President Trump’s One, Big Beautiful Bill is front and center in the race to represent southern Arizona’s Congressional District Six. APS is looking to nearly double its natural gas supplies to meet growing energy demands. Monarch butterflies are once again passing through the Phoenix-area as they migrate south from Canada and the northern U.S. Plus the latest tribal natural resources, Fronteras Desk, education, and metro Phoenix 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.
This is the podcast that’s designed to catch you up on some highlights from around the region. Thanks so much for listening. Here are a few of the stories for the week of September 14th, 2026.
President Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill” is front and center in the race to represent Southern Arizona’s Congressional District 6. As Republican Congressman Juan Ciscomani and Democratic challenger JoAnna Mendoza vie for voter support, they’re painting very different pictures of the district and how that legislation is helping or harming its residents. Wayne Schutsky reports.
SCOTT BESSENT: Life is good here in Casa Grande.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: That’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent after touring a Frito-Lay factory in Casa Grande, a rapidly expanding city about an hour south of Phoenix that sits at the northern edge of Congressional District 6, one of just 18 competitive districts across the country that could determine which party controls Congress after the midterms.
Bessent and Speaker Mike Johnson spent their August visit talking up the ways they believe Republican policies—and specifically the one big, beautiful bill—are benefiting CD-6. Here’s Johnson.
MIKE JOHNSON: We’re putting manufacturers, small businesses, working families in the best possible position to succeed. And we’re going to continue to do that. I believe we’re going to hold the Republican majority in this midterm election. It’s a fateful one.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: The visit came as polling shows Ciscomani locked in a close race with Democrat JoAnna Mendoza, a Marine Corps veteran who grew up in a farmworker family in a nearby rural community.
To Mendoza, Trump’s signature legislation, also called H.R. 1, hasn’t been all that beautiful for CD-6 residents, who, like other Americans, are dealing with a rising cost of living driven by inflation and oil prices. And she blames Republican changes to SNAP food assistance included in H.R. 1 for making it harder still for residents in the district to access social services.
Mendoza says that’s hurting working families and children who rely on those programs—programs that she says made it possible for her to rise out of rural poverty and eventually become a Marine Corps drill sergeant.
JOANNA MENDOZA: I share that with people because these programs are not—they’re not a handout. They’re a hand up. And certainly families like mine used them when they needed them.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Since the state began implementing the changes, around half a million Arizonans have lost SNAP benefits, outpacing other states across the country. Republicans have defended the changes, saying they’re designed to root out waste and fraud in the program. Here’s Ciscomani at a debate earlier this month.
JUAN CISCOMANI: We want to make sure that we protect that safety net for the people that that was meant to do. There’s a lot of fraud out there.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: But critics, including many SNAP recipients, have complained that it’s the new bureaucratic hurdles that are causing otherwise qualified Arizonans to lose coverage. And data from the state agency responsible for administering food assistance backs that up. It shows the Department of Economic Security has dropped over 3 million calls as Arizonans try to complete required phone interviews to qualify for SNAP.
JOANNA MENDOZA: For me, the cuts that my opponent voted for in H.R. 1 actually has increased costs for a lot of folks.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: But Ciscomani said the massive tax cut package included in H.R. 1 is a boon for his constituents, calling it one of the most consequential pieces of legislation of our lifetime. During the factory visit, he pointed to items like no tax on tips or overtime that will keep more money in their pockets, as well as corporate tax cuts that he says will grow the economy.
JUAN CISCOMANI: Represents the largest tax cut in American history made permanent. Largest share of tax relief directly to low- and middle-income Americans. Protects and creates up to 7.2 million jobs.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Again, Mendoza pushed back, though she says she supports changes like no tax on tips that benefit working people.
But Mendoza says the larger bill is hurting the local economy, not building it up, pointing to the Lucid Motors electric car manufacturing facility located just a few miles from the Frito-Lay plant where Ciscomani stood by Bessent and Johnson. Lucid announced plans to lay off around 1,000 workers from the plant, which Mendoza attributed to H.R. 1’s elimination of a federal electric vehicle tax credit.
JOANNA MENDOZA: They’re creating this instability for people. They’re saying, “You know, you need to demonstrate that you, you know, that you’re applying for jobs or that you’re working.” How the heck are people supposed to do that if they can’t—you know, if they’re laying people off and there are no jobs?
