The following is an AZPM original production.

From the radio studios of AZPM, welcome to the latest edition of The Press Room.

I'm Steve Goldstein.

Coming up, Arizona's Attorney General threatens to sue the Speaker of the U.S.

House for not swearing in Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva.

Plus, Mayor Romero unveils a new safe city approach for Tucson.

A group of journalists joins me to discuss those stories and more next on The Press Room.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) Welcome to The Press Room.

I'm Steve Goldstein.

Our panel of journalists joining me today are Caitlin Schmidt of the Tucson Spotlight, Jim Nintzel of the Tucson Sentinel, Yana Kunichoff of AZ Luminaria, and Danyelle Khmara of AZPM News.

Welcome to all of you, thank you.

Thanks.

Jim, let's start off with, I don't know what we're waiting on now.

A couple of weeks ago, you were on this program and you cited a report on CBS News.

You saw House Speaker Mike Johnson who said that Adelita Grijalva's swearing in was imminent.

It's still ticking, a couple weeks later.

It does seem as though the goalposts are moving in the swearing in of Congresswoman-elect Adelita Grijalva and this story continues to drag out, which is, I think, bringing more attention not only to the failure to swear Congresswoman-elect Grijalva into office, but also to the Epstein Files, because she keeps saying that the reason he won't swear her in are the Epstein Files and the fact that she would be the 218th signature on the discharge petition that would force a vote on the release of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein.

So I find it fascinating that it seems to be a self-own by the Speaker of the House to keep this story alive.

He's saying now, you know, it was originally, yes, we're gonna sign her in.

We're gonna get back to business.

Now he's put, they've done no substantive business since the government shut down, and now he's saying until the government reopens, I will not sign her in.

So I don't know why he wants to bring more attention to the Epstein Files, which is clearly not a good story for Republicans or the president, but he seems determined to do so.

Well, and Caitlin, he has not ever owned up to that part of it, right?

Definitely not, no, no.

There was a fun interview, I think, last week where he said, I'll swear in as soon as she wants to be sworn in, and then his office had to quickly walk back and say that's not actually what he meant.

But yeah, this is sure the way to keep the story alive for a story that you don't want people talking about.

And she's made it very clear she's not gonna stop drawing attention to this, so it seems like the smartest thing to do if they want us to stop talking about the Epstein Files is to just move forward.

Well, Danyelle, we know how political this is, but it's also really frustrating for people who live in this district and say, wait a second, we haven't had representation in a really long time and now this guy's playing political games.

Yeah, exactly, and so, I mean, that's the thing, the residents of CD7 don't have political representation in the House right now.

And so, you know, he said that he is not going to do it until the government shutdown is over, but also Democrats are saying that, like, look, this is really an administrative function.

It's not something that should take all that much effort, so I don't know if they're really buying the reason that he's giving right now.

Yeah, so, Yana, let's look at one of the bigger news items related to that this week.

Attorney General Kris Mayes, who obviously a lot of people have a lot of respect for, for good reason, but she likes to sue the Trump administration a lot.

She's very busy with that.

And now she's threatened to sue Congress, sue Mike Johnson to get Adelita Grijalva's swearing in.

What do you make of that particular approach?

Yeah, I think Kris Mayes has been a politician who it's been like so interesting to watch her in all these areas around utilities, around mobile homes, in this space as well.

I think that she, I think is interested in using like the breadth of her power to move things forward.

I don't know if I have like an assessment of whether this will, that will be what makes the difference, but I think it's just interesting to see how Attorneys General in this moment of the Trump administration have become like really political.

I think like, yeah, very forward political actors.

And I'm not sure she has, there's ground.

If she had standing, I wasn't sure.

That's the challenge of taking this to court.

But, and the representation issue is certainly important, although Congress is not in session, so there's not as if she's missing votes.

However, she also, and we brought this up on the show before, cannot hire a staff or open an office or deal with constituent services.

And that's a problem for people in this district.

Yeah, Caitlin, what are your final thoughts on this?

I mean, it feels like we're at a stalemate here, right?

I mean, both sides are digging in really deep.

It's, I honestly don't know what we're gonna see here, but it seems like the Democrats, at least in Arizona, are really circling the wagons and trying to apply pressure, if that'll work, who knows?

Yeah, Yana, we've seen Senators Gallego and Kelly camp out outside Speaker Johnson's office.

