The following is an original production of AZPM News.

Today on The Press Room, Pima County asked and the Sheriff Chris Nanos answered - through his lawyer.

We have the latest as the Board of Supervisors continues to scrutinize the sheriff.

Plus, we introduce you to one of the University of Arizona's newest Guggenheim Fellows.

Our panel of journalists gets you up to date with the latest stories.

We are in The Press Room.

And it's coming up next.

Thank you for joining us this week in The Press Room.

I'm Tony Perkins and we're coming to you from the new home of AZPM, the Paul and Alice Baker Center for Public Media.

And joining me in the studio, John Washington of Lookout, Angela Gervasi of AZPM News and Tim Steller of the Arizona Daily Star.

Thanks for being with us today.

Well, now we're gonna start off with Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos and he's under the microscope again.

It's been like this for him since the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, that case still unsolved.

And now he's under scrutiny from the Board of Supervisors, and there is the chance he might be removed from office.

John, what's been going on with Chris Nanos this week?

Well, a few weeks ago, the supervisors sent to Chief Nanos the list of questions that he is required to answer under state law.

And if he doesn't answer them satisfactorily, then he could potentially be removed.

And we got those answers on Tuesday of this week through his lawyer.

I don't think that the supervisor or the public really learned anything of substance in those responses that we got.

There was a lot of deflection and plenty of self-defense.

The attorney called it in the first sentence of the response 'an inquisition,' which I guess is the legal term of art, but it also sort of brings up some historical resonance there.

And really it was sort of packaged in a lot of legalese and it gave no real new insight into a number of serious questions.

Maybe most concerning is his past employment history, where he was suspended numerous times and he had to duck early termination from the El Paso Police Departme by resigning.

And the attorney said that that is actually immaterial to the current situation.

But I think speaking from the public perspective, that is actually of quite serious concern right now with this, what I would say, sort of broken trust and loss of confidence in the sheriff.

Angela, the Nanos statement came from his lawyer.

Sheriff Nanos did not appear at the Board of Supervisors himself.

What was the reaction from the supervisors about that?

Right, so I spoke to Supervisor Matt Heinz and Supervisor Jen Allen yesterday, and neither of them were very impressed with these responses.

As John mentioned, Supervisor Allen said there were no real surprises in this letter.

Supervisor Heinz took issue with the fact that there was no paragraph or section in the letter that identified this as a sworn statement.

And under this Arizona statute, which is a very old sort of statute, very old law, this is supposed to be a sworn statement made under oath.

Now Nanos' attorney has recently responded to that and said, well, the supervisors didn't specifically ask for a sworn statement, so it's become this sort of back and forth.

But under that law, the supervisors can potentially remove someone from office if they don't satisfactorily respond.

And I asked Supervisor Allen, do you think that's a possibility?

And she said she thinks that would be a stretch.

So there's really a lot of unknowns about what's going to happen next.

The next meeting isn't until May 13th.

And Tim, that statute, I think it goes back to territorial times.

What is it about Arizona where we switch back to, or refer back to territorial statutes?

I mean, when people have a need, they look for the laws wherever they can find them, right?

And so actually in this case, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors recently called their county recorder to speak before them under oath, under using this law, which is I believe why the Pima County Board of Supervisors got the idea of using the same law.

It had not been used for a long time before the Maricopa County Board used it.

And yeah, I mean, theoretically it gives this right.

So it allows the board to demand these answers, as my colleagues have said, under oath, which they didn't do.

And they made the request citing this law.

So I don't believe that it was an oversight that they didn't do it personally.

I don't believe that it was an oversight that they didn't do this under oath, but it's true that the supervisor didn't say, you must do this under oath, pinky swear, and all that stuff.

But again, it comes down to whether this matters.

Nanos' attorney has said that Nanos is quite willing to attest to all that under oath, if that's what's required.

But really all that matters is whether there's three votes to move further on this.

And there's probably two votes to move further.

Matt Heinz, the supervisor has been spearheading this.

And Steve Christy, the only Republican on the board, may be leaning that direction.

The other three, all Democrats like Heinz, I don't know.

I don't see any of them wanting to remove a fellow elected official from office at this stage.

And even if they don't take that step, however, there is across the board bipartisan dissatisfaction right now on the Board of Supervisors with Sheriff Nanos.

And up to this point around whether or not he was responding under oath, he also hasn't shown face at a supervisor meeting for a long time.

They have had a discussion of him on their agenda, I don't know how many times in the last two years at this point, and he hasn't showed up in quite as, in just about as long.

Yeah, Matt Heinz mentioned that at, on Tuesday's Board of Supervisors meeting, there was a proclamation to celebrate corrections officers from the Sheriff's Department.

