WASHINGTON (AP) — The House on Friday approved wide-ranging legislation aimed at helping communities in the West cope with increasingly severe wildfires and drought — fueled by climate change — that have caused billions of dollars of damage to homes and businesses in recent years.

The measure combines 49 separate bills and would increase firefighter pay and benefits; boost resiliency and mitigation projects for communities affected by climate change; protect watersheds; and make it easier for wildfire victims to get federal assistance.

"Across America the impacts of climate change continue to worsen, and in this new normal, historic droughts and record-setting wildfires have become all too common,'' said Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Colo., the bill's chief co-sponsor. Colorado has suffered increasingly devastating wildfires in recent years, including the Marshall fire last year that caused more than $513 million in damage and destroyed nearly 1,100 homes and structures in Boulder County.

"What once were wildfire seasons are now wildfire years. For families across the country who have lost their homes due to these devastating wildfires and for the neighborhoods impacted by drought, we know that we need to apply a whole-of-government approach to support community recovery and bolster environmental resiliency," Neguse said. "This is a bill that we believe meets the moment for the West."

The bill was approved, 218-199, as firefighters in California battled a blaze that forced evacuation of thousands of people near Yosemite National Park and crews in North Texas sought to contain another fire.

One Republican, Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, voted in favor of the bill, while Oregon Rep. Kurt Schrader was the only Democrat to oppose it.

The bill now goes to the Senate, where Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has sponsored a similar measure.

Both the House and Senate bills would permanently boost pay and benefits for federal wildland firefighters. President Joe Biden signed a measure last month giving them a hefty raise for the next two years, a move that affects more than 16,000 firefighters and comes as much of the West braces for another difficult wildfire season.

Pay raises for the federal firefighters had been included in last year's $1 trillion infrastructure bill, but the money was held up as federal agencies studied recruitment and retention data to decide where to deliver them. The raise approved by Biden was retroactive to Oct. 1, 2021, and expires Sept. 30, 2023.

The House bill would make the pay raises permanent and sets minimum pay for federal wildland firefighters at $20 per hour, or nearly $42,000 a year. It also raises eligibility for hazardous-duty pay and boosts mental health and other services for firefighters. The bill is named after smokejumper Tim Hart, who died fighting a wildfire in New Mexico last year.

"The West is hot — hotter than ever — it is dry and when it is windy, the West is on fire,'' said Rep. Kim Schrier, D-Wash. "And we are seeing this every year because of climate change. That's why this bill is so important.''

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called the bill "a major victory for Californians — and for the country.'' The Oak Fire, the largest wildfire so far this year, "is ravaging our state,'' she said. "At the same time, countless of our communities regularly suffer lack of rainfall that can kill crops and further fuel fires."

The House bill would deliver "urgently needed resources" to combat fires and droughts, "which will only increase in frequency and intensity due to the climate crisis,'' Pelosi said. The bill includes $500 million to preserve water levels in key reservoirs in the drought-stricken Colorado River and invest in water recycling and desalination.

Republicans denounced the measure as "political messaging," noting that firefighters' hourly pay has already been increased above $20 in most cases. The House bill does not appropriate additional money for the Forest Service or other agencies, and without such an increase, the Forest Service says it would have to lay off about 470 wildland firefighters.

Rep. Bruce Westerman of Arkansas, the top Republican on the House Natural Resources Committee, called it "egregious" that Democrats would seek to enact provisions that could lead to firefighter layoffs in the midst of a devastating wildfire season.

"Democrats are finally waking up to the wildfire and drought crises, exacerbated by years of forest mismanagement and a lack of long-term water storage. Unfortunately, Democrats' proposals are anything but solutions,'' Westerman said. He accused Democrats of failing to follow science showing the need to manage forests before fires begin, and said Democrats "fail to construct the kind of long-term infrastructure needed to make communities resilient to drought'' while prioritizing "liberal talking points" about climate change.

Neguse called that accusation outrageous and noted that many of the bills included in the wildfire/drought legislation are Republican proposals.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said the bill was important to the whole country — not just the West, where wildfires and drought are a daily reality.

"We are one nation indivisible and if one part of us is burning, we are all burning," Hoyer said.

Besides boosting firefighter pay, the bill enhances forest management projects intended to reduce hazardous fuels such as small trees and underbrush that can make wildfires far more dangerous. It also establishes grant programs to help communities affected by air pollution from wildfires and improve watersheds damaged by wildfire.

Republicans called the thinning projects — which also include prescribed burns and removal of vegetation — meaningless without waivers of lengthy environmental reviews that can delay forest treatment by years.

The White House said in a statement that it supports efforts to address climate change, wildfires and drought, but wants to "work with the Congress to ensure the many provisions in the (bill) avoid duplication with existing authorities and administration efforts."

DEATH VALLEY NATIONAL PARK, Calif. (AP) — Flash flooding at Death Valley National Park triggered by heavy rainfall on Friday buried cars, forced officials to close all roads in and out the park and stranded about 1,000 people, officials said

The park near the California-Nevada state line received at least 1.7 inches (4.3 centimeters) of rain at the Furnace Creek area, which park officials in a statement said represented "nearly an entire year's worth of rain in one morning." The park's average annual rainfall is 1.9 inches (4.8 centimeters).

