The following is an AZPM original production.

Welcome to this latest edition of the Press Room from the radio studios of AZPM.

I'm Steve Goldstein.

Coming up just in time for our rising desert temperatures, the heat was also turned up this week in the race to succeed the late Congressman Raul Grijalva.

We'll talk about the two debates that AZPM hosted on Monday and Tuesday.

Also, the Trump administration sent hundreds of Marines to Los Angeles to quell immigration related protests.

How are people reacting in Tucson?

A panel of Southern Arizona journalists joins me next on the Press Room.

♪ UPBEAT MUSIC ♪ And this is the Press Room and the Southern Arizona journalists I mentioned are Jim Nintzel, the Tucson Sentinel, Yana Kunichoff, of AZ Luminaria, John Washington of AZ Luminaria, and Paola Rodriguez of AZPM News.

Thank you all for being here.

Jim, let's start off with the Democrats debate this week in CD7.

Really, just wanna ask you about the top two contenders.

I know people hate the horse race, but let's talk about Daniel Hernandez and Adelita Grijalva.

Anything stand out about those two in particular and how they may have gone at each other?

You know, they definitely, I don't think Adelita spent much time going after Daniel.

And I think that's because she's probably, by conventional wisdom, the front runner in this race.

And Daniel really needs to get a game change, as it were, to turn things around.

And I don't think he was able to really accomplish that in the debate there, although he did take a few shots about campaign finance.

And he differentiated himself by saying that he supports some mining operations that Democrats here have traditionally really not supported the Rosemont Mine and the Santa Catalinas in particular.

So, yeah, I don't think there was enough there to change the momentum of the race if that's what any of the candidates were looking for.

And in that particular debate, the supply of the Republican debate as well, we started off discussing immigration, generally, ICE generally, and more specifically, what's going on in Los Angeles.

Here's what Adelita Grijalva had to say about that.

When you're calling the National Guard in, when they haven't been asked by the governor or the mayor, what you're doing is you're actually sending them in against protestors that are there expressing their freedom of speech and their rights.

So, John, I think what I'm looking for in this case with this question is, was there any daylight among the candidates as it related to how President Trump is dealing with immigration, how it's affecting Tucson and Southern Arizona, whether people are undocumented or not?

Yeah, there was some daylight, I would say, particularly Malvido and Deja Fox.

They pushed Grijalva a little bit more.

Deja had a line about ICE being younger than she is.

ICE was established in 2003, and she said that she expects to see a time after ICE is gone.

Then Malvido as well, he called out Grijalva for saying something like they need more funding for border enforcement.

After the debate, Grijalva specified to a press poll that she was talking about people who work at ports of entry, not border patrol agents.

And then Patrick Harris, I think, sort of drew a bit of a middle line and was a little bit softer on-- A middle line, good phrasing on that, considering what he did at one point in the debate.

Paola, what's it out to you about specifically the immigration of ICE in this debate?

Everyone really took a strong stance on what you would particularly see as a democratic stance of calling these ICE raids wrong for what's going on in the country and saying that there's too much force that's going on.

And so it wasn't anything too surprising.

That stood out to me, particularly about what was said.

I expected some of the answers that they shared.

Yeah, Yana, on that general issue.

I just say that we're having the debate now in a time that feels really different around immigration, even from when we started, the race started a few months ago.

It just feels like raids are obviously going up.

There's a lot more community anger around that, so it makes sense to me that this issue is front and center.

One thing that I appreciated at least, and this shouldn't be a shock, is how something with Grijalva stood out to me, trying to localize the fact that, because obviously we brought it up because in the news is Los Angeles, but this is obviously, and not just protest into something, but how people are really reacting and fearful of what's going on here.

We'll get into ICE more specifically, Yana, but as far as the discussion of that, did you think they got into that enough and made it more about this district as opposed to general immigration policy?

You know, Grijalva did mention that she wanted to hold hearings, and she specifically said that she wanted to hold hearings on Indigenous land, bipartisan hearings.

So I think there were some nods to localizing the discussion, but how much does Southern Arizona really differ from places across the country that we're seeing such raids?

I don't know that it's all that different.

Yeah, let's jump to another issue that was major, and this applies to a different congressional district.

A congressman who's already in office that's Juan Ciscomani, the discussion of Medicaid cuts, which with the so-called big beautiful bill, and now we'll see what the Senate does with this.

