The following is an AZPM original production.

♪ RHYTHMIC BRASS MUSIC ♪ Hello and welcome to this latest edition of The Press Room from the radio studios of AZPM.

I'm your host, Steve Goldstein.

Coming up on tonight's program, a Southern Arizona is already being affected by the Trump administration and Congressman Juan Ciscomani holds a fireside chat.

Distinguished panel of guests to join me tonight, Caitlin Schmidt of the Tucson Spotlight, Katya Mendoza of AZPM, Jim Nintzel of the Tucson Sentinel and Prerana Sannappanavar of the Arizona Daily Star.

Good to have you all here, thank you so much.

Jim, let's start off with the Pima County supervisors and what they heard earlier this week about how much money the county might be losing because of frozen grants, the Trump administration, a lot of uncertainty.

What stood out to you about the meeting?

Well, I think that uncertainty is the thing that really is making it very difficult to gauge what is going to happen here.

I think what a lot of people don't realize about federal grants is once you get them, you don't get a check from the federal government.

You do the work and then you ask for reimbursement and that's work that sometimes doing by county employees, but it's work that's also being done by public or private employers, it's road work, things of that nature that uh, you know, you might be halfway done with a project and you have to halt it in the middle.

So there's a lot up at stake here.

It's road projects, it's environmental projects, it's healthcare projects, things of that nature.

And I think what the county is wondering is how far is the Trump administration gonna go with all of this?

And it seems like they are not slowing down in their efforts to reduce the number of people working for the federal government and the amount of money the federal government's giving out to lower jurisdictions.

- Well, Cailtin, one of the numbers was thrown out with something around $150 million, but again, uncertainty is the key word here.

So how much does that affect what the county can plan to do even as far as budgeting?

Because if you have no idea how much can be reimbursed, you can say, "Oh, right now we have a surplus."

You may not if you lose all this federal funding.

- Right, yeah, I don't think that we're gonna see anything in terms of planning until we know what's happening.

And it was really interesting because we had a city council meeting this week that basically mirrored this conversation in terms of how much we stand to lose, how many grants that are active that have been put on hold, and how many employees are paid for by federal funds.

On the city side, I believe it was upwards of 200 employees, including police, first responders.

So, I mean, the impacts could be far-reaching.

And while we certainly don't know, I think everyone is erring on the side of caution.

Well, and one thing that struck me is that Steve Christy, the one Republican on the board, I'm phrasing it as a wait and see approach.

I mean, he's sort of, and Jim, he's sort of saying, "Well, don't worry about it yet because we really don't know."

(Jim) I spoke to Supervisor Christy and he said, "Well, you know, this is actually really great to see the administration doing this."

So, he's a big supporter of the push.

We'll see if he feels the same way if they start shutting down the bridge projects in the Green Valley area.

Those are the questions here.

But I do think it's safe to say that Pima County is going to be getting less from the federal government than it's currently getting for the next four years.

And that, I think the concern I'm hearing from some folks is that it's going to be a situation where when the Trump administration decides to turn the faucet back on, it will be, you kiss the ring and do as the Trump administration wants, and then you'll get money rather than the previous approach of sort of doling it out and across the board and having certain standards above paying respect to the president.

- Yeah.

Katya, anything in particular stand out for you about this uncertainty that Pima County and Tucson face?

- I mean, just echoing what Jim and Caitlin were saying, a lot of uncertainty, that seems to be the word of this administration.

When I last spoke with the county administrator, Jan Lesher, you know, she had suggested that as a way to recoup these funds, you know, we could see the county start pulling funds from other programs.

So it's just really a trickle effect from there.

- Yeah, and Jim, finally on this one, I'm really curious though, you talked about kissing the ring.

Are Tucson and Pima County going to be in a lot more trouble because it is one of the, I don't wanna say few, but fewer counties and fewer larger cities, if Tucson's serving that medium to large area, that is not supportive of this administration in any way, do you think it will become a target?

Pima County, Tucson will become a target for the administration, and then we have to kiss more than one ring.

- I think that's certainly something local officials are concerned about, and certainly something we've already seen from the state legislature, which has frequently targeted Tucson and Pima County because they have a Republican makeup of the legislature and they don't like the Democratic officials down here.

(Steve) Yeah, Prerana, let me turn to you now.

Generally with these frozen grants, how is that potentially going to affect the U of A?

Are we seeing any effects so far at this point?

Because obviously a huge university like this relies on federal funding to do a lot of research.

- So, before I answer your question, just going off of what everyone said, uncertainty, chaos, fear is something that's prevalent at the University of Arizona right now.

