🏛️ Democracy Delayed: Mike Johnson Blocks Adelita Grijalva While Trump Holds Universities Hostage
Southern Arizona loses representation as Speaker protects Epstein files and administration threatens academic freedom
😽 Keepin’ It Simple Summary for Younger Readers
👧🏾✊🏾👦🏾
Imagine you won a class election fair and square 🗳️, but the principal refused to let you be class president 😔 because you promised to tell everyone what’s in some secret files 🕵️♀️ about bad stuff powerful people did 💼.
That’s what’s happening to Adelita Grijalva—she won her election to represent Southern Arizona in Congress 🏛️, but the Speaker of the House won’t let her start her job because she wants to release documents 📄 about Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes 🚨.
Meanwhile, President Trump sent letters 📬 to nine universities saying “if you promise to get rid of programs that help underrepresented students 🎓 and stop hiring teachers based on diversity 🌍, we’ll give you special money 💵—but if you break your promise later, you have to pay ALL the money back 💰.” It’s basically trying to bribe schools into doing what he wants by threatening their budgets 💸.
Local reporters 📰 are investigating and exposing these problems 🔍, and people are fighting back by demanding their elected officials do the right thing ✊.
🗝️ Takeaways
🏛️ Democracy Delayed & Academic Freedom Under Siege: Why Mike Johnson Won’t Swear In Adelita Grijalva & Trump Wants to Own Your University
When partisan games meet institutional surrender, Southern Arizona’s communities pay the price
🗝️ Key Takeaways
🏛️ 800,000 Arizonans remain without congressional representation as Speaker Mike Johnson continues blocking Adelita Grijalva’s swearing-in for 3+ weeks
📁 Grijalva would be the 218th signature on the Epstein files discharge petition—Johnson’s transparent motivation for obstruction
⚖️ Arizona AG Kris Mayes is drafting a lawsuit against Johnson for violating the Constitution by preventing a duly elected representative from taking office
🎓 Trump’s “Compact for Academic Excellence” targets 9 universities, including UA, demanding the elimination of DEI, caps on international students, and ideological conformity
💰 Compact threatens loss of ALL federal funding if universities later violate terms—potentially hundreds of millions in research dollars
🚫 MIT first to reject compact, citing restrictions on freedom of expression and institutional independence
👨🏫 Over 80 UA Regents Professors demand rejection, warning of “significant legal and practical flaws” threatening academic freedom
🏘️ Mayor Romero’s “Safe City” initiative recycles criminalization tactics despite decades of evidence showing arrests don’t solve homelessness or addiction
📊 900 evictions monthly in Pima County with 68,000-unit housing gap—structural crisis masked by enforcement rhetoric
🧱 $800M for Arizona “smart wall” despite plummeting border crossings and existing unused surveillance infrastructure
The October 17th edition of AZPM’s The Press Room didn’t pull any punches—host Steve Goldstein assembled a formidable panel of Southern Arizona journalists to dissect two intertwined crises: House Speaker Mike Johnson’s ongoing refusal to swear in Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva, and the Trump administration’s audacious attempt to extort universities into ideological submission through the so-called “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.”
Joining Goldstein were Jim Nintzel of the Tucson Sentinel, Caitlin Schmidt of Tucson Spotlight, Yana Kunichoff of AZ Luminaria, and Danyelle Khmara of AZPM News—local reporters whose work has consistently exposed power’s abuses in the borderlands.
Because when democracy becomes theater and academic freedom becomes a ransom note, somebody’s gotta call it what it is.
The Grijalva Gridlock: 800,000 Arizonans Without Representation
“It does seem as though the goalposts are moving in the swearing in of Congresswoman-elect Adelita Grijalva,” Nintzel observed, his tone dripping with the exhaustion of watching yet another GOP power play.
“And this story continues to drag out, which is, I think, bringing more attention not only to the failure to swear Congresswoman-elect Grijalva into office, but also to the Epstein files.”