About 60 vehicles were buried in debris and about 500 visitors and 500 park workers were stranded, park officials said. There were no immediate reports of injuries and the California Department of Transportation estimated it would take four to six hours to open a road that would allow park visitors to leave.

It was the second major flooding event at the park this week. Some roads were closed Monday after they were inundated with mud and debris from flash floods that also hit western Nevada and northern Arizona hard.

The rain started around 2 a.m., said John Sirlin, a photographer for an Arizona-based adventure company who witnessed the flooding as he perched on a hillside boulder where he was trying to take pictures of lightning as the storm approached.

"It was more extreme than anything I've seen there," said Sirlin, who lives in Chandler, Arizona, and has been visiting the park since 2016. He is the lead guide for Incredible Weather Adventures and said he started chasing storms in Minnesota and the high plains in the 1990s.

"I've never seen it to the point where entire trees and boulders were washing down. The noise from some of the rocks coming down the mountain was just incredible," he said in a phone interview Friday afternoon.

"A lot of washes were flowing several feet deep. There are rocks probably 3 or 4 feet covering the road," he said.

Sirlin said it took him about 6 hours to drive about 35 miles (56 kilometers) out of the park from near the Inn at Death Valley.

"There were at least two dozen cars that got smashed and stuck in there," he said, adding that he didn't see anyone injured "or any high water rescues."

During Friday's rainstorms, the "flood waters pushed dumpster containers into parked cars, which caused cars to collide into one another. Additionally, many facilities are flooded including hotel rooms and business offices," the park statement said.

A water system that provides it for park residents and offices also failed after a line broke that was being repaired, the statement said.

A flash flood warning for the park and surrounding area expired at 12:45 p.m., Friday but a flood advisory remained in effect into the evening, the National Weather Service said.

Each fall, many humans descend upon their favorite bakeries and coffee shops for all things pumpkin-flavored. Some quick-thinking police officers who recently rescued a dog in Glendale, Arizona, proved that people aren't the only mammals who fancy pumpkin-infused goodies.A video posted to the Glendale Police Department Facebook page shows officers attempting to rescue a German shepherd after a passerby reported that it was stuck in a canal and was swimming back and forth. One of the officers removed his ballistic vest and gun belt and tried to swim to the dog and rescue it using a leash. The dog, however, "was skittish and did not immediately come" to the officer, according to the police department's Facebook post. That's when another officer remembered his wife packed a pumpkin muffin for his lunch and used it to successfully lure the dog back to safety. The dog was not hurt. See the rescue in the video player aboveOnce it was back on dry land, the German shepherd, whose name hasn't been released, enjoyed eating the pumpkin muffin."Gratefully, the dog was reunited with his owner who lived just down the street. Great work by our patrol officers," the police department said in the Facebook post, adding that the department was hopeful that the officer's wife was "able to whip up a new batch of muffins for him."Video below: Fire department saves dog stuck in underground pipe

PHOENIX —

Kari Lake, the Republican defeated in Arizona governor's race, is formally challenging her loss to Democrat Katie Hobbs, asking a court to throw out certified election results from the state's most populous county and either declare her the winner or rerun the governor's election in that county.

The lawsuit filed late Friday by Lake centers on long lines and other difficulties that people experienced while voting on Election Day in Maricopa County. The challenge filed in Maricopa County Superior Court also alleges hundreds of thousands of ballots were illegally cast, but there's no evidence that's true.

Lake has refused to acknowledge that she lost to Hobbs by more than 17,000 votes.

The Donald Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate has bombarded Maricopa County with complaints, largely related to a problem with printers at some vote centers that led to ballots being printed with markings that were too light to be read by the on-site tabulators.

Lines backed up in some polling places, fueling Republican suspicions that some supporters were unable to cast a ballot, though there's no evidence it affected the outcome. County officials say everyone was able to vote and all legal ballots were counted.

Lake sued Maricopa County officials and Hobbs in her current role as Arizona's secretary of state.

Sophia Solis, a spokesperson for the secretary of state's office, said Lake's lawsuit was being reviewed but had no other comment on the filing.

Jason Berry, a Maricopa County spokesperson, declined to comment on Lake's request to throw out the county's election results in the governor's race. But he said the county "respects the election contest process and looks forward to sharing facts about the administration of the 2022 general election and our work to ensure every legal voter had an opportunity to cast their ballot."

Lake's lawsuit says Republicans were disproportionately affected by the problems in Maricopa County because they outvoted Democrats on Election Day 3-1. GOP leaders had urged their voters to wait until Election Day to vote.

In late November, Lake filed a public records lawsuit demanding Maricopa County hand over documents related to the election. She was seeking to identify voters who may have had trouble casting a ballot, such as people who checked in at more than one vote center or those who returned a mail ballot and also checked in at a polling place.

During the summer, a federal judge also rejected a request by Lake and Mark Finchem, the defeated Republican candidate for secretary of state, to require hand counting of all ballots during the November election.

The judge has since sanctioned lawyers representing Lake and Finchem, saying they "made false, misleading, and unsupported factual assertions" in their lawsuit. The lawyers told the court that their claims were "legally sound and supported by strong evidence."

Hobbs in her role as secretary of state has petitioned a court to begin an automatic statewide recount required by law in three races decided by less than half a percentage point.

