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It's the home stretch before the midterm elections.

There's more controversial activity at the border.

And answering curiosity about who gets the rural Arizona vote in November.

Those stories and more are coming up on The Press Room, starting now.

Hello and welcome to The Press Room.

I'm Tony Perkins, and I'm joined by this week's panel of journalists, L.M.

Boyd with AZPM News.

John Washington from Lookout.

And independent journalist, Susan Barnett.

Thanks for being with us.

The midterm elections are a few weeks away, and the threat of political violence made headlines in Tucson.

L.M.

it was revealed that Pima County law enforcement responded to two incidents regarding Democratic congressional candidate JoAnna Mendoza.

Of course, she's running in the 6th congressional district race against incumbent Republican Juan Ciscomani.

What happened there?

Yeah, so this was reported out by my colleague, Kieran Hadley.

Law enforcement investigated two separate incidents involving Mendoza.

First involved an online message that law enforcement characterized as threatening.

They located the suspect, and that suspect was then hospitalized for mental health concerns.

It also turned out that they had an active warrant against them for domestic violence-related charges.

But as far as we know, they have not been charged in connection to these threatening messages.

About a week later, there was a separate incident where an individual, an unwanted individual was at the campaign office.

They were escorted off the premises.

No charges there.

But, I mean, these kinds of incidents aren't unique to Mendoza.

We've also seen, there was a Tucson man who was accused of sending threats to the White House, so it's definitely part of a broader political trend.

John, campaign offices have received threatening messages in the past, but has the threat of political violence become something we're having to talk about more seriously these days?

I think so.

I mean, this campaign hasn't been the most negative, but those two candidates have been trading pretty negative accusatory barbs throughout the season.

And if you look at the governor's race, how many times each of those candidates have accused each other of protecting pedophiles, for example.

In the broader context, President Trump has faced numerous assassination attempts, and there's been national reporting showing that public officials are facing increased threats throughout the country.

L.M., you know, we talked about that second incident, and the question also is what JoAnna Mendoza has had to say about this.

I mean, she expressed some compassionate words for this individual who was hospitalized.

She said that she'd be praying for them, that she wishes them well, but she did point to that broader trend that I was talking about, where politicians should not have to be dealing with these kinds of threats, but they are the reality.

Now, how do we cover these kinds of incidents brings up sort of an ethical question.

More coverage about this puts it in the newspapers or on the radio or in digital media and encourages more of the same.

Susan, is this an increasing part of our coverage?

I mean, I think it has to be.

These kinds of attacks are part of a broader trend, and we know them because we see them on the news, we read them, we experience them.

So I think that's part of the conversation when it comes to politics and government now is highlighting the increasing polarization and how that's been leading to people actually trying to take action.

Yeah, I mean, I think it is part of our ethical duty to report these things.

I mean, we are in an era of increased political polarization.

People deserve to know what that means and what that looks like.

And people actually face very real threats or attempts and even murders.

I mean, we had Charlie Kirk, of course, Arizona- based, killed last year in Utah.

And this is a growing concern for a lot of people All right.

Sticking with politics and political news, Tucson is just a small part of the Sixth Congressional District.

Rural voters are expected to play a big role in the outcome between Mendoza and Ciscomani.

Susan, your story about the district and small communities where the issues are mostly often deeply local, the economy, health care, water and border security, you wrote that despite their political differences, rural voters, some of them, share a common frustration.

In your story, what did you find out?

Yeah, so I went and I visited Benson, Willcox and Safford, and I wanted to just talk to the everyday person.

So what I did was I went and posted up outside of a Walmart parking lot and I caught people while they were putting their groceries away.

And when you do these kinds of interviews, you kind of prepare yourself for rejection because people don't want to talk to you, especially about elections or politics.

But the first person I talked to was Stephen and Nancy Smith, and they were very eager to talk to me.

They talked to me for about 30 minutes and they kind of started off with the national politics of, you know, their disdain for local and national politicians and how they don't feel like they're there for the people's best interests.

And this is something that I heard across Willcox and Safford is people's disdain towards politicians once they get into office and actually doing what they promised they would say.

And so I talked to them and they had voted for Donald Trump in the past three elections.

They said that this upcoming midterm election, they weren't planning on voting because they were so upset that they didn't feel like their needs were being met.

And, you know, that's something I've heard a lot as well.

So things like affordability, the price of gas, the price of goods.

Nancy told me that now there's been times where she's had to put things back on the shelf because she doesn't know if she can afford it in her budget.

And they rely on social security disability and an inheritance from Nancy's husband, which who was a service veteran.

And they're really struggling to make ends meet.

They connected the affordability crisis to the war in Iran, the tariffs.

So they had that sense of what is the government doing for me?