The Epstein files—those inconvenient documents that might implicate Trump’s wealthy friends and donors in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking ring. Grijalva has made it crystal clear she’ll be the 218th signature on the discharge petition, forcing a vote to release them.
Funny how protecting pedophiles suddenly becomes a “procedural matter,” isn’t it?
Grijalva won her special election on September 23rd with nearly 69% of the vote, yet over three weeks later, Johnson continues his obstruction. His latest excuse? The government shutdown—which, Schmidt reminded listeners with delicious irony, “he’s put the they’ve done no substantive business since the government shut down. And now he’s saying, until the government reopens, I will not sign her in.”
Schmidt continued: “There was a fun interview, I think, last week where he said, I’ll swear in as soon as she wants to be sworn in. And then his office had to quickly walk back and say, that’s not actually what he meant.”
Nothing screams “leadership” quite like needing your staffers to explain what you “really” meant on national television.
The human cost of Johnson’s games extends beyond political theater. As Kamara emphasized, “The residents of CD-7 don’t have political representation in the house right now.” More than 800,000 people in Arizona’s 7th Congressional District—one of the most diverse and economically vulnerable districts in the nation—have no voice in Congress. Grijalva can’t hire staff, can’t open constituent services, can’t help people navigate federal bureaucracy.
But wait, there’s a hero in this story: Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, who threatened to sue Johnson for violating the Constitution. According to Mayes’ CNN interview, “The law explicitly states that no House speaker has the authority to prevent a state from seating a member of Congress.”
Kunichoff offered a broader perspective on Mayes’ aggressive legal strategy: “Kris Mayes has been a politician who it’s been like so interesting to watch her in all these areas around utilities, around mobile homes, and the space as well. I think that she, I think, is interested in using the breadth of her power to move things forward.”
Attorney Generals as “really political” actors in the Trump era? Shocked. Absolutely shocked. It’s almost like using institutional power to protect vulnerable communities from authoritarian overreach is... exactly what they should be doing.
The University Hostage Situation: Trump’s Faustian Bargain
If Johnson’s Grijalva stall felt like garden-variety partisan cruelty, the Trump administration’s university compact represents something far more sinister: an attempt to fundamentally transform American higher education into an ideological conformity machine.
The “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” arrived at nine universities—including the University of Arizona—offering “preferential access to federal funding” in exchange for adopting a laundry list of conservative demands.
The requirements include banning consideration of race or sex in hiring and admissions, freezing tuition for five years, capping international undergraduate enrollment at 15%, and eliminating what the compact euphemistically calls institutional units that “punish” conservative ideas.
Translation: Kill DEI programs, gut faculty autonomy, and create affirmative action for conservatives—all while pretending you’re restoring “meritocracy.” Because nothing says merit like threatening to bankrupt universities unless they pledge political loyalty.
Schmidt didn’t mince words about UA’s troubling eagerness: “The U of A has long boasted its international student body presence. Every year, they release a report saying our international student body has grown. We’re representing more countries. So this kind of flies in the face of what they’ve done. But it’s not surprising, really, that the administration is entertaining this. If we look back to what they did earlier this year with the Student Cultural Resource Center consolidation, they really mean what they’ve done with the initiatives; they really are falling into line with the Trump administration.”
She continued with a crucial observation: “And I think students have a right to be afraid at this point in time, given what they’ve seen. And perhaps, you know, might not work with Mike Johnson, but sustained public pressure here in a really big way might work against a president who has not yet ever admitted that he benefited greatly from these policies that he’s stripping away.”
Chef’s kiss. Nothing quite captures institutional betrayal like a university president—who likely benefited from affirmative action, international collaboration, and academic freedom—eagerly dismantling those very ladders for the next generation.
