The Show for May 27, 2026: The West's snow drought, jaguar sightings and more

Federal officials say areas of the west experienced an unprecedented snow drought this winter. What that could mean for the region’s water supplies. Plus, why conservationists are excited about spotting a jaguar at a specific Southern Arizona site.

Transcript

MARK BRODIE: Hi, I’m Mark Brodie, co-host of The Show, an original production from KJZZ. Every weekday, we bring you the latest news and culture from across the state. You can find much more at theshow.kjzz.org. Here’s today’s episode.

Good morning. It’s The Show here on KJZZ 91.5 in Phoenix. I’m Mark Brodie. Coming up, it wasn’t a great year for snowpack across the West, what that could mean for the region going forward, and how companies are trying to use the upcoming World Cup to market themselves.

But first, Maricopa County recorder Justin Heap has referred potential non-citizens that were on the county’s voter rolls to the State Attorney General’s Office. But that didn’t happen before the AG’s office told Heap he was violating state law by not turning the names over. With me now to explain is Sasha Hupka, who’s written about this for Votebeat. Sasha, good morning.

SASHA HUPKA: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

MARK BRODIE: Thanks for being here. So, let’s start sort of at the beginning here. Recorder Heap was looking for potential people who shouldn’t be on the voter roll, shouldn’t be allowed to vote. How did he go about trying to find these people?

SASHA HUPKA: Well, for what it’s worth, I think that if you ask Heap the way he might put it is that he was actually looking to identify whether a certain group of voters impacted by a state error in 2024 had citizenship documents, various—

MARK BRODIE: This was the MVD situation, right?

SASHA HUPKA: That’s correct. Yes. So, there is this group of voters for whom the state, its voter registration system, and driver’s license system screwed up and they can’t tell if this group of thousands and thousands of voters across the state ever turned in documents proving their citizenship, which is a requirement here in Arizona. That’s something like a passport or a birth certificate. They can’t tell if they did that. And so, these voters have sort of been stuck in limbo. And Heap, you know, sort of had this idea of, "Well, maybe if I run these voters through a federal database, I’ll be able to determine if these voters are, in fact, citizens."

The database he used, however, is the SAVE database. It’s run by DHS. And the Trump administration recently expanded it such that Heap could do this type of maneuver, where he could run a list of thousands of voters through this database and sort of get back an answer, "Are they a citizen, or are they not?" And the problem with that database is that it’s extremely unreliable. And so, Heap ran this group of voters through this database. He identified at the time 147 voters who he says are non-citizens. And I think there’s been a question ever since around this group of voters of, are those 147 people truly non-citizens? Or is the database mistaken on some or all of them? And that’s sort of where we are today, is in the process of figuring that out.

MARK BRODIE: Okay, so he has now turned those names over to both the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office and the Attorney General’s Office. But he turned them over to the County Attorney’s Office first and basically had to be threatened into turning them over to the AG’s office. Like, someone from the AG’s office had to write him a, what looked like, based on your reporting, a pretty strongly worded letter saying, "You got to do this."

SASHA HUPKA: That’s how it appears. You know, the documents that I obtained show this kind of over the course of several weeks, this communication between Heap and the AG’s office, where the AG’s office says repeatedly, "Hey, under state law, you need to hand these names over to us. You can’t just hand them to the Attorney’s Office and be done. State law says you have to give them to us both." And Heap comes back and says, "Well, no, your interpretation of law is wrong and I don’t have to do that." And it’s only when the Attorney General’s Office sends Heap another letter saying, "Look, you need to do this. And if not," you know, they suggest that they might take some sort of legal action against him, that he actually handed over these names to them on the day of the deadline. It’s also worth noting he handed over 207 names.

MARK BRODIE: Which is more than what he originally had identified.

SASHA HUPKA: Yes, to the Attorney General’s Office and the Attorney’s Office. And I think that that is also very interesting because, as you noted, that is more names. That’s 70 more names, and we still don’t know where those extra 70 people came from. There’s kind of an unanswered question about that here.

MARK BRODIE: Okay, so do we know why he seemed so reluctant to turn these names over to the AG?