And now as we just talked about Attorney General Mayes, not to say, "Do you think this momentum leads to anything?"

We have no idea, but this, again, I can sort of come back to the tactics of this, just continuing to put the pressure on, although Mike Johnson probably feels pressure from the Trump administration 20 times a day.

He probably is immune to all this stuff now, I suppose.

I mean, I think what my kind of like bigger analysis of some of this Trump, the Trump administration second presidency has been is that the courts play this super important role and that I think public pressure sometimes works, but I don't know if that is like the main tool that I see making change.

I think I see it happening in court decisions at various levels.

So I am watching that, even though I don't know what the grounds are.

I wanna move on to, this has been something, another story that continues to roll on, and that is the U of A, Danyelle, being included in this group of nine universities now that's expanded greatly.

And I wanna make sure I have this language right.

The Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.

The Student Association, a lot of other people have come out here at the U of A and said, President Garimella, please don't go along with this.

What did we learn this week?

What's most interesting to you about this week?

Yeah, so there was student groups that came out this week, as you were saying, and really in a more sort of collective way, asked the U of A president not to agree to this compact as well, the city of Tucson, they signed a resolution not to agree to it.

Pima did the same thing.

And so kind of what we're hearing against it is that this is really a question of free speech and academic integrity.

And also some of the student groups are saying that the compact is sort of so sprawling that it's not even clear what universities might be agreeing to.

Well, in fact, I wanna get some of the language on this.

The compact asked the school's leaders to agree to ban the use of race or sex in hiring and admissions, freeze tuition for five years, cap international undergrad enrollment at 15%, things like this.

And these are things that before this came up, even before President Garimella was here, these are not things that necessarily the U of A body would feel good about.

No, the U of A has for long boasted their international student body presence.

Every year they release a report saying our international student body is grown, we're representing more countries.

So this kind of flies in the face of what they've done.

But it's not surprising really that administration is entertaining this if we look back to what they did earlier this year with the Student Cultural Resource Center consolidation.

I mean, and what they've done with DEI initiatives, they really are falling into line with the Trump administration.

And I think students have a right to be afraid at this point in time, given what they've seen.

And perhaps might not work with Mike Johnson, but sustained public pressure here in a really big way might work against a president who has not yet ever admitted that he benefited greatly from these DEI policies that he's stripping away.

Interesting, Yana.

Yeah, I think also when of the nine campuses, including U of A that have been asked, several have already said no, no one else has replied.

I think if U of A strays from the pack on that, I think it would be just like a huge deal.

And I think be like a marked change in a fight that we're seeing more universities aligned on right now, which I think is interesting and probably gives them more protection in that.

Jim, I wonder about short and long term future as well, because we see political changes in this country, it's almost like whiplash in a lot of ways.

It's like, okay, we have President Obama, then it's Trump first term, then it's Biden, now it's back to Trump.

But a lot of these things the Trump administration seems to want to do, not just seems to want to, is taking action to do.

Some of these don't seem like they would be quite as easy to reverse, just because a new administration comes.

How big a concern is there that not only would U of A be, in some cases, be giving up academic freedom, as a lot of people are concerned about, but this is not something that, okay, well, if we have a new president in three years who thinks something else, we'll just reverse it.

I think that is a concern, and it's certainly a concern among faculty here as well.

And if the university does engage in this compact, I would not be surprised to see significant brain drain among faculty members here who would go find somewhere else to work.

Yeah, Caitlin, I'll go back to the international student thing.

I think that's a really key point, because a lot of universities rely on international students for research, for cultural reasons, for diversity, but also for money, because international students have to pay more to go here.

So, I mean, these are concerns as well, right?

Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

I mean, it's not gonna hurt their, not gonna help their bottom line at the end of it, if we are turning away the students that pay the most to be here.

I mean, and we're a Land Grant institution, we are a Hispanic-serving institution.

This just doesn't really seem to line up with what we have said is our mission as a university and our duty to students.

Yeah.

Danyelle.

Just speaking of money, it seems like that is the main motivator that the Trump administration is using to try and get universities to agree to the compact, saying that universities who sign on to it will have a precedent to getting access to some of the federal funding sources and universities that don't will be foregoing federal funding.

So I think it's a really complicated decision for the university to make.

Yeah, there are no good choices here.