And there were a couple dozen deputies there, corrections officers.

And, you know, Nanos wasn't there to support them.

All right.

Well, let's move on to the Tucson City Council and free rides on city public transportation, fare-free rides under the spotlight again.

Tim, whenever the city faces budget challenges, the free bus rides comes into play.

What's different this time, if anything?

Well, I guess this is the first time they've had a significant deficit that they were trying to overcome while they were also providing fare-free transit.

And so this naturally comes up as a way to cut costs.

The city believes they could make around $8.5 million if they reinstated the previous fare structure.

But, and so that could theoretic really help address a deficit, but the city manager has come in with a budget that would be balanced and include fare-free transit continuing.

This week, the council had a proposal that would have opened up discussion, try to get community feedback on fare-free transit.

And that was voted down four to three by a board majority that really has continued to be, you know, very supportive of fare- free transit.

John, the status quo likely to continue?

How much patience will people who oppose free bus fares have?

Well, I don't know what they can really do about it because this has been on the agenda as well numerous times over the years.

And every time that it comes up, there seems to be some serious discussion about re-implementing fares and it gets pushed back.

Right now it's pushed back, I think, at least until next year and maybe even until 2028.

The thing is, there is another sort of way to look at this, is while there would be some obvious revenue gain if they were able to implement fares again, there's also an upfront cost.

They need to put in the infrastructure to collect those fares.

And there's also another sort of more complicated long-term vision around actually maintaining free fares, generates more revenue from merchants across the city.

And there have been studies in other cities that have gone, free fares that have shown that actually a tax increase is pretty significant.

Well, how about this?

There are some states and some cities that have changed their free fare policy.

I think in Washington state, there are some places where it says that passengers under the age of 18 can ride free.

Have any of these options been discussed?

Is that a possibility?

Yeah, they've talked about sliding scales.

They've talked about maintaining some portions of the transit system free or lower costs and others.

There's a lot of different ways to sort of crack this subject.

But for now, they've just pushed, kicked the can down the road a little bit and everything's gonna remain free for the time being.

All right, I'll switch over to politics.

And Arizona Senator, US Senator Ruben Gallego have found himself in the news after a statement he made about ex-colleague Eric Swalwell.

Swalwell pushed to resign Congress over sexual assault allegations.

Tim, how deep is the situation Gallego finds himself in?

Well, so far, as far as it pertains to Eric Swalwell, it's more of a campaign of innuendo regarding Gallego than it is that there has been any specific allegation against him related to the allegations against Swalwell.

Nobody, there have been rumors that someone was going to come out and make an accusation against Gallego himself, but that hasn't come to be.

There have been lots of people trying to spread even photoshopped photos showing Ruben Gallego in compromised positions.

But again, there's nothing solid there.

This week, my analysis of it this week was that he kind of boxed him in by portraying himself as the kind of male whisperer, the person who could meet macho manly men where they are, that is voters.

And that's a nice thing, but it also has a flip side, a dark side, and that's maybe the side that Eric Swalwell is on, and now it reflects badly on Ruben Gallego.

Angela, with all of this going on, is this a threat to Gallego's political future?

He was once mentioned as a presidential hopeful.

Yeah, just a few weeks ago, he sort of changed his perspective or posstion on whether or not he will consider running for president and said he wanted to look into the possibility.

I think it's really hard to say.

I think this is a pretty severe situation he's found himself in, but it's important to remember that, I often forget that we're still so far away from the presidential election.

Sometimes it doesn't seem that way.

I think this would be a very different situation if the Democratic primaries were coming up in a few weeks.

It's so early.

I guess we'll see if he even announces a campaign or can regain momentum.

Now looking at Arizona's other US Senator, Mark Kelly, he's building a reputation in terms of fundraising.

He made $13 million according to AZPM's reporting and Cronkite News just in the first three months of 2026.

John, is a Kelly Presidential candidacy looming?

You never know.

I think both of our senators are potentially being seen as either VP picks or maybe front runners.

Anytime Politico writes an article about you and how much money you've raised when you're not even in an election year, that's probably a good sign.

I think that's, $13 million sounds like a lot in some ways it is, but right now the political situation we are in where there's weather veining attention that all of a sudden sucks in all this money is actually sort of not that much in the long run.

Kamala Harris was spending $100 million a week at the height of her campaign leading up to 2024.

So this is a far cry from that.

But I think sort of big picture politically when Hegseth and Trump went after Kelly, I think they're really giving him these contributions on a lot of silver platter.

All right, Tim.

And this is sort of where this all got generated.

And just for that first three months of the year when Mark Kelly was in the news because of the confrontations with Hegseth, is it a lasting thing?

Well, I mean, everything builds on itself.

