenings this summer? Why not check out the Bat Cave in Phoenix? KJZZ's Phil Latzman takes us on a journey to find one of the largest populations of urban bats in the country.
PHIL LATZMAN: It's a June evening near the Phoenix-Paradise Valley border, and the temperature, accordingly, is 108 degrees. But there's a cool spot, literally and figuratively. I am walking with Angie McIntyre, who is the bat specialist for the Arizona Game and Fish Department. Alongside a canal and tucked into the ground is a two-mile-long flood control tunnel, and inside, it's fluttering with activity.
ANGIE MCINTYRE: The species that lives in this tunnel is a very adaptable species, the Mexican free-tailed bat. It lives in urban situations quite readily. This tunnel has been here since the mid-1990s, and the bats moved in somewhere around the late 1990s. Structures like this that keep bat species cooler in our hot summers are quite popular with certain species of bats.
PHIL LATZMAN: And when it comes to diversity, Arizona ranks second only to Texas with 29 different species. But these are big-city bats.
ANGIE MCINTYRE: You know, you have other species of bats that are more particular about where they live and wouldn't be caught dead in the middle of Phoenix. And then but then you've got your species that take advantage of our culverts and tunnels, bridges.
PHIL LATZMAN: McIntyre never imagined a future revolving around bats, but after graduating from ASU in the '90s with a degree in wildlife conservation, she got an internship surveying the winged creatures.
ANGIE MCINTYRE: And I just fell in love with them. Most people haven't seen bats up close, but like all their faces are very different and and they're just endlessly fascinating.
PHIL LATZMAN: And yes, she says, the flying mammals do have a reputation problem.
ANGIE MCINTYRE: I do believe that they're still very misunderstood. People think that all bats have rabies and bats get caught in your hair. I mean, I've been in caves with millions of bats flying all around me. I've never had a bat attack me or anything like that.
PHIL LATZMAN: Or suck your blood?
ANGIE MCINTYRE: Or suck my blood. Yeah, bats just don't do those sorts of things.
PHIL LATZMAN: After a five-minute walk, we arrive at the cave about a half an hour before sunset, and there are already visitors waiting for the big bat reveal. How many do we expect?
ANGIE MCINTYRE: This site we say has about 10,000 bats. The tunnel is about two miles long, and the bats are roosting on either end of the tunnel. So there's probably a few thousand on each end.
PHIL LATZMAN: All of them are females. Many of them are pregnant and preparing their roost for pups, which are usually born in the early summer. And then comes the moment of truth.
ANGIE MCINTYRE: So we're seeing them just start to leave the roost.
PHIL LATZMAN: In a sudden whoosh, a rapid, steady stream of winged creatures darts out of the tunnel, eventually disappearing into the evening sky at speeds of up to 100 miles per hour, making these Mexican free-tailed bats the fastest mammals in the world. They're so cool, though. Look at that. While humans may not be able to hear it, there's a cacophony of bat chatter in the air. McIntyre pulls out a special device, about the size of a small tablet, to take a listen.
ANGIE MCINTYRE: This is it's called an Anabat, this particular model, and it listens for the ultrasonic sounds that a bat is making as it's echolocating. And it makes it audible to us. We can't hear the bats flying over us, but with this detector, we can.
PHIL LATZMAN: We know that there are thousands of bats here. I read that one-fifth of the world's population of mammals are bats?
ANGIE MCINTYRE: That's correct. We know that there are about 1,500 different species of bats across the world. There are frog-eating bats, there are bats that specialize on all kinds of different insects.
PHIL LATZMAN: So they help us not be insect-infested.
ANGIE MCINTYRE: Yeah, exactly. And, you know, I mean, I don't know about you, but I don't want a bunch of pesticides on my food, or I don't like the idea of having to spray a lot of chemicals and things. And so bats are a natural insect control. They're the number one predator of insects at night. And so for Arizona, of our 29 species, 26 of those eat insects.
PHIL LATZMAN: So the next time you see a bat, don't be scared. Be grateful. That's Angie McIntyre, the bat specialist for the Arizona Game and Fish Department. And from the Bat Cave in Phoenix, Phil Latzman, KJZZ News.
BRIDGET DOWD: Adult education programs help people who haven't finished high school gain the skills they need to be successful in college or their careers. The new state budget eliminates about $6 million a year for those initiatives across Arizona. Lori Kirsten Joseph is with Pima Community College. She says the state funds helped support adult learners by offering transportation and clothes for job interviews.
LORI KIRSTEN JOSEPH: The conversations we were having with legislators was about how this program not only positively impacts the individual but how it positively impacts the community and the economy to have folks able to get better jobs.