Like you said, a lot of the grants which have come from the Trump administration have been paused, but there have been actual effects which have happened, like, one grant which did have effects was the USAID thing, the United States Agency for International Development.

The Trump administration signed on Inauguration Day that they want to stop all sorts of foreign aid.

So what's happening at the U of A right now is the U of A has six USAID projects which are going to be affected by this.

And that includes financial losses between $20 to $25 million approximately.

It also includes an estimated of six to eight layoffs right now.

That's what people have told me.

And of course, faculty and researchers are, they're nervous about more than this because there's global cascading impact.

There's research which has been carried on for about five to six years, which probably won't see the light of day.

And there's, whether it's disaster aid in countries around the world, or it's analyzing if that disaster aid has long-term impact, or it's training young researchers in those countries to kind of have local impact.

So it's all of those global impact things which are being affected as well.

(Steve) And to Jim's point earlier, this idea that in the case of grants being do the work and then we'll give you the money in a lot of cases, that could really affect the university too.

Because I'm gonna probably say chilling effect about 20 times during this program.

It does feel like that would have a chilling effect on research if you're not sure you're doing great work, we're not sure you can get the money back.

(Prerana) Absolutely, um, you kn with the foreign aid order which came out, that order actually said that after Jan 24th, any work that is done by universities, educational institutions is not going to be reimbursed.

So a lot of these faculty and researchers, they work on reimbursements.

It's not that they get the money and they spend the money.

So they've already spent the money, which is why they said that $20 to $25 million is gonna be lost in financial losses.

- Yeah, Katya, thoughts on that?

Just as far as the uncertainty, I mean, we're on the U of A campus now, and I think I'm just trying to figure out whether there's a, it's sort of hard to quantify this, but is there a feeling that people are sort of nervous generally now more than they were a couple of months ago?

- I agree and echoing what has been said already, just the fact that we're starting to see certain buzzwords, I guess, the climate change, those sorts of pages are disappearing not only from federal websites, but also at the university level.

So one of my questions I have is, what is going to happen with say certain departments like Mexican-American studies, African-American studies, Gender-Women's studies, are they just going to completely disappear or what's gonna happen?

Yeah, and Caitlin, climate change, yeah, that's already affected local communities here as well, no just the U of A.

(Caitlin) Yep, not just the U of A.

We saw Tucson Unified School District in the fall pass some groundbreaking climate action plan leading the nation in what they were planning to do, but a lot of that funding was gonna come from sources like the Inflation Reduction Act and other sources of federal funding that are completely up in the air now.

So it is widespread.

(Jim) And I think a lot of DEI stuff is wrapped into the sciences in an effort to kind of recruit younger people who might be of color or female who have not had representation in the science community to try to get up into and encourage them to pursue careers in science.

So there's a lot going on just at the undergraduate level and money that has already again been awarded that suddenly, oh, I guess you're not going to school after all.

And Jim, not to simplify this, but I mean, you've covered things for a long time, respectfully, you've been, and I think about has DEI become even more of a pejorative than affirmative action was?

We could see affirmative action was something that was sort of once it got going, it seemed like this is a positive, this is actually a good thing.

Did DEI, has DEI become the new sort of, well, we can't hit affirmative action anymore and we're gonna call DEI, we're gonna freak everybody out.

It just seems like there's so much anger tied to it.

And I'm not really sure where that is coming from.

- I think there is a, I think you're right.

I think it has reached a point where that's the new boogeyman and I think it's so weaved in.

And in fact, I think people who are applying for grants under the Biden administration, were encouraged to use that kind of language.

And so now that's kind of embedded within these grants that are being reviewed and shut off for entirely political reasons.

- Yeah, and Prerana, back to you, basically, what does it mean when President Garimella says, university is conducting an inventory of DEI programs?

Is that one step towards something else?

I'm gonna phrase it this way, is the U of A having to sort of roll over because they don't wanna upset the administration if we've already talked about?

- So I think no one's saying anything from the administration, no one's saying anything.

All they've said, like you said, is that the president is taking inventory.

And as we speak, I know that at the university, they're reviewing grants and they're looking for keywords that might point to, you know, DEIA.

So they're trying to, you know, just kind of do an inventory and post the February 14th letter that the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights put out.

So that letter, you know, specifically was about race-conscious programming and admissions and financial aid and anything that happens at universities and colleges.

So it was targeted at that.

And universities were given 14 days to stop because if they did not stop that work, then federal funding would be rescinded.