So he kind of built his own name recognition and such by appearing in that video where these six members of Congress said that members of the military do not have to obey illegal orders.

That was about five months ago, I think.

Seditious six.

Yeah, so that's when Hegseth and Trump went after Kelly.

And as this reporting has shown, that's also when Kelly's fundrai skyrocketed.

So, I mean, theoretically someone like Kelly could go from being a front runner for vice president to a real challenger for president.

I mean, he's got the, certainly got the resume for it being a former combat pilot and astronaut.

Now, John, you had a story in Lookout, a case about a federal judge that ordered the release of a transgender migrant and migrant rights activist and organizer from Venezuela.

That's right.

The judge said that, you know, this case is null and void.

She was detained by ICE since March.

What exactly happened?

Tell me some details.

So Karla Saenz, she is a asylum seeker from Venezuela, a transgender woman.

She crossed the border into Texas in 2024 and applied for asylum immediately.

She has since become an advocate for other people caught up in the detention system.

And she was sort of the front line of fighting for another woman who is in Eloy detention center, Yari, who has lost 70 pounds, is really suffering from a host of medical conditions.

And a group that supports Karla and Yari saw Karla's detention as actually retaliation for her advocacy.

Again, a transgender woman, she was put allegedly into the hole or solitary confinement, for the first five days, and then transferred to the men's unit for about six weeks.

She suffered intensely there and she was just released this week.

What's the status of her asylum case now?

It is ongoing.

So the merits hearing is gonna be rescheduled for some time in the next couple months, probably.

All right, thank you very much.

That's it for our guests here on The Press Room.

Thanks a lot for joining us.

John Washington from Lookout, Angela Gervasi from AZPM News, and Tim Steller with the Arizona Daily Star.

Really appreciate you spending your time with us today.

Coming up, we'll meet a standout performer for the University of Arizona in space science research.

We're back in The Press Room right after this.

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Welcome back to The Press Room.

Erika Hamden is a professor of astrophysics at the University of Arizona.

She's also one of the latest recipients of the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship.

It's an award given to those who have distinguished themselves and field their field of endeavor, ranging from the creative arts to academia.

Erika, welcome to The Press Room.

Thank you for having me.

And congratulations on the Guggenheim.

Thank you.

How surprised were you to get that?

Pretty surprised.

I put in applications for a lot of things like proposals to NASA, to the NSF, and then occasionally these fellowships or things to private foundations, and I always put them in just being like, whatever happens after this, I can't control, I have no expectations.

And so when I get one, I'm always like, oh my God, it worked.

So I was pretty surprised.

Guggenheims have been given since 1925, about 101 years.

Yes, we are the 101st cohort of fellows, which is a really long and distinguished history.

Some of the past fellows are incredible people in arts and sciences.

Zora Neale Hurston won a long time ago, and James Baldwin, and lots of really creative people that I admire, so it's pretty thrilling to be one of them.

All right, great.

Now, let's talk about space science and Artemis II.

It completed its moon mission, the astronauts, of course, back home safely now, and NASA learned a lot about its spacecraft and about its engineering system.

Yes.

What did we learn about the moon?

Actually, we learned a lot about the moon, so one of the things that I didn't even fully appreciate until the mission was how good the human eye is at picking out certain things.

So the human eyes are better at picking out certain contrasting colors like browns and blues, and so the astronauts were able to identify these regions of the surface of the moon that look colored to the human eye, and maybe depending on the type of filters you have on a robotic camera, you're not gonna get that same level of detail.

It's harder to tell those contrasts.

And then they also were noticing, I forget the technical term for it, but basically little bright impacts of things hitting the moon, that the astronauts were able to see and notice, like again, the human eye can pick out these changes and movement, like where all of a sudden there's like a bright dot and then it goes away, that's evidence of things hitting the moon and that they were seeing them at a much higher rate than our robotic telescopes can detect them, again, because the human eye and the brain processing is good at movement and changes in color.

And so those are just two things.

They also did a ton of, they were taking a lot of images with cameras in the capsule and they were looking at parts of the moon that, because of their altitude above the surface of the moon, no human had seen with their eyes, so they're seeing certain craters and features that are really big and they're the only people who have looked at it.

So I think robotic instruments are really important and can get you places that you can't send people, but if you can send people, people are so good at finding interesting things.

That was one of the points that NASA was making during the mission that we're not just sending spacecraft there, but people, humans, and they weren't interested necessarily in their work, that was important too, of course, but also about their impressions how they felt and what they saw.

What kind of impact did that make?

So I think, I mean, I was so impressed with the reactions that people are still having to, the wake up songs that NASA sent for the astronauts and the iPhone pictures that the astronauts took or the video one of the astronauts took of the Earth setting behind the moon.

