The Show for June 10, 2026: How parks ordinance affects Phoenix homeless, 'fake electors' and more

A Catholic nun and doctor who treats the homeless is sounding the alarm about a new Phoenix parks ordinance. And Arizona's attorney general is facing a major setback in her attempt to prosecute the so-called "fake electors." How are similar efforts faring around the country?

Transcript

LAUREN GILGER: KJZZ's original production, The Show, 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.

Hi, I'm Lauren Gilger, 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.

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning and welcome to The Show here on KJZZ 91.5 in Phoenix. I'm Lauren Gilger. Coming up, the Catholic nun and doctor who treats the homeless is sounding the alarm about a new Phoenix parks ordinance. And Arizona's attorney general is facing a major setback in her attempt to prosecute so-called fake electors. How are similar efforts faring around the country?

But first, every law enforcement agency in Cochise County will soon use iris scanning technology to identify people. And it's the same iris scanning technology that's already being used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. It's raising concerns about how this biometric data will be used and by who. Jerod McDonald-Evoy has the story for the Arizona Mirror and he's on the line now to tell us more about it. Good morning, Jerod.

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, Jerod

JEROD MCDONALD-EVOY: Good morning.

LAUREN GILGER: Okay. So, iris scanning technology sounds like science fiction, but it turns out this is not new. What is it used for?

JEROD MCDONALD-EVOY: Yeah. So, this technology, it's by the Massachusetts-based BI2 Technologies. It's called the Inmate Recognition and Identification System, or IRIS for short. What it does is it's kind of like, if you think of the movie “Minority Report” where they scan the person's eye and it gives them the identification. That's, in short, what it does.

It uses biometric markers within a person's iris to identify who they are. And the idea behind it, in this sense and that a lot of law enforcement agencies have used it for, is helping identify people within jails or prisons.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. So, exactly how does it work? Like, the company you mentioned there says it has a database of like a million scanned irises. They match them?

JEROD MCDONALD-EVOY: Correct. So, they have, they claim to have this database where they have millions, a million scanned irises. These are from people who have been incarcerated in other parts of the country or people who have maybe given their scans via other means.

But we don't have a ton of information on exactly how they have this database, what exactly it consists of, how accurate it is. But we know that they have this major database of these irises that they use that law enforcement uses when they, say, they arrest someone or they bring someone into a jail to be processed.

They'll scan that eye, that person's eye and it will be checked against this database. If it's not in that database, then they'll be added to that database for future reference.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. What about this part, the company kind of has a platform that allows officers to even use their cellphones to scan the irises of people that they encounter?

JEROD MCDONALD-EVOY: Correct. They have a different version of this software that's mobile that ICE has purchased a contract for that allows them to use their cellphones, basically like an app, where that they can they can try to verify someone's identity in the field, see if that person is.

The reason ICE really wants this is so they can verify if that person is the person they're looking for or if that person is, you know, someone that is in the country illegally that they want to deport.

And that part of the contract that ICE is looking for with this particular vendor is to give agents in the field or their 287(g) partners, so local law enforcement that have immigration enforcement authority, to be able to identify people during operations and hand them over to ICE.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. And that's one of the big questions here, right, about how Cochise County, how local law enforcement agencies like these might use technology like this, how they might coordinate with ICE.

Any indication if they will? They do have a 287(g) contract they entered into last year.

JEROD MCDONALD-EVOY: Correct. They did enter into that agreement last year. Cochise County did not respond to my requests asking how this program will be implemented exactly. They do say that it's going to be part of the jails and it will be used by every, like you said at the top of the segment, every single law enforcement agency within the county. So, every law enforcement agency will have access to it within their own jails and will have access to the database.

And they'll be using this. We don't know if ICE will have back-end access to this or if they'll get notified if, you know, someone that they're looking for shows up in the system because ICE will already be using the system.

So, it's unclear how those partnerships will work and how that will tie into the 287(g) agreement that Cochise County has already entered into with ICE.