I guess I was a little bit surprised from the moderator's podium, and maybe I blacked out, but I was surprised there wasn't, the words weren't stronger in terms of specifically protecting Medicaid.

We're talking about how many people in the district are covered.

I guess I expect to see more pugilism, not necessarily toward each other, but toward the policies.

Certainly nobody up there was supporting the idea of these cuts, and we're seeing them come into focus a little more, but the general approach is to create a lot of paperwork hassles for people in the hopes that they will not complete their paperwork and fall off the program, which CBO, the Congressional Budget Office does anticipate happening, and it's certainly what we've seen in Arkansas when a similar policy was put into place.

So I think there's only so much, it's a complex subject, and I think there's only so much you can talk about in that very small space of time, and they will be in the minority.

So the question is how that will change as this bill moves through the Senate and then back to the House.

I wonder if this was a slightly missed opportunity on behalf of the Democrats to push back harder, actually.

What I found interesting is that each of the Republican candidates as well, sort of, were a little bit wary of coming out and saying that they support this bill, which would, at least this portion of this bill, which would knock off a couple hundred thousand people off of Medicaid in Arizona.

There's people who deserve it or who qualify should be able to keep it.

That, according to estimates, that's not actually what will happen, but I think they were nervous about what will come of this.

Which is basically the Republican Party line at this point.

We're eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse, but I think there's a lot of, when you put that much red tape into something, you're probably going to increase the waste, at least from the bureaucratic side.

Yana?

So this last week, there were 11 food programs cut, some of them specifically for seniors in Tucson, and largely because of federal cuts.

And so I think I'm just really thinking, in a few months, a lot of these issues are gonna seem a lot more dire.

And so even if there aren't Medicaid cuts, I think the economic reality for folks is just gonna look really, I just think, a lot more dire.

And I think that will change the intensity of some of these conversations.

One of the candidates who did not get as much attention was Jose Malvido Jr., but we wanna go to what he had to say about Medicare for All.

60% of the people in the country have some, one of three chronic diseases, type two diabetes, hypertension, high blood pressure.

And these are all preventable diseases.

So I think with this comprehensive health, for everybody, Medicare for All, we can really use these players to help do this work.

And I think one challenge to that is that These clinics as well as hospitals Have differnent communication models.

Paola, what about Malvido more generally and some of the things that he talked about?

I respected the fact that he came out very passionately.

And even at one point said he didn't trust the other people on the stage.

Anything stand out to him as a guy who's considered a long shot, but I thought said some pretty interesting things.

You know, him as a candidate, from what I've taken, is that he's really come out really standing on tribal issues.

It's almost every time we're talking about mining or immigration, he's talking about how it's affecting the O'odham's lands, right?

Or how something might affect the Pasqua Yaqui tribe.

And so specifically on the topic of Medicaid and Medicare and cuts that can happen, and it's something that we talked about on the show, right?

Like if there are these cuts that happen, it's gonna affect everyone, right?

It's gonna affect rural health care.

And these areas like Sells, Nogales, Douglas, they're more rural areas, right?

And access to health care can be affected.

And so I saw him as a candidate bringing those sorts of things up, and yeah, those were something that stood out.

Yeah, John, what about that?

Yeah, I mean, he also has personal stake, which is described on the campaign trail, that his family lost their home to a mining company when he was a boy.

And so when Hernandez at the same time says that there isn't a choice that we need to make between environmental protection and clean, and good union jobs, Malvido and others are pushing back on that pretty hard.

Yeah, so one other, I wanna make sure we hear from Deja Fox as well.

She made a point, as she often does, about generational shifts, the fact that Democrats have lost some folks in the House because of age and illness, and unfortunately, the case of former Congressman Raul Grijalva, death, and here's what she had to say.

I need you to do the math, three vacancies, because we failed to have a hard conversation in our party about age, failed to bring in a new generation of leaders, and now it is working class families like mine.

They're gonna have to live with the consequences of cuts to their healthcare, food taken off their table.

And so yes, let's have the hard conversation.

So I'm gonna go to the younger panelists, not to put a lot of pressure on, but Yana, let me start with you.

Does it make sense for Deja Foxx to make that part of her push, the idea that we need younger leadership, or do we need new leadership in the Democratic Party?

I mean, I think a big part of the conversation in the last election was Joe Biden's age.

I think that you have folks like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.