Kunichoff raised a critical strategic point: “Of the nine campuses, including U of A, that have been asked, several have already said no; no one else has replied. I think if U of A strays from the pack on that, I think it would be just like a huge deal. And I think it's like a market change in a fight that we’re seeing more universities aligned on right now.”
Indeed, MIT became the first to reject the compact, with President Sally Kornbluth stating the university “cannot support the proposed approach” because “it includes principles with which we disagree, including those that would restrict freedom of expression and our independence as an institution.”
The economic implications are staggering.
As Khmara noted, “It seems like that is the main motivator that the Trump administration is using to try and get universities to agree to the compact, saying that universities who sign on to it will have a president and to get access to some of the federal funding sources, and universities that don’t will be forgoing federal funding.”
Nintzel connected the dots to UA’s precarious financial situation and potential “brain drain”: “I think that is a concern. And it’s certainly a concern among faculty here as well. And if the university does engage in this compact, I would not be surprised to see significant brain drain among faculty members here who would go find somewhere else to work.”
So let’s recap: UA faces a financial crisis not caused by diversity programs or international students, but by administrative mismanagement and state funding cuts. The solution? Apparently, selling your institutional soul for “preferential” funding—which, spoiler alert, means less funding than you’d get through competitive grants if you maintained academic excellence and diversity.
Schmidt drove home the financial absurdity: “I mean, it’s not going to hurt their bottom, not going to help their bottom line at the end of it if we are turning away the students that pay the most to be here. I mean, and we’re a land grant institution, we’re a Hispanic serving institution, this just doesn’t really seem to line up with what we have said is our mission as a university and our duty to students.”
Kunichoff offered the most poignant reflection on UA’s role in the community: “I just think some of the ways that I think the University of Arizona was in crisis were not politically related. They were financial decisions made in the past under different administrations. But I think I live right by the University of Arizona. It feels like such an important institution in this community. So I think the question of like what it takes to have that institution continue to be part of Tucson’s community. I think a lot of voices I’m hearing are saying part of that is protecting some of the vulnerable student population.”
Mayor Romero’s “Safe City” Initiative: New Name, Old Playbook
The panel also discussed Tucson Mayor Regina Romero’s newly unveiled “Safe City” approach—a rebranding of enforcement strategies that drew skepticism from all the journalists.
Schmidt contextualized the political pressure: “I mean, it’s really interesting with the timing. The small business center just opened. They’ve taken some criticism for not addressing public safety. And then a few days later, this came out. It’s such a complicated topic because they have a duty to residents to handle these things. But we don’t have unlimited funds, and the smart, compassionate ways that they’ve been trying to handle it haven’t been working. And so now we’re pulling out the old tool book of code enforcement arresting people, which we have decades worth of data that shows that arresting people for substance use and mental issues does not solve the root problem.”
The “criminalize poverty” approach. Because nothing says “innovation” like recycling failed War on Drugs tactics while calling them “smart enforcement.”
Khmara was even more direct: “To be honest, like from what I read about it, I didn’t see anything that seemed all that innovative or new. And it also made me wonder, you know, there was some talk about like some more services, and I thought, OK, well, where is the funding for this going to come from?”
Kunichoff connected the dots to structural housing issues: “I think about 900 people get evicted every month in Pima County. So I think without slowing the inflow of people who are becoming homeless, there would just always be homeless people in our community because there’s simply not enough housing. I think there’s a 68,000-unit gap. We’re not building fast enough.”
Nintzel summarized the Mayor’s political bind: “I think that homicide on the loop, the cyclist who was stabbed to death really has generated a lot of public outrage. And I think there is a lot of frustration with homelessness because no matter what the city has done in terms of providing more housing, the problem seems to be getting worse in this city. Fentanyl plays a big role in that.”
Schmidt raised an important institutional contradiction: “Pima County is still participating in the Safety and Justice Challenge with the MacArthur Foundation, which has been a years-long initiative to get people out of jail who are basically in jail because they are poor or have substance use or mental health issues. So it’ll be interesting to see how this will couple with that. They did some really amazing work early on of drastically reducing the pretrial population that was there for misdemeanors. And so I guess the question is, are we just going to fill that back up?”