LAUREN GILGER: There are connections you found as well, Jerod, between this company and the Trump administration in terms of some important lobbyists, right?

JEROD MCDONALD-EVOY: Correct. The Project On Government Oversight investigates, they had a great report where they found that shortly after Trump was elected to his second term, there was a company that was hired, the company that got this contract hired some lobbyists that are connected to this second administration.

Susie Wiles, who is now Trump's chief of staff, and former Attorney General Pam Bondi used to work at this firm. Susie Wiles actually opened, was one of the people who helped open this place, Ballard Partners, and they lobbied hard to get this contract for ICE to be, for this company to be the sole contract for ICE to do this biometric data.

And they also found that this company offered border sheriffs free use of this technology for three years during the first Trump administration. So, they've been kind of heavily involved within the Trump administration and within the border sheriff community, kind of trying to get their technology in the hands of these sheriffs and these law enforcement enforcement entities.

LAUREN GILGER: Jerod, how accurate is this iris scanning technology, though? I mean, and how private is it? It seems like there are some questions about how well it's been used in the past.

JEROD MCDONALD-EVOY: Yeah, that's something the privacy advocates have brought up. Studies by, you know, the National Institute of Standards and Technology have found that the miss rate can be anywhere between 2% to 20%. So, it's, it's not entirely sure how accurate the technology exactly is.

Research has also found that, you know, you could trick this technology even with like, say, a printed out on paper version of an iris. They took, you know, they took a copy of an iris scan and they printed it out on a piece of paper and they put it up to that scanner and they were able to trick it. But then they've also found other ways to bypass these.

But they've also been found to have errors, and then also they've been found to be not always secure, whether that be from human error, like a device that was sold on eBay that was a military device back in 2022, or these devices being abandoned, like in Afghanistan, because these were primarily first used by the military during the war on terror.

A large number of these were abandoned during that withdrawal from Afghanistan, and, you know, there were concerns about the Taliban getting their hands on this technology and using it to connect people to people that helped the United States during that conflict.

LAUREN GILGER: Absolutely. All right, we'll leave it there. Jerod McDonald-Evoy with the Arizona Mirror joining us. Jerod, thank you for your reporting here. Appreciate it very much.

JEROD MCDONALD-EVOY: No problem. Thank you for having me on.

LAUREN GILGER: Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes will have to go back to a grand jury if she wants to continue her prosecution of the so-called fake electors who attempted to overturn Arizona's 2020 election. This after the state Supreme Court said it won't review a lower court ruling that sent it back to a grand jury last year, dealing a significant blow to the Democratic AG's case.

The case is one of several around the country that arose after the 2020 election when some allies of President Trump tried to undermine the election results that showed that Joe Biden won. And many of those other cases are also hitting roadblocks. I spoke more about it with Votebeat's Sasha Hupka.

SASHA HUPKA: You actually have to go all the way back last year to a Maricopa County Supreme Court ruling, where a judge determined that the grand jury hadn't been properly instructed on a federal election law. And so, the judge ordered Mayes, take this back to a grand jury.

And as you might imagine, that would be a major blow to the case. And so, she pushed back on that. She attempted to appeal it to the Court of Appeals. They didn't do anything with it.

She then attempted to appeal it to the Arizona Supreme Court, and it essentially had been sitting there for months before we got this recent decision that the court wasn't going to review it.

And so, that means the lower court's ruling stands, and she does now have to take it back to a grand jury, which she says she will do and that she'll still continue to proceed with the case. But it is definitely a major blow.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. And she'd have to get reelected essentially to follow this through, it seems.

SASHA HUPKA: Yes. I think that this means the case likely isn't heading to a trial or seeing some type of resolution until maybe 2027, 2028, when you look at the timelines of what it takes to get a case like this through the courts. And obviously, she may no longer be serving as attorney general at that point if she doesn't win her election in November.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. OK. Back up very quickly for us, Sasha, and just remind us who these so-called fake electors are. This is 18 people, some pretty big names on this list, right?