And we've already seen a drop in international students here on campus, and I guess that's not surprising given the hostility that some of them must feel coming from the Trump administration and concerns about whether they would be welcome here in the United States.

Yeah, Yana?

I just think some of the ways that I think the University of Arizona was in crisis were not politically related.

They were financial decisions made in the past under different administrations.

But, I think, I live right by the University of Arizona.

It feels like such an important institution in this community.

So I think the question of like what it takes to have that institution continue to be part of Tucson's community.

I think a lot of voices I'm hearing are saying part of that is protecting some of the vulnerable student populations there.

To many people, U of A is the centerpiece of this community.

In a lot of ways, yeah.

A huge economic driver alongside Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.

All right, let's move on to Mayor Romero's Safe City Initiative.

Among other things, smart enforcement, including improving transit safety, access to justice, and pursuing partnerships with other jurisdictions.

Caitlin, before we turned on the mic, you mentioned the interesting timing of something, somebody was being covered, and then a couple of days later, the mayor came out with this.

But anything stand out as particularly effective, innovative, anything that really seemed different?

Was it more of a coalescing of ideas?

I mean, it's really interesting with the timing.

The Small Business Center just opened.

They've taken some criticism that they should be addressing public safety, and then a few days later, this came out.

It's such a complicated topic because they have a duty to residents to handle these things, but we don't have unlimited funds, and the smart, compassionate ways that they've been trying to handle it haven't been working, and so now we're pulling out the old toolbook of code enforcement, arresting people, which we have decades worth of data that shows that arresting people for substance use and mental issues does not solve the root problem, but these are elected officials whose hands are tied, who have, again, a duty to keep the community safe.

So I wouldn't want to be in that position right now.

Yeah, Danyelle, it almost feels like there's that balancing act, this idea that as a community, you don't want to be cruel to the unhoused.

You don't want to take people who are addicted to drugs and throw them in prison or something like that, but there are other people who are saying, "Well, I want to be sympathetic, but I'm also a little bit more scared than I used to be."

Does this thread the needle in any way?

Does it move people forward to at least discuss other ideas?

I mean, to be honest, from what I read about it, I didn't see anything that seemed all that innovative or new, and it also made me wonder, there was some talk about some more services, and I thought, "Okay, well, where's the funding for this gonna come from?"

I didn't see that mentioned.

And then there's also the complication of if somebody is on fentanyl or another drug and they're arrested, they can't be admitted to the jail, so they'll be taken to the hospital, and then oftentimes they don't end up going back to the jail or getting arrested.

So I think whether the authorities decide how to handle that problem or not, there's a lot of complications to this issue, and I don't see exactly how there were any big changes mentioned.

Yeah, Yana, anything stand out for you about something new or potentially impactful?

Yeah, I mean, I think it just really made me think about, I think when I was hearing about it, the tool that the city of Tucson has that they have flexibility over, I think, is arrests.

The reality is that a lot of the housing that they provide, the supportive housing, which I think there's a lot of successes there.

They have a nonprofit arm building more housing, but the money for that is just being cut back both at the federal and state level.

There are places where they depend on the county to prosecute someone or take them to jail, aren't working, so what I see them doing is feeling public pressure and then taking the primary tool that they have total autonomy over, which is enforcement, and saying that that's what they're gonna be moving ahead and focusing on.

But yeah, I think there's a lot of research over the impacts of that in the long run.

Jim, one thing that really stood out to me is when Danyelle mentions money.

Kevin Dahl, if he wins reelection, has talked about having ballot initiative that's smaller than we saw before, and maybe there's money for some of these things.

I'm not sure how much money there will be, but that also falls on the city of Tucson, right?

Yeah, we talked about this on the program a couple weeks ago, and I think that homicide on The Loop, the cyclist who was stabbed to death, really has generated a lot of public outrage.

And I think there is a lot of frustration with the homelessness, because no matter what the city has done in terms of providing more housing, the problem seems to be getting worse in this city.

Fentanyl plays a big role in that.

Not everybody who's on fentanyl, addicted to fentanyl is homeless.

We should make that point.

Not everybody who's homeless is on fentanyl.

The mayor talked about how one of their biggest challenges is the people who are seriously mentally ill who reject services.

You offer them a home or a chance to get help, and they turn it down, because they're just not in a place where they're going to accept that.

