A federal case for Grijalva
Mayes moves to sue … Lawyering up for "buddy punching"? … And tell Ciscomani what you think about the shutdown.
Somewhere on Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes’ desk, there’s a copy of a lawsuit for U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.
What was a legal threat last week is now a lawsuit that Mayes plans to file today to force the Louisiana Republican to swear in Adelita Grijalva to represent Congressional District 7 and her 800,000 constituents in Arizona.
Mayes wasn’t bluffing when she threatened to sue Johnson.
“We’re not messing around about this. We, the people of the 7th Congressional District, deserve to have representation. We fought a Revolutionary War over taxation without representation, and we’re certainly not about to allow it to happen again in this country and in the state of Arizona,” Mayes told us yesterday.
Amid the ever-increasing stakes of the federal shutdown, Mayes is setting an unusual precedent as a state attorney general suing the speaker of the House.
However, failure to swear in a duly elected member likely violates the Constitution, particularly the right to representation for the residents of the CD7, she argued.
Johnson is seemingly unfazed by the legal threats, telling reporters last week that Mayes’ legal threats were nothing more than a “publicity stunt.”
We have a feeling a federal judge is going to take the issue more seriously — assuming Johnson doesn’t make it a moot point by finally swearing Grjialva in first.
After a forum in Saddlebrooke on Monday afternoon, Arizona’s top elected attorney said she has grown tired of the flimsy string of excuses she’s heard so far about why Johnson can’t swear Grijalva into office.
“I have no idea what his motivations are for not swearing her in. Obviously, there’s been speculation about the fact that she’s the (deciding) vote on the Epstein files discharge petition. There may be other partisan motivations,” Mayes said.
No more excuses
After initially promising to swear Grijalva into office immediately, Johnson has since offered a litany of reasons why he can’t or won’t do it. Johnson’s latest pivot is to blame former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — who hasn’t been speaker for two and a half years — because she delayed the swearing in of two members of the House back when she was in charge.
But this is hardly a precedent Johnson was willing to follow earlier this year when he swore in Florida Republicans Jimmy Patronis and Randy Fine despite Congress being in recess.
“He, in fact, already swore into Republicans from Florida in May under the exact same circumstances, this tells us that he can swear her in, and he should do that ASAP,” Mayes said.
The delay has forced Grijalva to close her late father’s congressional offices in Southern Arizona, leaving roughly 800,000 residents of the district without representation. There are no offices to send your mail, no e-mail address to correspond with and no offices to visit.
“There are a lot of things that Adelita Grijalva is not able to do because she has not been sworn in by Mike Johnson,” Mayes noted. “That includes helping her district with the flooding that recently happened, helping with veterans benefits, helping with Social Security benefits.”
Grijalva was recently given the keys to her office inside the Longworth House Office Building, but she doesn’t have the ability to hire staff or start the process of opening offices in the district until she is sworn in.
Still, Mayes said there is a way for Johnson to avoid the legal fight entirely.
“She’s gonna be back in Washington, D.C. (tonight). So that would be a good time,” Mayes told us with a smile.
It will be interesting to see who blinks first, Johnson or the federal court, when it comes to swearing her in.
The Tucson City Council and the Pima County Board of Supervisors are holding dueling meetings today, making for a very long day in local governmental action.
The Pima County Board of Supervisors meeting starts at 9 a.m., and what caught our attention is a formal discussion to hire outside counsel to investigate the Pima County Sheriff’s Department.
This could be tied to the recent investigation into the "buddy punching” scandal over at PCSD.
But the board has also referred multiple cases to several agencies in the last few years, including for political interference when Sheriff Chris Nanos suspended his political rival during his re-election campaign, as well as the investigation into the sexual assault of a PCSD deputy at a holiday party.
Or it could be a simple extension of an existing contract the county has with an outside law firm.
Other items on the agenda:
A discussion about the Big, Beautiful Bill and its impact on refugee communities.
While not directly related, the county is considering next month setting aside $500,000 to shore up funding for food for an estimated 4,400 infants covered by the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program.
The supervisors will also discuss their continued opposition to the Copper World project.
Over at the Tucson City Council meeting, members of the council will meet with their attorneys behind closed doors to talk about what local governments can do when it comes to federal actions.
We’re short on details, but a good example might be Los Angeles County officials declaring an emergency over immigration raids to allow taxpayer funds to help undocumented immigrants pay for rent and legal aid.