SASHA HUPKA: It’s a little unclear. If you look at his letter and what he says, he essentially says he’s using a different process than the one the AG’s office says that he has to use. He’s arguing, "Hey, I’m using this other process. It doesn’t require me to turn over the names to you, and it would be premature to do so." The AG’s office comes back to that and says, "No, you’re using the wrong process." And this was very interesting for me to see in the letters because back in March, I had reported out that Heap seemed to be using this different process that legal experts and election experts at the time from across the aisle told me was the incorrect process. So, it was interesting to me to see the Attorney General’s Office saying, "No, you’re wrong, you’re using the wrong process." But I think there’s just, again, a lot of sort of unanswered questions around this because Heap hasn’t answered my questions about this. You know, I asked repeatedly before he referred to the County Attorney’s Office, "Hey, are you going to refer these people? You said you were going to." And I never quite managed to get an answer from him on on why he was delaying and referring. And again, where those extra 70 people came from or why exactly he was using the process that he is appearing to use.

MARK BRODIE: So, what happens to these these people who belong to the names that have now been turned over to the County Attorney and the AG’s office?

SASHA HUPKA: Well, the County Attorney and the AG, under state law, they need to investigate this. And so, they’re going to be running these sort of parallel investigations, as I understand it. I think that, you know, the next turn in this is going to be seeing, what do they find? Are these people indeed all non-citizens? And I think it’s worth noting that, you know, this is a very, very small segment of Maricopa County’s voter rolls that we’re talking about here. 207 people. Maricopa County has about roughly 2.6 million people registered to vote. That’s a rough number for what it’s worth. I haven’t checked today. It changes by the day. But that’s about what we’ve got. And so, this is a very, very tiny fraction of that.

I think that, though, you know, we know that non-citizen voting is just incredibly rare. So, you know, it’s just a matter of figuring out, truly, are all these people non-citizens or not? And if they’re not, what does that mean? What happens from there? Have there been changes to their registration status already? Heap has seemed to suggest there are under this process that he’s running, that he’s moved these people to inactive status, which is not canceling them, so they’re not entirely off the rolls. But what it does mean is they won’t be able to vote until they hand over proof of citizenship. And so, I just think there’s a lot of questions about how does this sort of go forward from there. But all of this will sort of come back to, what do the AG’s office and the County Attorney’s office find about these people?

MARK BRODIE: And very briefly, Sasha, it’s worth noting that even of those 207 potential non-voters, not all of them are suspected to have actually voted, right?

SASHA HUPKA: Yes, so that’s correct. You can be on the voter rolls and have never cast a ballot. And so, there is a segment of these people, at least according to Heap’s office, who are on the rolls, but they don’t seem to have any evidence they’ve actually voted in an election. And then, there’s a segment who they say have voted. And again, it’s just a question of, are these people actually non-citizens or not? You know, he says 60 people of this group have voted. I would find it somewhat difficult to believe, based on many, many studies around non-citizen voting patterns, that all 60 of those people voted in a single election. So, are we talking about, you know, 60 people who voted dating back to the year 2000? Okay, maybe that is plausible with what I know about the rarity of non-citizen voting. But certainly, at least on its face, these numbers kind of raise my eyebrow a little bit and they raised experts’ eyebrows too. And that’s been my reporting up until this point, you know, take this number with a grain of salt until state and county prosecutors actually do an investigation here.

MARK BRODIE: Interesting. All right, we’ll see what comes of that. That is Sasha Hupka with Votebeat. Sasha, thanks as always.

SASHA HUPKA: Thank you.

MARK BRODIE: Any hopes that this winter’s snowfall would put a dent in the ongoing drought across the West have melted away. Federal officials say the season’s snowpack is already gone in many areas. That’s earlier than usual and generally not a great sign. In addition, this year’s snowpack will serve as the new benchmark low in four states, including Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. With me now to talk more about this is Dan McEvoy with the Western Regional Climate Center. Dan, good morning.

DAN MCEVOY: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

MARK BRODIE: Thanks for being here. So, I guess like on the scale, how how bad was this winter?

DAN MCEVOY: Well, it it turned out to be the worst on record as far as our observational record goes for several states. And when I’m talking about worst on record, we’re talking about the snowpack, which we we measure for for water supply purposes in terms of the snow water equivalent or SWE, I might be saying that a few times. And that’s the amount of water that’s stored in the snowpack.

MARK BRODIE: And one of the things you found was that the the melt-out date, which is basically when the the snow has melted, was more than a month earlier than normal in Arizona and more than that in New Mexico and other places.

