The following is an AZPM original production.

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

I'm your host, Steve Goldstein.

Coming up in the program, a panel of journalists joins me to talk about the U of A faculty voting by a wide margin to have leaders push back against the Trump administration.

We'll also hear about a new member joining the Tucson City Council.

With me to talk about those and other topics are Jim Nintzel of the Tucson Sentinel, Prerana Sannappanavar of the Arizona Daily Star, Dan Shearer of the Green Valley News and Sun and Paola Rodriguez of AZPM News Welcome to all of you.

Thanks for being here.

So Jim, we've talked in the past about Juan Ciscomani, Medicaid cuts.

He had voted to advance some $880 billion in cuts speculatively, but now he and others Republicans, so-called moderates in the Congress, have decided to sign a letter saying that, "No, no, we don't necessarily approve of Medicaid cuts."

Can you just unwrap all this for us in less than 20 minutes?

Yeah, I'll do my best, but I may take up a lot of time here.

Actually he's been on record of being concerned about these cuts for a couple of months now.

He joined the Hispanic caucus in sending a letter some time back, and then he reiterated that more recently.

This has to do with the Obamacare expansion population, largely in Arizona.

Medicaid coverage has expanded to cover people within 138% of the federal poverty level in the Brewer administration.

What has happened is the Republicans in Congress feel like this is spending a lot, too much money on healthcare.

What we're seeing happen is Ciscomani is opposing this because the business community is very concerned about taking all these people off of healthcare because they feel it's going to crash the healthcare system in Arizona and lead to rural hospitals closing and layoffs and a fiscal ripple across the entire economy, essentially.

At this point, they were moving forward with that plan.

They've scrapped it.

They're coming up with a different plan.

We're going to see how they mark it up next week.

It's not a fight that's over by any means of the imagination, but we will see what happens next week.

Paola, what do you make of this?

It seems like he's trying to thread the needle, maybe do the right thing by the Medicaid population, but also in some ways not anger Donald Trump?

Yeah, it's a tough line to balance.

Ciscomani, he is in a swing district and he's trying his best to make sure that he can keep his constituents happy, but also not make any enemies out of people within his own party.

I think it is important to note that if Medicaid cuts happen and if hospitals start closing, it's going to start affecting much more than people of low income or in rural communities.

You're already seeing nationwide healthcare shortages, and so that's just going to worsen it for everyone.

It's a tough line he's balancing.

Dan, do you think Juan Ciscomani is going to hold the line on this or be able to, $880 billion sounded like a crazy number to start with.

That number is not going to happen, and I think everybody realizes it now, but they are putting some things forward that actually kind of make some sense.

Let's look at a couple of them paying more out-of-pocket costs if you receive Medicaid, working a little bit for your coverage.

If you're able to, that's not a bad thing.

The verification twice annually, maybe that's not such a bad thing either if it were to stop there, but I don't think it will.

But Jim, you said that some of the Republicans think that they are paying too much for healthcare, but they're going to say, "No, we're wasting too much on it because there's so much fraud and waste in the system."

But I don't think the public feels like that's what they're going after now.

I think the public feels like they're just going after a number and whoever gets hurt by it doesn't matter.

They just want to reach a certain number, and I think that's what's very disconcerting.

But Juan Ciscomani is right in the middle of it, and this could be costly for him if it doesn't go his way.

Any chance he gets primaried if he doesn't go along with President Trump on this?

Because it's hard to think of in that district that having someone further to the right is a good idea for Republicans, but we've seen some not great ideas in the past there.

Yeah, absolutely.

I don't know that that would happen.

I can't see that happening particularly at this point, but I do ... You have to remember he won last time with 50% of the vote, though that was more than he had gotten in the first time he was elected.

So he is well-liked there, but people are energized this time around, and we will see what happens.

We know traditionally in the midterms that the party in power tends to not do well, so I think he's nervous and he should be.

Jim, what's next for Juan Ciscomani on this?

This week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee is supposed to start the actual markup.

It was supposed to happen last week, and they pulled it because there was so much disagreement, and they realized that this cut to the federal matching funds was not going to sail through.

And now, as Dan said, they're looking at some other things, including a per capita cap on how much you could get.

In order to get these Trump tax cuts through, they've got to find major cuts.