The race for attorney general was one of the closest contests in state history, with Democrat Kris Mayes leading Republican Abe Hamadeh by just 510 votes out of 2.5 million cast.

The races for superintendent of public instruction and a state legislative seat in the Phoenix suburbs will also be recounted, but the margins are much larger.

Brittney Griner is happy to be home.

“It feels so good to be home!” Griner posted to Instagram, ABC News and The Associated Press reported. "The last 10 months have been a battle at every turn. I dug deep to keep my faith and it was the love from so many of you that helped keep me going. From the bottom of my heart, thank you to everyone for your help."

Griner's statement on Friday marks the first comment since she was released from a Russian prison earlier this month after being arrested in February on drug-related charges.

For months the Biden administration worked on bringing home the 32-year-old and another American detainee Paul Whelan, the Associated Press reported.

On Dec. 8, President Joe Biden announced that Griner was being released in a prisoner swap in the United Arab Emirates for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, the news outlets reported.

"President Biden, you brought me home and I know you are committed to bringing Paul Whelan and all Americans home too,” Griner said in her statement, the news outlets reported. “I will use my platform to do whatever I can to help you. I also encourage everyone that played a part in bringing me home to continue their efforts to bring all Americans home. Every family deserves to be whole.”

As she continued in her statement, the WNBA star expressed how "grateful" she was to those who helped her make it home, including thanking the staff and medical team at the military facility in Texas where she was recuperating since arriving in the U.S., the news outlets reported.

Griner also said she is already looking forward to playing professional basketball again with the Phoenix Mercury, saying she intends "to play basketball for the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury this season, and in doing so, I look forward to being able to say ‘thank you’ to those of you who advocated, wrote, and posted for me in person soon," the Associated Press reported.

Griner said in her statement that she'll “transition home to enjoy the holidays with my family” but didn't say exactly where.

Thousands of Arizona Catholics recently learned they may have been improperly baptized with the wrong words.

In Michigan, a separate but similar controversy has been ongoing since 2020. For years, a deacon at St. Anastasia Church in suburban Detroit used the words "we baptize" instead of "I baptize." The Vatican says that phrase makes the sacrament invalid.

The Detroit Archdiocese says it found about 200 baptisms were done properly, and 71 people so far have been baptized again. But 455 people haven't responded. One person who was affected was a priest, the Rev. Matthew Hood. He was quickly baptized and ordained again as a priest in 2020.

The situation has had many seriously upset, with one unidentified woman commenting during a talk who said, “Why do you think so many people are leaving the Catholic Church?” She said, “This is a great example why. This is just awful.”

Another man said, “What would Jesus do?” And then said, “I think he would be on a different side here and say by what you’re doing you have disrupted so many lives, so many people,”

Church members went to try and find videos of baptisms to see if family members had invalid sacraments.

Rev. Hood said, “We’re aware there are young people who no longer practice the faith. This problem has opened that up.” He said, “But for some individuals, it has been the opportunity to say I haven’t taken my faith seriously and this is an opportunity to do that, to realize something real is at play here.”

TUCSON, Ariz. — Eric Miller has been a vendor at Tucson's Annual Gem and Mineral Showcase for more than 20 years, but couldn't have predicted what would happen when he came to town this February.

"One of my trays, which had six fossils in very distinct places, six dinosaur claws, one was missing. I thought, 'Oh my gosh. One is missing,'" said Miller.

He quickly discovered more than just one fossil was missing.

Two ancient Spinosaurus claws from Africa, worth $25,000, were grabbed from his display at a Days Inn hotel in Tucson.

"I sat down and called the Tucson Police Department within minutes of discovering the theft," said Miller.

Miller also spread the word around town and asked other vendors to keep an eye out.

"It was our hope that the thief might, at some point in time, go to somebody else in Tucson and try to sell them. In fact, that's what happened," said Miller.

On February 8, nine days after the fossils were stolen, the thief attempted a sale.

The Tucson Police Department was called and officers arrested 39-year-old Christopher Thomas.

"I was thrilled. It took so much pressure off of me and everybody else," said Miller.

Miller plans to come back to Tucson for future shows but will take new precautions.

"Security is an issue. It's a good idea to photograph your more expensive things before the show even starts," said Miller.

This story was first repotred by Megan Meier at KGUN in Tucson, Arizona.

A megadrought ailing the American West got even drier last year and is becoming the deepest dry spell in more than 1,200 years. A study out Monday said the megadrought is now the worst-case scenario officials and scientists worried about in the 1900s. The drought deepened so much in 2021 that it is 5% worse than the old record in the late 1500s.

Scientists compare this megadrought to what would happen in a hypothetical world without human-caused climate change. And they calculate that 42% of this drought is due to global warming from the burning of fossil fuels.

A study published in the journal Nature Climate Change found that the window of time between 2020-2021 was the driest for southwestern North America in 1,200 years.

In the study, researchers said, "Since the year 2000, southwestern North America has been unusually dry due to low precipitation totals and heat, punctuated most recently by exceptional drought in 2021."

As CNN reported, the burning of fossil fuels has been found to be directly related to water availability in the West. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that in December Los Angles experienced its second-wettest month on record, but then last month Los Angeles experienced its eight-driest January on record for the city.