So after that, you know, the president put out the statement and the day after the president put out the statement, the University of Arizona's Office of Diversity website was taken down and the Culture and Resource Center's websites were taken down as well.

But the specific websites that, you know, let's say African-American Student Affairs or LGBTQ Affairs, those websites are still standing.

So these two websites were taken down and the university's land acknowledgement was also tweaked to remove the words "committed to diversity and inclusion."

So I just think that, you know, like the administration put it, they're just kind of trying to comply with everything that the Trump administration is doing because obviously they don't want to do anything that's against the law.

And they're trying to comply with, you know, state, local, and, you know, federal laws.

- There hasn't been much time to react to it yet, but how has the reaction been to the land acknowledgement statement, as you mentioned, being changed?

That would seem like that's really hitting people over the head in a very negative way.

Absolutely, absolutely.

And the faculty who spoke to me, who was at the U of A, they talked about how the land acknowledgement was made, you know, with collaboration with the Native American tribes.

But now this change was made without that collaboration.

So it just kind of feels like, you know, backtracking and it doesn't feel right, you know, in faculty's eyes.

And they're just upset about the fact that, you know, these immediate reactions are happening.

But at the same time, faculty also recognizes that the administration is kind of in a tough place because they're not the ones coming up with these, you know, federal orders.

So they just kind of have to do right by everyone and they have to, you know, make sure that they're not doing anything against the law.

- Katya?

- Oh, no, I am just agreeing with everything that she's saying.

- I was just curious because you brought up some of the different areas of study that may be tossed out.

I was wondering if this even gives some sort of feeling that the university's commitment to Indigenous peoples is no longer, I mean, even if it sends that message, I wonder if that perception could be an issue.

- I think not only that, but also the University of Arizona is the one Hispanic-serving institution out of the three public universities.

So how are we going to see that be impacted?

And what sort of programs, services, resources, et cetera, are going to impact Latino students?

- Okay.

Caitlin?

- I mean, this has all been in the works for quite a while.

I got several phone calls from faculty members the week before inauguration that there had been edicts coming out in deans meetings, telling them to start taking that inventory now and get ready to remove that material from their websites, take it out of all future materials.

We, of course, reached out to the U of A who denied that such an edict had occurred.

But given how quickly they were able to do everything, clearly this had been going on for quite some time.

(Steve) Yeah.

Jim, any thoughts on that?

- You know, you wonder how far it drips down.

We had the case last year where there were textbooks where people wanted to talk about the benefits of slavery and the useful skills that slaves developed.

So how does it affect education?

And where is your first amendment, right, in terms of being able to instruct people in multiple points of view?

- Yeah.

And Prerana, as someone who's emphasizing higher education on your beat, can you give us an idea of what you're sort of looking for next over the next week or two, like things that are on your radar?

- Aboslutely.

I think DEIA is just kind of going to be an evergreen topic because right now the university is taking inventory, but then, you know, they might be saying something about what grants they have seen that could be targeted by all of these federal orders.

There's also the National Institutes of Health you know, change, which happens.

So basically, the National Institutes of Health is a federal funding agency for medical research.

And it is a huge, you know, it's a huge source of federal funding at the UA.

So I'm looking to do a story at that too, because NIH actually released an announcement that they're going to change the indirect costs cap.

So previously, what used to happen is every kind of federal research, it has direct costs and indirect costs, and indirect costs would be negotiated with the government, you know, by universities, and they would decide on what kind of percentage was enough.

But right now, NIH has proposed that there's going to be an across-the-board cap at 15% for indirect costs.

And this is also going to, you know, it's been paused by a federal judge, but, you know, it's caused for, you know, labs to be shut down or, this is all, you know, estimations, like no one knows what's going to happen.

But if there's not enough money to support indirect costs, then direct research gets impacted by this.

So, and everyone in the UA that I've spoken to, they've said that 15% is just unanimously too low.

So, and labs would cease to exist, and research would not be able to happen the way it does.

So that's something I'm looking at as well.

We'll keep an eye on that as well.

- Katya, another area that's being affected by the Trump administration policies, and you wrote about it and reported on it for AZPM, the National Park Service.

You talked to a couple of people, one of whom has already been laid off, the other hadn't, and has been there for about 15 years, I think, based on your reporting.

What's to add about your conversations with those particular people, and what they're feeling right now?

Well, since I spoke with those two gentlemen, I have since heard from several other employees who are still currently employed.

Overall, the morale is low for federal employees, those who still work there, and those who do not.

Again, going back to the word uncertainty, these stories are really heartbreaking.