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Ciscomani defended the legislation and said whether a company hires or lays off employees should be based on private business decisions, not federal tax credits.
Ultimately, it will be up to CD-6 voters to decide whether the big, beautiful bill has been a boon or a bust for their community.
A few weeks after Ciscomani’s visit, Casa Grande resident Terry Arvizu appeared alongside Mendoza on a panel hosted by advocacy groups Climate Power and Rural Action Arizona. She said she is struggling with rising utility and grocery costs, and some family members have to drive hours to Phoenix or Tucson just to find work.
TERRY ARVIZU: You know, I talk to my neighbors, I talk to coworkers, and everybody’s struggling. We need more in our community. We need the resources. We need the help. Like, we don’t feel like anyone’s hearing our voices.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: So, is life good in Casa Grande? It depends on who you ask. Wayne Schutsky, KJZZ News, Phoenix.
TIARA VIAN: In Fronteras desk news:
Construction is underway on a plan to bring more visitors to a largely undeveloped stretch of coastline in the Mexican state of Sonora, directly south of Arizona. That’s despite concerns that the tourism project will threaten one of the state’s most important beaches for endangered sea turtle nesting. From the Fronteras desk, Nina Kravinsky reports.
NINA KRAVINSKY: Early in the morning, Elsa Coria walks the beach in San Carlos, carrying a thin metal rod.
ELSA CORIA: Para encontrar el nido.
NINA KRAVINSKY: She shows me how to poke into the sand to find clutches of sea turtle eggs laid under the surface overnight. Up and down the beach, she scans for turtle tracks heading from the ocean that might lead her to a nest. But this morning, the sand is crisscrossed with other kinds of tracks, mostly from trucks and four-wheelers.
ELSA CORIA: Aquí uno de los problemas muy fuertes que tenemos obviamente son los vehículos.
NINA KRAVINSKY: “One of the biggest problems we have here are the vehicles,” Coria says. It’s part of the reason Coria, a wildlife veterinarian, and the nonprofit animal rescue group she leads remove all the sea turtle nests they find and bring them elsewhere to incubate.
Even before 7:00 a.m., beachgoers are arriving at Playa San Francisco to enjoy a morning swim or set up chairs. The appeal of this spot is clear: The long, sandy beach curves into a half-moon, cradled by dramatic rock formations that end in the warm blue waters of the Gulf of California. There are some condos to one side, but behind most of the beach is a large tract of, until recently, undeveloped wetland.
Cresting the shrubby dunes, a wide swath of sand cleared of vegetation forms a rectangle. Construction trucks plow further into the green expanse.
This will become a 300-car parking lot, Coria says, for visitors to a new mile-and-a-half-long walkway along the beach at a cost of more than $30 million.
ALFONSO DURAZO: Transformamos las playas de Sonora.
NINA KRAVINSKY: Governor Alfonso Durazo’s administration has already built two similar walkways, which include bike paths and park areas, along other beaches in the state.
ALFONSO DURAZO: Con más infraestructura turística, Sonora se transforma.
NINA KRAVINSKY: State officials hope the infrastructure will drive tourism and boost the economy. But in the year since the Playa San Francisco walkway was announced, Coria says her group was shut out of the planning process as they raised concerns about what the project could mean for the Olive Ridley sea turtles that nest here, which are classified as endangered on Mexico’s Pacific coast.
The state of Sonora and Mexico’s environmental agency did not respond to requests for comment from KJZZ.
Coria feels the increase in visitors to the beach, where 60% of the area’s sea turtle nests are found, could further interrupt the delicate nesting process.
ELSA CORIA: Más gente, más basura, más perturbación de las hembras anidantes.
NINA KRAVINSKY: “It will mean more people, more trash, more disturbances,” Coria says. Plus, turtles sometimes nest up as far as the dunes where the walkway will stretch, she says.
The state, she feels, hasn’t listened to those concerns in their planning.
ELSA CORIA: Sí, da mucha tristeza, sí, mucha impotencia.
NINA KRAVINSKY: “It makes me feel so sad, so helpless,” Coria says.
Later that day, we stand outside the trailer-turned-incubation center where shelves of turtle nests in Styrofoam boxes develop in a dark, temperature-controlled room.
In a plastic box on the ground, 95 day-old hatchlings clamor over one another. Each of the identical, dark gray babies could fit in the palm of a child’s hand.