Once dry and desolate, this riverbed in southern Arizona has been given new life.

“The idea of bringing water back to the Santa Cruz River for Tucsonans has been around for about 100 years. That's when the Santa Cruz River stopped flowing because of overpumping of the aquifer here in Tucson for the agriculture that was going on here in the early 1900s,” John Kmiec, the interim director of Tucson Water, said.

Here in the desert, every drop of water counts.

“South of where we’re standing, this is what the Santa Cruz looked like…it’s dry. It's been like that since the 1920s almost continuously. It only responds for rain,” he explained. “If you want to see abundant life in the desert, just add water, and it's amazing what happens after that.”

So that’s what Tucson water did back in the summer of 2019 – by putting water back where it used to be as part of the Santa Cruz River Heritage Project.

“This is highly treated effluent from our regional wastewater treatment plant,” Kmiec explained. “Our daily flow right now is about 1,500 gallons per minute.”

“We had more than 400 people at about 110 degrees down in this riverbed when we turned this outfall on,” he explained.

The recycled water runs 24/7 into where the Santa Cruz River used to run, attracting people above and wildlife below.

“Just about every desert creature you can think of, you see down here,” Kmiec said.

It’s the sounds of this ecosystem that show the success of the project. Keeping track of the biodiversity here is part of researcher Michael Bogan’s job.

“This is basically how we collect it from the river,” Michael Bogan, assistant professor of aquatic ecology at the School of Natural Resources and the Environment at the University of Arizona, said.

“So we need to preserve them in ethanol and bring them back to the lab.”

Bogan said he noticed wildlife return right after the water was turned on.

“I immediately noticed dragonflies who had obviously flown in from some other water body somewhere in Tucson, golf course, pond, something like that. Flown in and not only had they found this brand new water that was only a few hours old, but they were already mating and laying eggs in the water. To me that was like seeing the birth of an ecosystem,” he said.

So his team, along with other groups, are keeping track of the species coming in.

“In most places because of either drought, climate change and drought that we’re in or because of human water withdrawals from dams or diversions, most places are drying up. So most of what we study is what happens when the water goes away. This is totally the opposite,” Bogan said.

“It’s a relatively small amount of water, yet it has a huge positive impact.”

Kmiec said the Santa Cruz River Heritage Project shows how to use water in a sustainable way to bring life back to the area for wildlife and for people.

“We see it as one of many. So we’re looking at other opportunities,” he said.

“We’ve done a lot of damage to the ecosystems so this is an example of trying to undo some of that damage,” Bogan said.

Former Vice President Mike Pence has directly rebutted Donald Trump's false claims that Pence somehow could have overturned the results of the 2020 election.

Pence said Friday in a speech to the conservative Federalist Society in Florida that the former president is simply "wrong" when he says Pence had the right to unilaterally "overturn the election." Pence is responding to Trump's intensifying efforts this week to advance the false narrative that he could have done something to prevent Joe Biden from taking office.

While Pence has previously defended his actions on Jan. 6, the remarks Friday mark his most forceful rebuttal of Trump to date.

“I heard this week that President Trump said I had the right to ‘overturn the election,’” Pence said in the speech. He continued by saying, “President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election. The presidency belongs to the American people and the American people alone,” Bloomberg reported.

According to CNN, Pence went on to say in the speech, "Under the Constitution, I had no right to change the outcome of our election, and Kamala Harris will have no right to overturn the election when we beat them in 2024."

Arizona now ranks number one in the nation when it comes to excess deaths. A metric used to measure the number of deaths over what's expected for the state over time was used to determine the alarming statistic.

Will Humble, Executive Director for the Arizona Public Health Association says the excess death rate was a stable data point before the pandemic and therefore, a good baseline to measure the impact COVID-19 is having on the state.

“What you clearly see both in Arizona and across the country is an increase in total mortality or total deaths over and above what you would normally expect in a regular year,” Humble said.

“So according to CDC estimates, Arizona is at about 25% to 30% over what would be the expected amount of deaths for this last year," said Garrett Archer, a data analyst.

Archer said, "That translates to about 10,000 to 20,000 extra deaths than we would expect to see.”

Humble claims the reason Arizona has so many more excess deaths is that Governor Doug Ducey and former State Health Director Dr. Cara Christ failed to implement policy to prevent the spread of COVID-19, especially during the surges over the past two years.

“The biggest thing was last winter in December and January when bars, restaurants, and nightclubs were just open and they could do whatever they wanted, that started all kinds of chains of transmission that ended up resulting in the deaths of older persons who never went to a bar or nightclub,” Humble said.

He also points to the impact COVID-related issues had on non-COVID-19 health conditions.

"Deaths from diabetes, deaths from heart disease, and it could be elective procedures that were delayed. Accidents and injuries were also another big category," Humble said.

He again blamed the lack of mitigation from the governor and state health leaders on overwhelming the hospital system and preventing people from either having access or seeking care.

"You also have the fact that the care within the hospital system during the surges is not what it normally is, and that results in excess deaths and mortality as well," he added.

Archer says that policy is just part of the equation.

