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.
KJZZ's Sun Up for Sept, 22, 2026 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: Hey, this is KJZZ’s Sun Up, your daily news update from here in Phoenix on our state and region. I’m Phil Latzman. Good day to you. We bring you this podcast as a daily digest of Arizona news as reported by our KJZZ news team. Welcome to Wednesday, dub-dub-dub and over the hump we go, on this Sept. 23, 2026, with a check of the news from here in the Grand Canyon State.
Congressman Greg Stanton and the Arizona Democratic delegation are demanding answers following media reports that the Trump administration is considering at least four data center proposals on federal public lands in the state. On Monday, Stanton said the delegation co-signed a letter to the Bureau of Land Management demanding transparency. He says he’s concerned BLM would attempt to bypass federal public notice and environmental review laws as it did with an ICE detention center proposal in Surprise.
GREG STANTON: We’re not going to support something that doesn’t follow the law in this proposal. And so that’s exactly what we’re demanding.
PHIL LATZMAN: Reporters at the Washington Sun identified four data center proposals, totaling 3,000 acres, on federal public lands in Arizona.
Meanwhile, Pima County leaders narrowly voted to approve a six-month moratorium on data center development in unincorporated parts of the county. Proponents say the pause is needed while the county works through new zoning requirements for data centers and studies their impacts. From the Fronteras Desk in Tucson, Alisa Reznick reports.
ALISA REZNICK: The moratorium comes more than a year after developer Beale Infrastructure first acquired county land to build the controversial Project Blue data center. Another data center, called Project Gravel, is proposed on a 160-acre stretch south of Tucson. Supervisor Jenn Allen said the moratorium would help ensure the county studies all possible impacts of data centers.
JENN ALLEN: And so, just to be clear about the scope of it: air quality and emissions, water use and water stress, land use and green space, cumulative impacts and community vulnerability.
ALISA REZNICK: Allen said things like light pollution, construction-related dust, and other issues would also be studied. But the resolution applies to future projects, not developments like Project Blue that are already in motion. Alisa Reznick, KJZZ News, Tucson.
PHIL LATZMAN: As both AI insiders and critics call on Congress to regulate artificial intelligence, Sen. Mark Kelly says he wants the industry to fund protections for workers replaced by the new technology. From KJZZ’s Politics Desk, Wayne Schutsky reports.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Kelly says he plans to introduce the Make AI Work for Americans Act to force tech companies to pay into a fund to help train workers and provide other support for those who lose their jobs to artificial intelligence.
MARK KELLY: These companies are getting rich off of a technology trained on the wealth of humanity’s research, knowledge, and work — our ideas and discoveries.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: The exact nature of Kelly’s legislation and how that fund would work is still unclear, and Kelly’s office did not respond to a request for a copy of the bill. As he pushes the new legislation, Kelly faces an uphill battle in a Congress that has proven mostly unwilling to address artificial intelligence, and he criticized House Speaker Mike Johnson and President Trump for their resistance to efforts to regulate the industry. Wayne Schutsky, KJZZ News, Phoenix.
PHIL LATZMAN: Tucson leaders voted last night to lower a threshold on industrial water use that triggers the need to conserve. As Taylor Griffith tells us, some residents and local environmental advocacy groups wanted to lower it even further.
TAYLOR GRIFFITH: In the year since the rule passed, Tucson Water has received no applications for water use that meet the limit required to submit a conservation plan. Most speakers at Tuesday’s City Council hearing advocated to quarter the limit, from 7 million gallons a month to under 2 million gallons. Mayor Regina Romero worried that could impact economic development and efforts to address persistent poverty in Tucson.
REGINA ROMERO: We also have to think about, what is it that we want to say yes to? We said no to data centers. We have been very good, as a mayor and council, to saying no to mines and to other extractive industry in our community.
TAYLOR GRIFFITH: The council narrowly settled on lowering the threshold by about a million gallons a month but plans to consider other threshold options within three months. Taylor Griffith, KJZZ News, Phoenix.
PHIL LATZMAN: Congressman Andy Biggs said yesterday that if he was elected governor, he would eliminate the income tax and that it would actually increase the state’s tax revenue. From KJZZ’s Politics Desk, Camryn Sanchez was listening in.
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Biggs is running for governor against incumbent Democrat Katie Hobbs. He plans to gradually eliminate the state individual income tax, which accounts for more than $5 billion in the state budget. But Biggs says the state can afford that without having to raise any other taxes or cut any state government services.
ANDY BIGGS: I have very confidence that as we manage this and we incrementally bring this down, you’re going to see more economic activity, which will result in more tax revenue coming into the state.