Volunteers load the box in their car and head to Playa San Francisco, where the hatchlings’ mother laid her nest more than a month ago before shuffling back into the sea.
ELSA CORIA: Ésta es la primera reliberación de tortuguitas marinas de la temporada.
NINA KRAVINSKY: “It’s the first turtle release of the nesting season,” Coria tells the throngs of visitors now gathered at the beach just before dusk, as green-shirted volunteers create a perimeter.
ELSA CORIA: Entonces, esta playa es un tesoro que es importante...
NINA KRAVINSKY: “This beach is a treasure,” Coria says. “It’s important that we care for it and protect it.”
Two by two, children are invited to scoop up a baby turtle from the box with a coconut shell and place it gently into the sand.
The hatchlings use their tiny, brand-new flippers to drive themselves down the beach and into the surf.
Statistically, only 1 in 1,000 will survive. Coria says the volunteers’ intervention triples those odds. After more than a decade at sea, any surviving females will return to this beach to lay their eggs. Coria hopes they’ll have a safe place to come back to. Nina Kravinsky, KJZZ News, San Carlos, Sonora.
TIARA VIAN: And this is the Stories You Don’t Want to Miss podcast. Thanks for listening.
The SPOT 127 Youth Media Center’s after-school program for high school students is happening very soon. Learn digital photography along with video and audio editing and entrepreneurship skills in this free, award-winning program. The in-person classes start October 1st. For details and how to apply, go to spot127.org.
TIARA VIAN: In business news:
APS is looking to nearly double its natural gas pipeline to meet growing energy demands. Clean energy advocates say it’s neither the most reliable or affordable fuel source available. Taylor Griffith has more.
TAYLOR GRIFFITH: The Sierra Club and Synapse Energy Economics studied spikes in natural gas prices from extreme weather or global conflict and compared this to APS’s plans. In a worst-case scenario, they say APS could end up paying more than $430 million for fuel, and 100% of that can be passed on to the consumer.
Sandy Bahr is with the Sierra Club Grand Canyon Chapter.
SANDY BAHR: APS’s proposed buildout of gas generation, again, will harm our air, our health, our climate, and really hit APS ratepayers in the wallet.
TAYLOR GRIFFITH: Bahr says this buildout is mostly to serve new data centers, but will be paid for by all. APS says its proposed methods would place costs tied to large customers, including fuel costs, onto those customers. Taylor Griffith, KJZZ News, Phoenix.
TIARA VIAN: In science news:
Monarch butterflies are once again passing through the Phoenix area as they migrate south from Canada and the northern U.S. And as Kathy Ritchie tells us, the city of Phoenix is asking residents to help these pollinators along their 3,000-mile journey.
KATHY RITCHIE: On a hot, sticky morning, Mayor Kate Gallego is getting her hands dirty, planting milkweed outside Phoenix City Hall.
KATE GALLEGO: Phoenix is a major point on the migration, and we’ve lost a lot of the original habitat.
KATHY RITCHIE: So planting milkweed and other pollinator-friendly plants in September has become an annual tradition here.
TRISHA BALLEFF: The milkweed is the only plant that the monarch caterpillar will eat.
KATHY RITCHIE: Trisha Balleff is with Phoenix’s Office of Environmental Programs.
TRISHA BALLEFF: So it’s really critical for their life cycle to have milkweed out around the city, especially for their migration.
KATHY RITCHIE: Balleff says anyone in Phoenix can plant milkweed in their yards. Seed packets are available for free through the city and the public library. Kathy Ritchie, KJZZ News, Phoenix.
TIARA VIAN: In education news:
SRP is investing $3 million into research projects at Arizona’s three public universities this fall. From the education desk, Bridget Dowd reports.
BRIDGET DOWD: The 34 research and development projects span a variety of topics, including sustainability, power reliability, wildfire mitigation, and energy efficiency. Alejandra Mendez is a senior engineer at SRP. She says the grants are designed to find solutions to some of the challenges the company faces as it tries to maintain reliable power and water delivery for its customers.
ALEJANDRA MENDEZ: We have a project with NAU where they are using soil moisture sensors across an area of the forest to help us identify the areas that are more susceptible to wildfire, and that’ll help us address those risks.