And, you know, I also talked to a woman who I'm forgetting her name, but she blamed the economy on Biden said we were still trying to recover.

And so she she's a registered Republican.

And, you know, she had that sentiment that these are things that are still carrying over.

And I think I believe that's also something that Republican candidate Juan Ciscomani has mentioned in the Clean Elections debate.

He said that this is Biden's economy that we're still trying to recover from.

Things like that, but also more so than affordability and the disdain for politicians.

Healthcare was a big topic that we talked about.

There were some people that are on Medicare or on Medicaid and they are afraid that there are going to be cuts to their health care.

And because of the One Big Beautiful Bill act that is slashing healthcare across the country.

So those are some of the things that we talked about.

Also talked to a rancher about water.

That's always a big issue.

And that's something that both JoAnna Mendoza and Juan Ciscomani have campaigned on as being one of their priorities and so many issues and in a rural district really going out there and seeing what people had to say.

I spoke to a woman who didn't know that there was going to be an election coming up.

And so really making sure that this information is accessible to rural voters so that they can make that informed decision and feel, you know, empowered when they go to the polls with the information that they have.

Susan, you mentioned people being like so willing to talk to you early and that's something I've definitely experienced.

I love going out to rural parts of southern Arizona because folks are actually excited to talk to me rather than, you know, declining an interview.

But yeah, no, I've spoken to spoken to voters in Sierra Vista in Safford and rural voters are not a monolith.

But it is interesting to see some consistency between like folks that we've been talking to gas, cost of living, the war in Iran and even finding folks that don't plan on voting because they have that voter apathy or that fatigue.

John, it's a really interesting thing about this is that many of the rural voters in the Sixth Congressional District, they're miners, they're farmers, yet there's millions and millions of dollars being thrown into this race to get their votes.

Yeah, I mean, I think what's interesting here is how much of a factor these people will play in the election outcomes.

I mean, these are some really tight races that not just CD 6, but the governor's race and potentially some other top ticket races in Arizona and they could be decided by people who decide to stay at home or as you mentioned, Susan, people who don't even know that there's an election.

So you think of how much money is being spent on reaching out to them, who these people who feel politically abandoned in this moment.

All right.

Let's talk about a scandal at the Arizona State Prison in Marana.

It's a sexual abuse scandal that has developed into a much bigger story in recent weeks.

John, what is this story about and how deep is the trouble prison leadership finds itself in?

Sure.

So this is about a former prison in Marana, a state prison that was sold by Arizona to a private corporation MTC just over a year ago.

I think before getting into the details of these allegations, it's important to zoom out a little bit and understand the broader context.

I think what we're seeing right now could best be described as something like an infrastructural blitzkrieg by DHS.

There are two new detention camps that they're trying to build: One in Surprise.

This one in Arizona, they're spending $1.2 billion on building out an already operating camp in Florence.

They're exploring the possibility of building three new border patrol stations in Southern Arizona.

One, to garrison 500 agents just south of Tucson in the Three Points area.

They are doubling the size of a permanent checkpoint between Tucson and Nogales on I-19 and they're building, spending billions constructing border wall.

So in Arizona, in Marana rather, they are trying to open this new facility as an ICE detention camp.

And there is a mandatory prison rape elimination act reporting that they need to publicly post all even allegations of sexual abuse or sexual harassment.

A whistleblower named Alex Randall who formerly worked at the state prison came to me and told me about one allegation of serial sexual abuse that had been happening in the prison.

And when I looked into it, what I found was actually far worse than just that individual incident.

And we were able to find, through the state's own records, three allegations of sexual abuse, none of which were reported by MTC on that mandatory prison rape elimination act audit.

And when I went to the company and I went to the town of Marana and I went to the state and asked them about it, no one could explain why it didn't appear.

And yet we see this as a place that is going to be run by the same company and is going to be housing people who are serially abused in immigration camps.

And a lot of the residents and a lot of the people who are against this camp have been pushing back and are truly alarmed by what the past management has been able to do and how they've been able to not protect people who are under their care.

And the details of this story in Lookout, published in partnership with The Intercept, they're really difficult to get through in some instances.

Prisoners testifying about food they had to create on their own?

Yeah, so the sexual abuse was only one part of the story that I was able to uncover.

Soaring temperatures inside during the summer, people barely able to stay cool enough to survive, not enough food to eat.

And some former prisoners took to fattening up prairie dogs so that they could get some extra calories and some meat that they weren't afforded otherwise.

Really alarming conditions that we were able to see.

And of course this story has significance because as John said, this prison is slated to become a detention center for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

You know, conditions at these facilities everywhere have been in question no matter where they're located.

Yeah, we've seen reports like this from organizations like the Florence Project which released a report about the conditions in detention centers like Eloy, like Florence.