SASHA HUPKA: Yes. And so, for what it's worth, not all 18 of them were fake electors. Some of them were allies of Donald Trump who sort of contributed to this effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in other ways.

But the fake electors component of them essentially signed paperwork attempting to falsely certify the state's electoral votes for Donald Trump when the state, in fact, voted for Joe Biden. That is who won the election in Arizona in 2020.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. And we saw this happen not just in Arizona, but in many states around the country, and we saw resulting prosecutions or attempts at prosecutions in many other states around the country as well. So, as we've watched this big blow to Mayes' case here in Arizona.

What's going on with all these cases around the country? Where do some of these other efforts stand, Sasha, to try to, you know, hold these folks accountable?

SASHA HUPKA: A lot of them are facing very serious challenges. We've seen in two states, in Georgia and in Michigan, that the cases either were dropped or are no longer being pursued.

In Nevada, the case is continuing forward, but recently it went before a judge in court, and she seemed very skeptical of the charges. She felt that it would have been very difficult for these fake electors there to actually affect any type of change on the 2020 presidential election results. And so, she's now taking some time to make a decision on the evidence. There's no resolution there yet, but certainly that doesn't bode well.

And then in some states like in Pennsylvania, prosecutors considered bringing charges but then never actually did.

LAUREN GILGER: That's interesting. Wisconsin is an interesting example, though, because it seems to be the one state where things are going relatively smoothly in this kind of prosecution.

SASHA HUPKA: Yes, it's continuing to move forward in Wisconsin. To my knowledge, I think it's the only state at this point that hasn't seen some type of setback or, I guess in the case of Nevada, judge skepticism.

There, they're currently preparing to arraign attorneys who had represented the fake electors in court. That's expected later this month. So, that case is continuing to move forward and perhaps has the best chance of actually going somewhere anytime soon.

LAUREN GILGER: What exactly are these fake electors being charged with? What's the alleged crime?

SASHA HUPKA: So, it depends on the state. There's a variety of things, but generally speaking, you're seeing fraud charges, forgery charges and things of that nature. Here in Arizona, they're being charged with several felonies.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. So, this is obviously part of this broader effort around the country to try to hold folks accountable who, in various ways, tried to undermine the 2020 election, which was six years ago now.

I want to talk about what's happening in Colorado because that's a very interesting example of this. You have Tina Peters, who was not a fake elector, but was found guilty for charges basically related to her efforts to undermine the election there. Her sentence was commuted by their Democratic governor recently.

SASHA HUPKA: Yes, and I think that that case, although Tina Peters obviously isn't a fake elector, is very emblematic of what's happening right now around the country. You know, you saw Tina Peters had her sentence commuted, and within days, she was back on right-wing media making some of the same claims that led her to, you know, do what she did in the first place there.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. So, I want to ask about the broader picture, too, because I think a lot of folks will hear about the so-called fake electors or 2020 election interference and think, man, this is old news.

But obviously, we are heading up to another election, and there are lots of concerns that we will see similar things happen in the future.

SASHA HUPKA: I think that it gets to a fundamental question that speaks to where we are right now as a democratic society. Should there be a penalty for spreading misinformation about elections, for attempting to overturn election results? Is that something that should be penalized? If so, how should it be penalized?

I think we're just in a very unique place with it right now, and I understand the instinct to say it's been six years, but 2020 continues to resonate into our elections today in so many ways.

When you look at what's happening right now in Maricopa County — where top election officials are squabbling, and where really the main divide that was there from the get-go was that the county recorder was supported by Trump's allies and has kind of walked the line, you know, not entirely claiming election denialism but then also not entirely refuting it either, versus the board that, you know, became so famous for standing up to that in 2020. You know, it resonates in every corner of our state right now throughout a lot of different situations, and that's just one example. And so, I think it is still very important.