BRIDGET DOWD: Each project proposal is overseen by an advisor at SRP and evaluated by subject matter experts across the company. Bridget Dowd, KJZZ News, Phoenix.
TIARA VIAN: In tribal natural resources:
Municipalities across Arizona are raising concern over the rapid rise of data centers, especially when it comes to water consumption in the drought-stricken Southwest. As Gabriel Pietrorazio reports, a tribe bordering the Colorado River has enacted a moratorium on its reservation.
GABRIEL PIETRORAZIO: The Hualapai Tribal Council in Northern Arizona recently passed a resolution opposing the, quote, “irresponsible development of hyperscale data centers.” Such facilities powering AI, they say, pose a direct and severe threat to the tribe’s sacred water, lands, environment, and way of life.
DWAYNE CLARK: Moving forward, we will always protect our air. We will always protect our land, and we will always protect our water.
GABRIEL PIETRORAZIO: That’s Hualapai Chairman Dwayne Clark.
DWAYNE CLARK: Hualapai Tribe will stand strong with any community, and we will oppose these data centers.
GABRIEL PIETRORAZIO: Some neighbors in nearby Bullhead City, which also sits along the river, are now concerned about rezoning proposals that could lead to data center development. Gabriel Pietrorazio, KJZZ News, Phoenix.
TIARA VIAN: In water news:
A coalition of business groups from across the West is calling on the federal government to give at least $2 billion for Colorado River projects. Alex Hager reports that includes nearly a dozen chambers of commerce from Arizona.
ALEX HAGER: In a letter to federal officials, the business groups say long-term investment is needed to help the Southwest adapt to dry conditions on the Colorado River. It includes business groups from all seven states that use the river’s water. Republican State Senator Tim Dunn of Yuma is part of the push for federal dollars.
TIM DUNN: We need to save the system. So that’s the lens we’re looking at, and when you come together trying to figure out how we can collectively do that in a bipartisan and a by-basin, complete basin way, that’s—we’ve had some great conversations on that.
ALEX HAGER: The money could be used for a wide range of projects, from adding to dams and accessing groundwater, to reducing wildfire risk and preventing leaks in city pipes. Business groups say reliable water infrastructure is foundational to the region’s economy. Alex Hager, KJZZ News, Phoenix.
TIARA VIAN: And finally, from KJZZ’s The Show:
The fight with indie film production company A24 is the latest in Harkins’s long history of budding heads with movie studios. Here’s co-host Lauren Gilger.
LAUREN GILGER: The low-budget thriller The Backrooms has officially raked in nearly $400 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing film of all time from indie film production company A24. The film was directed by 20-year-old Kane Parsons, who first went viral on YouTube.
KANE PARSONS: I found something. In the store.
ACTRESS: Okay. What did you find?
KANE PARSONS: A place. I found a place.
LAUREN GILGER: But that’s just the latest in A24’s indie hits. They’re behind the new Anthony Bourdain biopic, Tony, as well as Marty Supreme, starring Timothée Chalamet; Oscar winners Everything Everywhere All at Once and Moonlight; and the upcoming Robert Pattinson movie, Primetime.
In short, A24 is a darling of indie film buffs. And now, Arizona’s own Harkins Theatres says they’ll no longer play their movies. Harkins says they couldn’t secure, quote, “mutually agreeable terms” with A24. They pulled screenings of Tony and Primetime last week.
And here with his take on all the drama is M.V. Moorhead, film critic with Phoenix Magazine. Good morning, Mark. Thanks for coming in.
M.V. MOORHEAD: It’s always good to see you, Lauren.
LAUREN GILGER: Okay. So tell us first just about A24 and how they became such a big force in the film world.
M.V. MOORHEAD: Well, one of the things that’s extraordinary about A24 is that they became a big force of a certain kind of boutique film really quickly. They’ve been around just a little over maybe 10, 12 years, something like that.
And they’ve had—I mean, you just rattled off a bunch of them, but they—and they made some movies early on that kind of flew under the radar that I wish more people knew about, like there was a movie called Morris from America and Equals. And one of my very favorites from just not quite 10 years ago, a movie called The Lovers with Debra Winger and Tracy Letts was number one on my top 10 list that year.
But eventually they started to become a really big deal. And like you said, Everything Everywhere All at Once, they had The Whale, they had The Zone of Interest, they had Sing Sing, Minari. So that’s kind of become their forte is real award-bait kind of movies.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. So they’re a big force, right? There’s this independent, but very big now, film company.