Plus, there's a philosophical thing going on where people say, well, as Dan would say, able-bodied people are getting this healthcare.

But there are able-bodied people at 138% of the federal poverty level, which is pretty low.

And there aren't a lot of alternatives.

And if you don't cover people with insurance, then hospitals lose money and doctors and nurses lose jobs.

You can understand why the business community in Arizona is so concerned about this.

But Jim, as we talk about this issue, and they talk about fraud and waste, and everybody's on board with that, how much do you really think there is?

And I know that's an impossible question to answer.

I just don't think it's going to be nearly what they think.

And then they're going to be stuck with this $880 billion number and not deliver on it.

Oh, there's certainly not $880 billion in waste.

No.

I mean, go after the waste and fraud and abuse and find it, but you're not going to find a significant...

There's not enough there to come near what they're looking for.

And I think that Ciscomani should have early on started objecting, but he did vote to pass that budget resolution, which he said was just the first step in a very long process to really get to that number.

I think it's already snowballing and I know the Republicans have backed off a little bit, but in the end, I just don't know that he's going to come out looking very good on this.

Yeah.

And we'll see.

As you said, it's always been like, "Oh, we're moving the ball down the field and we'll see where things go from here."

But obviously it's hit a snag last week because they did pull it from the markup.

And, Paola, finally on this, it is interesting that a lot of Trump voters, obviously the Ciscomani district as well, a lot of folks are on Medicaid in these districts.

So how do you think that could affect things?

You mentioned how rural Arizonans and others could be really impacted by this.

I mean, these are families and constituents that are utilizing Medicaid and utilizing these services to help them.

I mean, it's probably going to be a deciding factor for their vote come the midterms, whether or not there will be cuts.

I could see that 100% influencing how they vote moving forward.

Yeah.

And, Prerana, a place where we've seen a lot of cuts already is at the university level.

Trump administration has pushed through some research cuts, but I want to ask you about what's going on at the U of A specifically.

Massive vote earlier this week that you reported on that saw U of A faculty members calling on President Garimella to essentially fight back against the Trump administration.

So the number 91% was there and this was about a thousand faculty members or so.

Can you give us some context on that?

How many faculty members would have been able to vote had they chosen to?

A lot more than a thousand?

Yes.

So the University of Arizona has about over 4,000 active faculty members.

And then on top of that, there's about 1,100 emeritus faculty members.

So like over 5,000.

So out of that, nearly 1,000 voted.

So 976 faculty members voted and 886 of those voted in favor to urge the president to fight back and to just to defend the university's core values.

So it's nearly 91%, but still it's a landslide margin if you look at the voting faculty members.

And to give you more context on this, the University of Arizona's Faculty Senate members, the faculty senate leaders, Leila Hudson, Katie Zeiders and Mona Hymel, they put together this faculty referendum, which basically a couple of the specific things that they asked for was one was that the president signed the Association of American Colleges and Universities letter, the April 22nd call for constructive engagement, which at this point 619 university presidents across the United States have signed.

And very interesting, the incoming provost, Patricia Prelock, who is currently the interim president of the University of Vermont, where President Garimella was previously, she has signed this letter.

So Leila Hudson, when I was talking to her, she was just like, okay, you know, that's going to be encouraging.

It's going to be hopeful, because she's going to come and I think she's starting May 19th if I'm not wrong.

So it's going to bring it a different perspective.

And maybe there's more hope there.

The other thing that the referen that the President and the administration, they kind of legally contest the unlawful demands that are coming from the Trump administration's executive orders, because they are orders, they're not law, yet.

So they called it unlawful demands.

And I think what faculty resound referendum vote is feeling that there shouldn't be as much pre-complia until something is in the constitution or until something is law.

So it's kind of like they just want the president to respond.

They want to engage in dialogue with the president.

And they just they just want to know that the president kind of is standing up for the, you know, the bedrock principles.

I'm sure I've asked you this before on the program, but is there any indication from anyone in the president's office that he will actually make a public statement?

He will actually talk to the faculty members as they would like to be talked to?

That's very difficult to say.

So publicly, there hasn't been much that he said.

So even even when, you know, I reached out to the president and the administration for comment about the faculty referendum story, what he wrote back saying was, you know, kind of detailing the amount of federal and state funding that the U of A depends on and receives.