LAUREN GILGER: I heard someone say recently that they're watching the midterm elections basically to see, you know, are they fair, are they a normal, quote unquote, "American election cycle"? What are you watching for?

SASHA HUPKA: I am watching for so many things. But I think here on the local level, some of the big themes I see are certainly federal involvement or efforts to exert control over the elections here. That's going to be probably the big theme here of the 2026 cycle.

But then I also am looking for things that are just, I mean, they might sound mundane, but how well is the election administered, right? You know, are there technical issues?

I mean, all of these things are things that impact voters. And so, I try really hard to look at all of it, both like the political and maybe the more front page, headline-grabbing stuff versus the stuff that maybe does not feel like a headline right now, but that's actually going to be really important to voters' experience.

LAUREN GILGER: Sasha Hupka with Votebeat joining us. Sasha, thank you very much for coming in. Appreciate it.

SASHA HUPKA: Thank you.

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning. It is The Show here on KJZZ 91.5. I am Lauren Gilger. Coming up, why the release of millions of mosquitoes is less terrifying than it sounds.

LILA SEIDMAN: Male mosquitoes do not bite. So, releasing millions of mosquitoes is not going to lead to a bunch of biting insects being in your orbit.

LAUREN GILGER: Well, that's a relief. We'll hear how increasing the mosquito population now can actually lead to fewer mosquitoes in the future.

But first, an Orthodox Christian group is threatening to sue the city of Phoenix over a controversial new ordinance it passed last month that bans groups from providing medical care and food to the homeless in city parks unless they have one of two permits that will be available for $4 per month in some parks. St. Herman's Table, a ministry of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross Orthodox Church, is asking a judge to issue a temporary restraining order to stop the city from enforcing the new law. But they're not the only ones who took issue with the city over this decision.

When the City Council passed the law in early May, it was after a seven-hour meeting in which they heard from a host of residents, including our next guest this morning.

SISTER ADELE O'SULLIVAN: Mayor Gallego and members of the council, my name is Sister Adele O'Sullivan. I started Circle the City to take care of our dear neighbors on the streets of Phoenix. I appreciate your stewardship of our city and your attempts to listen to your constituents. I'm asking you please to remember that persons experiencing homelessness are your constituents as well. We're not being overdramatic. Emergency rooms will be overcrowded with people we would have cared for in the field. 911 response times across the city will be longer. There will be devastating health consequences for those who remain in the parks. People will die.

LAUREN GILGER: Sister Adele O'Sullivan is the founder of Circle the City, which provides healthcare to the homeless. In fact, I guess you could call her Doctor Sister Adele O'Sullivan because she is the first sister in her order's long history to become a doctor. She was a pharmacist first, but she told me she saw the need and wanted to do more. I sat down with her in our studios recently to talk more about her story, her work, and the city's new ordinance, and it is today's Deep Dive.

SISTER ADELE O'SULLIVAN: I asked to go to medical school to take care of the poor, and I had a number of wonderful experiences around the state. I did some sort of rural-type medicine in Cochise County. I worked at the Arizona State Hospital for a couple of years.

But I was working out in El Mirage, taking care of a kind of a semi-rural population, when I got a phone call one day. It was 1996. They need a doctor to go to the Maricopa County Healthcare for the Homeless clinic on 12th Avenue and Madison. Would you go?

And I had been down there to substitute, so I knew the situation there. And I thought, well, there is no poorer place in Arizona, and made the decision to go.

LAUREN GILGER: So, that's what got you into working with the people who are experiencing homelessness?

SISTER ADELE O'SULLIVAN: Once I got there, I couldn't see that and forget and go back.

LAUREN GILGER: What was it about those people that you met treating them that day, that week maybe, when you first started? Do you remember any of them?

SISTER ADELE O'SULLIVAN: Oh, very well. It was being in those exam rooms listening to those stories, such resilience, such amazing strength through obstacles that most of us will never in our lives have to face. And as a doctor, I wanted so much to be able to care for the whole person, the medical, physical needs, the emotional, the behavioral healthcare needs, the spiritual needs, the the simple things we take for granted.