"Policy is going to be one measure, but another variable is the vaccination rates, especially early on during the Delta and Alpha surges. Arizona did not have a very high vaccination rate," Archer said. "We have a large older population because we are a retirement community and that will factor into things like excess deaths," he said.

The Arizona Department of Health Services disputes Humble's claims that failed policy by the governor and state health officials played a major role in the excessive death rate and said in a statement to the media, "I encourage you to review this information we provided to your newsroom and others when the Arizona Public Health Association first promoted its report on excess deaths. In short, the CDC data the Arizona Public Health Association uses isn’t intended to answer the questions the group is attempting to answer."

The statement went on to say, "Each death is an unspeakable tragedy for that person, their loved ones and Arizona as a whole. Out of respect for those who have died and those who continue to suffer from COVID-19, we politely suggest that attempts to draw conclusions from deaths - and stories that may result from these attempts - look carefully at the data, sources, and conclusions of those presenting findings before properly vetted, complete and consistent state-by-state information is available."

The CDC also posted data, which the department added comments to, and released as a statement below:

Limitations

"These estimates are based on provisional data, which are incomplete. The weighting method applied may not fully account for reporting lags if there are long delays at present than in past years. For example, in Pennsylvania, reporting lags are currently much longer than they have been in past years, and death counts for 2020 are therefore underestimated. Conversely, the weighting method may over-adjust for underreporting, given improvements in data timeliness in certain jurisdictions. Unweighted estimates are provided, so that users can see the impact of weighting the provisional counts. However, these unweighted provisional counts are incomplete, and the extent to which they may underestimate the true count of deaths is unknown. Some jurisdictions exhibit recent increases in deaths when using weighted estimates, but not the unweighted. The estimates presented may be an early indication of excess mortality related to COVID-19, but should be interpreted with caution, until confirmed by other data sources such as state or local health departments. It is possible that recent improvements in the timeliness of data could also contribute to the pattern where a jurisdiction exhibits recent increases with the weighted data, but not the unweighted. Conversely, recent increases may be missed in jurisdictions with historically low levels of completeness (e.g., Connecticut, North Carolina) either due to the lack of provisional data or insufficient weighting to address incomplete data."

We raise the following specific concerns with the report:

1. Estimating all-cause of mortality by excluding injuries and other (minor) natural causes is a limitation of this report. Injuries are among the top five causes of death in Arizona, and this cannot be overlooked in this type of study. It begs the question of whether the percentage of excess mortality found in this report is actually representative for Arizona.

2. The differences in burden of mortality between ADHS data and the result of this report (ref. Page 3) might stem from the assignment of COVID-19 as primary cause of death - that is, the various ways jurisdictions (CDC, states) determine a COVID-19 death case.

2. Figure 7 (page 6) begs the question of whether these rates are adjusted or crude. Comparison of mortality across time periods or even geographic areas is typically done using standardized rates, and it is worth asking whether AZPHA is following this best practice."

This article was originally published by Marc Thompson of KNXV.

GLENDALE, Ariz. — An act of generosity and sacrifice from a Peoria, Arizona, 8-year-old led some Glendale police officers to pay it forward to the boy with a belated birthday party.

Jaden Simmonds is like most kids his age. Spiderman is his favorite superhero, he loves to collect sloths and he's excited to play his Sonic the Hedgehog video game.

What sets Jaden apart from other kids his age is what he decided to do for his birthday.

Over the summer, Jaden told his mother instead of having a big birthday party, he'd rather his friends and family bring him gifts for kids who don't have as much.

So for over a year, Jaden collected enough toys to fill a big red bin. Last month, he wheeled that bin into a local mall, which caused the jaws of Glendale police officers Jeff Alloway and Commander Ryan Horrall to drop.

"We just try to teach our kids to be selfless and think of others," said Krysta Simmonds, Jaden's mother.

Alloway estimates Jaden's gift helped provide additional gifts to about 40 families this Christmas.

"Shocking, to see a child so young, to have such a heart, such a big heart to donate and give up," Alloway said.

Motivated by Jaden's generosity, a few Glendale police officers sought to pay it forward and throw a belated birthday party at Urban Air in Peoria on Friday.

"The gesture that he did, we didn't want it to go unnoticed," Alloway said.

Jaden spoke to local media Friday and told a room of cameras on tripods taller than him that he likes to help others, and it makes him feel good when he does. Like most kids his age, Jaden admitted he was anxious to stop answering media questions and jump on the trampoline.

With approval from his mother about which games were age-appropriate and some police sleuthing to locate the console, Glendale police also gifted Jaden a Nintendo Switch.

His face lit up when he unwrapped the hard-to-find gift.

"The fact that he thought of others than himself was a very proud moment," Jaden's mom said.

This story was originally published by Jordan Bontke on Scripps station KNXV in Phoenix.

PHOENIX, Ariz. — Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey is suing the Biden administration over its demand that the state stop sending millions in federal COVID-19 relief money to schools if they don’t have mask requirements or close due to COVID-19 outbreaks.

The lawsuit filed in Phoenix federal court on Friday comes a week after the U.S. Treasury Department demanded that Ducey either restructure the $163 million program to eliminate restrictions it says undermine public health recommendations or pay back the money.

The Treasury also wants changes to a $10 million program Ducey created that gives private school tuition money to parents if their children’s schools have mask mandates.

