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 files suit against the U.S.

House for delaying the swearing-in of Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva.

Plus, the U of A rejects the Trump administration's education compact, but offers a potential alternative.

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

(upbeat music) Welcome to The Press Room, I'm Steve Goldstein.

Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva, who won a special election to serve Arizona's 7th Congressional District, still has not been sworn into her seat, despite assurances by Speaker Mike Johnson that it would happen.

But as Speaker Johnson continues to delay the swearing-in, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes took action this week.

She filed suit against the U.S.

House of Representatives.

AZPM news reporter, L.M.

Boyd, has been covering the story and joins me, thanks for being here.

Thanks for having me, Steve.

Okay, so Kris Mayes, you had a chance to actually speak with her in person.

She's clearly agitated about this.

What was the conversation like?

How would you assess the tone?

Yeah, well, we heard her last week give a deadline to Speaker Johnson.

The deadline was not met.

So we caught up with her at a town hall in Saddlebrooke on Monday.

We asked her where she was at in the process of filing.

She didn't seem agitated.

She honestly seemed calm.

She told us she had reviewed a draft complaint and was expecting to file that day or the following day, so Tuesday.

Okay, and here's a cut of tape of Attorney General Mayes explaining why she did it.

You also hear from Adelita Grijalva herself.

It is completely unacceptable for the people of the 7th Congressional District to be deprived of representation.

That's called taxation without representation, and we fought a revolutionary war over that.

Adelita Grijalva won her election by more than 70% of the vote.

Now four weeks have gone by for Mike Johnson to swear her in.

Those offices were closed on September 23rd, and I can't open up any other offices until I have a budget and have the authority to be able to enter into an agreement backed by our federal government.

L.M., let me go to the Adelita Grijalva part of this.

The fact that this district has not had representation for such a long time, how much of an issue does that become in the various conversations you had this week?

Yes, so I spoke with Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva.

There were a number of issues that she is eager to address.

We've seen flooding in Southern Arizona.

There are questions about access to health benefits, veterans benefits.

The lack of representation really exacerbates the issues that come with this shutdown.

Federal employees are unable to work.

Families are struggling to access federally funded services.

I've even seen that county leaders are currently facing questions about how to supplement the funding for WIC.

That's a service that brings food and nutrition for women and children.

So the concerns are there and Grijalva says she doesn't have access to a budget.

She's unable to work in an official capacity.

So let's go back to Attorney General Mayes in this lawsuit.

What precedents does she cite in deciding to file this suit?

So there's this interesting case, if you're a legal nerd, Powell v. McCormack.

Mayes references this a lot in the lawsuit.

This is a case from the 60's where Adam Powell, a reelected congressman, is accused of a number of things, lying to Congress, misappropriat funds, but he's reelected.

House Speaker at the time, John McCormack, would not swear him in.

The US Supreme Court ruled in Powell's favor that he met the qualifications as an elected representative and the Speaker could not interfere with that.

Interesting, okay.

Let's do a brief timeline on this.

Let's compress it as much as we can because Raul Grijalva passed away.

We had the primary election.

We had the election that, as you mentioned, Adelita Grijalva won, and now we've been sort of waiting this out.

What are some of the key points in the timeline you think people should remember?

Yes, going back to March, the late Representative Raul Grijalva died due to complications of cancer treatment.

That month, his daughter, Adelita Grijalva, announces her intent to run in the special election to replace his seat.

We had that special election September 23rd.

She appeared to win in about a two to one margin, but we see House Speaker Mike Johnson say he's gonna wait for the election to be certified before swearing her in.

Now, that is typical, but we've also seen cases where we are not waiting for the certification.

October 1st marks the beginning of the government shutdown.

October 14th, the Secretary of State certifies Grijalva's election the same day.

Attorney General Kris Mayes issues a letter to Speaker Mike Johnson threatening to sue if Grijalva is not sworn in and gives him that two-day deadline.

This past Monday, like I said, we caught up with Mayes at the town hall where she was gearing up to file that suit, and now we're at that point.

So finally, as we're taping this on Thursday afternoon, Adelita Grijalva still has not been sworn in, but give us a few seconds on what could be next here.

Yes, what's next?

That's important.

We have not seen Speaker Johnson budging yet.

Wednesday, Senate failed to advance a GOP measure that would pay federal employees, military members, contractors who are continuing to work.