They cite overcrowding, medical neglect, food and water quality, and then you reach out to DHS books people and they tell you that these claims are "categorically false" and that these centers are regularly audited and inspected by external agencies.

But then you also see, you know, earlier this year the Trump administration put a stop to the Office of Immigration Detention Ombudsman, which is in charge of independently investigating things like detainee deaths, things like employee misconduct, and also making sure that there is accessibility to medical facilities in these detention centers.

And it comes at a time where you've seen, like John said, you've seen an increase in funding, like a historic level of funding for border security for detention centers.

And so it's kind of hard to put those two things right next to each other.

Now in Lochiel there's a protest to protect cottonwood trees from border wall construction.

It's turned into a border wall crackdown, a border patrol crackdown, and dozens of arrests.

John, there were some pictures that you published on the Lookout website.

What was it like there and what's it like to cover that story?

It was really tense.

You know, I went down to Lochiel a number of times.

This is a very small town, nearly a ghost town in pretty rural San Rafael Valley, southeast of Tucson.

And just under two weeks ago, early Monday morning, there was a religious ceremony that was being conducted that was interrupted by hundreds of very heavily outfitted border patrol agents, many of them armed.

They violently arrested, as you said, dozens of protesters.

And in very short time, they actually arrested them on private property.

They had no warrant and they very quickly then knocked down this ancient cottonwood tree that these land defenders and activists had been protecting and been actually up in the branches of the tree for over 70 days.

And so after this tree was knocked down very swiftly, some of these protesters scrambled across the border and set up a new tree set on the Mexican side.

And that lasted a few days until, with the help of Mexican authorities, border patrol was able to extract the person from the tree.

They were then held in, this is a US citizen who was held for over 72 hours in an immigration detention camp in Florence and has just been released as of yesterday as we're reporting this.

A lot of parts to this.

There's the environment, there's the trees, the purpose of building a border wall in that location anyway.

Just west of there, on the Tohono O'odham Nation, you know there's a sovereign nation who had been vehemently against further border wall construction there.

DHS contractors have tagged over a thousand saguaros to be chopped down or transported.

2021, the Tohono O'odham Nation decreed legal personhood on these saguaros.

These are sacred plants.

In the time that we have left, let me ask you some questions about the election coming up.

What are some of the contests that you're looking ahead to covering or paying attention to closely ahead of the midterms?

Well, we talked a lot about CD6.

I think it'll be really interesting to see voters think that Ciscomani has earned another term.

It's fascinating to see himself, like distance himself from Trump.

We know that Trump is holding a rally in Bullhead City Thursday.

Meanwhile, Ciscomani posted on his Instagram that he was voted number one most bipartisan.

No mention of Trump's visit to Arizona.

So that's been interesting to see.

And I'm also fascinated by the attorney general's race.

In 2022, Kris Mayes won by 210 votes.

So when we talk to voters who are unsure about voting, I think about those 210 votes.

And I think if Warren Petersen were to win, that would completely do a 180 on our relationship with the White House.

Susan?

I'm looking at something that's seemingly like not a controversial thing, but we've seen a lot of grassroots organizations stand up against it, which is Prop 142, the TEP franchise.

We've seen a lot of people from the city government stand behind TEP.

You know, citing the $2 million annual investment into the community.

But then we've also seen community grassroots community organizers go out, knocking door to door, trying to get people to pledge to vote no.

So, it's a 25 year franchise agreement with TEP.

There was a similar one a couple of years ago that voters denied because it included a fee raise.

And so now it doesn't include that fee raise, and it includes a lot more things that voters may find attractive, like that investment.

So really interested to see what happens there.

How about you, John?

Well, you know, there is a lot to focus on right now.

Another one of the propositions that we're looking at at Lookout is Prop 318, which is the transgender restrictions on playing in school sports or accessing bathrooms.

And my colleague, Lorenzo Gomez, came out with a really interesting story today about the person behind that proposition.

All right.

Well, that'll do it for us.

We'll be back with a look at the upcoming midterm elections from the perspective of University of Arizona students, right after this.

Welcome back.

Gen Z voters in Arizona provided some surprises in the 2024 general election.

Hundreds of thousands of college students in Arizona have the ability to tip some tight contests in 2026.

Here to talk about that with us are Rachel Kietzman and Madeleine Slawny, both students at the University of Arizona.

Thanks for being with us.

Rachel, many young people, as it turns out, are not registered to vote in Arizona, and they aren't taking that first step.

Why not?

What did you find out?

When I talked with people, a lot of what was unique was some of them didn't have a reason, actually.

They weren't even sure that the midterms were coming up.

But a lot of people just, it wasn't a top priority for them.

They thought that if the topics don't affect them directly, that they don't need to go out and vote and get registered to vote.