The fentanyl question and whether we should arrest people who are on fentanyl, I think one thing they said is if they're facing a choice between going to jail or going to rehab, you might be able to move more people into rehab, but they also made the point that getting off of fentanyl is very, very difficult.

The withdrawal symptoms are so intense that people are not likely to do that.

The other problem is fentanyl is so inexpensive that it's easy to acquire.

And if you're on the streets, paying $2 to put your blues away for a little while probably doesn't seem like that bad an idea.

So the challenges are enormous.

This feels to me like a bit of a rebranding of what the city is already doing.

Instead of actual new approaches, there was a lot of blame laid on other jurisdictions and the need to fund more mental health programs.

They were upset with the Pima County Attorney for not prosecuting these cases, which is why they're talking about creating a misdemeanor within the city of Tucson.

So at least you take it into the city court and you again have that ability to try to leverage and arrest into treatment, but also treatment's expensive as well.

Jail's expensive.

And Danyelle's point about the officers not being able to book someone, if they're on fentanyl, then the officer has to go sit in an emergency room for the rest of their shift, waiting for the guy to get medically cleared is another huge problem in the system as it exists.

Yana, you first, then Caitlin.

Yeah, I do think looking at homelessness and then some of the addiction and mental health issues is not necessarily always coupled.

I think about 900 people get evicted every month in Pima County.

So I think without slowing the inflow of people who are becoming homeless, there would just always be homeless people in our community because there's simply not enough housing.

I think there's a 68,000 unit gap.

We're not building fast enough.

Those are realities that I think underlie all of this, even separately.

And I do think being unhoused and I think some of the trauma and intensity of that, I think can play into these other issues, but that's the bigger picture.

Yeah, I mean, their backs are just up against the wall.

The Tucson Police Department under Chief Magnus, the previous chiefs launched a very successful diversion program before the pandemic that was doing really, really well.

And then once fentanyl came around, it was not doing well anymore.

It was not worth it for people to go to rehab when they could be booked into jail, let out very quickly, and then get their fix again.

And I'd be curious to know what kind of conversations were had with some of our community partners around this because Pima County is still participating in the safety and justice challenge with the MacArthur Foundation, which has been a years long initiative to get people out of jail who are basically in jail because they are poor or have substance use or mental health issues.

So it'll be interesting to see how this will couple with that.

They did some really amazing work early on of drastically reducing the pre-trial population that was there for misdemeanors.

And so I guess the question is, are we just gonna fill that back up?

Sheriff made a point when I spoke to him this week that yes, his policy is to make sure that people are medically cleared by his medical staff.

It's not his decision, it's theirs.

But when they reject someone, and he said 90% of the time, those people do not end up back in the jail after going to a hospital and being medically cleared, the police typically cite and release them.

And he says, "Well, if you're just citing and releasing them, why are you bringing them jail in the first place?"

Yeah.

And I was at trespass, or I was at misdemeanor court in the city a few months ago, right after the, or soon after the trespassing in washes ordinance passed.

And there were, everyone that was there just on trespassing was older, unhoused men.

They were charged, they were, you know, the charges were dropped, but if those people hadn't gotten in, then they would have warrants.

So I think like the stakes of even like a really low level interaction with the justice system can be pretty high.

And I think that's just another thing I think it's important to think about in some of this, even if people are released or they're just cited, but then they don't come in and then they end up with warrants and that can impact both their behavior and their ability to get housing.

Like I think it just has really big knock on effects.

Danyelle, any final quick thoughts on this?

I mean, I was just listening to Yana thinking like, "Yeah, that's exactly right.

And there's that risk that any interaction with the justice system can ultimately just make the situation worse for individual people and the community as a whole.

Jim, I'm gonna put you on the spot on this one as we close out with this topic.

You talked about how some people perceive this as being less safe, Tucson getting less safe.

You've lived for a very, very long time.

Is it cyclical?

Do you see certain times where people say this and that there's some remedy and back and forth, does this actually strike you as worse than it has been?

I think this is a problem across the entire country, but yeah, so I think the rising home costs in this town, rising rents, rising cost to buy a home, is definitely affecting people's ability to get shelter.

I think that the fentanyl issue is definitely worse than the drug problems we've seen in the past.

Okay, let's change up.

Danyelle, can you tell us what you know about the so-called smart wall at the border?