So the U of A receives over four hundred and seventy million in federal research funding and then over three hundred and eighty million in state funding.

And then there's over 70 million that they receive in federal Pell Grants, which kind of supports twenty two percent of the student body.

So it's not a small amount by any means.

And also, I think we have to acknowledge that we are currently, you know, the there's a Republican controlled legislatur also pushing on DEI to to be shut down and calling DEI discrimination.

So so there's a lot of balls to kind of manage.

And the president is in a tough spot.

There's there's no denying that.

But I think what what I've heard from faculty and what I've heard from generally the university community is that they want dialogue, which not necessarily they're always getting directly from the president.

And just to kind of go into more detail, the faculty referendum isn't the first thing that that has urged the president to defend the values.

You know, before the faculty referendum, there was the Regents and Distinguished Professors letter which they sent directly to the president.

And this happened, I think April 18th or 19th, I could be wrong.

But it happened a while back.

And they were also asking for essentially the same thing.

So they're asking to sign the Association of Universities letter.

They're asking for, you know, defending the core values.

And again, even to that, when the president responded, he did not necessarily address the specific items that they were asking or the specific actions that they were asking him to take.

He just kind of responded with the federal funding, the state funding.

And I think even talking to the Regents, like not talking to them, but reading off of their letter, they weren't satisfied with that response and they just want more engagement and they want more dialogue.

So what it's looking like is that the president is making decisions and he has a game plan, but they're not necessarily always.

So they'd like to be privy to it and they're not.

Dan, what do you make of all this?

So why is the president in a tough spot if 75 to 80 percent of the faculty didn't even show up for the meeting?

What does that say to you?

And then let's look at that 619 number, which is accurate, as you said, as of yesterday.

That's barely a 10 percent of higher education institutions in the United States.

And so is this just, again, one of these like politicians love to do, issuing a strongly worded statement that really doesn't say anything or does this really matter?

You'd call it a landslide, but most of the people weren't there.

And I get it.

Voter turnout is very low, even for faculty members.

But millions and millions and millions of dollars are on the line.

Trump is threatening and intimidating and he knows how to do that well.

And people seem to not be reacting.

That to me would be the story.

Why weren't you there?

Yeah, that's an interesting point.

That's what comes to mind for you.

Well, I think this is part of a pattern coming from the Trump administration, whether it's universities or arts organizations or cities and counties like we're seeing here in Arizona.

There's a big threat to remove funding if people don't do as the president would like him then to do.

Yeah.

And, Paola, we're obviousl on the U of A campus right now and we've all run into students.

You would obviously run the students more often than I would.

But I mean, I hate to say what's the vibe, but it does feel that way to some extent that people are nervous for their international students or others.

I mean, it's something the Trump administration's policies does affect like specifically international students.

A lot of the times students of Color and of course are concerned.

I think, you know, and specifically looking at that faculty referendum that was being talked about, I think, you know, kind of going off of a point that Dan was making, it is I wouldn't necessarily say that it puts the president in a tough spot because if you look at it nationwide, every single university president is under pressure.

He's not unique to it.

And then also we need to take a look at what's happening up at ASU.

They're being investigated by the Department of Education.

U.A.

doesn't really want to be in a position where they want to be investigated or lose federal dollars at that.

So yeah, one of the bigger university point when it gets all of you in a couple of seconds here.

But let's switch to the projected budget at this point.

You've got a few notes here and there for the 2026 budget.

And I'm struck by the fact that, you know, has U of A made up for this massive, massive deficit that was there with with Bobby Robbins or no?

How are they going about this for next year?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So now the fiscal fiscal year 2026 budget is a balanced budget.

So initially when the president came in, there were a lot of like promises that were made when it came to finances of the U of A, because obviously the U of A was in a tough spot because of the financial crisis.

So most of those promises have been delivered upon.

So yesterday the U of A announce its preliminary budget and it shows that it's a balanced budget.

The deficit has been done away with.

The president also promised that there were going to be faculty races and, you know, faculty wide races and staff wide races.

And that have those have also been incorporated.

And the president also kind of announced, I think, in February that the minimum wage of the U of A will be increased from fifteen dollars to sixteen fifty.

So all of these things have been incorporated into the budget.