I mean, I think we, obviously the Democratic Party could use more youth, I don't know if you want to say they have a youth problem, but I think that's true, and I also think you see young people being more disaffected, voting less.

So I don't know the answer to that.

I think seeing her on social media has been really interesting to just see a different space for this debate is going on where more young people are.

Yeah, Paola, did she make a mark in this debate, do you think?

You know, I left that debate listening to it, wondering what were some of the top, or some of the action points that she would leave if she had that seat, right?

I kept hearing more and more about her story, and it's important, right?

You're hearing about who this person is and why they should be in that seat, but I'm just thinking from voters, something that I've heard a lot from people is that they felt like it was really scripted, and that they don't really quite know what she would do if she was in that role.

And so I think in the point of age, it's a Democratic Party issue, right?

But also, younger voters don't tend to come out on voting, period.

Now you're adding that it's a special election.

It's gonna be really hard to get those voters to come out.

Yeah, John and Jim?

Yeah, I think one thing that did stand out to me about Foxx's performance was after the debate, again, in the press gaggle, she seemed like she was on her toes, really eager to answer questions.

She was also the only one in the debate who, there's a bit of a pile on against Grijalva, but she was the one who actually challenged them and asked for a show of hands about who's gonna be accepting corporate PAC money.

Yeah, I think she came out swinging.

I thought that was an interesting moment because she asked that question, and four out of five of the candidates raised their hands, and then she's like, "Well, now we know who everyone' working for," but Daniel Hernandez was the only one off to the side.

It was a good sign that they were actually listening too, which was nice.

They were just in their own little modes.

It was.

I think you're right when you talk about the storytelling because I think that's one of the points she made.

We need more storytellers in the Democratic Party, and I think that's definitely something that she's trying to say, "Hey, by telling stories, "you're gonna bring more people out to vote," but I think also to your point, it's probably not a lot of crossover between her TikTok followers and the people who are voting in a Democratic primary in CD7.

One interesting point that brings together a couple of these topics is when she was really challenging other people to release their finances, she's actually passed the FEC deadline.

She hasn't filed, and we know that she's also spent at least $70,000 on meta, so she's really investing heavily in social media, and maybe it's a beginner's mistake at this point, but she hasn't yet done that filing.

Last thing on this totally unfair question, you can pass, you can abstain.

Yana, did anyone actually win this debate?

Ooh, I don't know if I felt like anyone won.

I think that there was an unexpected moment that people are talking about, which was the hand counting, but I don't think that counts as winning.

So anyone who watched the debate and saw that I was a moderator, I know for a fact it was not directed at me.

We know that for sure.

So Jim, who won the debate?

Well, if indeed no one won the debate, to Adelita Grijalva won the debate because she's the one that they need to take down.

Paola, what do you think?

Retweet to what Jim said.

Wow, okay.

I'd say the same, she didn't lose, and that's a win for her.

And that's spent a few minutes on the CD7 debate for the Republicans.

There were three candidates debating, two of them very much, I mean all three of them are fans of President Trump, no doubt, two seemed very much in the so-called MAGA camp, I guess I would say.

But one note stood out to me.

Jimmy Rodriguez, who did not participate in a debate that had taken place in Phoenix a couple weeks before, talked about a temporary work program, which actually kind of sounded pragmatic.

Let's see what he had to say about that.

Do a temporary work visa for the people that are here that are working legally, paying taxes, because 25% of our construction workers are undocumented.

48% are in the farm industry.

And if we pulled all of those people out, it would devastate Arizona.

John, let me ask you about that, because it sounded economically practical.

It did not necessarily sound humane, which I think a lot of Democrats would have been interested in, but it did sound more like, hey, let's just not willy-nilly deport people, because this actually might really hurt Arizona's economy.

Whether that was kind or just pragmatic, it sort of surprised me, how about you?

Well, I talked to him before, and he has been sort of playing a little bit more to the center than the other two candidates, especially in terms of immigration.

He has spent a lot of time in Yuma, he says he knows a grower out there.

And mass deportations, deporting everyone who doesn't have authority to be in the United States right now would affect the economy.

So he's just not wrong.

I mean, economists are very clear on this point, and I think he's trying to come at it from a practical position.

So, Paola, not to be naive about it, but yes, that makes sense, but in a Republican debate, when you consider who's gonna be voting in the primary, there may be a lot of Republican voters who are fans of President Trump, who are like, no, no, no, deportation first, and we'll figure it out.