DAN MCEVOY: Yeah, that’s right. There was an incredibly early melt-out of the snowpack this year. For example, Arizona, on average, the snow disappeared 35 days earlier than average. And this is in the mountains, in the places that normally have a snowpack. And so, this was a combination of we had our, you know, this already bad snow year coming into March. Then in March, we had a a record-shattering spring heat wave that set temperature records across not just Arizona and New Mexico, but much of the Western United States, and triggered this extremely early melt of the snowpack in the mountains. And, you know, especially in places like in the higher elevations in Colorado and Utah and New Mexico, that that typically are accumulating snowpack all throughout March, we had this incredibly early melt of the snowpack in an in an already bad snow season.

MARK BRODIE: What are the implications of, obviously, I think we know the implications of not having a whole lot of snow, but what are the implications of having the snow that we we did get melt earlier than normal?

DAN MCEVOY: Well, what we really saw from this was a a shift in the timing of the water that melts out of the mountains and comes into our streams and reservoirs. And so, while we still did get that water coming out of the mountains into the system, it was shifted much earlier. And so, what we’re going to see is a lot lower stream flows and runoffs in the in the peak of the warm season. So, April through July is is a common metric to look at for runoff for water supply. And this is looking to be extremely low and perhaps record low in some cases. And why that matters is because during the warm season, this is our our time when the atmospheric demand for water is highest and also the human demand for water is highest for things like irrigation and recreational use outside. So, we’re going to we’re going to have much lower amounts of water coming into the system during that those peak that peak time of the summer.

MARK BRODIE: And this is coming on the heels of, you know, it’s not like we’re coming out of a time of of great abundance here to begin with.

DAN MCEVOY: No, that’s right, and particularly, you know, particularly on the Colorado River system. So, we have the upper and lower basins. That system has been in decline for decades now. And so, the past, you know, several decades have seen a number of extremely low years. The area has been in drought for a number of years. And so, this was certainly not the type of season that was going to help things out. And really it would take, you know, on the order of of somewhere around a decade or longer of really wet conditions to kind of flip things around. And so, an extremely bad snow year like this is certainly not going to help the situation at all.

MARK BRODIE: So, what does this potentially mean for Arizona and the West going forward? I mean, there’s been some talk that maybe we’ll have a a wetter than average monsoon season this year. Like, what are you what are you looking for, you know, in the in the months to come?

DAN MCEVOY: Yeah, well, I think in terms of the summer water supply, most of that comes from the mountains from from snowmelt. So, a few things, you know, Arizona is still under that tier one reduction in the Colorado River water supply. Those are based on the water levels on Lake Mead. And it’s been in place for a while, and and that’s not supposed to change. Some of the smaller areas in particularly the the lower Colorado that rely on more local water supplies are going to have issues, and there’s already places that are starting to to run out of water on those smaller local water supplies.

In terms of the monsoon, there are some long-range outlooks indicating a potential for wetter than average conditions during the monsoon season. That would be a good thing, but the bottom line is that the amount of water that we get from the monsoon season alone, even in a wet year, isn’t going to be able to reverse or change the amount of water lost to the lack of snow and the early snowmelt and the warm conditions.

MARK BRODIE: Is it fair to say that if you were going to have one above average season, that it would be better for us long term to have a a more snow than average, more snowpack than average, than more monsoon activity precipitation than average?

DAN MCEVOY: Certainly, yeah. We would definitely want to have a big snow year in the mountains, particularly in the upper Colorado River basin, as opposed to a wet monsoon season. You know, both help, but the fraction that comes from snowmelt is much higher compared to the monsoon.

MARK BRODIE: Sure. All right, we’ll have to leave it there. That is Dan McEvoy with the Western Regional Climate Center. Dan, thanks for your time and your insights, I appreciate it.

DAN MCEVOY: Thank you.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning. It’s The Show on KJZZ 91.5. With Lauren Gilger, I’m Mark Brodie. Coming up, what recent jaguar sightings in the Sonoran Desert could mean for the conservation of the species.

SUSAN MALUSA: Because this is such a a sensitive and vulnerable species, having that data, not just a picture—pictures are a moment in time and they’re beautiful and exciting, and we can learn from them—but it’s the whole story.

MARK BRODIE: We’ll hear from the head of a research team that’s been keeping track of the region’s jaguars for around 15 years. But first:

LAUREN GILGER: Yesterday on The Show, we introduced a new series we’re diving into about religion at the State Legislature. We’re calling it Ditat Deus, which is Arizona’s state motto. It means "God enriches," and it’s where we begin our next conversation in this series today with Professor Evan Berry.