And I think that the, a lot of times when people are doing something very technical, like if you're a scientist or the past astronauts going to Apollo, you think of them as these just really, almost robotic people and I think that this was also helpful to show like, oh, these are real people and they have kids and they have families and they're interested in things and they make, like they're all, we're all just humans, we're all doing, just trying to make it through and so I feel like that was also a really nice aspect of it that there's a, like bringing some humanity to the process.

And NASA made another point of emphasis of inclusion, including everybody in this.

This was the first NASA mission in the major mission in the era of social media.

Yes.

And if you didn't know the astronauts' names before they launched, you certainly knew them by the time they landed.

With social media, how much of a difference did that make in Artemis II?

I mean, I think it's, I think it makes a huge difference in the impact that it has.

Like it was so funny to see random people posting on the internet, like, oh, I woke up and checked on what my best friends, the astronauts were doing.

Like people who didn't necessarily care about space the week before were so invested in it and were following along.

And I especially want to contras that with like, you know, the Apollo program where all of the activity that NASA was doing was mediated through kind of the network television and the structure that that imposed.

Whereas now NASA can have a live feed on YouTube.

They post videos on their Instagram and all their other social media accounts and it makes it much more immediate that people can feel like, oh, they're following along.

They can like see where the spacecraft is.

They're just like much more of a participant and they don't, it doesn't require some news person deciding like, oh, this is interesting.

We're going to show it.

It's up to the person engaging with the social media.

And so I think that actually reaches a much larger audience and makes people feel way more connected to it.

There's a little bit of like the parasocial relationship that forms in social media where you have like people are following along with someone and feel like they build a relationship with them.

And I think that for the purposes of like promoting science and investment in that kind of area, I think it's really good for people to connect with the astronauts.

And also with the people in mission control was another thing that like the mission control people became like minor celebrities too.

And like the science desk and how excited they were.

It was so like wonderful and moving actually to even see the people in mission control.

And before the mission began, and also during the early stages, there was some stories in the mainstream media and also in social media that this was similar to an Apollo era mission, Apollo 8.

And some of the been there, done that kind of thing.

By the end, it was a brand new thing.

Yes, yeah, people got on board.

And I mean, it's similar in that we are going to the moon and they didn't land.

Apollo 8 actually orbited the moon and they were much closer to the surface of the moon than what the Artemis II trajectory was.

But otherwise it's totally different.

It's like different rockets, different capsules, different technology, mostly better, I would say.

But even if you wanted to right now, you can't build a Saturn V rocket and you can't build the Apollo era capsules because the people that did it, the supply lines, all the drawings, like they're all long gone.

And so even if you did it once, you're building entirely new systems, you still have to do all the same tests.

And so to me, I'm just like thrilled that we're going back at all because I've spent my whole life admiring Apollo and now I'm like, oh, it's like happening right now.

I saw it mentioned once that Artemis II aimed for two things, either aimed for the mind or for the heart.

Which of those two do you think carried the most weight?

Oh, I mean, I think that the heart won by a lot.

I feel like people loved seeing, like just how enthusiastic everyone involved was.

Like how much the astronauts cared, how much all the people in mission control cared.

Every single person at NASA cares so deeply about it and wants everything to succeed.

And I think that that really came through and the joy that people felt in watching it I think is really interesting and like almost, it's funny, like as a millennial, I feel like, oh, I've lived through all these terrible times in history, but like, oh, I'm living through something which is just 100% awesome.

And I feel like that positive aspect of it was really valuable and that you can see people doing their jobs extremely well that demonstrates how much they care and how much of a good job they wanna do.

And I think that's just like so fantastic to experience.

Last thing, Artemis 3, it's gonna be a mission carried out within Earth orbit, but it'll be several months away.

Will there be still the same amount of excitement?

So I think Artemis 3 is not gonna have humans on it.

I'm not actually sure, but I think that it won't be the same like because they're not going to the moon.

I think the next mission where they send people to the moon either to orbit or to land, like is gonna be similarly thrilling.

I think people will be following Artemis 3 because of how much they engage with Artemis 2.

And I think we care a lot about how the lander that they're gonna test, some of the additional tests that they're gonna do are really important for the next thing.

But I think the views of people so far and the way that you could immediately get images, you could see where the dot of the spaceship is as it's moving around.

And I think, for me, I would check in on the YouTube and see the moon getting bigger in the window.

And that sense of scale is so important, I think, for why people connected with it.

All right.

Erika Hamden, thank you for joining us.

Really appreciate your time.

Thank you.

And that wraps up this edition of The Press Room.

I'm Tony Perkins.

For all the staff and crew at The Press Room, thanks for being with us.

And we'll see you next week.

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