The following is an original production of AZPM News.

The ripple effects of a deadly shooting by an ICE officer in Minneapolis are being felt locally here in Tucson.

Arizona's Senator Mark Kelly and the Pentagon are gearing up for a royal rumble over his censure by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

And Christmas came and went with Project Blue getting their gift of land from the county.

But now what's next?

I'm David Lee and The Press Room starts now.

[MUSIC] Welcome to The Press Room.

I'm David Lee, AZPM News Director.

Thank you all for joining us.

Today on the show, we have Danyelle Khmara from AZPM.

We also have Alisa Reznick from KJZZ, Paul Ingram from the Tucson Sentinel, and Katya Mendoza also from AZPM.

Want to start off a little bit talking about the shooting that happened back in Minneapolis on January 7th.

Renee Good, fatally shot by an ICE officer.

There was another shooting last night in Minneapolis as well.

The shooting is still under investigation, but a lot of folks were outraged, both all over the country and locally here that first night.

There was a protest here and Danyelle, you were out there.

Tell us a little bit about what you saw.

Yeah, so, you know, it was raining that evening.

And so I really didn't know what to expect when I headed down there, down to the federal courthouse out in front in downtown Tucson.

But there was quite a few people there.

There was about 100 people there all out in the rain and, you know, holding signs really just against what happened.

And, you know, signs also saying that they want ICE out of their community.

And we saw protests like that, obviously in Minneapolis, but we saw protests like that all over the country.

And, you know, they continued into the rest of that week.

Alisa, you were out the next night.

What was happening there?

Sure.

So that next night, well, it was the Thursday after the shooting and it was a vigil.

So it was at El Tiradito downtown.

That's where a lot of sort of memorial events happen for people who die crossing the desert, for example, or things.

It's a very historic site in Tucson.

And the mood there was, you know, similar.

There were a lot of moments of silence for Renee Good, but also these discussions more broadly about the challenges that legal observers face, you know, not just in Minneapolis, but also in Tucson across the country.

And this idea that, you know, a lot of these things start at the border or start with migrants.

You know, obviously, Southern Arizona isn't new to this idea of violence by federal officers.

I think communities here remember shootings like the Jose Antonio shooting by a Border Patrol agent in Nogales, Sonora.

So I think this is kind of one of those things where, you know, this perspective in Southern Arizona is different than the rest of the country.

Paul, what do you think the concern is that what happened in Minneapolis could happen here?

Well, I think one thing that we kept in mind is that we see the video and we see that and that creates a very visceral reaction.

There's an emotional reaction to seeing, you you see this woman moments before she's killed.

You see what happens afterwards.

You hear what the ICE officer says in the aftermath of it.

You see the crowd's reaction.

And that creates this kind of visceral and very emotional sense.

But also, I mean, people are really angry about how ICE and also Border Patrol are approaching their jobs in Minneapolis, but also in Los Angeles, in Chicago, in Charleston.

There's been this kind of continuous fury about how this gets pushed.

And I think we make a really good point that the Borderlands have kind of had these sorts of incidents.

There's been lots of shootings, single incident shootings.

And, you know, where agents said, well, they threw rocks at me or they tried to run me down with their car.

They seemed like they had a gun when they didn't.

And we've sort of used those.

But people are seeing this.

But this is also captured on video.

And I think what's sort of unique is that a lot of these violent incidents that have happened in Southern Arizona happened without cameras, without video in remote wildernesses in a lot of cases.

And in this case, it's in the middle of a city where people have multiple occasions to capture this video and to show this.

So it's clear that people are angry.

And that's showing even in public polling.

I mean, public polling of about ICE operations and how the Trump administration approaches this issue are falling.

They've taken a huge loss.

The disapproval rate is like 60 percent now.

And that's even true among independents.

It's certainly true among Democrats.

And even among Republicans, there's less and less favoring for these kinds of operations.

Alisa, from the state perspectiv in terms of our politicians, how have they been monitoring everything, not just nationally, but here in the state as well?

Sure.