Yeah, but also, I don't know, you're looking at this district, right, and it's primarily Democratic, right?

And of those Republicans that might be on the balance, I could see them saying, you know, we do need those workers.

So it's a toss up.

Yana, what do you think?

At the Trump rally last fall, I talked to a number of Latino Trump supporters, and economics was a really big part of their interest and support for the now president, and so I think a more pragmatic economic position, I can see that in a district that's, I think, like 60% Latino, that might win some people over.

Okay, Jim, what do you think?

I think the debate moments where somebody steps outside the herd or whatever, and maybe says something that could be used against them in a Republican primary or a Democratic primary, matter more if that can be amplified by the other campaigns, by television ads or mailers or whatever.

I don't think any of these candidates have enough money to send a mailer out to everyone in the district.

So, and we'll see, January 3rd is, July 3rd is the next filing deadline.

But yeah, I think it's not, I don't think there's, again, no game changers in there, and I just, I don't know, have any idea who's coming out ahead in this race.

So just a couple more questions on this.

So Daniel Butierez ran against Raul Grijalva last time in his last race.

Butierez had the Republican nomination.

Did he seem like he had learned anything from being the nominee last time?

He really came out swinging, which I thought was interesting and accused Jorge Rivas of being basically a coward for fleeing Central America and coming to the US as a teenager instead of staying and fighting in the El Salvadoran military.

Rivas came back with saying, "Well, you've been in jail for 10 years "and you've been addicted to drugs," and really laid into him on that front.

And I think that was one thing where Jimmy Rodriguez kind of stayed outside the fray.

Yeah, we're gonna hear one more clip and it's related to Jorge Rivas.

Why don't you give the death penalty to drug traffickers?

Once people know that if you go to that country with drugs, you're gonna face the death penalty.

People do not take those drugs to those countries.

So I think President Trump, I believe he's interested in something similar.

So John, that seems a little out of the norm to consider that.

Was that a head-shaking moment, or was that something that could appeal to Republican voters?

We'll see.

I mean, we keep on pushing the boundaries.

He cited China.

To me, it sounds more like a policy out of Duterte's Philippines.

But that was one of two, I think, pretty radical proposals.

The other one was Butierez, who suggested that all homeless people should be rounded up and given a choice between going to jail or going to a work camp, and that work camp would be in former prisons.

But he cited personal experience, right?

He did.

He said he thinks this would have helped him, I suppose.

Is that what he was saying?

You know, I'm not exactly sure.

But I think that, does it help people to be further incarcerated or mock-incarcerated in former prisons and forced to work?

I don't know if that's really a road to stability, to safe housing, to recovery.

I mean, he himself, when I spoke with him, said that it was when he got out of jail that he got hooked on crack cocaine and methamphetamines because he had no hope getting out of jail.

So I don't know that his solution is really practical.

Yana, any thoughts on that?

I feel like there's some candidates who are taking a leaf out of the Donald Trump book and some who are not, and saying just like the most, the most shocking, aggressive thing that they can.

And I just don't, I wonder if in this moment when we're several months into the intensity of the Trump presidency, that's as effective now as it would have been before.

Paola, last note on this.

Any thoughts on Butierez or Rivas?

I'll be very interested to see when voters have the chance to come out.

I think it'll be very telling on the district stance on how influential aligning yourself with MAGA stance will play out in this election.

Okay, and now let's move into a little bit deeper conversation.

Got a few minutes left in the program.

Yana, let me start with you with what's going on in Los Angeles.

There are some who are, I think most people are labeling it protests.

There are some who are more in the President Trump camp are calling them riots.

And so President Trump decided to send National Guard troops which the Governor of California didn't appreciate, but also hundreds of Marines as well.

Just give us a little bit of background that quickly, but I wanna focus more on what's going on in Tucson and the reaction here.

But what are you seeing with Los Angeles?

Yeah, so whether you call it protests, uprising, riots, it's a response, and it's a response to a clear escalation.

People who have been picked up on the streets, at Home Depots, near schools.

We have video that was released earlier today about people being chased by ICE across fields not too far outside of Los Angeles.

And so the people I've spoken to in LA are saying that this is how we are defending our communities.

And I think there is room for discussing exactly what it is, but we are seeing the escalation in response, and then now we're seeing a counter response by the troops coming in.

Yeah, Yana, what are we seeing in Tucson?

We've seen several protests.

There was one that was downtown.