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Biggs says he’ll also get rid of waste, fraud and abuse in state government, which will further offset the elimination of the income tax. Camryn Sanchez, KJZZ News, Phoenix.
PHIL LATZMAN: Green Party congressional candidate, David Redkey, was arrested in Phoenix and faces claims he sent threatening messages involving guns targeting a lawyer and a judge. Prosecutor Stephen Garcia is with the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.
STEPHEN GARCIA:
We have the defendant making direct threats to the victims, sending emails, threatening emails, talking about guns—a gun which was never recovered, Your Honor. That’s a grave concern for the state.
PHIL LATZMAN:
Redkey, running in Congressional District 3 against incumbent Democratic Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari, told the judge he has no knowledge of the alleged victims in the case. The Green Party, though, says it actively opposed Redkey after he was kicked out of other political parties for alleged abusive behavior.
Attorney General Kris Mayes says a lack of resources is being directed to criminal fentanyl investigations. It’s after a watchdog report found ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations wing is spending significantly less time on that work. Once again from the Fronteras Desk in Tucson, here is Alisa Reznick.
ALISA REZNICK: The report was released in August by the Office of Inspector General and found fentanyl investigations decreased by 24% between 2024 and 2025 as more ICE personnel were shifted to do immigration enforcement. One HSI office reported approximately 99% of its work was dedicated to immigration, leaving almost no capacity for fentanyl investigations. Seizures decreased nationwide by 39%. Mayes says over half of all fentanyl seized every year is seized in Arizona. She’s asking DHS to immediately restore resources to investigations across the U.S. Alisa Reznick, KJZZ News, Tucson.
PHIL LATZMAN: The national average for a gallon of diesel is now over $6.50. It’s a record high according to AAA. Paul Enos, the CEO of the Nevada Truckers Association, says trucking companies could potentially pass on the higher fuel costs to consumers. Smaller trucking businesses with delivery contracts that have pre-existing price caps are especially challenged.
PAUL ENOS: It is hurting our trucking companies where that cost of fuel has now outpaced all of their other expenses.
PHIL LATZMAN: And Enos says Arizona and Nevada are vulnerable to higher gas prices because of their dependence on California for diesel fuel. As of today, Arizona diesel averages $6.44 a gallon.
A new report from the Center for American Progress claims that Trump administration policies are partly to blame for the increased energy costs for Arizonans. Co-author Lucero Marquez said the rate increases proposed by utilities like Tucson Electric Power and Arizona Public Service were due in part to economic volatility placing pressure on company shareholders. Marquez says pending hikes in Arizona are part of a larger trend that’s playing out since January of 2025.
LUCERO MARQUEZ: We found that more than 116 million electric utility customers and more than 59 million natural gas utility customers across 49 states and Washington, D.C., will face increased or proposals for increased costs of more than $101 billion.
PHIL LATZMAN: APS is seeking a rate increase that would add up to about $240 per year for customers.
The rate of 911 calls reporting violence against women in Sonora is almost triple the national average in Mexico. From the Fronteras Desk in Hermosillo, Sonora, Nina Kravinsky reports.
NINA KRAVINSKY: Data published by Mexico’s government for the first six months of this year shows Sonora follows only neighboring Chihuahua and Mexico City for its rate of emergency calls related to incidents of violence against women. Sonora, the Mexican state directly south of Arizona, came first out of Mexico’s states for its rate of 911 calls related to incidents of sexual abuse, at more than four times the national average. For its rate of femicides — gender-based killings of women or girls — Sonora was ranked fourth out of Mexico’s states. Across the country, protesters have demanded more from Mexican authorities and the government to protect women. Nina Kravinsky, KJZZ News, Hermosillo.
PHIL LATZMAN: In sports: In baseball, Nolan Arenado had his team-leading 20th homer of the season among his three hits against his former team. Michael Soroka struck out nine in seven innings of one-hit ball as the Diamondbacks beat the Rockies 7-2 last night in Denver. Despite the win, the D-backs remain on the brink of elimination, four games behind the Phillies in the race for the third and final NL wild-card spot with five regular-season games remaining. The second of three against the Rockies is this evening in Denver.
In basketball, the Mercury finish up their ill-fated season tonight at home against the Las Vegas Aces. Phoenix has long since been eliminated from WNBA playoff contention. They have a record of 16-27.
And that does it for this edition of KJZZ’s Sun Up, Arizona’s morning news podcast this Wednesday, Sept. 23. I’m Phil Latzman. May the good news be yours, and we’ll do it again tomorrow. Talk to you then.