Now, in your story published on the Arizona Public Media website, you talked to students and to University of Arizona professor Spencer Lindsay.

Let's hear a little bit about, from your story and what they had to say.

"Sometimes it does feel like the news and politicians can be so sensationalized.

Sometimes it feels so extreme, like the world is falling apart."

(Rachel) This frustration with politics directly affects whether or not young people are showing up at the polls.

Spencer Lindsay explains.

"People can get involved in politics early on, have this candidate that they particularly like, and then maybe they're dissatisfied with them.

And that causes kind of, you know, a little bit of a disillusionment with the process."

We heard one student say there's the feeling the world is falling apart.

Now, you wrote that there are some issues that are causing young people not to care at all.

There's been apathy before, but what's different now?

I think what's different now is that politics and the political divide between the two parties is just getting more extreme.

And a lot of young people don't want to identify with one party or the other.

And if they're not really identifying with one of those groups, they're just not wanting to vote, period, in this election cycle.

They don't want to choose, and they're tired of keeping up with all of these big political events happening.

And you've found that when it comes to Gen Z, there's something that's different from previous generations.

Young voters don't like to be labeled.

Tell me about that.

Yeah, like I kind of mentioned, if they're not exactly fitting into what it means to be a Democrat, exactly what it means to be a Republican, they don't want to label themselves at all.

And when they don't label themselves, they aren't sure how to vote, who to vote for.

And I think it's just that students aren't wanting to take the time to do further research besides just, "Oh, this candidate is a part of this party.

This candidate is a part of this one."

So they're just not voting because they're not sure who to vote for and don't want to put themselves in a box.

And Madeleine, you talked to students about how they felt about generative artificial intelligence and its impact on the election.

Let's hear a piece of that story.

(Madeleine) Generative AI's growing popularity has also been followed by an equally growing series of concerns.

And that divide is informing how some young people plan to vote this November.

"I would definitely be looking towards someone's stance on AI on whether I would vote for them or not.

Especially here in Arizona where we don't have a ton of water to spare."

"I have friends, family that have been laid off as the workforce has kind of changed as far as what is needed with the new capabilities of AI."

Now Madeleine, you talked to people and wrote that for many young people, politicians are lagging far behind in the race against ever evolving AI technologies.

Are students afraid that the people that they're being told to elect to lead the country just don't get it?

Yeah, I really think that is from both sides.

That is what I saw was the biggest concern about AI.

For the people who, you know, wanted to see AI slow in its progression, there was concerns that politicians aren't paying attention, that they don't understand the harm AI can bring.

But even from people who want to see AI progress further, there's concerns that politicians don't exactly understand how that process can be done ethically and with concern for safety.

Younger adults seem to especially realize that artificial intelligence is going to be a big part of their future.

But do they feel it is a threat or a benefit to their personal future?

See, that really depends on who we're talking to.

There's definitely both sides to that issue where there's some people who believe particularly in the sciences in the world of technology.

AI can have those massive benefits, but there particularly is also concerns of how is AI going to impact the job market, for instance.

That was one of the biggest concerns I also talked with people about and how that's going to impact their personal job futures.

Next question is for each of you.

Madeleine, I'll ask you first.

Graduating university students were once always told how big the world was going to be when they were going to leave college.

Now, technology has that sort of narrowed the scope of that world.

Do young people feel discouraged that it's not what they were promised?

Did you find out from your interviews that technology to them isn't making things better?

I think for certain, especially talking with people who went into computer science, particularly in the early 2000s, there was this idea that there was going to be a whole bunch of computer science jobs and computer science openings.

But now a lot of people coming out, graduating, they're finding that a lot of these positions are now closed and taken up by artificial intelligence.

Rachel, what have you been able to find out?

Basically, these stories that you're doing regarding the election, is technology a benefit or not for people who are graduating from college during this year and next semester?

Well, I think there are so many great uses of AI and I think a lot of younger people acknowledge those.

I think what's hard right now is a lot of the entry-level jobs that have previously been held by recent college graduates, they're being taken over by AI and automated processes.

So younger people are having a harder time finding jobs once they graduate and I think it's scaring a lot of young people and it's making them feel very strongly about AI data centers and everything involving it.

Alright.

Really interesting insights from Rachel Kietzman and Madeleine Slawny, both journalism students at the University of Arizona.

Thanks a lot for being with us.

- Thank you.

And that'll do it for The Press Room.

Thank you for being with us and we'll see you next week.

♪ UPBEAT MUSIC ♪ Support comes from Pyramid Federal Credit Union, serving Southern Arizona for more than 96 years, offering personalized solutions to help members reach financial goals.

More information is available at pyramidfcu.com.

This has been an original production of AZPM News.