Professor Berry is a religious studies professor at Arizona State University, and he came into our studios recently to talk about where that motto comes from and how baked in religion is to our way of government, not just here in Arizona, but in the country. And Professor Berry, I don’t think we’re the only state in the country with a religious or God-referencing motto, right? How connected from the very beginning has religion been to our system of government?

EVAN BERRY: One of the interesting things about Arizona is its roots in mining have a lot to do with this. The fact that you get rich with mines based on God’s providence, I think, is is is the basis for why that motto is so central for the organization of state politics.

LAUREN GILGER: God enriches refers to like riches in the earth.

EVAN BERRY: God’s God’s bounty in from waters, from rains, from mining. We’re really dependent on those things here in the Desert Southwest.

LAUREN GILGER: No way. That’s fascinating. So, one of the things that strikes me and that we’ve been thinking about and talking about as we’ve done this series is that each session at the State Legislature, and I don’t think most people realize this, begins with a prayer, right? Like, you will have a lawmaker up there reading sometimes a very in-depth and sometimes very personal prayer. Is that common?

EVAN BERRY: Yeah, I think more than half of state legislatures open both chambers of of their state legislatures with a prayer for every session. Some of those states have guidance about whether or not certain kinds of language is allowed. Some of those states have criteria about who can and can’t speak. Arizona’s pretty laissez-faire in terms of who is allowed to present. It can be a guest, it can be a visiting chaplain. So, Arizona’s a little bit more open about prayer at state legislative gatherings.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, but it does seem as if religion and Christianity in particular seems to be kind of, maybe not baked in, but assumed in a lot of the the rituals around our state government. Would that be a fair statement?

EVAN BERRY: Yeah, that’s fair. So, prayer before legislative sessions has been practiced in most states since the beginning of the republic. And I think by today’s standards, that would strike many people as like an establishment clause issue. But courts have consistently found that because that practice predates even the First Amendment, right, it just it dates back to the to the colonial period, that it’s sort of grandfathered in as a tradition more than an establishment.

LAUREN GILGER: That’s interesting. So, you teach a religious freedom class at ASU. And I I wonder in today’s world in which, I don’t know, politics are very divisive and heated often, and they often go very hand in hand with religion, what’s that like? What do students think about religious freedom in this country today?

EVAN BERRY: You know, most students who take religious studies classes, it’s going to be the only class that they get the opportunity to really think and talk about religion in their college experience. And they’re mostly really excited to get a chance to do that. The students really engage that as an opportunity to think through what it means to be a citizen, what it means to connect their personal identity with the cultures and spiritual traditions of their neighbors, and to think about those questions together in sort of a collegial debate environment. Yeah, students, I think, have responded really well to that. We do talk in that class about charged issues, animal sacrifice, Christian nationalism, climate change, oil and gas exploration, all sorts of things that are contested areas in American politics where religion is sort of hiding in the background of what how how our debates are shaped.

LAUREN GILGER: Where does Christian nationalism come into this conversation today, Evan?

EVAN BERRY: Well, that’s that’s the million-dollar question. I think that Christian nationalism, with its assertion that America is and should remain a Christian nation, crowds out the space for other kinds of religious claims in our public policymaking. So, if you have Native American plaintiffs, citizens arguing that their rights should be respected by the courts, Christian nationalist perspectives don’t want to make room for that. If you go back to the the case about animal sacrifice in Hialeah, it’s the same thing, that the Christian ideas and norms should be reflected in the law and that other kinds of religions shouldn’t deserve the same protections as as Christianity.

LAUREN GILGER: How much has that conversation and sort of the idea that that we are a Christian nation changed or become more prevalent, you think, in recent years?

EVAN BERRY: I think it’s become substantially more prevalent over the past, say, 50 or 60 years. I think to some degree, this is a growing movement that dates back to the reactions against the civil rights movement in the 1960s and 1970s. So, you have groups rallying around segregation academies, you have groups petitioning not to have to follow the government’s mandates not to discriminate, and so separating out that on the basis of their religious freedom to do so.

You know, the the original idea of separation of church and state, which is not actually named in our founding documents, but, you know, it’s comes from the writings of people like Roger Williams and Thomas Jefferson, so in their in their private papers, which were inspirations for the the Constitution. They use this language of separation of church and state both to talk about protecting the state from the church, but also protecting churches from government interference. And Christian nationalism essentially rejects that idea that there should be a protection of both of those things from one another.

