The Daily Agenda: We're back!

Back to the grind … What’d we miss? … And it's the end of "Arizona is Hot" content season.

Welcome back, dear reader!

Hopefully, you had a restful August, escaped the heat and didn’t obsess over every twist and turn in Arizona’s evolving political telenovela.

Hank and his wife ditched the valley for a two-week tour of places in Arizona that do not have cell service. It was lovely — the dogs discovered squirrels and we accidentally visited Fredonia.

Hank and friends at the North Rim.

As a string of newsy Substackers took over the Arizona Agenda, Caitlin and Curt labored away on the Tucson Agenda, growing by more than $10,000 of annual revenue in their second month. They even got an intern.

Caitlin took home some big awards from the annual Arizona Newspaper Association contest — including Best News Story for a piece she and Rachel did as a collaboration between the Agenda and the Star.¹

If you haven’t yet subscribed to the Tucson Agenda, now is a good time to smash that button. Or tell some Southern Arizona friends about it and get cool Tucson Agenda stickers.

We also had a fun birthday party/launch party in Tucson, where we sold out The Loft Cinema (thanks for coming, Mom!) for a live event with editorial cartoonist turned Substacker David Fitzsimmons. It was a blast.

As we noted in one of our pre-scheduled vacation updates, Rachel is moving on and we’re looking for the next Agenda co-author. If you’re interested in the gig, or you know someone who would be good, send us an email with a brief intro and some links.

info@arizonaagenda.com

We’ve already received a bunch of awesome, heartwarming emails from readers and fans² — some applying for gigs and some just wanting to get involved in what we’ve got going on here. 

A screenshot of an email from a reader.

And now that monsoons have arrived and summer is ending, the Agenda will be back in your inbox five days per week!

We’ll be breaking from the daily format more often this fall to bring you occasional new voices and perspectives. And we’d like to take the season to talk with you readers a bit more, rather than just having a one-sided conversation. So you’ll see more of that.

But enough about us! We’ve got a lot of news to catch up on. 

So today, we’re recapping August, covering the 10 big news stories you missed as you escaped the heat last month, or all the things you already forgot because the heat melted your brain. 

Let us know where you hid away this summer! We’ll send some Arizona Agenda stickers to the subscriber with the sketchiest vacation story.

Heat and homelessness: Temperatures continued to be unbearably hot during our vacation. At least 180 people have died of heat in the Valley this year, while humanitarian groups say they found another 42 bodies in the desert near the border in August. Two bodies were also discovered at the state Capitol recently, though nobody seems to know what happened. The City of Phoenix is still attempting to sweep homeless people from the Zone nearby, completing its eighth sweep of the area since a court mandated the cleanup. Tucson may begin sweeping homeless encampments after a group advocating for homeless people’s rights dropped a lawsuit against the city. Meanwhile, air conditioning failed at Phoenix's largest homeless shelter, and “questions linger” about why it was allowed to go on for several days. Phoenix is getting too hot for animals even, and the New York Times has moved on to attempting to scare retirees from moving here. 

Running late: Gov. Katie Hobbs declared a heat emergency after more than a week after the nasty July temperatures had already started dipping. And just six short months after she fired the entire board of the Arizona-Mexico Commission, Hobbs finally found a new set of board members to populate the most profitable volunteer positions in the state. She didn’t have to look far — about a quarter of the new power brokers were appointees from Gov. Doug Ducey whom Hobbs had fired. And nearly a year after bailing on the Clean Elections gubernatorial debate, Hobbs is still catching flack from the New York Times on their list of “notable no-shows” to debates. 

Lake and Blake to Lake v. Blake: Kari Lake and Blake Masters are threatening to square off in the “volatile” U.S. Senate GOP primary. The Republic’s Laurie Roberts, unimpressed by the MAGA Party representatives running for the office, still wants to draft Rusty Bowers for the office. Meanwhile, if private prison executives were the entire electorate, U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema would have a walk-on reelection victory, assuming she runs, which she still won’t say. 

Nepotists never prosper: The Maricopa County Democratic Party is embroiled in an independent-investigation-worthy scandal after its former Executive Director Ne’Lexia Galloway funneled a big mailing contract to her fiancée, who botched it.  

Tired of winning yet?: Former President Donald Trump’s latest indictment is bad news for the Arizonans who helped him attempt to hijack the 2020 election. AG Kris Mayes is still investigating the Arizona fake electors and potentially Trump, and former Gov. Jan Brewer is a fan of more indictments. Meanwhile, Arizona Republicans won’t fund their own Presidential Preference Election, despite the wish from activists who want one-day voting and hand-counting of ballots, in part because the party is nearly broke. 

“Upon detailed consultation with our Legal Counsel, it is now evident that acting on this resolution would breach our bylaws, placing the AZGOP at risk of countless legal complications,” AZGOP Chairman Jeff DeWit wrote in a letter. “The rushed resolution was proven to be problematic and an invitation for entities such as the Department of Justice to intervene in our election.” 

Speaking of losers: Former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is once again running for mayor of Fountain Hills. He still has not conceded last year’s loss to Mayor Ginny Dickey. 

The courts are our only hope: The courts continued to uphold our system of democratic governance through August by slapping down Lake and failed AG candidate Abe Hamadeh’s lawsuits attempting to overturn the 2022 election results. Arizona Supreme Court justices even hit Hamadeh with some sanctions. And the ploy to funnel money to political allies to create fraud-proof ballots in Cochise County failed after supervisors there decided to only let Recorder David Stevens contract with a company that is not stacked with his friends. Another man is going to prison for threatening to kill public officials over the 2020 election and Cyber Ninjas audit. And ASU’s First Amendment Clinic is backing Lake in the defamation lawsuit Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer filed against her, pissing off liberal ASU alumni everywhere.

“This is not ASU deciding to support Kari Lake,” Gregg Leslie, the clinic’s executive director, said. “This is one legal clinic at the law school deciding to support a free speech claim.”

10 months to go: Planned Parenthood and reproductive rights advocates finally announced their planned 2024 ballot initiative to enshrine abortion access in the state Constitution. They’ll need nearly 400,000 valid signatures from registered Arizona voters by next July to qualify for the 2024 ballot. The initiative would guarantee the right to an abortion up until viability, with permissible abortions later to protect the health of the mother. 

Just hold it: Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne continued to be Tom Horne, joining in the movement to prevent trans kids from using restrooms. And the war of words between him and Mayes continued as he attempts to shut down dual-language programs for English learners. 

Get those ad dollars: Media groups want to be able to sell TV and radio ads to recreational marijuana businesses. The Arizona Broadcasters Association is part of a group pushing the DEA to reclassify pot as a Schedule III drug, alongside Tylenol, as opposed to a Schedule I drug like cocaine, so that dispensaries can buy airtime. 

1. The Agenda, however, was not listed in the winners list, since we’re not allowed to be a member of the Arizona Newspapers Association or enter the contest on our own.

2. If you already emailed us and haven’t heard back, sorry! We have a lot of emails to get through.