Other items of note on Tuesday’s council agenda:
Setting a date for the joint council/supervisors meeting next month
An update on the city budget, comparing revenues against projections
We’ll have updates from both meetings later this week.
UA takes a pass: After weeks of deliberation, University of Arizona officials rejected the compact offered by the Trump administration. The deal would have tied VIP access for federal funding to adopting Trump’s political agenda. UA President Suresh Garimella told the campus community on Monday that the UA “has not agreed to the terms outlined in the draft proposal” from Trump officials. That’s about as strident as it got. Instead, Garimella offered a “statement of principles” to Education Secretary Linda McMahon and said “many of the proposed ideas are already in place at the U of A.” Out of the nine universities that were offered the compact on October 1, only Vanderbilt and the University of Texas at Austin have yet to reject it. Another three schools, including Arizona State University, were offered the compact in recent weeks. On Monday afternoon, Arizona Board of Regents Chair Doug Goodyear sent out a news release saying the regents support Garimella’s response to the compact offer. When we talked to Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes yesterday, she said she would fight for any Arizona university that refuses to sign.
”I will support any university in Arizona that rejects this compact and these really grotesque efforts to hold our universities hostage and essentially blackmail them,” Mayes said.
State of the race: The Democrats’ House Majority PAC released a poll Monday putting Democrat JoAnna Mendoza virtually tied with two-term Republican Representative Juan Ciscomani. The 18-question poll showed many in Tucson were unhappy with both President Donald Trump and Ciscomani’s performance in Congress, and gave Mendoza a 1 percentage point lead in a hypothetical head-to-head match-up against Ciscomani. This is essentially a tie if you consider the polling’s margin of error — which isn’t terribly surprising given that it’s a super competitive district — but it’s still an interesting metric a full year before the CD6 race reaches its apex.
Making deals: Gov. Katie Hobbs headed to Mexico City this week to talk trade with government and business leaders, the Republic’s Stacey Barchenger reports. The trip comes after months of Trump breeding uncertainty with his tariff policies, and a few months before a key meeting of trade officials from Mexico, Canada and the United States.
Past meets present: Border history is entering the digital age at the Pimeria Alta Historical Society in Nogales, Daisy Zavala Magaña reports for the Nogales International. Museum staff have been digitizing photos and archives for the past year, thanks to a $325,000 grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. The archives date back to the Mexican Revolution, including a photo of a Mexican female soldier, known as an Adelita, sitting on a horse with a rifle on her lap and a gunshot wound on her leg.
Speaking of Adelitas: Congresswoman-elect Adelita Grijalva urged voters to approve Prop 414, a budget override for TUSD, in November. Grijalva, who spent 20 years on the TUSD board, said the state Legislature has “starved” public schools of funding and Prop 414 is “Tucson’s way to fight back,” she wrote in an op-ed in the Tucson Sentinel.
If you like writers who can seamlessly string together unrelated news stories with just a single word in common, then click that button!
Bicyclists rejoice: Tucson is going to get a velodrome (an oval bike track with steep banks) in November, KJZZ’s Ignacio Ventura reports. The Olympic-style velodrome will be located near the Tucson Speedway. But it’s not for the faint of heart. Before you can get on the track, you have to get certified.
Despite the banner above, we are not laughing about the federal shutdown. The shutdown has left thousands in Southern Arizona either furloughed or working without a paycheck, not to mention it’s being used as a political cudgel to keep Congresswoman-elect Adelita Grijalva from being sworn in.
Tucson Republican Congressman Juan Ciscomani sent out this post recently, asking for feedback about how the federal shutdown is hurting southern Arizona.
We thought we’d give him a hand with getting survey results.
His question? Do you support reopening the government?
To vote yes, click here. To vote no, click here.
I’m such a huge Kris Mayes fan. There’s not much these days that makes me feel comforted, but having her as our AG is one of those few things.
Ciscomani’s downfall in the midterm elections will come when his 186,000 constituents, 23% of the residents in AZ CD6, realize that many will be forced off Medicaid because of his Big Beautiful Tax Bill for the rich. Over 26,000 households receiving SNAP benefits in the district will begin to lose their food stamp benefits under the Ciscomani/Trump tax cut, too.
And BTW, Congressman Ciscomani, go back to work in Washington. Vacation is over.