BRIDGET DOWD: She says state funding makes up about 20% of Pima's adult education budget. And now from KJZZ's original production "The Show," your yard is full of things to eat. Here's co-host Lauren Gilger with Cactus Kelly, a master gardener and urban forager.
LAUREN GILGER: Let's take a trip into the desert with Kelly Athena, AKA Cactus Kelly, a master gardener and urban forager who teaches classes year-round on how to collect ingredients most people think of as debris in their yard and teaches folks how to make nourishing food out of them. She came into our studios recently and brought with her an array of goodies she harvested from trees you can find just about anywhere in the city for me to try. We talked more about what's ripe now and where it all started for her with her dad when she was just a kid.
KELLY ATHENA: When I was 10 years old, he gave me a book called "Native American Uses of the Plants." So I read that, and after that, I had to know every single bird and plant that I could see in my yard and everywhere I went. And I was just kind of an amateur naturalist my whole life.
LAUREN GILGER: As a kid? That's amazing.
KELLY ATHENA: Yeah.
LAUREN GILGER: So you've been foraging for a long time, and there are certain seasons to this, it sounds like. So let's talk first about the season we're in right now and what you might find on a tree, literally in your backyard or on the street, where you can get these ingredients. What's blooming right now?
KELLY ATHENA: Right. Right now, in June, there's mesquite beans. And most people see them as a problem, like, "Oh, litter, and it's in my pool, and oh, what a hassle." But I say it's not litter, it's lunch. So all those dry, beige pods on the ground or on the tree are edible. Take a little inch of a bean and just suck on it and bite into it a little bit. Make sure it gives you a sweet pop. Usually within a minute, you'll go, "Oh. Wow, that's like brown sugar." You want to try it?
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. Oh, it is sweet.
KELLY ATHENA: Oh, already good?
LAUREN GILGER: Immediately sweet. Wow, good. I could see brown sugar in that. That's amazing. OK, so I mean, obviously there's a long history of this, like generations of people from Indigenous communities here have been using mesquite for various things. How do you use it?
KELLY ATHENA: Right, the O'odham have been using it forever, at least 13,000 years in this Sonoran Desert. How I use it, I read the book by Wendy Hodgson, "Food Plants of the Sonoran Desert," and that was based on interviews with a lot of the O'odham people. And so I just got the basics from her, "Hey, these are good to eat, you can grind them into flour." And they did it with the metate y mano. But I found a machine that is the perfect mesquite mill, so I can make about 10 pounds of flour in one hour. And it's delicious. The actual seed is inside and like glued into the bean. You cannot open this bean like most beans. It's indehiscent, yeah.
LAUREN GILGER: Right, it doesn't pop out. Right, yeah. So you grind up the whole thing, the pod and all. OK.
KELLY ATHENA: Right, and the little actual bean, you can see over there, it is like a little flaxseed that can be golden or brownish, and that has the protein. And then all the stuff in between has the fructose and the sucrose, which makes it really slow digestion so that you don't get hit with a sugar spike. So this is really our sugar of the desert. It has overtones of honey and cinnamon, even chocolate, like in our drink here. I roasted up some beans and then I grind them up, and then I put them in hot water for 10 minutes.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, so it's like a tea, almost like a coffee-looking drink here you've made me. And it's delicious. It does sort of taste like a tea or a coffee, but it's sweet cinnamon-y.
KELLY ATHENA: Right. Most people think of the mesquite smoke that you barbecue things with, and that is a whole completely different flavor and they're just shocked when they try some flour and they find out I didn't put any sugar in it. It's just the pure bean.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, and it's so good for you. OK, so that's what's blooming right now in June. You can get these mesquite beans everywhere. We just went through palo verde season. I think there were like two rounds of this this year, right?
KELLY ATHENA: Yes, they came 30 days early, so that is a big wow for me. In all the years I've been here, this is the first time I've seen them ready in April. So they are what I call desert edamame because you can just take a pod, and some of them are onesies, some have two, some have five.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah.
KELLY ATHENA: And you just tease them out with your teeth.
LAUREN GILGER: So you've got like a green pod there and there's like a bean inside of it?
KELLY ATHENA: It tastes just like a pea out of the garden, so fresh. Yeah.
LAUREN GILGER: I got to try it. Oh my gosh, that tastes like a pea, like a fresh little Wow, that's so good.
KELLY ATHENA: Fresh little pea. Yeah, they were just picked in April, and then I have to freeze them. This is the one that you have to keep in the freezer because, just like frozen peas, it will go bad at room temperature. They go hard. I love it this way. Sometimes I steam them or boil them a little bit. And I like to put quail bush or saltbush, it's a type of saltbush, on top.