In my conversations with the National Parks Conservation Association, I thought it was very important to emphasize, even though it's an effort to trim government spending, and lay off employees and things like that, these people aren't paid that much to begin with, and it's a calling.

I think that the roles that are being laid off are emblematic of what public service really is.

- And that's incredibly important, and I'm also curious, though, if we think about people who live in Arizona, and the economy, which I would think the Trump administration likes to talk about a lot, tourism is pretty important here, and the National Parks here are a vital part of that.

- Millions of dollars, yes, exactly.

- Every single year.

And it makes me think about the last government, last big government shutdown, I can't remember exactly what it was, and how, you know, Jan Brewer at the time, I think, was governor, and had to take some special action to make sure that we could keep our national parks open.

I mean, doesn't this seem kind of absurd to lump all these things together, National Institutes of Health?

Okay, and then our parks, it just seems like kind of a willy-nilly cutting.

What stands out for you about the National Park Service, the fact that this is a state and in the Southern Arizona, relies so much on the environmental beauty we have here.

- Yeah, I mean, and that impact has been immediate as well, so our national park tweeted out yesterday that the visitor center is gonna be closed on Monday, starting Monday.

So, I mean, and as more people are laid off, we're gonna see more like that.

I mean, I will never forget those images of NASA with no employees and shuttered national parks during the last government shutdown.

That was just eerie.

And I would hate to see us get to a place like that again, but it looks like we're slowly chipping away at these things.

(Steve) And Katya's gonna be potentially forest service as well, Bureau of Land Management, so there could be more-- - Mission Wildlife Service, I believe, EPA is next on the chopping block, Veterans Affairs.

- So, yeah, and the folks you talk to and you've spoken to already, I mean, are they sort of planning?

I hate to say this, but almost expecting that at some point they're gonna be let go as well?

- So, the employees that I've spoken with, they are full-time, one of them, which I reported in my story, he was seasonal, so he still has no idea.

And again, there's so much uncertainty with what's gonna happen with seasonal employees.

There may or may not be an exemption is what has been circulating.

Not only that, they are concerned about federal funding, still, that is a huge unanswered question.

A lot of these projects include biological surveys, prescribed burns, things like that that are very important.

And as we approach wildfire season in Arizona, you know it's important to do the work with that.

(Steve) And people are gonna notice these things that they might even think about now.

But I also think it's important you mention personalizing this, because I think the more numbers we hear, oh, thousands of people got laid off, the numbers are daunting, but when you think about how those are individual people building up to those thousands and how they're affected and how that could affect our society going forward.

I mean, these are some big things to think about.

And going off of what Caitlin said, not only visitor centers are gonna be closed, you're gonna see a lack of EMTs available.

And every year during business season, we all see those reports of people petting the bison, stepping in the hot springs at Yellowstone, things that they shouldn't be doing.

I mean, there's gonna be such a delay in response.

- Even as simple as not bringing enough water.

(Katya) Things like that.

Choosing to hike Grand Canyon in the middle of the summer.

I mean, people just do it.

And we need people to assist these people making those decisions.

Now, Jim, you had a chance to attend a fireside chat with someone who's supporting, at least outwardly supporting a lot of these Trump policies.

Congressman Juan Ciscomani.

He seems like, at least based on what you reported, he's sort of on board with the Elon Musk.

Is he enthusiastically on board with some of these DOGE cuts or not?

- Well, I wish I could have asked him.

And our efforts to reach out to the office have been met with silence and following the event, we hoped to catch up with him.

And he hustled out the door and said they didn't have time for questions.

So we could only take from what he was saying on the stage, but on the stage, he seemed enthusiastic about what was going on.

He said that this is a great opportunity to kind of figure out what we need and what we don't in the federal government.

And we can start over again, sort of, once we clear out all of this, we can kind of figure out what was important and what wasn't important.

And I think that's the ethos of a startup company where move fast and break things.

When you talk to Democrats, they're like, well, the federal government's not a startup.

It's, when you break things, people have really bad consequences, like losing their jobs or people, if you cut their medical care off, people die.

People don't have the opportunity to go get an education.

There's a lot of things that have a pretty serious impact that we're, well, we're gonna see what that impact's gonna be.

- Did the host of the Fireside Chat ask him about, what about the congressional power?

It's a branch of its own?

Was Congress gonna step in?

- Congressman did say, you know, the Trump administration has done what it's done through executive actions, and it's important for Congress to then codify that.

How that exactly plays out, we don't know.

Congressman Ciscomani did sign on to a letter from the Hispanic Congressional Caucus this week to the House Speaker saying, hey, we're not on board with Medicare cuts.