LAUREN GILGER: What do you think this means, or how do you think this looks when it comes to lawmaking? Like, we for this series interviewed a series of lawmakers about their own religious experiences and sort of inspirations, the reasons why they’re driven to do the things they do, vote the way they vote. And sometimes that’s based on their religion, sometimes that’s not. When it comes to lawmaking at a national level or a local level, do you think the the sort of forthright conversation about religious motivations has changed?

EVAN BERRY: Yeah, it’s hard to track that over time. I do think that in a representative democracy, it’s really important that private citizens and elected officials are both free to speak about their private religious convictions and to talk about the relationship between what they think is important in policy and how that stems from their moral and spiritual and religious commitments. That said, sometimes those commitments might be religiously particular in ways that step on other people’s religious commitments. And that’s that’s where the trick is. So, this idea that legislators here in Arizona or anywhere in the nation draw on their religious and and faith lives to shape what they think is important is a long part of American tradition. What’s what’s changing is our willingness to give space for people whose religious differences might be impacted by that.

LAUREN GILGER: Okay. Evan Berry, religious studies professor at Arizona State University joining us. Evan, thank you very much for coming in. Appreciate it.

EVAN BERRY: Yeah, thanks for inviting me.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning. It’s The Show on KJZZ 91.5. I’m Mark Brodie. The FIFA World Cup kicks off in a couple of weeks, but TV viewers are already seeing ads that reference the global tournament. From footwear to potato chips, many companies are looking to use the World Cup in their marketing. But how effective might that be given the relative popularity of soccer here compared to other sports and compared to the rest of the world? With me now to talk about that is Tim Riester, founder and CEO of the Phoenix-based advertising firm RIESTER. Tim, good morning.

TIM RIESTER: Good morning.

MARK BRODIE: So, we should also mention you are a soccer guy, right? You’re involved with Phoenix Rising, the soccer team here in Phoenix. How big of a deal is the World Cup in the United States for companies looking to advertise?

TIM RIESTER: It is projected to be bigger than ever in its history. The last time the United States hosted a World Cup was in 1994. And those who will remember it really catapulted soccer into the prominence that it is now as it continues to grow as a sport in the United States.

Major League Soccer, the MLS, actually was founded after 1994 as a result of that growing enthusiasm. And the projection for the advertising commerce, they’re projecting $10 billion of advertising revenue just in the United States for this World Cup.

MARK BRODIE: Wow. And that is in a country where, I mean, no offense, but soccer is not the most popular sport. And while I think a lot of viewers would recognize like Lionel Messi or, you know, David Beckham, who of course is not playing anymore, some of the biggest stars and some of the biggest American stars are not household names and not household faces.

TIM RIESTER: And this is their opportunity. But what’s so fascinating is, their opportunity comes after the advertising instead of before. So, as advertisers, these big brand marketers, you mentioned Messi, you mentioned Beckham. Already they appear in the ads that I’ve reviewed in the campaigns I’ve reviewed that are already out. They appear in almost every one of them because they’re the among the few big international soccer stars that people in America know.

So, you’ll see fewer members of the U.S. Men’s National Team in the advertising. You’ll see more international soccer stars paired with celebrities from Hollywood, from our motion pictures and our music industry in the United States.

MARK BRODIE: OK, so is this an opportunity, like can the U.S. Men’s National Team use advertising maybe as a way to get the public to be more familiar with American players, with Team USA?

TIM RIESTER: So, they are, and they’ve they’ve just launched the biggest campaign in their history, the U.S. Men’s National Team. And what’s so interesting about it is, their their focus and their theme is "Never Chase Reality." That’s actually the theme of the campaign.

MARK BRODIE: OK.

TIM RIESTER: And what they’re saying is, don’t focus on how difficult it will be for us to compete. Focus instead on the fact that anybody can win when it comes to this level. Everyone brings their best game. So, even even some of the smaller countries like Curaçao, who has to play Germany in the in the early group stage, you can’t count those players out because those are players who have been, they had a ball on their barefoot since they were 1 or 2 years old in their country, right? So, this is this is the time in the world where the best players come together and bring their very best match.

And for the U.S. players, they could really surprise everyone and come through. And that’s what the U.S. National Team’s campaign is about. And in fact, Fox Sports, who’s carrying the broadcast throughout the United States, their campaign they’re running to promote it already is about the dream and they end their commercial that’s running now with one of the famous U.S. hockey players, right? Which sport is closest to soccer in the United States? It’s hockey when you watch, is very similar sport. And a member from the Dream Team ends their commercial to remind us all, never count out the Americans.

MARK BRODIE: OK. Are there certain companies or types of industries that you think that are better suited to advertise during the World Cup?