I remember early on learning underwear was a luxury. Now, you know, when do we think about that? When do we think about how a simple thing like a pair of glasses enables you to open the doors to applying for benefits, to seeing what bus is coming down the street, to — it's so many things I wanted to be able to do for the people in those exam rooms.

LAUREN GILGER: So, this led you to founding Circle the City some years later, right? And this is not a Catholic organization, this is a nonprofit that's much more inclusive than that. Tell us about about your decision to start the the clinic.

SISTER ADELE O'SULLIVAN: Well, I remember asking once, I asked my pastor if there was an organization to give me a little money, like to buy some shoes, to buy some of those simple things. And he gave me a check. I cashed it and I put the money in a shoebox. And locked the shoebox up in the drug cupboard, and when someone came in with a simple need, we went to the shoebox.

And it wasn't until later that I could reflect back on the fact that no matter what was spent out of that box, there was always money left for whatever the next person needed.

LAUREN GILGER: That's amazing, yeah.

SISTER ADELE O'SULLIVAN: So, as the money accumulated in the box, so did the energy in the community to help us. It was common knowledge when I went there in 1996 that the biggest need in this community was a place for the sickest to go, that the people that were getting out of the hospital, people that had fresh surgical wounds, folks that were not weight-bearing after accidents, people that needed more care after they no longer met the criteria for remaining in the hospital. We needed a place other than the streets or shelters for those people to go.

LAUREN GILGER: So, you just did it.

SISTER ADELE O'SULLIVAN: So, I went to my community and I said, we need a medical respite center in Phoenix. Could we do that under the corporate umbrella of the Sisters of St. Joseph? And they said yes.

NewsMeet the team that delivers health care to homeless patients on the streets of PhoenixKathy Ritchie, February 29, 2024 Circle the City provides mobile health care to unhoused individuals around the Valley. On a sunny February morning, a street medicine team saw patients during breakfast at Burnidge Soup Kitchen near 35th Avenue and Osborn Road. Listen
LAUREN GILGER: And so, there it is, yeah. So, I mean, talk a little bit about the work you do today. Circle the City is one of the few organizations that, as you said, is treating kind of the sickest of the sick and those who cannot pay, those who are often on the streets. How do you find them? What kind of issues do they encounter?

SISTER ADELE O'SULLIVAN: We opened in 2012. It worked. People got well, they had a chance to recover. However, when it came time to discharge them from the respite center, the outpatient system that would be user-friendly for them was not adequate to serve the Valley.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah.

SISTER ADELE O'SULLIVAN: So, in 2015, Circle the City opened our first outpatient clinic, fixed-site clinic, and we put our first mobile clinic on the road because it's very important for us that we go to the people, to create relationship, to establish trust and to provide care for the people who couldn't get to us.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah.

SISTER ADELE O'SULLIVAN: We also have five additional street teams that go out on foot to the places where the mobiles can't go.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. So, it's these mobiles, it's the street teams that I want to talk about next because I'm guessing they are the ones who will be most impacted by this new parks ordinance from the city of Phoenix, which is restricting the work that they can do in the parks. No more medical treatment of any kind in city parks.

First of all, before we talk about the reasons why they wanted to pass that, just tell us how it will impact your organization's work.

SISTER ADELE O'SULLIVAN: Well, we do have mobile clinics, but there are people that can't come to us. We have to go to them. And even to take our mobile clinics into parks under the ordinance that was recently passed, there is a permitting process. And the permitting process only allows two permits per month, per park.

We can't tell you ahead of time which park on which day the person is going to be there that really needs our services.

LAUREN GILGER: Right.

SISTER ADELE O'SULLIVAN: So, the permitting process that's in this ordinance is not practical or workable for us. So, I think, as we look ahead, it essentially prohibits medical care that we would provide in parks.

LAUREN GILGER: What will the impact of that be for, not for your organization, but for the people who you treat?