Senate also failed to end the shutdown.

So Attorney General Mayes says she's hoping that the judge acts quickly with this lawsuit and is asking that the judge, him or herself, is the one to swear in Grijalva, and that's if the government shutdown doesn't end before then.

Okay, L.M.

Boyd, AZPM News.

Thanks very much for being here.

Thank you.

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And welcome back to The Press Room.

I'm Steve Goldstein.

Talk about more of the week's news in Southern Arizona.

I'm joined by John Washington of AZ Luminaria, Paul Ingram of the Tucson Sentinel, and Prerana Sannappanavar of the Arizona Daily Star.

Thank you all for being here, guys.

Paul, let's start off with Kris Mayes finally, I should say finally, filing suit, although the finally should really be marked more with how Speaker Mike Johnson, sort of more excuses to keep Representative-elect Grijalva from going.

Any surprise that the Attorney General actually went ahead and did this?

Because Mike Johnson himself is calling this A circus, publicity stunt, red herring, et cetera.

No, I mean, I think it's something that she said she was gonna do, and something that they took a little bit of time to put together, but there's a very clear legal challenge that's built into this.

You know, one thing I think a few people had said that she's suing Mike Johnson.

She's not actually suing Mike Johnson.

She's suing the House, the House Clerk and the House Sergeant at Arms, essentially saying that there has to be some structure, they have to give her the oath of office, or they have to create a situation where anyone who's allowed to get an oath can give it to her so she can start serving the public.

You know, it's been, she won in September.

It's been weeks.

Mike Johnson has given several kind of deadlines, which he immediately blew past.

He said, "I can't do it because the House isn't in session, but the House isn't in session because of a fight over the budget.

And what this means is, is that, when only do we not have, we don't have representation, most of us here in southern Arizona, but also it means that during the budget battle, if that comes back to the House, it means that there's one less vote.

So it's pretty clear why Mike Johnson doesn't want her to be in office.

There's one less Democratic vote he has to worry about.

But when push comes to shove, this is something that Mayes had to do.

She said she was gonna do it and she's doing it.

John, it just seems frankly absurd, the fact that people are not getting representation, but also Mike Johnson has moved the goalposts over and over again on this.

Yeah, one of his arguments was that Mayes doesn't have jurisdiction to file this suit.

When you think about what a attorney general's role is, however, one is to be a counselor to the state government and the other is to advocate in the public interest.

And you have, the number's been cited a lot in this argument, 813,000 some people who are not being represented by an unfilled seat.

So, I mean, that is about a 10th of the entire state population.

I would say that that's pretty clearly in the public interest.

And now we are inching up towards one of the longest delays between the election and between a swearing in.

I think yesterday, Johnson was saying that the first day that Congress is back in session, then he will go walk down the hall or wherever and swear in.

But we've seen some commitments not being upheld so far.

So we'll see if that actually happens.

Yeah, Paul, the trust issue is a big one because yes, it would make sense because Speaker Johnson is now at this point able to characterize it as maybe hide behind the shutdown.

But once the shutdown ends, whenever that is, if he doesn't make that one of his first actions, that's going to call, that's really gonna make people even more nervous, right?

Oh, I think certainly so.

I mean, it really shows.

I mean, he seated two Republicans who won in a Florida special election.

He seated them immediately.

At one point said it was because their families were here, which sort of seems like what if you bring your wife and husband, kids, spouses, grandma, then you get seated, but otherwise you don't, which is not something that's in the Constitution.

Something that I think he kind of-- There's not a line in there about family?

I feel like he may have made it up.

And so he just hasn't.

And then he said at one point that they were gonna go on on Tuesday, they were gonna do it.

There was another deadline he set and both of those have passed.

So yeah, I mean, if they think at this point for Mayes, if Mayes doesn't have jurisdiction, the question would be who does?

And if certainly then who's allowed to sue the house to force them to do this?

I mean, I think at this point, he should just let her take the oath of office.

He's already given the key to the office.

She can start hiring staff.

She can start doing the things to represent her constituency.

And he's keeping her from doing that for reasons that aren't really that clear when it comes down to it.

Yeah, I think a interesting framing that Mayes has said about why she's bringing the suit is the invocation of taxation without representation.

Like really trying to sort of pull on the national sympathies.

