The Tucson Unified School District board voted 4-0 at an emergency meeting Wednesday morning to require everyone to wear a mask on TUSD property.

Before school begins Thursday, the board decided to mandate masks on all TUSD campuses, motivated by the outbreaks in the Vail School District and with the growing number of pediatric cases.

Vail School District began school on July 19 and officials have reported 25 COVID-19 cases from students and staff as of July 25. On Monday, the district reported 57 student cases and 12 staff cases as of Aug. 1. TUSD is almost four times the size of  Vail.

Last week, Dr. Theresa Cullen, director of Pima County's Health Department, said the county received reports of 56 cases since July 19 and eight outbreaks at schools.

For weeks, health experts warned of the expected outbreaks and high transmission in schools, especially with the inability of school districts to implement masking, because state law passed in June prohibits districts from mandating masks.

Dr. Joe Gerald, an epidemiologist with the UA Zuckerman School of Public Health, who has been tracking the virus since March of 2020, alerted the public to the impending outbreaks in his weekly forecast.

”Unlike the summer of 2020 when we were headed into school re-opening with generally declining rates, the match has been lit and the kindling is aflame this time,” wrote Gerald in an email. “For good measure, we are going to throw on some wet wood (children) in the coming weeks to ensure a robust bonfire for the Labor Day Marshmallow Roast. In the absence of greater vaccination or mask mandates, it is difficult to be optimistic about what might happen when schools are running at full capacity.”

The warning came along with the exponential rise in COVID-19 cases and the prevalence of the Delta variant, which is highly transmissible. Arizona has a high rate of transmission at 175 cases per 100,000 individuals for the seven day rolling average, while Pima County has about half that rate.

The desert is green and blooming like never before...the following 10 or so photos were all taken behind Gates Pass in the midst of the bloom.

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For almost a decade, ProPublica has been reporting on the ways TurboTax has fought efforts to make tax prep easier and less costly. As part of that series, we published a story about how to get your money back from TurboTax if you were charged for a service that should have been free.

People flooded the TurboTax customer service line — maybe you were even one of the callers. Some of them told us all they had to do was mention ProPublica to get a refund.

All of a sudden, customer service agents were hearing a lot about ProPublica. Some of them started to give us a call.

It turns out that TurboTax’s customer service agents were part of a much larger group of agents who work as independent contractors for large companies like Disney and Airbnb without benefits or job security. Previously, our reporters investigated the layers of corporate insulation that protect these companies from being held accountable for these agents’ working conditions. This month, reporters Ariana Tobin, Ken Armstrong and Justin Elliott published a story highlighting the voices of customer service agents themselves.

Our reporters heard from hundreds of customer service agents with similar experiences. People were cursed at or called racial slurs. Male callers made sexually explicit comments or masturbated over the phone. One told an agent, “I really like the way you type.”

Almost all these agents felt that they were not allowed to hang up. Arise said in a statement, “Service Partners interacting with individual customers through the Arise® Platform are protected by both client and Arise policies and processes that include the ability to disconnect callers without penalty or transfer these calls to support resources if they are unable to de-escalate the situation.” Other companies gave similar statements saying agents were free to disconnect callers.

We spoke with Ariana about the project as well as the unique role gender plays in the world of customer service. Parts of our interview were edited for length and clarity.

Tucson City Councilman Steve Kozachik was out way ahead of two primary challengers in midtown Ward 6 as election results were released this evening, while Kevin Dahl was leading the race for an open seat in north-central Ward 3.

Kozachik had more than 57 percent of the vote, while Miranda Schubert had 27 percent and Andres Portela had 15 percent in the Democratic primary.

"My staff and I work hard at building relationships," Kozachik. "That is important in our community. My team and I are grateful to the community for their support."

Portela said the result wasn't what he hoped for, "but I'm forever grateful for those who supported me."

In Ward 3, Dahl had 60 percent of the vote, while Juan Padres had 40 percent.

Dahl, who focused his campaign on responding to climate change, said he was pleased with the results.

"I think one thing it shows is that Tucson voters understand that climate change is not just an issue that will affect the environment and our water supply, but it will impact people, especially those who can least afford to respond," Dahl said.

Padres congratulated Dahl on his victory, saying his opponent "ran a solid campaign."

There's no incumbent in the Ward 3 race as Councilman Paul Durham stepped down earlier this year and Karin Uhlich, who was appointed to replace Durham, did not run for the seat.

Kozachik will face independent candidate Val Romero in the November general as he seeks a fourth term. Dahl is set to face Republican Alan Harwell Jr., who got enough write-in votes to land a spot on the general election ballot, and independent candidate Lucy LiBosha in November.

In Ward 5, Councilman Richard Fimbres faced no primary opposition and will face no opponent in the November general election.

PHOENIX – Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, 11 other Republican governors and more than 200 GOP lawmakers on Thursday filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion ruling.

The 1973 court decision for women’s reproductive rights set a precedent for a constitutional right to access to abortion – and has been challenged ever since. The current nine-member court has a 6-3 conservative majority after the confirmation of the Trump administration’s three nominees – Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch – and the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case, which was filed by Mississippi.

One legal expert at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at ASU predicts the court will continue to chip away at Roe v. Wade without making the more controversial decision to eliminate it completely.

“Court watchers believe that the chief justice (John Roberts), in particular, is more institutionally minded and does not want the court to appear overly political,” associate professor Kaiponanea Matsumura, an expert in reproductive rights, told Cronkite News. “The question is whether any of President Trump’s appointees share the chief justice’s sense of restraint.”