After the Capitol insurrection, major social media and web hosting platforms that provide the tools for them to stay online, like Amazon Web Services, made substantial efforts to eradicate domestic violent extremists and conspiracy groups like QAnon from their platforms.

AWS removed far-right social media space Parler from its services, causing it to go temporarily offline. 

Since then, many of these far-right groups have jumped to online spaces like Gab.

These alternative hosting companies hold terms of service that allow hate speech and other unfavorable content to flourish on their platforms. 

The most well-known of these alternative hosting sites is Epik, backed by CEO Rob Monster, who over the years has provided services to several hate-speech-filled message boards like neo-Nazi site The Daily Stormer and 8chan. 

 

In some cases, Epik has stepped in to provide these services after far-right spaces were dropped by their original web hosting providers. 

For example, after it was revealed that the perpetrator of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting used Gab to post hate speech, the site was subsequently dropped by GoDaddy. Still, Epik stepped in to provide domain hosting services so Gab could stay online.

After being dropped by AWS, it also stepped in to provide Parler with domain hosting services. 

"What we're seeing now is some of the more reputable companies saying that we're not going to be a part of that, we're not going to let our systems be abused," said Bret Schafer, Media, and Digital Disinformation Fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy. "There is a huge ecosystem that allows disinformation to be monetized, and I think the more reputable companies are seeing this as a challenge to their business."

Jack Bratich, author and Rutgers University professor, said one worry he has about the pairing of companies like Epik and Gab is that it not only makes these companies financially dependent on each other, it also allows them to push different potentially dangerous ideologies even further. 

"I think there's something bigger going on socially and culturally around these media platforms... that expands beyond both the financial incentives," Bratich said. "This is tied to a kind of development of a kind of Christian nationalism and a desire for a kind of a theocracy in the U.S. People like [Rob] Monster, who owns Epik, have been pretty forthcoming about that."

Tyler Adkisson at Newsy first reported this story.

MESA, Ariz. — At just 11 years old, calculus homework is no match for Monty Hernandez.

While other kids his age are hoping to make the middle school basketball team, Monty is preparing to enter his freshman year of college.

"It's very important to study because without studying, you won't make it far," Monty said.

Monty studies a lot. Whether in the car or the stands at his sister's softball game, the Mensa society member puts in the work morning and night.

"I didn't have any idea that at 9 years old, he'd ace a high school chemistry class," said Monty's mom, Danielle Hernandez.

Hernandez says it's been quite the journey for her son.

Monty didn't speak until he was 4 years old. He was diagnosed with autism and began his schooling in special education, but testing would soon send him on a meteoric rise through academic levels.

"At first, when I was with people that were older than me, it was weird, but over time it gradually became the norm," Monty said.

After years of difficulty with strength, agility and fine motor skills, Monty was diagnosed with a connective tissue syndrome. The condition requires him to need special accommodations for his learning.

"It explains his low muscle tone, his joint pain, needing a scribe sometimes to write — especially in these math classes where the problems are getting so long, he has to write so much," Hernandez said.

He continues to push through at every turn. Sadly, doctors also diagnosed Monty with ascending aortic aneurism, a heart condition. Until doctors can do surgery to insert a prosthetic aorta, it's a condition that can lead to sudden death.

"At any point in time I have to be there to say, 'It's time to go to Phoenix Children's, call his cardiologist,'" Hernandez said.

But for Monty, now a senior at Skyline High School in Mesa, Arizona, the prospect of death doesn't phase him. It perhaps even emboldens him, especially with so much left to achieve.

"If I'm going to die, I at least try my hardest to do my life goal. I don't want to go out without a bang," Monty said. "I want to become a pediatric neurologist so I can help kids who aren't as fortunate and who need help from doctors to reach their goals."

Paying for Monty's college education will be difficult. His mother has helped him apply for many scholarships, but most require students to be 18 or older.

They're asking the public to help fund Monty's dream by donating to his future education costs.

This story was originally published by Cameron Polom on Scripps station KNXV in Phoenix.

ELOY, Ariz. — Dozens of women joined hands in the sky over Arizona to break multiple state skydiving records.

A total of 40 female skydivers and two airborne videographers came together for the record-setting jump.

The women dove from a plane 16,000 feet in the air last Saturday, making three formations on a single skydive over the state.

In doing so, the group broke the state's sequential skydiving record. They also broke Arizona’s women's formation record, which was set roughly 10 years ago.

The skydivers came from all around the United States, and even outside the country, including from Paraguay and Spain.

Customers are still sitting down for a cold beer at Joyride Brewing in Edgewater, Colorado.

“We always talk about stopping and smelling the hops. It’s all about the joy ride of life,” said Grant Babb, the owner of Joyride Brewing.

That’s despite new state rules that state bars must serve food to stay open, and Joyride doesn't serve food.

“It makes you lose a little sleep at night, not knowing every day when you wake up if you have to do something different. It’s trying to shoot at a bullseye and just watching it constantly move,” said Babb.

Babb had to make arrangements with multiple food trucks and the restaurant down the street to stay open. That’s because the recent spike in COVID-19 cases has led the state to put its economic restart plans on hold.

“In our case, we schedule out food trucks about a month and a half in advance, and we’re working with only the food trucks we’re trusted partners with,” said Babb.

