KJZZ's Sun Up is a weekday morning podcast giving you the Arizona news you need to start your day. It is the biggest stories of the day from KJZZ News.
Transcript
ANNOUNCER: KJZZ’s Sun Up is supported by Banner Health, Arizona’s largest nonprofit healthcare system. Last year, Banner reinvested more than $1.1 billion in community health and charity care. Banner Health, nonprofit for Arizona. bannerhealth.com/nonprofitforaz.
PHIL LATZMAN: Hello, this is KJZZ’s Sun Up, your daily news update from here in Phoenix on our state and region. I’m Phil Latzman, your host for this podcast, a daily digest of Arizona news as reported by our KJZZ news team. And it is Thursday, July the 30th, almost Friday, hang in there, we’re sweating it out together, and now here is a check of the news.
Longtime Tempe Mayor, state lawmaker and Congressman Harry Mitchell has died. His son Mark Mitchell announced the news on social media on Wednesday night. Mitchell was a civics teacher at Tempe High School, also served as the city’s mayor for 16 years. The Democrat later served in the state Senate before being elected to two terms in Congress in 2006 and 2008. As Tempe Mayor, Mitchell helped spearhead the effort to develop Tempe Town Lake. A statue of him stands at City Hall in the municipal complex named after him. Harry Mitchell was 86.
A Maricopa County judge has removed a so-called “poison pill” measure from the general election ballot that critics called a veiled attempt to undermine a competing school voucher reform initiative. From the politics desk, Wayne Schutsky reports.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: The Republican lawmakers who sent HCR 2048 to the ballot said it would protect military families who receive school voucher dollars by stopping the state from passing new laws to revoke those funds. But it also includes language that would fully void any future law that violates those protections. A clause critics say was designed to invalidate a separate school voucher reform initiative.
Judge Joseph Kramer found the Republican proposal violated a rule requiring ballot measures to stick to a single subject because the first part could accomplish the goal of protecting vouchers for military families without including the poison pill. Republican lawmakers plan to appeal the ruling. Wayne Schutsky, KJZZ News, Phoenix.
PHIL LATZMAN: An extreme heat warning remains in effect, entering the 8th day of that warning, and it stays in effect through Sunday. Highs expected to be in the 115 range by tomorrow and above 110 for the foreseeable future. The National Weather Service warns those temperatures do pose health risks to most people. As Katherine Davis-Young reports, cooling centers across the Valley are seeing high demand.
KATHERINE DAVIS-YOUNG: At the First United Church of Christ in downtown Phoenix, respite center staffers say lately there have been lines at the door before they even open in the mornings. Jonathan Nelson is one of the regulars.
JONATHAN NELSON: Come in every day because the heat’s really, really bad. I’ve been to the hospital because of the heat. I’ve been in kidney failure because of the heat.
KATHERINE DAVIS-YOUNG: He’s been homeless in Phoenix for 15 years, but he says this has been his hardest summer yet. Even though rain has brought temperatures down a little, it’s pushed humidity up, and he says that’s worse. If not for this site, he says he couldn’t survive. That crosses Arene Rushdan’s mind too. She’s with the Arizona Faith Network, which manages this heat relief site and a dozen others across the Valley.
ARENE RUSHDAN: So that’s one of the things that really worries me when I see these temperatures go way up, 117. It’s ... I’m thinking about, “Oh my God, are we going to lose anyone?”
KATHERINE DAVIS-YOUNG: Forty heat-related deaths have been confirmed so far this year in Maricopa County, with 388 more under investigation. Visitors and staffers here say this summer’s heat remains an urgent threat, especially to unhoused people. Katherine Davis-Young, KJZZ News, Phoenix.
PHIL LATZMAN: A new poll shows people living in the Colorado River basin overwhelmingly want their governments to do more to secure water for the future. As Alex Hager reports, that includes more than 90% of Arizona respondents.
ALEX HAGER: In Arizona and the six other states that use the river’s water, roughly 90% of voters polled said they were worried about drought impacts, like increased wildfire risk, threats to clean drinking supplies, increased insurance costs and smaller food supplies.
In the poll, conducted by Morning Consult and the Walton Family Foundation, a similar number of people said the state and federal government should make addressing water security a top priority. They also supported water conservation and reuse in cities and protecting wildlife habitat.
Roughly 9 in 10 people also said they supported making farms more water efficient and helping farmers and ranchers adapt to hotter and drier conditions. Alex Hager, KJZZ News, Phoenix.
PHIL LATZMAN: Well, the Hoover Dam is temporarily closed to visitors while maintenance crews work on the facility’s cableway system. Bridget Dowd has details.
BRIDGET DOWD: The 150-ton cableway system is used to move large equipment and materials across the river between the Nevada and Arizona sides of the power plant. The Bureau of Reclamation says during routine maintenance, the cableway carriage moved unexpectedly and placed additional stress on system components.
As a precaution, the area was secured and a specialty contractor was scheduled to help assess the equipment on Wednesday. The Bureau says until the contractor completes its evaluation and safely repositions the cableway carriage, it cannot estimate when visitor access will resume. Bridget Dowd, KJZZ News, Phoenix.
PHIL LATZMAN: Well, Democratic governors are pumping $10 million into Arizona to protect Katie Hobbs, the governor they believe is the most vulnerable incumbent in the 2026 election cycle. Sam Newton, a spokesperson for the Democratic Governors Association, says those dollars are only an initial investment in Arizona, where in many ways the deck is stacked against Hobbs.
SAM NEWTON: Arizona is the swing state in 2024 that Trump won by the most. Republicans start with a very significant voter registration advantage, and the race in 2022 was one of the closest ones in the entire country.
PHIL LATZMAN: Hobbs’s challenger, Republican Congressman Andy Biggs, says the DGA spending is a sign Democrats believe Hobbs will struggle to win reelection.
Well, a Republican for the Arizona Corporation Commission is facing allegations he filed misleading financial reports and is at risk of losing out on hundreds of thousands of dollars of publicly funded campaign cash. Here’s Wayne Schutsky once again.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: State lawmaker Ralph Heap secured one of two Republican nominations in the July 21 Corporation Commission primary. He’s running as a Clean Elections candidate, meaning he has agreed to forgo money from corporations and other large donors in exchange for public funding from the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission.
This year, qualified Corporation Commission candidates are eligible for up to $370,000, but Heap might not see a dime. That’s because Clean Elections candidates must file a sworn statement affirming they filed accurate campaign finance reports, and Heap hasn’t signed that document. He’s also facing allegations that he hasn’t reported who paid for hundreds of campaign signs throughout the state during the primary election. Wayne Schutsky, KJZZ News, Phoenix.
PHIL LATZMAN: Well, the Federal Aviation Administration says it received substantial feedback from the public about its plans to change flight paths at Valley airports, including Sky Harbor, and will delay those plans until next June. The FAA wants to implement its new satellite-based air traffic procedures, which they say will enhance safety and efficiency. The delay gives the administration time to review and address the feedback. In 2014, flight path changes affected several historic neighborhoods in downtown Phoenix.
Well, chronic absenteeism in the Tucson Unified School District has now reached 44%, the highest since 2021. Ahead of the new school year, the district says it has a plan to address the issue. Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo says 61% of absences in grades first through eighth are excused by parents.
GABRIEL TRUJILLO: We have to do a better job really informing and empowering our parents, and informing them just how important it is to have kids in school.
PHIL LATZMAN: Tucson Unified will have community liaisons in 37 schools who will interact with parents and do home visits to figure out why those students aren’t making it to school.
Well, the USDA announced on Wednesday it would allocate $25 million for a sterile fly dispersal facility in Douglas. From the Fronteras Desk in Hermosillo, Nina Kravinsky reports on the effort to protect livestock against the New World screwworm, which last month spread into Texas.
NINA KRAVINSKY: USDA says sterile New World screwworm fly release is the most effective way to eradicate the flesh-eating parasite. Sterile flies mate with normal screwworm flies to dwindle the population. There’s currently only one other sterile fly distribution facility in the US, in Southern Texas.
The border has been closed to livestock from Mexico for over a year to protect against the spread of the parasite, but is set to reopen next month starting in Douglas. Neither Arizona nor its southern neighbor, Sonora, have confirmed any cases of New World screwworm, as both Mexico and the US work to fight their own outbreaks. Nina Kravinsky, KJZZ News, Hermosillo.
PHIL LATZMAN: And sports! In their return from the All-Star break, Kahleah Copper scored 27 points, the Mercury back from a 13-point deficit to beat the Valkyries 91-89 last night in Phoenix. Alyssa Thomas had 25 points, 9 rebounds, and 8 assists for the Merc, who have won three straight following a five-game losing streak.
Baseball: Eduardo Rodriguez pitched eight shutout innings, Gabriel Moreno hit a two-run homer, Diamondbacks blanked the Pirates 3-0 yesterday to win two of three in Pittsburgh. Rodriguez struck out two while giving up five hits on 105 pitches. For Brandon Garcia closed it out for his second save. Arizona now two games up on the Pirates for the final NL wild card spot and they’ll start a series in Cleveland against the Guardians tomorrow.
And that does it for this edition of KJZZ’s Sun Up, Arizona’s morning news podcast for this Thursday, July the 30th. I’m Phil Latzman, be careful in all the heat out there today, and we’ll do this again tomorrow when it’s Friday.