And we'll see if it actually works, but yeah, right now Grijalva as she frames it is basically spinning her wheels there, not able to use the power that she's been elected to wield and represent Southern Arizona.

Well, and unfortunately, and I'm gonna paint myself as naive on this, but don't call me naive because I'll feel sensitive about this, but it does feel like if this were, if our system were a little bit different than it's been in the past decade, I'm not saying that Republicans and Democrats didn't always fight, of course they did.

But this feels like if Kris Mayes were still a Republican and had filed this suit, then maybe there would somehow feel like there's more heft to it, like she's representing the state, but oh no, she's just a Democrat trying to advocate for a Democrat.

Yeah, that is a sort of an interesting counterfactual to imagine right now.

I think that if they're counting votes, I don't know that that would really change the calculus.

And it seems like, well, a lot of people have been saying that that's the underlying reason why they're delaying this swearing in, so she won't cast that ultimate vote for the Epstein Files.

Yeah, Paul, last thing on this, and this happens to be because of course, I still spend a lot of time in Phoenix and there's a Phoenix radio station that had Representative Juan Ciscomani on, who as we know doesn't really wanna talk to those of us down here, but he was very quick to blame the shutdown on the Democrats.

He said, oh, Adelita Grijalva, I have a lot of respect for her, but no, but Speaker Johnson's doing the right thing.

Does that, again, put Juan Ciscomani in kind of a weird position to say that he is, I think he expected to work with Adelita Grijalva, he's not working with her yet, and that he's still sort of advocating for, I guess I'm just sort of wondering, what do you think his strategy is on this?

Well, it seems in part like he's just not really willing to stick his neck out for anyone at this point.

He really just wants to do whatever Mike Johnson wants him to do.

He's very much, he's being a good soldier in this about carrying forward, well, it's because of the shutdown.

And the thing is, I mean, Congress is allowed to seat Grijalva even if the government is shut down.

The government shut down because there was a failure, they didn't pass a continuing resolution.

Keep in mind, they didn't pass a budget.

They haven't also passed a continuing resolution, which is gonna run out soon anyways.

So this is something that they've sort of said, and I think what it comes back to is like, Congress is increasingly incapable of doing the kind of basic work of passing budgets, of putting people into their membership when they're supposed to be, of doing the oath of office, doing all the things that we expect Congress to do without much effort.

And we're not getting any of those things done.

So I actually think it really, it should land on Johnson.

He really is not doing the business of the House and doesn't seem to be able to wrangle that effort to actually accomplish things for the American people.

Prerana, an awkward segue, but another case where Arizona is being affected by Washington, U of A President Garimella finally made an official response to this education compact offered by the Trump administration.

So was this actually an official no, U of A doesn't wanna play ball?

How would you characterize it with your reporting?

So I think there's been a range of reactions.

There have been people who have said that this was a clear no, and obviously there's a lot of encouragement and a lot of appreciation for the fact that he did say no to certain things.

And just going through President Garimella's response to Education Secretary, it's started out very appreciative of the efforts that are being made to kind of further higher education and saying that we do believe in your vision, we do believe in the same priorities that you do, because the U of A has done a lot of similar stuff to what the federal administrati wants.

Like they froze in state tuition for Arizona students.

They cut administrative spending by 22%.

They've reworked their enrollment strategy to kind of focus on in-state students, Arizona students, partnerships with community colleges.

So he mentioned all of these measures in the letter, but he did say that he does not believe in good research, innovative research, coming out of anything that is not a merit-based federal funding research system.

So he was like, we wanna compete and we are willing to compete and the U of A is going to compete.

So we don't want any preferentia treatment.

So he did say a hard no to that, but he was also, he was the seventh president to respond to the compact.

Nine universities were first invited and he was the only president so far who has responded with a stateme of principles.

He's the first one who's kind of opened that door to negotiation, which is why I think that kind of murky space exists where some people are saying that it wasn't a hard no.

I wanted you to dig in on that phrase, statement of principles.

How can we define what that actually means from President Garimella's point of view?

So I think a lot of people, I've heard reaction that it's very good that the president has put forth principles that are the foundation of the U of A, but at the same time, I do think that it kind of reads like a response to specific things that the compact was asking for.

There's talk about hiring admissions, there's talk about in-state tuition or just tuition in general, there's talk about the internati students.