Yesterday there was one, I think outside of ICE headquarters where there were some windows broken.

I was at that protest, and I think a lot of the consistent language of immigrants are welcome here is something that we've seen throughout all of the protests.

So I think the messaging is consistent, even though as John said, I think the tactics that people use are what you frame those as varies, depending on what individual you're looking at.

So 2,200 people in the country were detained on Tuesday by ICE.

Does this sound like it's about reaching quotas to some extent?

Without knowing for sure, does it sound like that?

I mean, there was a directive in trying to reach around 3,000 a week.

Whether it's trying to reach a quota, can't say anything on that, but the Trump administration is really trying to make its impact in being the administration that has pushed for the greatest mass deportation that's ever happened.

Yeah, I mean, I think what it made me think about was the fires in LA.

It's like a community that went through a lot recently.

Also particularly after disasters, a lot of the workers that come in are undocumented workers.

So I think it's a city that obviously has a huge history, like a big immigrant history and also a particular moment that brought folks together.

So I think to see people really upset about these actions and responding really intensely, to me that made sense.

It's like a response to see.

It's for me some months.

Yeah, I mean, as for the quotas, I mean, I don't know if it's an official directive, but Stephen Miller has been clear that he wants 3,000 people a day to be picked up.

And if you do the math on that, that's a little bit over a million people a year, which is maybe around or a little bit under 10% of the entire population of people who are undocumented.

And so that's gonna obviously affect all of them and their families, but drive terror into all the rest of the people.

Because what we are seeing is not just the people who are being specifically targeted by ICE, but so-called collateral arrests.

People who happen to be in the area, people who are hanging around immigrant communities and things like that who are just being swept up as well.

And I think this is why the communities in Tucson and LA are so incensed and are pushing back.

Jim, one of the things, actually, going back to the Republican debate for a second, that we could have perhaps dug in a little bit more on is whether there should be safe havens from things like this and whether raids willy-nilly should be accepted, permitted, whatever it may be.

What are your general thoughts on what you're seeing in here?

Jimmy Rodriguez addressed that after the debate and talked about how we actually asked him, hey, well, should ICE be going out and arresting these construction workers and field workers and the business owners, for that matter, and he did not seem to think that was a smart strategy.

But the other two, I think, are very much about, hey, if anyone's coming to this country in the last four years, they need to go.

And I think it's been pretty clear that the administration so far, especially going to immigration courts and places like that, is going after some low-hanging fruit on the immigration front.

Yeah, John, about a minute left on this particular topic.

What are your thoughts?

Well, I think something to keep in mind is the presence of troops, both National Guard and soon-to-be Marines.

I mean, this is something that we are only seeing so far in LA, but we see that the Trump administration has been willing to kind of test case to push the boundaries on a number of different policies.

And will we start seeing it in other cities?

I mean, Trump himself has been really clear that he has wanted to use the Army for a long time and a lot of these issues.

Hobbs, in some regard, beat him to it.

She sent National Guard to the border a year ago or a couple of years ago at this point.

I think one interesting news piece here is that a Adjutant General of Arizona was just newly named, and that is the person who's going to be in charge of the National Guard troops in Arizona.

So we'll see what happens here.

Well, and the last thing related to LA is that earlier on Thursday, California Senator Alex Padilla was taken away after he was trying to question Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Nome, about what's going on in Los Angeles.

So that's something to watch too.

We may see more chaos going around.

We've got like 30 seconds left.

Paola, a big thank for people who watch Public Radio, watch public television, listen to Public Radio.

The rescission vote was taken.

Can you tell us what happened there?

Yeah, the rescission vote was taken to pull CPB funding.

That's the Corporation for Public Broadcasting from local public media stations passed on a party line vote for Arizona.

So representatives like Juan Ciscomani and Eli Crane voted to rescind this funding.

So that can affect stations, local public media stations all across the state.

Right, can affect big markets, small markets, rural markets.

Yeah, and you're looking at even smaller markets like the Hopi radio station where you're talking upwards of 30% of their funding can come from state or federal funding.

Obviously keep a close eye on that.

Paola Rodriguez of AZPM News.

Thank you, John Washington, AZ Luminaria, Yana Kunichoff, AZ Luminaria, and Jim Nintzel of the Tucson Sentinel.

Guys, thank you all for being here.

And thank you all for joining us for this edition of the Press Room.

We'll be back with another one next week.

I'm Steve Goldstein.