Colorado isn’t the only state backtracking due to the surge. According to a tracker from the New York Times, 15 states are pausing plans to reopen and six are reversing course and shutting some things back down.

Arizona is one of those states where bars, gyms, and theaters have been ordered closed once again. Restaurants there fear the same might happen to them soon if new COVID-19 cases aren’t curbed.

“You can’t simply turn off and turn on a restaurant operation,” said Steve Churci, the head of the Arizona Restaurant Association.

He says the toll of shutting down those businesses for a second time would be crushing.

“If you were to shut down, what happens to the suicide rate? Does that go up? What happens to the homelessness rate, people losing their homes? So, there’s a whole other sad and unfortunate contingent that would be impacted by this,” said Churci.

Churci says service industry workers employ almost a quarter-million people and the state has lost $815 million in revenue from food sales. He says in a normal year, US restaurants sell $900 billion worth of food.

“Almost a trillion-dollar industry. So, we often say we’re the cornerstone of our communities. We’re the heart and soul of America in the restaurant industry, and we are,” said Churci.

For Joyride, the losses have been heavy as well.

“We, we’re down 80 percent in the month of March, April, May. And then June, we’re still seeing a significant decrease, we’re down definitely 40 percent,” said Babb.

For Babb, the money hurt, but letting his staff go was harder.

“It’s the most painful thing you can do is tell an employee that we don’t have any work for you,” he said.

He says it will hurt even more if he has to send his staff home again.

After experiencing several miscarriages, an Arizona couple is celebrating a big miracle. Cary Patonai and her husband, Tim, have two sons and have been trying to have another child for the past year. The couple went through two miscarriages during that time, which followed 17 miscarriages before having their second child. "Two of those miscarriages were even sets of twins, so it was very difficult," Cary told KNXV.When the child the couple had been praying for finally arrived, the delivery nurses were in for a surprise. Finnley weighed 14.1 pounds."They were like, 'Oh my gosh,'" Cary said. "They couldn't believe he was so big. They couldn't wait to get him on the scale."Cary said the doctors and nurses were excited and taking pictures with the family. "They asked permission, of course, but they were just so pumped," she said. Finnley didn't fit in the clothes they brought to the hospital, so they had to make a quick wardrobe change. At 10 days old, he's wearing size 2 diapers. The couple is used to welcoming big baby boys into their family. When their second-oldest son was born, he was in the top five of the biggest babies Cary's doctor had delivered. "I was like, 'Just you wait, I'm gonna get to the top of the list,' totally joking two years ago, and then we accidentally, we did it," Cary said.

July 2021 was the earth’s hottest month on record, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The land and ocean surface temperatures were a combined 1.67 degrees above the average.

One city in the southwest region of the U.S. is looking at solutions to help keep the ground cooler.

“It looks basically like cured concrete,” said Ryan Stevens, a civil engineer with the City of Phoenix.

Ryan Stevens and other engineers are trying to lower the temperature of the asphalt.

“Really, it gives that illusion of putting on the product like sunscreen onto our roads, and that's really what it's doing is insulating our roads from the daytime solar energy," he said.

In nine areas across Phoenix, the city is piloting its "Cool Pavement Program." It’s a lighter coating on top of the roads already in place.

“It’s not paint. We hear people say, 'Well, you just painted your streets,' we didn't paint our streets. We actually used an asphalt-based product,” said Kini Knudson, director of Street Transportation for the City of Phoenix.

The program began last year and currently coats 36 miles of asphalt across the city.

“If it’s something that makes sense from an environmental climate perspective but also makes our pavement last longer, for me, it's a no-brainer,” he said.

“The idea is to keep the energy out of the pavement because at night the pavement is the last thing to cool down. About 30 to 40 percent of the urban area is paved surfaces,” Stevens said.

Paved surfaces contribute to similar problems in cities across the U.S. Larger populations and more buildings created a higher urban heat island index -- it’s a concept called the urban heat island effect.

“The urban heat island is a situation that has been studied for about 200 years. It happens because you have buildings that can store heat differently than the natural surface. So a building will hold onto heat and hold it on through the night, and what that does is it keeps the nighttime temperatures warmer so we have this situation where we’re not cooling off at night,” Erinanne Saffell, Arizona’s state climatologist, said.

“That energy, the sunlight comes down and is stored in the surfaces,” she explained. “The more reflective a surface, the less energy it’s going to store and so it's not going to be as hot.”

Saffell compares it to how a person might feel wearing a dark t-shirt in the hot sun.

“If you're wearing a light-colored shirt that reflects the heat, that's not going to get you as hot,” she said.

“We know that heat is a challenge for our community, we want our community to be comfortable,” Kate Gallego, the Mayor of Phoenix, said. “We’ve noticed it’s not getting as cool as night, we’re retaining a lot of heat.”

Results from the first year of the program show the cool pavement had an average surface temperature of 10.5 to 12 degrees Fahrenheit lower than regular asphalt at noon and during the afternoon hours. At all times of the day, the cool asphalt was cooler than traditional asphalt.

“That’s enough temperature distance or change that you can feel it if you're walking in a community,” Gallego said.

However, Stevens said it’s still being looked at how this impacts the air around the asphalt.