TIM RIESTER: Well, for sure, the international brands, they already understand the impact of this. In the United States, many Americans and advertisers don’t understand that second only to religion is soccer in the rest of the world. I mean, it’s really, really big. The viewership will be over 6 billion people.

MARK BRODIE: Wow.

TIM RIESTER: So, imagine pretty much every game that’s played and televised during this six-week period will be as big as the Super Bowl worldwide. You have six weeks of Super Bowl games over and over and over again. That’s what the World Cup is.

So, you’ll see advertisers like Adidas, who really understand, and they’ve already released a a teaser campaign. And I just love it. It’s called "Backyard Legends." And it’s about this group of kid s—

MARK BRODIE: Three kids like on a concrete soccer field.

TIM RIESTER: Exactly, right? In an inner city, where this concrete field is between these high-rise buildings, and how across the generations this team or across the decades, I should say, because it’s the same three players as they age, are unbeaten, even against the greatest players in the world who’ve come to try to defeat this trio. And they to make it work for the U.S. audience, Adidas brings in Timothée Chalamet.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah.

TIM RIESTER: And they have him narrating this this 5-minute film, and they bring in a U.S. player, Trinity Rodman. And and people who don’t follow soccer may they may, most people remember Dennis Rodman, the crazy NBA player who played with the Chicago Bulls during the Michael Jordan era.

MARK BRODIE: His daughter’s a phenomenal soccer player, though.

TIM RIESTER: The highest paid female soccer player in the history of the United States. She is a superstar. So, they’ve put her in this commercial with Timothee Chalamet, and he’s bringing her and two European players, Bellingham from England and Yamal from Spain.

And he says, "This is my team," and he’s going to try to defeat this this local, this folklore story about this local trio. And they don’t show that match yet. They tease you for five minutes and let you know that as their campaign continues, you’ll find out if they’re good enough.

MARK BRODIE: Right. OK, so Tim, just about a minute left. If you are advising companies about putting together their campaigns, you mentioned this is like having six weeks of Super Bowls. Do you go inspirational? Do you go funny? Do you play it straight? Like, how what is the right strategy here?

TIM RIESTER: Advertisers need to think culture instead of commerce. If they understand the cultural phenomenon this is and they place themselves within the culture, like Lays potato chips is trying to do with Will Ferrell.

MARK BRODIE: Driving a big like RV.

TIM RIESTER: And calling it the bandwagon, right? Calling it what it is, right? Get on the bandwagon whether you follow this sport or not. And I think that advertisers who understand that it’s about culture instead of commerce, they’re the ones who will win in this World Cup.

MARK BRODIE: So, an ad like that, for example, great in the U.S., maybe not so good in England, where like people really just watch soccer as a matter of habit.

TIM RIESTER: That Lays commercial was designed for the U.S., where Adidas commercial was designed worldwide. And if if there’s time, I’d love to just invite people, you know, Phoenix Rising, for 10 years, we’ve had 37 different countries on our roster. There’s 20 countries on the roster today, and several of the players fans have seen at Phoenix Rising are playing in this World Cup for other countries, Panama, Curaçao, Haiti. We have a player from Haiti who’s playing in the World Cup right now.

So, people who have been out to see Phoenix Rising, which by the way costs 1% of what it costs to go see a World Cup match, will see some players they know in the World Cup this year.

MARK BRODIE: Interesting. All right, we’ll have to leave it there. Tim Riester, founder and CEO of the firm Riester. Tim, thanks as always.

TIM RIESTER: Thank you, Mark. It’s a pleasure to see you and be here.

MARK BRODIE: Since Republicans in Congress approved new requirements for the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program last summer, states across the country have seen reductions in the number of residents receiving food stamps. Arizona is an outlier. Year over year, the Department of Economic Security, the state agency responsible for administering SNAP in Arizona, has removed more than half of Arizona’s food stamp recipients. As KJZZ’s Cameron Sanchez reports, former SNAP beneficiaries cut from the program say the state is making it impossible to prove they’re still eligible.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: The SNAP changes mainly consist of new work standards and require applicants to provide more information to prove their eligibility and to provide that information more frequently. The Trump administration says those changes were necessary to eliminate waste and fraud. Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs blames the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress for so many Arizonans losing benefits.