So it is kind of a response, but at the same time, also principles that the U of A stands for.

Go ahead, John.

It's hard for me to hear this conversation and not think about some of the context and think about Linda McMahon's past.

I mean, she was the executive of a world wrestling federation.

Her business was theatrical aggression.

She is the head of a department that the Trump administration is very openly trying to dismantle.

She herself called a few days ago or last week, showing that during the government shutdown, department education hasn't been operating, proving its obsolescence.

So this is who the president of University of Arizona is negotiating with right now.

At the same time, I mean, the Trump administration has been very open and vocal about retribution and threatening political opponents.

So how do you say no without exactly saying no or without sort of painting yourself as a target for this administration or for a department that might not exist?

It's a very interesting sort of a series of questions that the president had to answer.

And I think he tried to navigate as best he could.

Yeah, Paul, that retribution one is a cogent point.

I think that's a really important point.

I mean, that's one of the things that was worried about when people were saying, should the U of A say no or yes, one of the things was that the U of A did not have the money to fight this.

It doesn't have the endowment that say Harvard does to fight this.

And we've seen like Columbia immediately did what the administration wants, even though Columbia has a huge endowment and really could have fought it legally and could have survived not having federal funds for a while.

I think the other thing that's sort of interesting is how much the other universities have largely said no, but they also all kind of agree with certain principles.

So one of the things that's sort of weird about the document is that they put it out here with this idea of like, this is almost the final document and we're not really negotiating.

And then of course, all the university says essentially, well, then no.

And now they're like, well, we'll negotiate on some terms.

So I think Garimella had the benefit of kind of coming in last after most people said no, abjectly, absolutely not, or maybe we agree with some principles, but we can't do this.

And he was able to say, well, I'm willing to negotiate with some of these things.

What I think is most interesting is that the U of A said, we will not take specific favors.

We won't take a large chunk of money.

The Regents Professor said, one of the things with this document is it's supposed to be a quid pro quo, but we don't know what we're gonna get.

And so what are we even agreeing to?

We're gonna give up a lot of our independence in exchange for what?

And I think that's one of the things the White House has done a really poor job in setting this up.

They've set up this document where a lot of people found it really pretty easy to say no.

Garimella, he's kind of straddling the fence a bit.

He's sort of showing maybe I willing to negotiate on some things, but with his principles, he kind of shows some of his cards.

There's certain things he's not willing to give up.

And that's what I think people wanted from him.

Prerana, one thing I've had interesting as well is that there was the letter that President Garimella sent to Linda McMahon in the Department of Education, but then the statement that he put out to the university and the public.

Do we know how different those may have been as far as wording?

I don't think they're extremely different, but one notable difference did jump out at me.

And I do wanna say that whatever was in the letter to the university was in the statement of principles, but in the specific letter itself to the education secretary, he did not stand up for academic freedom in the same strong way that he did in the university letter.

And I think that's something that people have pointed out, although the statement of principles has one specific section about freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and also kind of talks about how the university cannot stop people from expressing opinions in their personal capacities.

But at the same time, also did not put it in as strong of a way as a hard note, which is why I think there's so much kind of like push and pull with this, because Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Horne, he did talk about how it's clearly, quote unquote, not a no.

And I'm so happy that the University of Arizona, and he also mentioned ASU, Arizona State University is also in talks with the White House about the compact, and is kind of expressing his appreciation that, okay, I'm so glad that these Arizona universities are negotiating.

So he's putting a different spin on it.

And then there's faculty chair, Leila Hudson, who said that, I do think it's a no, but I'm very happy.

It goes along with the universit principles to negotiate, so we're happy that they're negotiating.

So it's just kind of interesting to see how this is gonna play out.

I think there's more to come to the story.

John?

Yeah, I would say, we've been talking about Garimella standing on principals and defending those principals, but there's also a sense of defending actual students and the student body and the faculty as well.

In the compact, it was that the university would have to comply with demands about, especially foreign students, international students, and give information or give incidents that they are engaged with to the Department of Justice.

So it's not just about these abstract ideas of freedom of education or freedom of speech, but actually about protecting the students here.

And that is one thing that I think a lot of people on the campus are happy that he did not concede to.

Yeah, Prerana, final thing on this, and this comes back to your reporting about U of A partnering with Chinese schools and whatnot.