SISTER ADELE O'SULLIVAN: Well, we're worried about that, and we said that at the meetings that our worry is that more people will die in parks, especially during the heat. This ordinance is going to go into effect just as the worst of our heat is coming on for the summer.

You know, our outreach teams do intravenous hydration in the field because there are some people that will not go leave their belongings and their animals and leave the safety of a place where they stay, even when they're seriously ill. So, we go to them.

What we hear from our people is that sometimes a mental health condition is actually paralyzing. And those decisions to try to pick up and leave what they know as safety to go to an emergency room is a decision that they are unable to make.

LAUREN GILGER: So, you think people will die?

SISTER ADELE O'SULLIVAN: We do.

LAUREN GILGER: I wonder this because you founded this organization for, I'm sure, moral and religious reasons, this kind of imperative that you feel as a sister to to treat the poor.

I mean, is there a moment you can imagine there being a situation where someone is in danger and you're going to break this ordinance and go in and treat them anyway?

SISTER ADELE O'SULLIVAN: You know, it's hard for us to say right now what's going to happen in the future and what situations. Of course, we will obey the law and not go into parks to provide medical care when the law forbids that.

We have to find other ways. We have to find that's what we've done since Circle the City was founded and it's what our sisters have done since the beginning, is find innovative ways to meet the needs of the people.

LAUREN GILGER: How do you do that? What might that look like?

SISTER ADELE O'SULLIVAN: In the parks?

LAUREN GILGER: Sure, or outside of them, I guess.

SISTER ADELE O'SULLIVAN: Well, outside of them, we're finding all kinds of innovative ways, using electronic devices, using non-clinical teams. So, putting non-clinical teams out in the field that have ways of alerting medical personnel. Now, again, that will be a challenge.

LAUREN GILGER: They are going to have to move them out of the park to treat them.

SISTER ADELE O'SULLIVAN: Well, or call 911. And I think another thing our community is likely to face when this ordinance goes into effect is that 911's going to get hit over and over and over again for people that we would have treated in the field.

LAUREN GILGER: So, I mean, obviously, like, I think there are real concerns about, you know, finding needles in the parks. Like, people don't want their kids to find needles in the parks, which, you know, happens and we heard about it at those City Council meetings, too. Like, people don't want, you know, lots of medical debris left in parks because they're supposed to be these welcoming community spaces, and I can understand those arguments, as I'm sure you can, too.

Do you feel like there is a better way to to do both of these things, I guess?

SISTER ADELE O'SULLIVAN: I think the gap here is that where is the logic that forbidding us from going into the parks is going to do anything to affect dirty needles and litter in the parks? We are not leaving dirty needles or litter. And we don't want dirty needles or litter in the parks, either.

LAUREN GILGER: I want to ask you about something you testified when you were at the City Council meeting when they took this vote. You said, "I'm asking you please to remember that persons experiencing homelessness are your constituents as well."

I wonder if you can elaborate on that a little bit for us because I think it hits at the the central premise here that maybe is the premise that you hold, which is the humanity of the people who are in these very difficult and and ugly situations, like they're hard to love.

SISTER ADELE O'SULLIVAN: Well, we, you know, we don't find them hard to love. They're they're the reason that we get up in the morning.

And what I meant by that comment, I know that our our council people are trying to listen to the feedback from their constituents and to respond, right. But the feedback from our population that we serve and those who serve them was also very strong at those meetings. And if I were on that council, how do you weigh that? You have to find a solution that that takes care of the problem without harming your constituents.

And that's what we're worried about, that some of those constituents are really going to be harmed by this ordinance. The dollars that the city has allocated to serve them, I appreciate that. I really do. I think the city has has done a great job of finding dollars to open the SOS and to try to do what they can through the Office of Homeless Solutions. They they really have.

But the problem is we, we can't stop there. We can't stop there. We have to serve the folks that have such dire need that they're out there looking for a safe place to go. And this might be the only one they can find, and then they're sick.