And the one thing that kind of stood out for me was that the administrative units, at least that's what they've said so far, that the administrative units will be taking a bigger cut than the college units and the student support units.

So administrative units are taking a seven percent cut and colleges are taking about a two percent cut and student support units a two point eight percent cut.

So obviously we haven't seen the actual budget yet.

This is just kind of a summary that they've revealed.

And this week the college deans have been given the college budgets and they're going to be, you know, figuring out how to implement the budgets in their own colleges and then communicating them.

But the administrative budgets are not out yet.

They're going to be out in a couple of weeks.

OK, that's definitely something to watch.

One other campus thing, Dan, Governor Hobbs signed a lot of things, but also as is her watch.

She vetoed a lot of bills, one that she actually did sign had to do with protests, encampments.

We saw those on many universities.

Obviously, ASU was was a highlight there.

Most of it related to Gaza, pro-Palestinian protests.

And Alma Hernandez was the sponsor behind this one.

What do you make of this?

And Governor Hobbs going ahead and signing it definitely seemed like a strange bedfellows kind of thing.

A lot of Republicans supporting a lot of Democrats against.

Yeah, HB 2280.

It does seem strange bedfellows.

If you look at it from a political point of view, if you look at it with common sense, why should students have to climb over piles of garbage and be yelled at to get to class?

That's really what it comes down to.

And it was bipartisan.

And Alma Hernandez made this very good speech on the floor defending it.

And meanwhile, we see a lot of pearl clutching from the left over their rights being their free speech rights being taken away.

Nothing's been taken away from you.

That's not the only way to to protest something.

And again, what is the university exists for education and research?

And this is just not right to put there.

You can go put them in any Tucson Park.

They have plenty of these things going on over there and join the bums there.

But here, no, it should not be on a college campus.

And I think people realize that.

Jim, I think it's a big win for Alma Hernandez.

For sure, this was something that was important to her.

And she was able to get it across the finish line by working with Republicans.

Yeah.

Paola?

Echoing exactly what Jim said, I think also something that comes to mind when we're talking about encampments.

You know, when we do look at like First Amendment and all of the things that come along with it, I can't help but also think, you know, back when like the ADA was trying to be passed.

That wouldn't have happened if encampments did not occur.

Right.

And so I think there's a lot of varying different opinions on the effectiveness of encampments and its form of protest.

It's it's definitely it's a huge win for Alma Hernandez.

One hundred percent.

Yeah.

And one thing Michael Crow at ASU has said that his standard and I'm not doing it verbatim is something that as long as you don't interrupt education, you can to some extent do whatever you're doing.

And we'll see if that actually holds with some of these.

But then it calls into question, right?

Like, isn't the act of protesting supposed to be uncomfortable and disruptive in some ways?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Paola, let me stick with you.

A land swap at Oak Flat has caused a lot of controversy and taken on another step because of the Trump administration and you reported on Apache Stronghold and they're trying to get another resolution here to to slow this thing down.

Talk about the significance of Oak Flat, frankly, for for both sides of the issue, one from the Native communities and others from maybe the the mining folks, the business folks.

Yeah, I mean, it's been a longstanding issue in 2014.

The Congress at that time and President Barack Obama signed a reauthorization bill for the national defense funding that included a land swap between resolution copper for parcels they had and then also the federal government.

And the whole idea was that within this area that Oak Flat is in, there's a large deposit of copper.

And so from my understanding of it all, the significance that Oak Flat has for the Native community is that this is their birthplace for their religion, right?

They go there for their coming of age ceremonies.

They gather medicinal plants and acorns from the trees there.

And so for them, seeing access to this area be taken away could, in their view, violate their freedom for religion, right?

And resolution copper holds that for them, access to or having this land wouldn't necessarily mean that they're limiting access for religious purposes for the tribe, that they would work with them.

And that in the 10 years that they'll still give them access to the campground.

However, during the testimonies that I was hearing earlier this week, there wasn't comment about whether or not access outside of the campgrounds would be afforded to the tribe, tribal members.

Jim, this is kind of a long running thing.

In this case, it's not necessarily environment versus commerce, but this case, we have more religious versus commerce in a sense to me because it almost feels like, well, don't you want the mining jobs?

Yes.

But at the same time, this is a spiritual place for us.