KATIE HOBBS: There have been several federal cuts that have impacted DES directly and a lot of these benefit programs directly. So whatever the reason is that a lot of people are losing benefits, it’s squarely on cuts at the federal level.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: But according to a study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a non-partisan research institute, the cuts to SNAP beneficiaries in Arizona are disproportionately higher to those in other states. Nearly 500,000 Arizonans who received SNAP benefits a year ago are no longer beneficiaries of the food stamps program. That’s roughly a 55% cut. The next closest state, Virginia, saw a 15% reduction.

The SNAP program in Arizona is administered by the State Department of Economic Security. Hobbs has acknowledged the states face challenges adapting to new federal requirements, but says DES isn’t to blame.

KATIE HOBBS: I can’t speak to why our rate is disproportionable to other states. But if you look at kind of the projections that we presented when HR 1 was first passed, what we’re seeing is in line with the number of people we thought would lose benefits.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: But people waiting in line at St. Mary’s Food Bank in Phoenix on a Monday morning in April all say the issues at DES run deeper. They say it’s harder to apply because DES is now requiring applicants to complete phone interviews to prove eligibility, but it’s nearly impossible to get someone from DES to answer those calls. And if an applicant can’t complete their interview, their benefits are cut and they have to reapply again.

Adamary Olivas was waiting in line at St. Mary’s with her partner, Esteban Ramos. She said daily calls to DES routinely went unanswered. And by the time she did hear back from the department, the paperwork required to prove eligibility for food stamps had expired. Olivas says she’s been trapped in this loop since October.

ADAMARY OLIVAS: Before, the first time we did it, I was able to activate it in person, and now I’m not able to activate it in person. We have to call, and we call and call and they never answer. So, that’s like the biggest issue.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Monice Soto was also in line with her family.

MONICE SOTO: Yeah, I don’t have a job right now, so that’s why I’m applying. And I’m needing it, I have kids, and I’m still pending, and it’s been taking for more than 60 days.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Arizonan after Arizonan in line at the food bank say without SNAP, it’s harder to put food on the table.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: You got no other choice to come here sometimes to get something to put on the table.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 2: Yeah, it has made things harder. We just budget more, you know, we can’t — we just limit ourselves on what we can get.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 3: Right now, like, been having really, really bad hard time, like, hard time, you know, trying to buy food.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Michael Wisehart, the director of DES, told KJZZ the agency isn’t purposefully denying benefits to eligible Arizonans.

MICHAEL WISEHART: It is more challenging to get through the the system than it used to be.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: But are you cutting people who are eligible?

MICHAEL WISEHART: If we know they’re eligible, we are making them eligible for the program. There are no people Everybody who works at DES — it’s a really hard job. And if you don’t believe that it’s a really hard job, go to a local office.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Wisehart says DES is underfunded and understaffed, and they don’t have the capacity to get to all SNAP cases in a timely manner and implement federal changes. He says it’s created a backlog of applicants waiting on services. Democrats warn the future could be even more challenging for DES. Republican lawmakers are proposing 5% cuts to most state agencies, including the state’s social safety net.

Arizona food banks say there’s only so much they can do to feed families who have lost SNAP benefits. Terri Shoemaker is the executive vice president of the Arizona Food Bank Network.

TERRI SHOEMAKER: To have worked in hunger relief for so long and see things not get better, but actually get significantly worse is heartbreaking. And I hope that we can work together to find a better path so that people have enough to eat. Because without enough to eat, it’s kind of hard to do anything else.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Shoemaker says for every meal a food bank can provide, SNAP has a history of providing about five, leaving a gap. Camryn Sanchez, KJZZ News, Phoenix.

MARK BRODIE: A research center based at the University of Arizona says its cameras have spotted the same jaguar at the same spot multiple times. Cinco has been captured on camera in southern Arizona’s Sky Islands, the Wild Cat Research and Conservation Center recently posted video of him. Susan Malusa is the center’s director, she joins me to talk more about Cinco’s sighting. And Susan, what is the significance of seeing a jaguar at this sighting and seeing it there repeatedly?

SUSAN MALUSA: Well, Cinco showed up on our cameras in November of 2025. And really what made that moment really special for us is where he showed up. It was a site that we’ve been monitoring for almost 15 years, and it’s a place where we had a previous jaguar detection. So to see a new individual come back to that same location is really important in in our research. It shows the site fidelity, the value of these historical sites that jaguars return to.

MARK BRODIE: Why is it important that this jaguar came back to a site that a previous jaguar had also been to years before?