LAUREN GILGER: Let me ask you lastly about sort of the I guess the overwhelming contrast that I keep thinking about throughout this conversation talking to you. A sister, right, about being a physician in these kind of situations, because I think a lot of people would have a lot of trouble with that.

Like, it is, and I've done a lot of reporting with the homeless population, like it can get very ugly, like there's drug use involved, you know, there's lots of violence involved. Like, it's not pretty. It's hard. I wonder how you approach that as a religious sister.

SISTER ADELE O'SULLIVAN: Well, you know, human weakness takes a lot of forms. We all struggle with something. And I think you'll find it in the value statements of Circle the City. We meet people where they are.

And that's what our first sisters did. Our first sisters went out and took care of street women, prostitutes, in the streets of this little town in France, you know. It's we're meeting people, both literally and figuratively, where they are. And if we don't meet them where they are, how's life ever going to get better?

These are good people who have been struggling with powers in their lives that they desperately wish they didn't have to struggle with. And, you know, and homelessness is one of those things. We all wish homelessness didn't exist in our city, and we don't want anybody to be afraid to go into the parks or afraid to use them for spaces of recreation for their children.

But what we want is that problem of homelessness in our city and our parks to be solved by a compassionate approach that meets people where they are and then moves them out of homelessness and into treatment and into shelter, and eventually into housing. That's the way we want the problem to be solved, not by watching people get sicker or by criminalizing them for their poverty.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, we'll leave it there. Sister Adele O'Sullivan, the founder of Circle the City, joining us. Sister O'Sullivan, thank you very much, I appreciate it.

SISTER ADELE O'SULLIVAN: Thank you for having me, Lauren.

LAUREN GILGER: We also reached out to the city of Phoenix's Office of Homeless Solutions. They sent us a statement saying they're committed to helping people experiencing homelessness and connecting them with the sources, the resources they need. Quote, "while also keeping our parks safe, clean, and available for all of our residents."

The city points out it has invested more in shelter outreach and affordable housing than any other city in the state, including adding more than 1,200 shelter beds and 300 safe outdoor spaces since 2022. Phoenix calls on the state, county, and federal government to work toward long-term solutions, quote, "that truly end homelessness." In response to the pending litigation filed by the founder of St. Herman's Table, the city told us they intend to defend against it: "We believe our ordinance is lawful."

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning. It is The Show here on KJZZ 91.5. I'm Lauren Gilger. A giant tech company is asking the federal government for permission to release tens of millions of mosquitoes in an effort to bring down their population. Google has asked the EPA to release as many as 64 million sterilized male mosquitoes. The public comment period on the proposal ended last week.

The plan is that the sterilized mosquitoes would help decrease the overall number of the insects that can carry diseases like Zika, dengue, and others. This would not impact the species of mosquito that carries West Nile virus.

LILA Seidman is a reporter for the Los Angeles Times focused on wildlife and the outdoors. She spoke with my co-host, Mark Brodie, who asked what exactly Google is looking to do here. What's the plan?

LILA SEIDMAN: So, at least part of their plan, because they have a plan called Debug, which is this idea of releasing sterile male mosquitoes, a specific type of invasive mosquito, to drive down the population of the insects and, as a result, limit the disease they spread. And these mosquitoes, called Aedes aegypti, can spread dengue, yellow fever, Zika, so things that aren't good.

And a specific part of that plan is they want to release up to 64 million of those sterile male mosquitoes in Florida and California over two years. So, it's also really important to note that male mosquitoes do not bite. So, releasing millions of mosquitoes is not going to lead to a bunch of biting insects being in your orbit.

MARK BRODIE: Right. Well, and the point, and this is something that that has been done for a while with mosquitoes and other insects, is you sterilize the males and they mate with the females. The females have eggs, but they don't hatch, and therefore you reduce the population.

Assuming that Google goes ahead and does this, are there estimates as far as how much it could bring the mosquito populations in Florida and California down?