Because Arizona is gonna get $800 million to this $4.5 billion to build more of this.

So what should we know about that?

Yeah, so basically, this is a technology that would interact with existing wall and other steel barriers that are already being built, but it would also go to fund some secondary wall, which is when you have two layers of steel barrier, but it would also include funding for things like patrol roads, lights, cameras, detection, technology.

There wasn't a whole lot of specifics released yet on where exactly or what exactly this would entail.

There was some projects that were in both the Tucson and the Yuma sectors, so the entirety of the Arizona border.

And we already have a lot of technology on the border where there's wall, where there's not wall.

We have surveillance towers.

We also have in a few spots, some stadium lighting that has never been turned on.

And that's been there for a while.

And you know, ecologists, they sort of fought for that not to get turned on.

Don't know if their efforts have anything to do with the reason why it hasn't been turned on, but it can create light pollution.

But I think it's worth noting that we already have some of this infrastructure and it's currently not in use.

So I will be curious to see what they end up doing with this.

What haven't we seen documented cases of migrants crossing?

Isn't that one of the things the administration has taken credit for that we're seeing fewer crossers?

So a simple might ask the question, do we really need to spend billions more on this if policies are gonna get credit for being effective?

Yeah, I mean, I think that is the ultimate question and the question that everybody keeps asking when there is more funding for border barriers, when there is more border barriers going up in wildlife refuges where we have wildlife that crosses the border in order to mate, in order to hunt.

And there's gonna be some real ecological repercussions.

People are saying, but the numbers of people crossing are already so low, so why are we still doing this?

And I think, yeah, that is a legitimate question.

Yeah, Caitlin, any thoughts on this?

I mean, I wish that CBP wasn't closed for the shutdown could have answered some of Danyelle's questions about what makes this smart, because this really sounds kind of just like the regular wall and maybe like a little more wall.

It's tough to say what's smart or intuitive or particularly different about it.

And it was hard to get ahold of people because of the government shutdown.

I thought you were gonna say the opposite of smart, but you didn't do it.

I mean, if it has a touchscreen, then it might be.

Jim, speaking of something else that is related to the shutdown.

If you were in Tucson International, if you were in Sky Harbor, you were not treated to a message from the Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, in which she says, "It is TSA's top priority "to make sure you have the most pleasant "and efficient airport experience as possible "where we keep you safe."

She continues though, "However, Democrats in Congress "refuse to fund the federal government, "and because of this, many of our operations are impacted "and most of our TSA employees are working without pay.

What do you make of many airports not just here refusing to hear that message?"

Well, I think they're concerned that it's political propaganda, and it's not their job to be presenting political propaganda.

And I think that the pain of the shutdown is going to start affecting us more in the weeks to come, and air travel will be one of those things that you're gonna see air traffic controllers calling in sick, and you're gonna see flight delays, and you're gonna see some real trouble as a result of the shutdown.

No one cares about my personal experience, I'll share it anyway.

My wife was flying to Atlanta, and about 20 minutes before landing, she got diverted to Birmingham, Alabama because there was an alleged fire in the air traffic control tower, which there was never evidence that actually happened, but when workers are not being paid, they may not be super excited, not accusing anyone of anything, but maybe people could get together to fix the shutdown.

That's terrifying.

Yeah, yes.

Yeah, it really is.

So, Yana, I'm gonna give you 30 seconds.

But I wanna send people to azluminaria.org to read your story about Pima County Libraries.

Can you give us the 30 second Cliffs Notes?

Yeah, checking in on the libraries, the move from the old Valdez building owned by Tucson into the one now owned by the county will start soon.

The library has the keys, they're looking for an architecture firm, there's a new library director, which is really exciting, she started about a month ago, and also the library is still trying to staff up.

And that probably needs upwards of 30 people now that they're hiring for and looking for.

So that's exciting and I think a big months long effort.

Well, you've done such good reporting on that.

I think the first time you were on this show, we talked about it.

So thank you a year later for still talking about it.

Okay, Yana Kunichoff of aAZ Luminaria, Jim Nintzel of the Tucson Sentinel, Caitlin Schmidt of the Tucson Spotlight, and Danyelle Khmer of AZPM News.

Thank you all for being here.

-Thanks.

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

We are back with a new episode next week.

I'm Steve Goldstein.