SUSAN MALUSA: Well, when we look at landscape and um we know that just as a species, jaguar needs landscape connectivity. They need they move from sky island to sky island, and that connectivity, and they that connectivity to the core population, and when I say population, that means a breeding population, which is in Mexico. So, we know jaguars move across large landscapes. So, when you’re trying to look at the historical range and then identify what’s the key habitat, what can I learn here so that we make sure that these corridors, this connectivity remains intact, we’re able to look at our 15-year dataset and say, three jaguars have returned to this same spot.

What’s unique about this? What what prey species are there? We can see this with a—we developed a software program where we can see we can look spatially at the landscape and see what the terrain is like, what the vegetation is like, what distance to water, and we can kind of connect the dots and say, "Okay, this is the type of location that a jaguar likes." So when we put all this together and we say, "Okay, these 10 spots are really they all have the same thing in common," but then one spot which actually had a previous jaguar is the exact spot the jaguar returns to. That’s the site fidelity, that’s where we’re saying there’s something special there. And we can see in this in exciting video that we recently released where the jaguars using scent at that detection site.

MARK BRODIE: How significant to the overall health of this species is it that you have now seen this particular jaguar in this particular place, whereas we’ve talked about, you know, previous jaguars have also been?

SUSAN MALUSA: It’s very significant when we’re looking at a species that that we’re trying to utilize this data or we at the Wild Cat Research and Conservation Center are building this dataset so the data can be used for jaguar conservation. Because this is such a a sensitive and vulnerable species, having that data, not just a picture—pictures are a moment in time and they’re beautiful and exciting, and we can learn from them—but it’s the whole story.

MARK BRODIE: I want to ask you about the significance of the fact that the the jaguars that you’ve seen have all been male. And I would imagine that you would like to see a little more gender diversity in in the jaguars you’re seeing there. Is that right?

SUSAN MALUSA: Absolutely, absolutely. This is about recovery, right? And recovery is reached when you have sustainability, and that means we need males and females on the landscape. But, that being said, when you’re looking at the science of it all, males are what you expect to see. Males disperse first, and they disperse further. So, the fact that we’re continuously seeing males on the landscape at intervals that are closer together than the previous years, that’s a step, that’s a sign, you know, we’re moving in the right direction.

MARK BRODIE: So, what are you looking for now, now that you you have this data, you’ve seen Cinco in this particular area? Like, what what are you looking for next, what would you like to see next?

SUSAN MALUSA: Oh, you know, we’ve I’ve been doing this for this project for 15 years and and I feel like we’ve just scratched the surface. There’s so much to learn. Recovery isn’t just about showing up, it’s getting to sustainability. And step one is, can the landscape support jaguars? We’re seeing that the landscape is supporting jaguars. But there is a lot more to learn, um why they return to these exact same spots is still something we’re, you know, trying to learn more about.

So it’s important for us to continue to study what makes those places on the landscape so very special. And we’re we’re able to do that because we have this citizen science team that allows us to collect so much data. And then we have our camera long-term monitoring. We also have two more layers, if you will. We utilize genetics in two different ways. We collect scat on the landscape and so that can reveal the health of the animal, the diet of the animal. So what is it eating? What are the prey species? And what we see in that is that it really does rely on native prey.

And then the environmental DNA, that’s where we filter water. It’s almost like a little coffee filter. We we pump it through, it just pulls the water through a little filter. And that’s in that’s very critical when you have such, you know, small amounts of of water in this arid landscape. And we bring that filter, that little tiny paper filter goes into a test tube, we bring it back to our our wildlife genetics lab, and we’re able to extract the DNA and see all the different species that went through there, or not at that point, even tributaries that are where water is going into that little pond.

MARK BRODIE: All right, that is Susan Malusa, the director of the Wild Cat Research and Conservation Center at the University of Arizona. Susan, thanks a lot, I really appreciate it.

SUSAN MALUSA: Thank you, thank you, Mark.

MARK BRODIE: Thanks for listening to The Show’s podcast. The Show is produced by Sativa Peterson, Nick Sanchez, Amber Victoria Singer, Athena Ankrah, and Ayana Hamilton. The Show was created by Jon Hoban, our executive producer is Amy Silverman. You can find more of The Show and sign up for our newsletter at theshow.kjzz.org. You can also find us on Instagram at @kjzztheshow.

KJZZ's The Show transcripts are created on deadline. This text is edited for length and clarity, and may not be in its final form. The authoritative record of KJZZ's programming is the audio record.

>> RSVP FOR AN UPCOMING LIVE EVENT FROM THE SHOW