LAUREN GILGER: It's like in a salt shaker here. Let me try this.
KELLY ATHENA: Yep, we got some green salt in a salt shaker, so it's...
LAUREN GILGER: What's a quail bush?
KELLY ATHENA: A quail bush is a type of saltbush. It looks like a sagebrush on the desert.
LAUREN GILGER: Oh my gosh, that does taste like salt.
KELLY ATHENA: It's kind of hard to find them, but you just sprinkle that just like salt on these palo verde beans, and it just gives them some pop.
LAUREN GILGER: That's a great flavor.
KELLY ATHENA: Yeah, I just I just love it. I've had kids coming to my class and all they'll eat is the saltbush leaves.
LAUREN GILGER: Salty.
KELLY ATHENA: Yeah.
LAUREN GILGER: You can pickle these as well, I hear?
KELLY ATHENA: Yes, you can. You can take them out of the pod. And if you blanch them or steam them, they'll pop right out. And so I've pickled them before, like a Sonoran succotash where I have yucca flowers and ocotillo flowers and these beans and so on.
LAUREN GILGER: Oh, it would look like a caper. I love that. OK. So what's next? What's the next season we're watching for as the summer carries on here? Are there other types of trees we should be watching for, you know, little treats from?
KELLY ATHENA: Yes, definitely. The next one that's ripe almost right now is the ironwood tree.
LAUREN GILGER: At least the ones with the kind of silvery pink flowers.
KELLY ATHENA: Yes, has gray bark or silver bark and very thorny if you get up close. You do not want to touch any twig or any anything on that tree.
LAUREN GILGER: Right.
KELLY ATHENA: So I wait until the beans are dried and dark brown, like those.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, very dark brown. OK.
KELLY ATHENA: Yes, and then I put a tarp down and I tap the tree, either with a saguaro rib that I've gotten legally or a pool pole. If it's a tall tree, those extending pool poles are lightweight and you can get them down. They'll just rain down like hail. And usually they only produce beans two out of three years, and they've produced for the last four years in a row. I think it's like a mast year, there's tons of them.
LAUREN GILGER: Wow. What do they taste like?
KELLY ATHENA: They taste like peanuts, soybeans, hazelnuts.
LAUREN GILGER: Let's try this. OK.
KELLY ATHENA: Those are boiled.
LAUREN GILGER: OK.
KELLY ATHENA: And then the ones in the middle are actually the best, they're air fried.
LAUREN GILGER: Oh, it's very nutty.
KELLY ATHENA: Yes. You can actually boil them, put them in a blender, it'll turn into a butter.
LAUREN GILGER: What do you like about this? Like, why do you think you've kind of created this whole world around it that you've I mean, you you've dedicated your work to this?
KELLY ATHENA: Right. Right, and I have a master's in piano performance, and and this is what I do, and I have prickles in my fingers all the time. Oh boy. It's because I feel the most free in nature. Just the connection with these wise beans, these trees. The ironwood can live over a thousand years, and they're endemic to the Sonoran Desert. And I just I think because nature's looks are so perfectly beautiful that it reflects back to me that, "Hey, I'm part of nature," and it makes me feel better about myself.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah.
KELLY ATHENA: And I just like to help people get environmentally literate. Like most people don't know the name of the tree in their front yard. They go, "Well, I think it's a mesquite, maybe. Maybe acacia, maybe I don't know, I haven't thought about it," you know.
LAUREN GILGER: Haven't thought about it. Yeah, exactly.
KELLY ATHENA: And they're not just background props or something. They're our life. We each have to have eight trees in order for us to live. But it's usually NIMBY, not in my backyard. The biggest thing the HOAs get calls about is, "Get that tree cut down, it's dropping leaves and pods into my pool." And so they do. They they cut them down.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, and that breaks your heart, I'm guessing.
KELLY ATHENA: Yes. So I just kind of guerrilla plant a few my own and ...
LAUREN GILGER: That is Kelly Athena, AKA Cactus Kelly, joining us to talk about foraging in the desert. She's the founder of Cactus Kelly Urban Foraging Institute. She offers classes year-round on foraging, a master gardener as well. Kelly, thank you so much for coming in and teaching me about this and letting me taste all this. It's been amazing. Thank you.
KELLY ATHENA: Thank you so much, Lauren. It's been fun.
BRIDGET DOWD: This has been the Stories You Don't Want to Miss podcast, made possible in part by the Katina Foundation, 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 Bridget Dowd. This is KJZZ. Listen more, learn more online and on the KJZZ mobile app.