Well, just to circle back briefly on what Paul said, I mean, it's true that in these fatal incidents in Arizona in the past, we have not always had this kind of video evidence, but just last year, well, actually a couple of years ago now, we did catch that fatal shooting of Raymond Mattia on the Tohono O'odham Nation.

That was a Border Patrol shooting through body camera footage.

So it's going to be interesting to see how the investigation plays out in Minneapolis if it changes or if it's different than what the border patrol investigation looked like down here, because these are questions that Southern Arizona residents have been asking for a long time following, you know, use of force incidents like those with border patrol.

As far as what state representat are doing, we've seen a couple of reactions.

We did see a pretty immediate reaction from Representative Grijalva down here in Tucson, who basically brought up that just not too long ago.

The Taco Giro ICE raids resulted in, you know, protests and tear gas being used by federal agents and kind of calling again for an investigation into ICE's use of force.

We've also seen comments from Representative Yassamin Ansari, who is putting together legislation that will potentially curtail the sort of funding that ICE would get.

Danyelle, do you think how people are protesting will kind of continue at the rate it is?

Will it diminish at all?

Will it even escalate?

Yeah, I mean, I don't think that it's going to diminish.

If anything, I think it will escalate, you know, just speaking about sort of how this issue has been escalating even before the shooting with ICE activity in local communities, including Tucson.

You know, we have here in Tucson volunteers who respond when they hear about some sort of ICE raid or ICE activity happening.

And they have said that they have had instances where they've been followed or they've had, you know, ICE in vehicles speed off very close to them and do things that they have considered intimidating.

And, you know, I've heard from some of the volunteers that do this work that they've only seen an increase in interest from the community in taking part in sort of this community action to do this immigrant rights work since the shooting.

So I think that people are scared, but people are committed and people are upset about this sort of increase in violence.

And then Katya, what are you seeing from the community as you're out there reporting?

What's the general feel?

I think my colleagues have pretty much touched on that.

It's kind of split.

I did want to bring up, however, how local leaders are, at least here in Pima County and Tucson, they're trying to stay on top of the violence or prevent it.

With that being said, earlier this week, City of Tucson did launch a website, sort of a "Know Your Rights" website, which includes resources, organizations, that sort of thing.

Additionally, the Pima County attorney, Laura Conover, she did put out a statement earlier this week about how she is supporting First Amendment rights or doing what she can to protect First Amendment rights.

However, she encouraged resident of Pima County not to fight fire with fire rather than water.

So she's taking a diffusing approach towards this situation.

All right.

Talking about rights in general, we want to turn to Mark Kelly.

Some interesting stuff going on with him right now.

The Arizona senator is suing the Department of Defense and Secretary Pete Hegseth, who are trying to punish him for his warnings about following illegal orders.

Hegseth censured Kelly, which could call for a demotion from Kelly's retired rank of captain and reduce his retirement pay.

Monday, Kelly filed suit against trying to block that censure.

Paul, this seems like it's getting really personal and going back and forth.

Is this going to be a long thing going?

I think it really will be.

I mean, one thing that's sort of remarkable is that Senator Kelly and other members of Congress who are also people who are in the armed forces or were attache to intelligence agencies all kind of made a video.

And what they said was that, you know, people who are in the military do not have to follow illegal legal illegal orders.

And that's very clear.

I mean, that's built into the law and they were reiterating it.

And what's strange is how the Department of Defense has decided that rather than saying, of course, you're correct.

That's how the law is.

They've inside decided to try to strike at and go after these people for for doing this, for making these comments.

One of the things that's sort of unique is Kelly's in unique position along the side from the other members because he retired rather than separated from the military.

So they have the ability to get at him and they've used that leverage to try to to try to punish him.

The strange thing is, is not only they're trying to punish, you know, a civilian who's retired from the military for saying something that's truly that's true within the law, but that they're doing it to a sitting senator.

They're they're picking a really interesting fight here because they're continuing this idea that he said something that he shouldn't have.

They're trying to punish him for this.

And this is also somebody that also holds the purse strings in some ways for the Department of Defense.

You know, I mean, in some ways, this has become a gift from Mark Kelly because it creates it allows him to pick a fight to be in a fight that he can win, that he can do well at.