M.V. MOORHEAD: Yes.
LAUREN GILGER: Kind of a darling. Indie film lovers love them.
M.V. MOORHEAD: Very much so.
LAUREN GILGER: And indie film lovers kind of love Harkins, right? This kind of homegrown, almost century-old movie theater chain here, founded in the Valley. Tell us about their history.
M.V. MOORHEAD: Well, they were started by a man named Dwight Harkins, who was really known as Red Harkins. And Red founded them in the early ’30s. And he was just kind of a born showman. And he had a lot of innovative, creative ideas. He experimented with drive-in movies at Tempe Beach Park back in the ’30s.
He built—it wasn’t his first film or his first theater, rather, but he built the College, what was called the College in those days. It’s now known as the Valley Art Theatre in downtown Tempe.
And he had a lot of kind of wacky ideas. He did luminescent carpeting so you wouldn’t get—stub your toe in the dark, I guess, or whatever, but it wouldn’t mess with the lighting of the screen. He had a room for mothers to go in and take care of their babies, and they could plug in and listen to the movie while they were doing it.
LAUREN GILGER: Innovative ideas early on, yeah.
M.V. MOORHEAD: Yeah, wouldn’t mess with everybody else’s experience. Stuff for the hard of hearing.
His son, Dan Harkins, who we know to this day, insists that he was—it was Red who broke up segregated seating, racially segregated seating in the movies.
So he has a very storied history. But the one thing I mean—my disclaimer is, this thing between him and A24, I have like zero inside baseball knowledge about what’s going on.
LAUREN GILGER: Well, neither side’s saying that much about what’s going on.
M.V. MOORHEAD: And nobody’s—doesn’t seem to be saying much.
LAUREN GILGER: But this is not the first time Harkins has done something like this.
M.V. MOORHEAD: Exactly. Harkins’s history, especially since—you know, Red seemed to most be into being a good, solid local chain. And but they were in financial trouble by the time that Red passed on in the ’70s.
And it was the son, Dan, who really took them to another level. And that was partly because of a little bit of feistiness. That company is known for just having a little willingness to fight and contention. And most notably in the ’70s, Dan took other distributors, big major distributors, the studios and all that, to court in an antitrust suit because of practices that he felt were anti-competitive.
LAUREN GILGER: Wow.
M.V. MOORHEAD: And really kind of to everybody’s surprise—for all I know, maybe even to Dan’s own surprise—he won.
And my old late friend, Bill Rose, who used to be the film critic on Channel 5 here, you know, told me that he always saw Dan as sort of a David who took on a Goliath and won.
And that is—that was the beginning of Harkins becoming what we know it to be today, which is just a dominant local chain that people are very loyal to. But they’re also a lot of other—they play in Oklahoma, and I think Colorado and California. That branching out, that’s what not only saved Harkins, but turned them into a pretty big player.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. Well, and it’s kind of what local film fans here love about Harkins, right? So you’re seeing a lot of people online right now saying like, "We can’t—we hate this, this idea that we can’t see A24 films at Harkins because we don’t want to go to AMC. We want to support this local chain." What do you think here? Do you think they’ll come to some kind of deal? You think they’ll figure it out?
M.V. MOORHEAD: If I had to guess, and it would be nothing but a guess, I would guess that they will. They had a problem with New Line Cinema. Harkins had a legal wrangle with them back in the ’90s, and so they weren’t playing things like Austin Powers and stuff, really lucrative pictures.
And so they, eventually I believe—you know, now New Line has since long since been gobbled up by Warner. But, you know, I think they eventually settled their differences, too. But he—the business, Harkins, they don’t take any guff. They fight.
And I’m certainly in no position to say who the rights and the wrongs are in this. But the point is, that’s not a company that rolls over.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. All right. Well, we’ll see what happens. M.V. Moorhead, film critic with Phoenix Magazine, joining us. Mark, thanks so much. Appreciate it very much.
M.V. MOORHEAD: Great to be here. Thanks.
TIARA VIAN: And this has been the Stories You Don’t Want to Miss podcast, made possible in part by the Cortina 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 Tiara Vian. This is KJZZ. Listen more, learn more online and on the KJZZ mobile app.