We wanna make sure there are still Pell grants.

So there is, he is pushing back on that level against some of the stuff that's being discussed right now in the House of Representatives, and we will see, you know, there's a lot of sausage getting made, and it's as ugly a process as you've ever seen.

- And, Caitlin, we know the wind's shift in politics, but, you know, as recently as November, Juan Ciscomani, pretty narrow reelection win, and this district is one of the few swing districts, maybe one of two we have in the state, and, gosh, it seems to me that, I mean, I know he has another, but they're constantly campaigning for the next reelection bid.

Does this strike you as odd that he would be this positive about some of these things, considering maybe voters back home would be more like, we like some of those cuts, but not all of them, hey, take it a little bit slower.

- I mean, I don't think so.

You know, Juan Ciscomani has been fairly inconsistent for us for a while now, but, I mean, I think a lot of these people are feeling emboldened now, right?

I mean, they're in charge, they're making decisions, they're not getting a ton of public backlash to a lot of these decisions, and so maybe lean into them a little bit.

Voters have a short memory, so he's got plenty of time to dial it back when he's actually campaigning.

- Jim, you actually talked with protesters as well, approximately how many folks, and, you know-- (Jim) There are about 60 folks out there lining the road on the way to Ventana Canyon, and, you know, Elon Musk was a big target of their ire, also the Trump administration, and real concerns that he's exceeding what is appropriate in terms of what a president does, and that we're sliding towards a dictatorship, in their words.

But there are also people inside the audience who were Republicans who were like, hey, we love seeing this, the federal government's spending way too much money, and this is a great way to get it under control.

So there's definitely a mix of opinion from the public out there.

- One of the protesters outside, though, was a veteran who had two Teslas.

He was glad to get rid of, he also used language we can't use on public broadcasting, Jim, but give us an idea of what he had to say.

- He said he used to love Elon, he had two Teslas, and he sold them both, and that everything that Trump touches, well, this is to say everything that Trump touches dies to kind of edit his language.

- Katya, final thoughts on this one in particular, because of where one Ciscomani was speaking, his constituency, it makes me wonder, sort of the same question I asked Caitlin, the idea that is he leaning a little bit too right for what his constituents may want at this point?

- I think I'm gonna lean a little on what Jim said in terms of his Ciscomani's support to not cancel Medicaid, right, is what you said?

(Jim) Yeah, yeah.

With that, I guess I'm curious to see if we're gonna see him push back on DOGE, talking about federal cuts and layoffs and things like that to trim the fat, so to speak, DOGE's annual budget is $40 million, where is that money coming from?

I just read a report in ProPublica today.

It's unclear how this federal agency, although it's not a federal agency, is being funded, right, and they're able to allocate other spending from other federal agencies to this agency.

However, they're not transparent and they're not answering questions and we don't know who's getting paid, we don't know who works there, so I just try more attention to that.

- Yeah, our last minute or so, Caitlin, I'm gonna come to you on this one.

Firing of immigration judges, when I mean hundreds of thousands of backlog cases, right, and one of the things that President Trump said and the Biden administration seemed to want to do this as well was to add more immigration judges.

What could losing 20 of them, what could that do to all the border kerfuffle?

- Yeah, I mean, it's certainly not gonna help assist in diminishing that backlog.

I mean, it's chaos, right?

And it's a certain level of hypocrisy when we're saying during campaigning that we're gonna hire more judges to get this backlog cleared up and then the first thing we do is fire them.

And we have another situation with the Florence Immigration Project where they've been asked to stop funding legal representation for children, which is shocking, but it's chaos, it's chaos over there.

- Yeah, and Jim, final few seconds on this.

- I think-- I guess if you don't care about the legal process and you're just gonna try to put in judges that will speed things up, maybe you need to get rid of some that you think might be slowing things down.

- Well, I was wondering if the argument would be, well, because we're not gonna have a problem with the border anymore what do we need all these judges for?

- Yeah, there could be that too.

Although they are promising mass deportations and there's a lot of folks who are already here in this country without documentation.

- Yeah, okay.

Jim Nintzel of the Tucson Sentinel, Caitlin Schmidt of the Tucson Spotlight, Prerana Sannappanavar, thank you very much, from the Arizona Daily Star, and Katya Mendoza of AZPM, thank you all for a great discussion, we appreciate your time today.

And thank you very much for joining us for this edition of The Press Room.

We'll be back next Friday with a new episode.

I'm Steve Goldstein, enjoy the rest of your night.