He can show himself standing up against Pete Hegseth and the other members of the Defense Department and, you know, Trump administration officials.

And it's probably a pretty winnable fight.

And I mean, it really you're going to pick a fight with somebody who's in the Senate who also is not somebody who's running for election in a few months who might be vulnerable.

He's got a long he's got a nice term for a little while.

Yeah, Alisa, he could be a Democratic contender for president down the line.

The longer this last kind of in the public eyes, does that help him or hurt him?

I mean, I think time will tell with that, but it certainly doesn't seem like it's hurting him right now.

I mean, his suit alleges that his First Amendment rights were violated.

And as Paul said, that's going to be kind of an interesting legal battle and potentially a pretty winnable battle.

Obviously, that's going to be different than the court of public opinion.

But, you know, I think a lot of constituents anyway see that Mark Kelly is sort of rather than kind of maybe being scared off by such a censure, kind of fighting back and drawing attention to the strangeness sort of Hegseth's comments and the strangeness of the situation at large, as Paul mentions, as a sitting senator who's not up for, you know, an election right now.

So I do think it's, you know, Kelly's chances of becoming the presidential nominee have been discussed in the past.

And I certainly think this is going to be a factor.

This will be certainly interesting to watch in the months to come.

You know, Pima County has now closed their deal for land with Project Blue right on Christmas Eve, as they were expecting.

The town of Marana also has approved some rezoning for their proposed data center.

Katya, you've done some recent reporting on all of this.

What are you looking at moving forward for both sides of this debate?

I think with Project Blue, one of the outstanding questions is what is the water source for office operations for the center itself?

Even county officials still don't have the answer to that.

It must be an ADWR, Arizona Department of Water Resources approved water source.

Yes, the county did close on the land sale on Christmas Eve.

However, just yesterday, the No Data Center, No Desert Data Center Coalition just filed a lawsuit against Pima County officials.

So what do you think this will lead to kind of long term?

Sure.

So a lot of the recent attention has been on the developing Marana Hyperscale Data Center in December.

The Marana Planning and Zoning Commission unanimously voted to move this rezoning measure to the Marana Town Council under question is two 300 acre parcels of land.

And so it was left up to the Marana Town Council who also unanimously approved the rezoning.

Now this developing data center is also brought forth by the developers of Project Blue, Beale Infrastructure.

These Marana residents, they are repeating sort of the same questions that we heard over the summer about Project Blue.

How much energy will this use?

How much water?

However, this facility, based on what Beale has said, will be also air cooled.

So using little to no water.

Now the Marana residents have taken a few steps in their own hands.

One, including a political action committee sending around a petition for calling for a referendum, asking Marana voters to consider putting this on an upcoming ballot.

Additionally, a few Marana residents three have decided to run for Marana Town Council in the upcoming election.

Alisa, in the state of the state, Governor Hobbs seems to have backed off some of the tax breaks mentioned again, the water incentive.

Where is her positioning with all of this right now?

With data centers?

Yeah.

I mean, it seems like to me, and I'm new to the area, it seems like these are the chic thing.

Everybody wants one.

And there were a lot of incentives to get them started.

But now those are backing off some.

Yeah, I think now the chic thing is that people don't want them, at least here locally.

But obviously there are still pockets of support for these projects.

There was kind of an interesting thing that happened up in Phoenix for some time with former Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema up there sort of making the case for data centers and saying how much we needed the data centers.

She has also backed off.

We haven't really heard that much from her at least in 2026.

But I do think it's kind of posing this constant question of what's going to happen with data centers at large?

What's going to be the role that local governments have played and time and time again, especially in southern Arizona, those opposed to data centers like the No Desert Data Coalition have talked about what they've learned from cities like Chandler who have data centers already and have issues with them.

Some of those issues are with water.

Those issues are with the amount of electricity it takes and the potential rate hikes for customers.

We've also seen that Attorney General Kris Mayes has become involved in this conversation, looking at potential rate hikes more broadly with TEP, but also looking at how TEP is playing a role here with Project Blue, because again, the project has in its in its most recent form approved on Christmas Eve is going to partner with TEP to use its TEP electricity.

But as Katya mentioned, we just don't know where the water is going to come from.

Marana also has certain rules around how city water can be used.

So that's also going to, I assume, be another conversation about what's actually going to work out for these data centers.

It kind of reminds me a little bit more broadly of the conversation around mining.

You know, a lot of these projects are years and years off.

Yeah.

But we have conversations about what it's going to mean for residents, what sort of job opportunities it's going to bring in and have that ongoing debate.

Data centers feel like the sort of new version of that.

And Paul, quickly, it seems odd to me that there is no end user kind of identified for a lot of these projects.

What happens if we don't like who comes in there?

Well, I think that's one of the complications about these things is that we don't know what the end user is.

And in some ways, the idea that we know about the end user of a particular data center is in some ways that may be one of customers.

I mean, data centers might be used by hundreds of customers.

You know, I mean, it depends on the data center.

One of the things I think is very tricky is that, you know, the state was sort of open to having data centers because they're money makers.

I mean, you get a decent chunk of cash for the property development.

There's a lot of money to be made in data centers.

But until recently, we haven't seen the sort of hyperscale data centers that are coming now to Pima County.

And I think that has sort of changed how people look at the data centers because what you're talking about is not just a server farm with that are running websites, but you're talking about massive that you're using massive more powers, their massive more computers.

And the water usage is incredible.

Now, the response, this the Project Blue has said that they'll use air cooling, but that has a cost.

It means they're going to use significantly more electricity.

And that also means that we're going to use more water because you use water to make electricity in a lot of cases.

So there's big questions that haven't really been answered.

People are frustrated by the lack of those answers.

We don't know where the water is going to come from.

We don't know how the power is going to come from.

And this is on combination with both Trico Electric, which is in Marana and TEP have both asked for rate hikes.

So people are feeling this sudden increase in their budget, increase in their bill, which affects their budget.

And people are not comfortable with that because they don't see the benefit to them personally of data centers coming here.

OK.

Governor Hobbs in her state of the state.

I thought it was kind of interesting.

She kind of started it off talking about the reduced rhetoric in terms of violence across the country and here in the state.

That stood out for me just off the top.

Alisa, what stood out for you when you think about her state of the state?

I mean, I think we covered some of that already in terms of her kind of she did introduce the active management area.

We haven't heard about those in a little while.

But yeah, I mean, I think there were a lot of things that were that were covered.

But, you know, we're going to be looking at things like water, data centers, a lot of different issues in the future.

And, you know, I don't know that anything particularly stood out as unusual that she mentioned.

Paul, for you.

Sure.

One thing I think she talked about is affordability, which has become one of the major issues when we go back to the data centers.

This is why people are upset about it.

The idea is if the electricity rates go up, that means that they can't afford other things like, you know, rent and food.

And so there's this kind of constant conversation about these sorts of issues.

And you see how Hobbs is sort of tried to deal with the area states big issues.

State has a huge issue with water, how to deal with the Colorado River, how to deal with active water management areas, how to really solve the lack of water that's here.

And we seem to be in a now we have a very we have a very dry winter.

We haven't had any snow.

We don't have any snowpack in the Colorado basin.

So what does that mean for the long term?

That's going to be really tough.

The other thing she talked about a little bit, which is about dealing with the border.

She talked about, you know, does Operation Desert Guardian, which is kind of an extension of Doug Ducey's Border Strike Force.

We're really using DPS officers to go after drug smugglers, you know, human smugglers, people who are doing that kind of work.

So that's, I think, a continuation.

So in some ways, she's kind of continuing the work that she's been doing for the last couple of years.

But she's also going to make a really good case for herself because she's up for election in November.

OK.

The other thing that happened in the state this week, a former state attorney general Mark Brnovich passed away.

Danyelle, I know you worked and covered him a little bit.

And, you know, Paul, maybe you can chime in as well.

What do you think his legacy is going to be?

Well, you know, I mean, he he has a relatively long history in the state.

People know him pretty well from his time as attorney general.

But then also he ran for Senate and lost that he was a big backer of Trump during Trump's first term.

And, you know, I'm remembering at one point, I think it was towards the beginning of COVID, he sued the city of Tucson for their rules about not making exceptions to people getting the COVID vaccine.