“The degree of which that air mixing, does it feel hotter or not, is something we still need to look at,” he said.

The city plans on trying different colors and shades as well.

Keeping buildings and asphalt lighter is something Steve Hamburg says has been used in design decisions for quite a while.

“If you go to the Mediterranean, you would never see dark roofs. You're always going to see light roofs, because they want to reflect the heat off the roofs so it doesn't warm the structure…people have been known to do that for thousands of years,” Steven Hamburg, chief scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, said.

The project in Phoenix will continue to see what works best to mitigate the urban heat island effect and keep our planet cooler.

“It’s going to take a few more years to be able to fully evaluate the impact and the benefits of it,” Knudson said.

The imminent release of a partisan audit into the 2020 election results in Arizona – authorized in March by the GOP state Senate – has pitted elected Republicans against each other.

Stephen Richter was elected in 2020 to help oversee elections in Maricopa County – the state's largest.

"They started to pursue this in what I believe to be an unprofessional manner that will only erode confidence in our elections," Richter said.

He flipped the county recorder's office red in a down-ballot race last November – the same year Donald Trump lost. He initially supported an election audit.

"I'd have to be a doofus not to understand that there's a significant percentage of the party that doesn't have confidence in how the 2020 elections were administered," he said.

But it was the state Senate's selection of Cyber Ninjas to conduct the audit – a Florida-based company with no experience leading election probes and whose CEO has spouted debunked election conspiracy theories – that has caused many prominent Arizona Republicans to distance themselves.

"I'm not anti-audit," Richter continued. "I'm anti-Cyber Ninjas."

One of the theories already floated by associates of Cyber Ninjas is the assertion that tens of thousands of ballots were cast fraudulently for Joe Biden last November – something Richter characterized as "laughable" in a 38-page open letter he sent last week to Arizona Republicans.

Newsy repeatedly reached out to representatives of Arizona's Republican State Senate and was denied interviews with all 16 state Senators.

Contacted directly, Newsy found one Republican state senator who originally supported the audit has turned on an email auto-reply with a letter explaining why he abandoned support for the probe, saying in part: "What's been going on these past few months cannot be called a professional audit."

On the national scale, former President Donald Trump said "the facts are coming out, the truth is being uncovered and the crime of the century is being fully exposed."

But so far, the audit – pitched as a way to restore voter confidence – has fallen short.

Recent state polling by non-partisan pollster OH Predictive Insights, shows just six in 10 voters are extremely or moderately confident in the state's elections.

Former Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett is now the Senate liaison to the Maricopa County audit.

"I want myself, my children, my friends and my family to know that when they participate in an election in Arizona, the results are going to be tabulated accurately,"he said. "Even when the results are close, they can have confidence that they can believe those results."

The audit is still turning heads in other states across the country, especially from far-right voters disaffected with President Biden's win in the 2020 election.

Arizona voter Scott Ziegler said many are still eager for the results of the audit.

"I know people that are in other states that are waiting for this," he said. "This is a big deal."

This story was originally reported on Newsy.com.

CASA GRANDE, Ariz. — Nancy Caywood knows the value of holding on to what’s important to you. Her family’s farm is on its fifth generation.

“This is my grandad. He’s out working our family farm in the 1940s right here. He purchased the farm in 1930,” she said.

For 91 years, Nancy’s family has been farming land in Casa Grande, Arizona, about an hour south of Phoenix. So she’s seen some dry weather in her day.

“All of the west is in a serious drought,” said Caywood, “The lakes are decreasing in level, and they’ve all got the bathtub ring, and they’re very, very low right now, and so we just entered what we call tier one of water usage which means that agriculture is going to be cut back.”

The Bureau of Reclamation declared a water shortage in the Lower Colorado River Basin and announced level one restrictions, the first-ever.

"The basin is experiencing its 22nd year of drought, and earlier this summer, the reservoirs hit their lowest levels since they were originally filled," said Tonya Trujillo, the Asst. Secretary for Water and Science.

That means Arizona will face the largest cuts at an 18% reduction. Nevada will see a 7% reduction and Mexico 5%. Those numbers may not sound like a lot to the average person, but to farmers, every drop counts.

“In all honesty, we probably had about, trying to think, probably about 25 acres on this farm this year just because we didn’t have the water," said Paco Ollerton.

His farm is just down the road from Nancy’s. Uncertainty is starting to sink in for Paco for his farm and others.

“My guys are going to have less, my equipment dealer is going to have, you know people are being conservative about buying equipment, it’s going to affect all the suppliers and the inputs,” said Ollerton.

Caywood worries about her son Travis, who runs the farm now.

“Now I’ve just watched this just wear him down, and it’s sad as a parent to see this because I don’t think my grandfather ever experienced this level of drought. But this has been a year, after year, after year, it’s been going on, and to watch this just wear Travis down hurts, it just hurts. And you just want to say it’s going to be ok, but we don’t know,” said Caywood.

Telling the people we love that everything will be OK, you don’t have to be a farmer to know that feeling.

But it might take a farmer to find that glass half full optimism in the middle of a drought. Nancy’s got that too.

“I look out here, and I know that the alfalfa is here, and we can grow it. We just need water, right? And so you just have to look with optimism that we’re going to get water,” she said.