How do you unwrap all that?

I, you know, I think, as you said, this has been dragging on a long time.

This feels I think they had a similar lawsuit down here with with with the Rosemont Copper project, which did not go the way of the tribes.

And I think this feels kind of like a Hail Mary pass at the end of the day to try to prevent this project from going forward.

Dan, any thoughts on this one?

You know, who wants to be in a position of having to decide whether this land is kind of sacred, really sacred or mega sacred?

I mean, that and that's kind of what this judge has to has to do.

But once it becomes Resolution Copper's land, it's private and they can do what they want with it.

And so we did have that down here.

I've been covering mining for years down in our area, Green Valley, Sahuarita.

And this comes up almost every single time a mine is proposed is that those are sacred Native lands, at least in Arizona.

It's something that has to be looked at.

But in the end, you follow the law.

We'll see what the judge says.

I do want to add, you know, something that the Apache Stronghold's attorneys were saying is that, you know, there has to be a balance of equities.

Right.

When we're looking at whether or not to put a temporary injunction, so temporary pause on this final environmental impact statement that would allow for the transfer of lands.

It's better to have the pause in their view, because that means let's say the US Supreme Court takes up their case, right?

They side with the mining company.

Then there's no loss, right?

They could still mine for that copper.

But if the final environmental statement impact goes through before the US Supreme Court takes it and then the US Supreme Court takes it and then they side with the tribe.

The tribe holds that, you know, well, the mining has already happened.

The lands are destroyed.

And to also worth noting, the attorney for the Apache Stronghold did ask the vice president or the president of Resolution Copper how the land would be impacted.

And she did say that, yes, the land would be swallowed.

So, Jim, let's wrap up just a couple of minutes left.

New member of the Tucson City Council, which we know about him.

He's very young, very young, 26 years old.

Rocque Perez will only be there for about six months.

There is a election for this seat.

But Richard Fimbres, he's not going to run for the special.

He's not running in the or there's not even a special.

There's a there's a regularly scheduled election.

Richard Fimbres, just because of health reasons, was not able to complete the end of his fourth term.

So Rocque is really a placeholder until the voters of Ward 5 put someone in there.

But he's a young, up and coming politician on the Democratic side.

He's been heading up this metro education commission and has, from what people were saying, done a pretty good job of turning around its fortunes.

And I think he may have ambitions beyond this, which would allow him to kind of get his name out there over the next six months.

I thought the piece you wrote for the Senate lets me just details as far as people had to drop out when they were told that they'd have to quit another government related job in order to take this one.

Yeah, Bobby, Bobby, Jaramillo from the Sunnyside School District was probably a pretty good tender for this gig as well.

But he does serve on the Sunnyside School District.

And the city attorney Mike Rankin said that there was an issue because of the city charter.

It's you know, Adelita Grijalva served on both the board of supervisors in the Tucson Unified School District and had no problem.

But that's because the city charter of Tucson was not an important document in that case.

Jim, I'll stick with you for our last minute or so of the program.

So George Cunningham, I came to know a little bit when he was one of the chiefs of staff for then Governor Janet Napolitano.

Passed away.

What's significant about what he what he did in his service?

We had a obituary written by his son, Paul Cunningham, who serves on those Tucson City Council.

And I thought it was a very heartfelt remembrance, but also talked about the astonishing things he did really as a numbers guy.

He could look at a budget and really translate how those numbers were going to affect people.

And he was very good at working with both Governor Mofford and Governor Napolitano and served in the legislature and worked his magic there and here at the university as well.

So, you know, remembered as a really terrific guy and also a really smart guy.

What kind of personality?

Just it was very wry.

He had a very wry sense of humor, very sarcastic at times.

And, you know, from what Paul was saying, just a terrific dad who went out and played ball with him and really brought him up the right way.

He said, OK, terrific.

Thank you, Jim Nintzel of the Tucson Sentinel.

Paola Rodriguez of AZPM News, Prerana Sannappanavar of the Arizona Daily Star and Dan Shearer with his first appearance from the Green Valley News and Sun.

Thanks for joining us in the press room.

Thank you all for watching and listening as well to this edition of the Press Room.

We'll be back next week with another episode.

I'm Steve Goldstein.

Enjoy the rest of your night.