And, you know, I think he'll be remembered a lot for his his support of a lot of Trump's policies.

But yeah, that's that's mainly what I think of when I think when I think about him.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, one thing to keep in mind is he also sort of started the race about the abortion law here.

I mean, you know, the the kind of resurrecting the 1864 law was in part set off by Mark Brnovich.

And, you know, that's kind of interesting because while the courts really started to rule where that 1864 law could be put into effect in part because of Brnovich's moves, that also ultimately ended up with a constitutional amendment that makes abortion part of the state law.

So it's interesting to see.

I mean, he was very strident about the border, for example.

He really pushed the idea that the state, if the Biden administration wasn't doing what they needed to do on the border, that the state could instead intervene and consider National Guard.

And we see that, you know, National Guard deployments, multiple National Guard deployments throughout the Ducey administration.

And now, you know, even even down under Hobbs.

You know, the other thing, too, is like but, you know, while he did a lot of Trump's policies, he was also really kind of pushed back when Trump tried to convince the state to give him this to give him Arizona.

You know, Arizona voted against Trump in 2020.

And, you know, that's that created, of course, a huge controversy.

And Brnovich kind of tried to thread a line in that he really pushed back in the idea that the state had, you know, should just give him the votes.

But he also, in part, I mean, he launched a election integrity unit that really spent a lot of time trying to figure out who voted at one point.

They were asking to see if prisoners had voted.

And, you know, one thing, too, is like the people who who voted in it shouldn't have, you know, this ultimately Pima County come back and said that happened because a lot of people were just confused.

But Brnovich kind of tried to thread that line and he tried to follow the law in a way where there are other attorney generals who would have just simply folded to what Trump wanted.

And there are other attorney generals who, of course, really fought him tooth and nail.

But he he he threaded an interesting line.

I think it was fairly successful because of that.

OK.

I think we saw the the integrity, the voting integrity stuff was interesting with Brnovich because I feel like it signaled this, you know, larger shift within the Ducey administration towards, you know, hardline border policies and looking into voter integrity issues.

There was an issue, I remember, in Yuma, where Brnovich was alleging that someone who carried ballots for her neighbors to the ballot box had conducted had done voting fraud because she voted for other people, that kind of thing, or investigating whether that was fraud or not.

So I do think it's yeah, it's kind of a complicated line, like you mentioned.

But, you know, that's that's true when it came to, you know, we all remember that phone call that Ducey declined from Trump when the votes were being counted.

So Brnovich certainly played a role there.

OK, we have just a little bit of time left here.

We have a new segment.

It is viewer questions.

You can send us an email.

You can post something on YouTube.

We'll pull one of them and read them each week.

And we're going to start off with one from David Dudash, who sent it to us via email.

And I'll just kind of summarize it quickly.

It deals with noise pollution here in the city.

He's called the police several times.

Feels like nothing's been done.

He says he's got a sister who lives over on the part of town near Rita Ranch and can hear racing on Houghton.

Is there anything that anything can be done, Paul?

I mean, I think this has been sort of a long term problem.

I mean, you know, going back into the 90s, there was there was street racing in the 90s.

So through the 2000s, there was people drag racing up and down.

You know, that's been a problem in more recent years.

I mean, Tucson Police Department has tried really hard to go after people who are doing street takeovers, who are doing drag racing to do more enforcement and combining that with also with the Pima County Sheriff's deputies using the airplanes, using other equipment to kind of like identify people who are doing this.

But it's a tough problem.

There are only so many cops in this town.

There are only so many places they can be at any given time.

There's lots and lots of activity happening.

And so like things will slip through.

And I think that's you know, that the TPD is now tried really this idea of looking at the issues of public safety and trying to identify and put more officers to that.

But it's a tough problem.

It's a big city.

All right.

That's going to have to wrap it up for us today.

Katya Mendoza, thank you very much.

Danyelle Khmara, thank you very much.

Alisa Reznick, thank you very much.

And Paul Ingram, thank you very much.

And thank you all for joining us here.

I'm David Lee.

This is The Press Room.

We'll see you next week.