LILA SEIDMAN: So, I have not seen an estimate for this particular project, but they did a trial in 2018 in Fresno County, and they published their results two years later in a study, and the reductions were really stark.

I can even read it to you. It said, "The number of female mosquitoes was 95.5% lower in release areas compared to non-release areas at peak mosquito season." ... So, that's a really big effect.

MARK BRODIE: Why is Google doing this?

LILA SEIDMAN: That's the question that a lot of people have been asking me. This was I had a feeling you might ask me. I've been starting to look into this, but I don't have anything I can really report yet. I reached out to Google for this story, and they did not respond to me yet.

I've been talking to other vector control officials, so the people who deal with pest management on a local level, and they've kind of been sharing with me their ideas, but I want to do more verification before I report that.

MARK BRODIE: Sure. Well, are the vector control folks, like, what do they think about having a giant tech company sort of coming into their space and and doing this?

LILA SEIDMAN: I mean, it's really interesting. I want to talk to more people, but one challenge that — and I'm based in Los Angeles and I'm mostly focused on Southern California, but these issues are probably happening in other parts of the country like Florida because Florida also has a big mosquito population.

Their issue is scaling these operations and coordinating. So, they can focus on their local area, their local district, but this is a regional problem. So, I have talked to a lot of officials who told me we do have this challenge of not being able to bring this to a wide enough area and wanting to coordinate on a broader level.

So, I haven't talked to a lot of people specifically about this, but I thought about this as a potential way to sidestep that. If a private company steps in and potentially has the money and ability to do this on a broader scale, I wondered if that could actually be good for local jurisdictions.

MARK BRODIE: I mean, it's an interesting point because, you know, mosquitoes of course famously move around, they fly. So, you know, even if ... one particular area does a good job of fogging or some other kind of ... reducing the population, that doesn't necessarily help, you know, the area a few miles down the road or the next district or jurisdiction.

Whereas as you're saying, you know, a giant company might be able to scale it up so that an entire region or more of a region can be can be affected.

LILA SEIDMAN: Yeah, exactly. Well, what's funny is these mosquitoes actually don't fly very far, but they get moved places for somehow. Their eggs might might get carried on a plant, they might hitch a ride in your car, and they've definitely been spreading in California. I mean, they are pretty far north in the state, which, you know, you think of mosquitoes being in warm regions, but they've been creeping north.

And because what you were saying is that, you know, it's not just a one-city issue, right? I mean, that is totally true. And one thing Google is saying — I don't know if this is the whole reason why they're doing this, but they have a very detailed explanation, not of the specific projects in California and Florida, but the general idea.

And they really focus on using technology to make the process better and easier so that they can release more mosquitoes. Because they're saying, "Hey, it's hard to rear the number of mosquitoes you need to do this for it to be effective." Which is like, you know, actually in the millions. And so they're like, "Hey, we can automate rearing of mosquitoes, use technology to figure out where is the best place to release them." So, that is one thing that they're saying they can bring to the table that, you know, maybe a city or a county can't.

MARK BRODIE: Are there other private companies that you know of that are doing something like this or, you know, even if it's not specifically trying to, you know, reduce mosquito populations, something else kind of in the environmental health, public health space?

LILA SEIDMAN: I was talking to a local official about a very small company that also uses this bacteria, which is called Wolbachia, and she said basically they have a different strain. And yeah, so they do sell that as a product. That's my understanding, is that there are some companies on a much small, you know, that's a small one. I don't know if there are other large companies getting involved, but I have heard of different ventures.

Because one aspect of this is the public health aspect ... Dengue is a huge problem, not just, I mean, worldwide. So, the other idea is that if you create a patent, let's say a product, that works, that might be able to be sold. So, there is that element to it.

MARK BRODIE: All right. That is Lila Seidman, a reporter with the LA Times. Lila, thanks so much, I really appreciate it.

LILA SEIDMAN: Thanks so much.

LAUREN GILGER: 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, and 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.