The Gaggle: An Arizona politics podcast

On May 24, America experienced another horrible mass shooting. An 18-year-old gunman in Uvalde, Texas, massacred 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School.Salvador Ramos opened fire with an AR-15-style assault rifle in a fourth-grade classroom before an officer killed him to end the rampage. It is the deadliest school shooting since the one at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012. The violence in Texas still shocks, but it doesn’t feel new.The political response seemed more combative, more quickly, in another sign of America’s all-too-familiar political stalemate over gun violence.Polling shows large majorities of Americans favor at least some greater restrictions on access to firearms, yet the issue is scarcely discussed on Capitol Hill.At the state level, it’s a different story.In this week's episode of The Gaggle, a politics podcast by The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com, host Ron Hansen is joined by Republic reporter Rafael Carranza, who reported from Uvalde. UCLA professor Christopher Poliquin also joined the show to discuss how lawmakers react to these tragedies.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Freshman state Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, has been among the most prominent voices lying about the 2020 presidential election. But her bombast goes well past political puffery.After the recent massacre in Buffalo that police believe was at the hands of a white racist, Rogers crossed a line in a vague social media post that fueled a conspiracy that the slayings were part of a federal false-flag operation.Nearly all her Arizona Senate colleagues voted for an ethics investigation, but they limited their scrutiny to a seven-word post after the slayings in which she noted that “Fed boy summer has started in Buffalo.”They rejected a Democratic measure to immediately expel her. The Senate Ethics Committee is scheduled to meet Wednesday on the investigation into Rogers and her tweet.In this episode, Brian Levin, a national expert on hate and extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, joins The Gaggle. He explains how Rogers and the rise of extremists in Arizona compares to what is happening more widely across the country. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With the nation's elections under siege from other nations and their integrity in question from many Americans, Ken Matta, Arizona's longtime elections security director, has stepped down.Matta worked under Republicans and Democrats and oversaw 32 elections. He ran nearly 203,000 test ballots to verify the accuracy of the state's election machines.Now, Matta is moving into the private sector as the state prepares for elections that will again test public confidence.In this episode of The Gaggle, we speak to Matta about his tenure as an elections security officer, what he saw during his years of service and why he trusts our elections process. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The rate of inflation has been on many people's minds lately, from the gas pump to the housing market to the grocery store.The main driver of inflation has been consumer demand and supply chain issues that have lingered as the COVID-19 pandemic slows down. It is currently affecting Americans day to day, and more than half of the country says it's now impacting their long-term financial goals. In a speech Tuesday, President Joe Biden addressed the rising inflation issues but spoke more about putting the blame on Republicans rather than a plan to combat it.Voters have a chance to show their frustration at the polls this election year.In this week's episode of The Gaggle, a politics podcast by The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com, hosts Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Ron Hansen are joined by pollster Paul Bentz. He's senior vice president at High Ground Public Affairs Consultants and joins The Gaggle to discuss how inflation going to impact voters' decisions in the upcoming election.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Many regulations and limitations that went into effect around the beginning of COVID-19 are gone. You’re allowed back inside restaurants, you can buy as many rolls of toilet paper at once as you’d like, and you don’t have to wear a mask while doing either.And now added to the list of regulations that will be lifted is Title 42. Title 42 is a public health code that was established in 1944 as a part of the Public Health Services Act. It gives the United States the ability to deny entry of non-citizens in the case of disease that could be seen as a serious danger to the U.S.It was rarely used but was put into effect in March 2020 when the spread of COVID-19 became more serious. Since then, it has been used more than 1.7 million times by Customs and Border Protection. President Joe Biden’s administration announced it will rescind the current policy later in May after more than two years, but not everyone agrees that it’s the right move.In this week's episode of The Gaggle, a politics podcast by The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com, hosts Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Ron Hansen are joined by Arizona Republic reporters Rafael Carranza and Clara Migoya to parse through Title 42, how it is affecting Arizona's border, and what the future holds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Maricopa County Attorney Allister Adel ended her three-year tenure as the county's top prosecutor in a hospital amid concerns that she was losing her battle with alcohol abuse and after her top section chiefs noted they didn’t think she was up to the job. Adel's resignation sparked a dash to qualify for the election to replace her and a lightning round of interviews for an interim boss.The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors has appointed Republican Rachel Mitchell as the interim county attorney to finish out Adel's term, which ends this fall.Candidates to run for the office in the 2022 election had just two weeks to file paperwork and gather signatures to qualify for the August primaries in their bid to take over one of the largest prosecutorial teams in the country. All this begs the question: What's next for the Maricopa County Attorney's Office? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Thousands of refugees are waiting at the U.S.-Mexico border. This might sound like old-news, but these asylum-seekers are getting through the border. What makes them different from the previous waves of migrants is that these people are from Ukraine. More than 2,000 Ukrainian refugees have crossed the border at Tijuana into San Diego. President Biden has ordered border agents to process any Ukrainians seeking sanctuary in the U.S.He says the United States will accept up to 100,000 refugees from Ukraine. But why exactly are Ukrainians coming to the U.S. through Mexico from Europe amid the war in their homeland? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 2020, Arizonans voted to legalize recreational marijuana, and it opened the door for both local and national marijuana companies to flood the market. But cannabis is not as highly regulated in Arizona as one might expect.We are in the wild west of marijuana production and that means some corners are cut and standards aren’t always consistent. Some cannabis companies have failed to keep their products free of contaminants. Arizona, like most states with legal marijuana and testing rules, requires growers to submit the products to state-licensed labs before marijuana is sold on dispensary shelves. But in unlike other states, regulators here don't do their own testing to ensure the weed is safe.In this bonus episode of The Gaggle, an azcentral.com podcast,  Arizona Republic business reporter, Ryan Randazzo talks about how he got a lab to test products he bought, and how results came back showing some of that cannabis was contaminated with a pesticide. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Recently, Gov. Doug Ducey signed a bill into law that would ban women from getting abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. He also signed a bill targeting transgender youth. The law bans gender affirming surgeries for people under 18 and bans transgender girls from participating on women's athletic teams at public or private schools that compete against public schools, including at the collegiate level.Supporters say the abortion restriction protects women from the emotional and physical trauma of undergoing abortions and saves lives. Supporters of the bill impacting transgender youth say it protects children and women’s sports.One of those proud supporters is Cathi Herrod.Herrod is the president of the Center for Arizona Policy, a socially conservative non-profit advocacy organization. Those who have followed state politics since the center’s start in 1995 probably have heard of her. The center has have been instrumental in helping pass numerous socially conservative laws in its 27 years.The center promotes what it refers to as the foundational principles of life, religious freedoms and family values. Herrod has served as president since 2006.In this week's episode of The Gaggle, an Arizona politics podcast, host Yvonne Wingett Sanchez sat down with Herrod to discuss her recent successes and the center's future legislation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Governor Doug Ducey has signed a controversial abortion bill into law. The new law, which won’t take effect until the fall, outlaws abortions after 15 weeks – with no exceptions for rape or incest.Those who oppose abortion rights Pro-life advocates are hailing the new law as a huge success in the fight to protect the unborn. But those who support abortion rights describe it as heavy-handed government intrusion into personal medical decisions … as well as deepening racial disparities in health care access.By enacting one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the nation, Arizona joins other Republican-led states chipping away at Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion rights, that is currently expected to be reined in by the high court this term.This week on The Gaggle, hosts Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Ron Hansen are joined by Arizona Republic politics reporter Stacey Barchenger. Together they break down what Arizona’s upcoming abortion law does and what it does not do, how this plays into the agenda for Ducey and Republicans nationally. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices