The following is an AZPM original production.

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

I'm your host, Steve Goldstein.

Coming up on the program, a former state lawmaker filed suit against the city of Tucson and some members of the Tucson Police Department and how the Trump administration actions are affecting international students in Arizona.

With me to talk about these and other topics are Yana Kunichoff of AZ Luminaria, Dylan Smith of the Tucson Sentinel, Paola Rodriguez of AZPM News and Tim Steller of the Arizona Daily Star.

Guys, thanks all for being here, I appreciate it.

Dylan, let's start off with Adelita Grijalva.

Is this one of the worst kept secrets that there was a feeling that out of respect, obviously for the accomplishment and waiting for the memorial service, we're waiting for her to officially announce the memorial that she did.

Other than the last name, what does she bring to the table?

Tons of experience, actually.

This isn't just a, some people are trying to paint this as kind of nepotism and that it's just the name and the Grijalva machine, which does exist.

There's a pretty good political coalition of folks who supported Raul Grijalva and Adelita and a whole lot of other people.

But she brings decades of elected service on the Tucson Unified School District governing board, been a supervisor, been reelected to that position.

She's been in government for quite a while and has a handle on things in that respect.

It may not be just a complete cakewalk into this special election in the primary with Daniel Hernandez running, who also is somebody with political experience who has served in an elected office.

So Paola, what stands out to you about what Adelita Grijalva brings to the table in terms of, as Dylan pointed out, she has a lot of strengths, but are there any things that, any potential weaknesses that Daniel Hernandez or someone else might be trying to exploit?

You know, I think with Adelita Grijalva's experience, specifically with the Pima County Board of Supervisors, I think maybe you could see people coming at her for maybe the handling of the Chris Nanos stuff and things like that.

But I think as a candidate, Adelita, in a conversation I had with her earlier this week, she's made it very clear, she's very different from, well, she's very appreciative of her dad and the reputation that they have, but that she's made her own experience and made her own strides within the political stance.

So it'll be interesting to see how things play out.

Yeah, Tim, we've seen a lot of situations where someone who's related to someone who's been around a long time, steps in, does a great job, there are, nepotism is gonna, people are gonna say that, whether it's valid or not.

Do you think that Adelita enters this with her eyes wide open, knowing that, let's not accomplish a lot of things on my own, that people may try to associate with my dad, which in a lot of ways is very good, but still she's her own person?

Yeah, I mean, I think that's gonna be the key is defining herself to a broader public.

I mean, it is a sort of dynasty, especially if she ends, I mean, she's followed her father's footsteps into the Tucson Unified School District Board, and then to the same seat in the Pima County Board of Supervisors.

So it truly is a dynastic, you know, dynamic here, but it doesn't mean that she's not her own person, and she, but I think it would be good for her to define herself separately.

I mean, her dad always said that her, his kids were very different from him.

I think politically they're probably pretty similar in their stances, but maybe personally quite different.

I see her as somewhat quieter and maybe more disciplined in a way.

She's kind of a tactician, and yeah, she could be formidable.

Yeah, Yana, what comes to mind for you here?

I think just thinking about the voting, like the voting of that district, so 40% democratic, 37% independent.

So I think that this is also just like a really intense political moment to be stepping into national politics, and so I think that she, yeah, I think she has a lot of opportunity to be a strong voice, even separate from her legacy, because that's just a place, a space so many people are watching right now.

Dylan, you mentioned Daniel Hernandez, obviously the other big name, now that Adrian Fontes has said he's not gonna run, he's gonna run for Secretary of State again.

I'm curious about, you know, those of us who've covered politics for a long time, I still have the itch of with endorsements.

Oh my gosh, an endorsement, endorsement, and most of them mean nothing, but in this case, Senator Kelly, former Representative Gabby Giffords, endorsed Grijalva over Hernandez, even though many of us came to know Daniel Hernandez for the first time because of that tragic day in Tucson.

So what does this endorsement mean, does it matter?

I would say probably not very much, actually.

You know, it matters a little bit.

Certainly it helps garner some attention from folks who maybe have, you know, are paying attention to people who have much more name recognition.

You know, does it change anybody's vote?

I don't really think so, actually.

I don't think an, I would be hard pressed to come up with any endorsement that has ever changed anybody's vote.

I would guess that it would matter more if it went the other way, that it would have some impact.

That is if Mark Kelly and Gabby Giffords had endorsed Daniel Hernandez, then yeah, to me it would have given him a bit of a boost.

This is more expected than anything else.

Tim, did you get a feel in any of the people you've talked to, Randy, or any of the people, you've heard that Hernandez and Grijalva really fighting over this endorsement, or did they sort of come out of like, okay, Senator Kelly and Gabby Giffords will decide when they want to endorse anyone?

Oh, I don't know about the fight over the endorsement.

I mean, I think there's a fight over the, or a rivalry, a kind of lopsided rivalry over the identity of the Democratic Party here, especially on the South and West sides.

I mean, Daniel Hernandez, plus his sisters, Alma and Consuelo, have emerged over many years now as a sort of alternative Democratic block on the South and West sides.

I call them business oriented.

There's a few different issues there, different from the Grijalva team on.

And this is, I've covered this for a long time, back when Daniel was just on the Sunnyside school board, he challenged Grijalva associated members and tried to get people recalled.

That raised some real hackles in the political establishment in this area.

So this goes back a long ways, it's a rivalry.

One of the differences though, that the Hernandezes don't have a big machine or a big alliance or coalition the way the Grijalvas do.

So they have a disadvantage.

And that recall attempt in the Sunnyside board was probably the defining break between what gets labeled as the Hernandez and the Grijalvistas.

Yana, I was thinking about the idea of the fact that they could be from sort of kind of different wings of the Democratic party.

Is that part of what you're watching here?

Yeah, I think that's really interesting thinking about AOC and Bernie coming to Tucson, like a huge turnout for that.

And so I think that in many ways, the future of the Democratic party depends on who wins leadership in that struggle between more centrist folks and people who are more like openly progressive.

Paola, I don't know if you saw this, and if you didn't, I will move on to the next topic.

But I've read on AZ Central that there is another influencer, 24 years old, who's deciding to run, and she actually had a nice speaking part during the convention for the Democrats with Kamala Harris.

And I don't know if any of you have heard about her, think she might have an impact in this race.

I do not see that, but I'll be definitely taking a look at that at AZ Central.

And the reason I thought of it is because when Yana mentioned AOC, there are some comparisons made to a very young AOC.

Yeah, well, so her name is Deja Foxx.

She grew up here.

I was looking back in our clips in the start.

We had an interview with her in 2017 when she was 17 years old, like a full Q&A.

We've mentioned her probably eight times because she was involved in a sex ed drive at TUSD as well as confronting then-Sena when he was at a event in Mesa.

So she's been kind of creating, and at the time in 2017, she said she wanted to be an elected official.

So it's seven years later and she's making that push.

This isn't the first time we've seen an influencer jump into a local congressional race.

And I'm skeptical of anybody's chances.

You have to lay the groundwork with people who are going to support you, give you money, knock on doors for you, vote for you, not so much be a national social media figure.

You have to be a local political player to be elected.

Running for office does help build your profile.

And maybe it's a good move in that direction.

And Yana, a lot of candidates tend to go for high efficacy voters, but as Dylan's saying, maybe Ms. Foxx could attract people who don't vote that often.

Maybe that's something to... Yeah, I mean, I actually interviewed Deja Foxx in 2017 writing about SB 1070 before I lived here and was writing for a national publication.

So yeah, obviously, I think thinking of her work, you're harking back to a deep history of organizing here that I think in this moment, a lot of people are interested or looking to or learning about if they don't already know about it.

But I think that's the question.

I think a lot of young voters are more likely to see her on TikTok than maybe in like a more traditional campaign rally or in another space.

So yeah, I think that that's a space where I think not all politician but when someone definitely is, I think they're getting a unique audience.

Okay, and Paola, now that Adelita Grijalva is moving on to run for Congress, that means her seat on the Pima County Board of Supervisors has to be filled.

I hate to use the same phrase again, but is that also like the worst kept secret?

Who is, do we know who the board is sort of leaning toward at this point?

I mean, in terms of how the board is leading, we're still kind of figuring that out.

But as of this morning, Andres Cano, who works for the city of Tucson right now, but was previously within the state legislature, just made his announcement that he's going after that district five seat.

Okay, and what's the process gonna be like here, Dylan?

I mean, they wanna get done by April 15th, where they wanna put someone in place.

People have to submit their applications for the appointment by Monday.

And so it's pretty quick that people have to make their decision.

So it's a little bit more compressed than it has been in the past even.

So it's gonna be folks who have been thinking about this for a while and obviously Andres Cano has been somebody who's been thinking about this for a long, long time.

Yeah, it's what, from resignatio it's gonna be like 12 days, which is very fast and benefits those who are ready, which Andres Cano definitely is.

I don't know who else is gonna emerge, but he's right there.

Well, whether it's Cano or someone else, is this a full term?

How is this gonna work?

In terms of the term limits, I'd have to throw that to one of my other colleagues who might know a little bit more about that.

But I would say that, you know, Adelita Grijalva, when she made her resignation, she made it very clear that she wanted to make sure that the seat was going to be filled as soon as possible.

So that way people within her district are still represented.

Yeah, that's important to consider what we're seeing in Congress where CD7 won't have someone for probably six months.

Under state law, the person who's appointed to the supervisor's seat will serve through the next general election, not the entire rest of the term because it's not at the halfway point.

So the appointee will serve through the end of December, 2026.

And have to run for election.

If they choose to.

And it seems like this time around, Chair Rex Scott is not sticking with his previously expressed sentiment that they shouldn't appoint people who are not going to run again.

He's kind of changed his mind on that.

He says because of the timing of things and the long stretch and all of that, because it's somebody who's gonna serve almost two years, then it could be somebody who would say they will run again.

And then the term ends in 2028.

So if this person who was appointed runs again in 2026, and if they win, they will have to run again in 2028 to get elected to a full term.

And Tim, is this something that the public can have any influence on?

I mean, is the public calling their supervisors?

Are they gonna say, hey, I think you should go with this person or not?

Yeah, sure.

I mean, it's like any decision of the Board of Supervisors.

In fact, it's much more important than a lot of decisions because it represents one important vote, one out of five votes.

I mean, that's a big power on the Board.

And so, yeah, they're gonna have all their names by the end of the day Monday, and then there's gonna be a virtual forum hosted by the League of Women Voters on Wednesday, and then the decisions to be made the following week by the Board.

So that's the timeframe people have from Monday to the following week to make their views known.

Well, one more question on this, and I covered, I'm just gonna go a little bit when he was in the legislature, but I don't exactly remember what his views were.

Are they fairly, pretty much in line with Adelita Grijalva in terms of the sort of the same wing of the Democratic Party or that sort of thing?

I mean, that's who will likely, we don't know who all the candidates are gonna be, but certainly Andres Cano is a close ally, and I would expect anyone who gets appointed is gonna, first, they have to be a Democrat if I'm not mistaken.

And then second, they're likely to be similar in views.

He's the protege of the previous long-time supervisor, Richard Elias, who was a Grijalvista in many ways, part of that cohort of folks, although he and Raul had their moments of disagreement, certainly.

When we talk about the machine, it's not like everybody is in lockstep.

Certainly there are things they disagree on quite often, but they do kind of cultivate leaders.

They teach people how to run for office.

They support people.

It's kind of a training ground for new Democrats.

So, Paola, I'm gonna start with you on this.

We're gonna lead on Dylan for the next topic, but Justine Wadsack, former state lawmaker, has filed suit against the city of Tucson members of the police force.

Before we get into the suit, can you give us sort of a quick Cliffs Notes version of what happened when she was pulled over, going 71 out of 35, all the stuff that went on?

Yeah, Justine Wadsack was speeding, and when she was pulled over, she tried to say that her car was about to die and that that's why she was speeding, and that she's a state lawmaker.

That was another thing that she set out right in the back to the police officers because of legislative immunity.

And then the police officer, from my understanding, walked away from her vehicle to talk to a supervisor to see about what to do.

And now we're here with the lawsuit.

I believe that she didn't take it to trial or to a trial, and now we're here when she's suing the city.

Yeah, and Tim, at the time, it seemed bizarre, especially the way the hearings were, she and her attorney went about the hearings, the fact that legislative immunity was invoked.

What do you make of that up to the lawsuit point?

And did you actually expect it to, there's part of me that we know that former state lawmaker Wadsack marches at the beat of her own drum.

I think a lot of us, I think, was thinking this is better for you if this just dies as opposed to filing a big lawsuit.

Yeah, I mean, maybe there's a different logic.

Maybe she holds a different logic that it's better to keep attention on herself, or maybe she really believes that she was the victim of a conspiracy, which is essentially what she's alleging.

I mean, I really have a hard time thinking back to that night, that fateful night, late at night, dark darkness looming over Tucson and this officer sitting there, knowing that she's gonna be driving down Speedway, knowing that she's probably gonna be going really fast and that that way they could upset her reelection run.

It's improbable, let's put it that way.

Okay, now Dylan, I'm gonna quote your story.

Okay.

And you wrote this.

I did.

I hope you're-- Oh, maybe, maybe I did.

I gotta hear the quote, then I'll tell you if I really-- So Wadsack makes nearly a dozen claims about leaks in the suit, including that a police report and body cam video were leaked to the press.

The Sentinel's reporting was based on records, including the written reports and video that were released by TPD in response to a formal public records request as the original story explained.

Despite the claims of a conspiracy to leak information, this reporter, Dylan, who had the sole byline on the original news report, has to the best of my knowledge, never met nor interacted with any of the named defendants in the case.

So how did you get dragged into this?

Well, we broke the original news about that Tucson police were indeed going to issue a criminal citation to Wadsack for speeding months after, because they couldn't do it while the legislature was in session.

So they waited and then gave her a traffic ticket afterwards for the, in July, middle of July, for something that had happened back in March of last year.

And city attorney Mike Rankin gave you a good quote?

About the case, yes, he said he does not want to comment on this ridiculous lawsuit, is what he said about this move to sue the city and Tucson police officers claiming $8 million in damages.

Well, you wrote extensively about this.

So what really stands out to you about this suit in its absurdity?

Saying that the Tucson police department carried out a quote coup against Wadsack in the election is a very big statement, I would say.

And it is a conspiracy lawsuit that says that these specific members of the Tucson police department conspired with members of the press and with her primary opponent in the Republican primary, Vince Leach, to put this out and smear her and make it so that she would lose her election.

Well, it's shocking, isn't it?

Even like leaving aside whatever your process was in getting this information, the idea that opponents in a campaign would tell reporters negative information about their rivals, isn't that just morally shocking?

No, I'm being sarcastic.

This is the way the news works.

Well, things went the other way.

I was the one who called up Vince Leach back in July and told him about this.

He had no idea it was gonna-- I'm not even saying that Leach did it.

And again, on Sunday, he had no idea that the suit had been filed, that his name is not included in there, but there are repeated references to her primary opponent.

A suit was filed that is about him and he hadn't heard about it till they called him up.

You were right.

So what the one point is, the idea that people are telling reporters truthful information about public figures, that is not a conspiracy.

That is the way the news works.

Yeah, I think there's a media literacy element that's in your story that I think is great.

A leak is not just information you didn't want reported.

That word has a specific meaning, which is information that was shared not through proper channels.

So I think it was great to say you got it through a Freedom of Information Act request.

I know that's not the core of this issue, but I think it's always helpful to clarify the words people are using when talking about how reporting happens.

There are a litany of false, inaccurate claims in the lawsuit, basic errors, a ton of weird grammatical errors.

It's not the most well-written lawsuit.

Just leaving aside the question of was there a conspiracy to violate Justine Wadsack's civil rights?

There are so many things that are wrong in there that it just kind of boggled my mind.

The basic fact of where the traffic stop took place is off by a mile in the lawsuit, literally.

Yeah, literally a mile.

But it should be worth noting.

She has stuck to this narrative ever since it first came about.

Just saying.

Well, her narrative now is that she never said that she was being politically persecuted.

She never said that to a TPD officer in a phone call when they called her up to tell her, oh, hey, we're gonna give you a ticket.

You know, the TPD lieutenant wrote in the report that she said that, oh, you're, you know, this is political persecution.

The lawsuit, which is essentially a claim of a conspiracy to persecute her politically, includes repeated denials that she ever said that.

That she said she was politicall persecuted.

Yeah, awesome, too.

Okay, our last few minutes I'll spend on how Trump administration policies are affecting students.

Paola and Yana, I want you guys to weigh in on this.

Yana, let me start with what's going on at ASU.

Your colleague, John Washington, spoke with folks.

There are eight international students officially, maybe more at this point, at ASU have had their visas revoked.

And the spokesperson wrote back, the only thing we can tell you this time is that eight out of our 15,100 international students have had their visas revoked and these were not protest related.

So obviously this is Trump administration policies, but what's going on in this case?

And what do international students need to be wary of?

If they weren't wary already.

Yeah, I mean, in the ASU case, there's very little information that's been shared publicly.

The campus union president also confirmed that there was no reason given in the letter that they had seen about the international students having their visas revoked.

At the same time, U of A has suggested to its 4,000 international students and 1,300 international faculty.

So that's a lot of people that they should always carry physical copies of proof of immigration status.

The bigger context obviously is the Trump administration arresting students who allegedly were their political beliefs, but arresting people.

There have been videos of students taken off the street by agents in like, without wearing uniform.

I think things that feel like a different level of concern about civil liberties around students.

So that's the context of this moment.

Yeah, and probably we've seen things across the country and now obviously this is, what's obviously a pretty obvious message being sent here, but what stands out to you about this?

This is, I mean, this is very chilling to a lot of people.

Oh, of course it's super chilling.

I mean, especially when you look at a campus like, the University of Arizona, our campus is within the 100 miles of the border.

And so that means border patrol can stop people and do checks.

And so I'm thinking for immigration or international students, they're definitely feeling scared.

I think I was listening to a daily episode earlier this week about how the Trump administration is really trying to push this idea that, self deportation or like self leaving.

So that way, like these students are so scared that they just leave themselves, right?

And also worth noting, ASU is being investigated by the Department of Education for, the pro-Palestine protests that happened last year.

And so they say that the student visas that were revoked were not due to the protest.

I do just think it's interesting that those visas were revoked around the same time that the school is being investigated.

Yeah.

Yana, what do you think about that?

Yeah, I mean, students that were involved in those protests saw charges.

Some of them, many of them were, I believe were dropped, but obviously those students had a level of scrutiny and like legal consequences that I think were unusual for campus protests that we've seen over the last couple of years.

So it's hard to imagine that this is not part of a broader pressure on that.

My colleagues, Prerana Sannappanavar, who's been on the show and Emily Bregel, have a story in today's paper.

They say the numbers up to a dozen at ASU, students who've had their visas revoked.

The part that really jumped out at me was that, according to the attorney who's representing or involved in these cases, they are not being targeted because of political activity, that they are all being targeted because of past criminal cases, underage drinking, DUI, in situations that are really weird.

Like a guy who had a DUI, cleared that up, reapplied for visas more than once and was granted visas and then now that's being cited as a reason to revoke the visa.

It should be noted, the U of A has decided not to comment at all.

They've cited student privacy, which is a bizarre explanation given that we're not talking about individual student information and that lots of other universities are acknowledging whether student visas have been revoked.

I think, Dylan, the final thought on this, I think that's what stood out to me as well, the idea that I presume students, whether they like what the leadership might say or not, they'd like the leadership to say something.

Does that stand out to you or did to me?

Well, the University of Arizona has a longstanding reputation, a deserved reputation for not being transparent.

They stonewall about literally anything and everything and refuse to talk to reporters about things that they legally should be.

They don't turn over documents, they don't comment about things and this is something that's been going on for years and years and does not seem to have changed under the new president.

Yeah, yeah, in about 20 seconds, what does it say?

I was an international student for undergrad and so I think when I hear a lot of this, I just think about how stressful it would have been for me to think about my future and the place that I was studying and a lot of the uncertainty.

So I think information from universities and how that shared actually probably is very helpful for the thousands of people who are in this situation in the community that we live.

Yeah, any quick thoughts, guys, five seconds?

Touching on everything.

Yeah, it just feels like something we're gonna have to keep our eye on for the next, who knows, four years.

Tim, Dylan, Yana and Paola, thank you all so much for joining us for this edition of The Press Room.

Thank you as well for being in the audience, whether viewing or listening to us, we appreciate your time today.

We'll be back with another edition of The Press Room.

Coming up next week, I'm Steve Goldstein.

Have a good night.