Exactly. We spend years and millions of dollars getting people OUT of jail for poverty crimes, then immediately pivot to putting them BACK in jail for... poverty crimes. It’s the Circle of Life, neoliberal edition.
The “Smart Wall” That Isn’t Smart
Khmara also reported on Arizona receiving $800 million of $4.5 billion for border “smart wall” technology—a euphemism for more surveillance infrastructure in an area where migrant crossings have already plummeted.
“Basically, this is like a technology that would interact with existing walls and other steel barriers that are already being built,” Kamara explained. “But it would also go to fund some secondary wall, which is when you have two layers of steel barrier. But it would also include funding for things like patrol roads, lights, cameras, detection, and technology.”
Schmidt delivered the perfect deflation: “I wish that CBP wasn’t closed for the shutdown and could have answered some of Danyelle’s questions about what makes this smart because this really sounds kind of just like the regular wall and maybe like a little more wall.”
“Smart wall” is to actual intelligence what “clean coal” is to clean energy: marketing spin designed to launder billions in corporate contracts while pretending technology can solve political problems.
What Do You Think?
Despite the relentless assault on democratic norms, academic freedom, and vulnerable communities, there are glimmers of resistance worth celebrating.
Adelita Grijalva refuses to be silenced, appearing on national media to call out Johnson’s patronizing BS. Arizona’s Democratic senators camped outside Johnson’s office in solidarity. Attorney General Kris Mayes is weaponizing the law against authoritarian overreach.
Over 80 UA Regents Professors—the university’s most distinguished faculty—publicly demanded rejection of the compact. Students, the Tucson City Council, and Pima County all passed resolutions opposing the compact.
Local journalists like Nintzel, Schmidt, Kunichoff, and Khmara continue doing the unglamorous work of documenting these abuses, asking uncomfortable questions, and refusing to let politicians hide behind procedural excuses.
The borderlands have always been spaces of resistance. We’ve survived worse than bureaucratic foot-dragging and corporate extortion. We’ll survive this too—pero no sin lucha.
Here’s how you can fight back:
Demand UA reject the compact: Contact President Suresh Garimella and the Arizona Board of Regents. The deadline is November 21st.
Support local journalism: Subscribe to the Tucson Sentinel, Tucson Spotlight, and AZ Luminaria—the reporters doing this vital work.
Pressure your representatives: Call Senators Kelly and Gallego, demanding they continue pressure on Johnson.
Support independent progressive analysis: Subscribe to Three Sonorans to keep this kind of fearless commentary coming.
Discussion Questions:
Should Arizona’s congressional delegation consider more aggressive tactics beyond camping outside Johnson’s office? What would meaningful accountability look like?
If UA signs Trump’s compact, what responsibility do students, faculty, and community members have to resist—and what would that resistance look like?
Mayor Romero’s “Safe City” initiative recycles criminalization tactics proven to fail. What would genuinely addressing homelessness and addiction require, and why does our political system seem constitutionally incapable of pursuing those solutions?
¡La lucha continúa, compas! Drop your thoughts in the comments.
Have a scoop or a story you want us to follow up on? Send us a message below or via email (all messages kept confidential) at ThreeSonorans@gmail.com.
Adelita Grijalva won by an overwhelming margin (40-plus percent), so what -- other than the Epstein files -- is Johnson's problem?
<< Should Arizona’s congressional delegation consider more aggressive tactics beyond camping outside Johnson’s office? What would meaningful accountability look like? >>
I hate to sound like a hard-ass, but since the ReThuglicans have refused to compromise on healthcare (prolonging the shutdown), I think the Democrats should now add another clause: that the government will remain shut down until the duly elected Representative from Arizona is seated.