And you had so many quotes in one of your pieces, but one of them had to do with, not sure exactly what, was it the leader involved with that connection, the connection between U of A and the Chinese schools, and he was surprised that President Garimella came out this strongly based on the action he had taken about international students, et cetera?

Yeah, I think it was interesting for people to kind of see how fast he buckled down.

And it was, again, there's been so much talk about the fact that it wasn't law, it wasn't legislation, it was just a committee report.

So I think lots of people are also interested in seeing how Garimella kind of operates on this.

And even just going back to the statement of principals, the international students part of it, he did say that because the compact did have a portion about submitting ideological information about foreign students and kind of vetting them on the basis of that.

And I think there was kind of an address to that in the statement of principals where he said, we're not going to do that, we're gonna do that according to FERPA, and we're gonna do that according to legal laws, we're not going to just give out information about international students.

So I do think that he is taking a stand, also because he was an international student himself, half of his education was in India, and then he came here for grad school.

So it is kind of like hitting close to home for him, because I think it's about future Suresh Garimella's, who are being talked about.

Paul, final thought on this?

I mean, I think you're right.

And it comes down to how he was trying to balance the needs of the international students and trying to create a principle.

Also, he didn't agree to the 15% limit, which in a lot of ways, that doesn't really matter for the University of Arizona, but he didn't include, yes, we agree to that.

So you see how he, and he also talked about SEVIS, which is the visa system.

He said, we're gonna follow the law, and we have been following the law.

So it's interesting to see how this document is, it leaded away from the things that he didn't wanna talk about and really kind of agreed in principles that he did wanna talk about, while also kind of creating some structure.

It'll be interesting to see how this kind of negotiation comes out, because at some point the White House, I mean, what happens when the White House asks him to violate one of these principles?

What does he do?

Yeah.

All right, John, last couple of minutes.

I know your favorite topic.

You did some reporting this week on Project Blue, which it didn't come out of the blue in this discussion, but it didn't seem like it was something that Pima County Supervisors were necessarily going to take up, but the public came out in force and essentially had to be discussed.

So how many people from the public seemed to be there, and what was their message?

Was it the same as it's been through the entire process?

Right, with this Project Blue, we have seen, I think, a number of, at least in my time, covering this unprecedented public turnouts.

There was that enormous turnout for the community forum in August at the Convention Center, over 1,000 people.

And then on Tuesday of this week, Project Blue was not on the agenda, and yet somewhere between 400 and maybe plus, maybe nearly 500 people turned up and forced the Supervisors to discuss it yet again.

There was, they filled out the meeting room, and they were standing room only in the lobby.

There was a snaking line out the doors.

And it was fascinating.

I mean, you saw that the speaker after speaker railed against the project.

A number of them actually brought in another topic, which I think they don't want to get lost in this, but is related is Copper World Project, the mining project in the Santa Ritas, saying that if you're concerned about water, the water usage of that mining project would dwarf the needs of Project Blue.

But what they were really doing, the public is targeting a couple of supervisors, namely Chair Scott and Matt Heinz.

And they repeatedly targeted Heinz trying to get him to change his mind.

I overheard a interesting conversation in the hallway, in the lobby.

Heinz actually went outside to speak with some people, and they were really pressing him, saying, "Why won't you change your mind?"

And he was just sticking to his decision.

And the conversation after he finally left was, okay, so this is a representativ democracy.

We are here, and we do not feel represented anymore by this decision.

So I wonder if he's playing politics at the same time they're saying that there will be an electoral challenge to him because of this decision, what does he stand to win right here?

And yet, despite them railing against him for his position on Project Blue, they also were praising him for a number of other positions, including some of the funding cliffs that are gonna be taking away food sources for people, especially refugees in the neighborhood.

So really interesting dynamic at play right now.

Very quick yes or no.

Are recall efforts ongoing?

I don't think at this point, but there was someone who called for him taking up, actually standing on the land, and holding that if it starts to be breaking ground there or the next election.

Great.

John Washington, AZ Luminaria, Prerana Sannappanavar, the Arizona Daily Star, Paul Ingram of the Tucson Sentinel.

Thank you all for being here for this edition of The Press Room.

Thank you for joining us as well for this episode of The Press Room.

Back next week with a new episode.

I'm Steve Goldstein.

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