The Show for July 24, 2027: International students at AZ colleges, the start of a journey and more

November’s general election is shaping up after this week’s primaries picked party nominees. The Friday NewsCap panelists analyze that and the rest of the week’s top stories. Plus, how new rules from the Trump administration could impact international students in American universities.

Full transcript

KJZZ's original production, The Show, is supported by Banner Health, Arizona's largest nonprofit healthcare system. Last year, Banner reinvested more than $1.1 billion in community health and charity care. Banner Health, nonprofit for Arizona. bannerhealth.com/nonprofitforaz.

MARK BRODIE: Hi, I'm Mark Brodie, co-host of The Show, an original production from KJZZ. Every weekday we bring you the latest news and culture from across the state. You can find much more at theshow.kjzz.org. Here's today's episode.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning. It's The Show here on KJZZ 91.5 in Phoenix. I'm Mark Brodie. Coming up, new rules from the Trump administration could cause problems for international students at American universities. And we'll have the latest installment of our summer soapbox essay series on road trips. But first, it is time for the Friday Newscap and some voices from the news this week.

KATIE HOBBS: I know better than anyone that this campaign is not going to be easy. I've been underestimated in every single race that I've ever run. But I will tell you this: I have never lost.

ANDY BIGGS: Katie Hobbs hasn't really delivered for Latinos, either. And so I believe that Donald Trump has delivered more for Latinos than Katie, and I believe I will deliver more as governor.

JAY FEELY Why did I decide to run for office? It is a desire to leave this country better for our children and our grandchildren. That's it at its core. What we're doing is fighting for the future of this country. I truly believe that.

AMISH SHAH: He said that he is going to follow orders from one man: the guy in the White House. I don't think that's what the voters of the Arizona First District really want to see here.

WARREN PETERSEN: We will fight crime. We will defend the laws and the Constitution, and we will root out every single bit of fraud, waste, and corruption in this state.

RYAN MILLS: The misleadingly titled Protect Education Accountability Now Act is a shameless attack on Arizona's parents, funded by an out-of-state union. We don't believe the unions have turned in enough valid signatures and that they're trying to game the system to get on the ballot. That's why we filed this challenge.

MARK BRODIE: And with me to break down the results of this week's primaries and look ahead to November are Jaime Molera, with the firm Molera Alvarez. Jaime, good morning.

JAIME MOLERA: Good morning.

MARK BRODIE: And Gaelle Esposito of Creosote Partners. Gaelle, good morning to you.

GAELLE ESPOSITO: Good morning to you, too.

MARK BRODIE: Jaime, let me start with you. Who had the best night Tuesday night ... or leaking into Wednesday morning?

JAIME MOLERA: That's a good question. I would say the Feely campaign. I think they were a bit anxious because Chaplik was really making some progress at the end.

MARK BRODIE: In the 1st Congressional District?

JAIME MOLERA: In CD1, correct. So they were able to leverage a lot of the Turning Point support. Most of the Turning Point candidates — and I should say Turning Point actually had a pretty good night because most of their candidates did pretty well.

MARK BRODIE: Gaelle, who do you think had the best night?

GAELLE ESPOSITO: The Democratic Party. I think seeing some of these Republican winners, I'm feeling pretty good about their chances in November.

MARK BRODIE: OK, so which ones? ... Which campaigns this week are feeling perhaps more confident than they were Sunday or Monday?

GAELLE ESPOSITO: I think if I'm Adrian Fontes, I was probably a little bit more nervous about Gina Swoboda winning that primary, and getting to go up against Alexander Kolodin is something that he's probably very excited about.

I think the governor is in a really great position. Andy Biggs is an extreme candidate who is going to follow Trump and Turning Point wherever they point and tell him to go. So I think she's in a really strong position. ... I think we are looking at a big Democratic wave here this time.

MARK BRODIE: Do you agree with that, Jaime?

JAIME MOLERA: No. ...

MARK BRODIE: Do you think the Republican candidates are as problematic as Democrats think they might be?

JAIME MOLERA: I'm not stumping for the GOP. I just think Arizona is still a conservative Republican state. While I would agree that the governor has a good chance of winning, juxtaposed against Andy Biggs — because Andy Biggs is close to President Trump, whose numbers are not very good in Arizona right now. But you still have 330,000 more Republicans. And so the Republican Party, particularly Biggs, has to message the campaign in a way that really affects Arizonans and gets Republicans to come out for him. I still think it's going to be a very tight race.

We heard earlier where Gov. Hobbs said that she's been underestimated a lot. Well, Andy Biggs has been, also. I remember when he became Senate President, a lot of people didn't think he'd be able to get that. When he ran for Congress the first time, a lot of people didn't think he'd be able to win there. So, I think it's going to be a good race. You have two seasoned politicians, and there's going to be a lot of money thrown into this.

MARK BRODIE: We've already seen TV ads. The next day, both Hobbs' and Biggs' campaigns had TV ads. Do you think it's safe to say, Jaime, that from the Hobbs campaign, we're just going to continue to see Andy Biggs linked to Donald Trump and, to an extent, Jeffrey Epstein?

JAIME MOLERA: Absolutely. You're going to see that up until Election Day. They're really going to be pounding that. I think, conversely, Biggs' campaign is going to be talking about the ineffectiveness of her administration really to move anything. I think you're going to see a lot of attention being paid to the vetoes, ironically enough, because they're going to say, "Well she really hasn't done anything as governor, all she was able to do is block things." So it's going to be interesting how they message that and what will break through in order to convince Republicans, again, to come out and vote, because that's going to be the key for the Biggs campaign.

MARK BRODIE: Gaelle, if you're the Hobbs campaign, how do you try to take her record and say to voters — make it for something, as opposed to just, "Hey, I'm here blocking all this stuff that the Republicans in the Legislature were trying to do?"

GAELLE ESPOSITO: The governor has a clear record of getting bipartisan budgets passed pretty effectively with her priorities in them. I think we saw this year the moratorium on data center tax credits; that's going to be a big thing that they'll talk about in the immediate. They've signed some really interesting and good housing affordability laws to cut red tape. I think they're going to focus on that sort of record.

MARK BRODIE: Jaime, we've seen Andy Biggs talk about working with Democrats. He said he worked with Kyrsten Sinema and Hakeem Jeffries. I think he maybe name-dropped John McCain also at one point, maybe forgetting McCain was actually a Republican. But to what extent do you think Biggs is going to try to lean into that in the general election, as opposed to his ties to Donald Trump and Turning Point?

JAIME MOLERA: Well, and I've said this before I think on The Show, if Andy Biggs becomes the person he was when he was Senate President, as opposed to the person he is as Congressman Biggs ... head of the Freedom Caucus, who has been very tied to President Trump . If you look at his campaign, they really haven't been talking to Turning Point or Donald Trump at all. I think that's for a reason. You're going to see them really start to move away from the ties to Trump and focus on the message of their campaign: a better economy and a governor who is going to be more effective.

MARK BRODIE: One more question about this primary: Are you surprised at the margin and how badly David Schweikert lost?

JAIME MOLERA: I'm not. The reason is because, regardless of how effective they may be in the general — which I don't think they'll be as effective — Turning Point in a Republican primary is absolutely critical. When they threw their weight behind Andy Biggs, it had an impact. Karrin Taylor Robson saw that very early on; she dropped out of the campaign at the beginning of the year. I was kind of surprised that Schweikert stayed on to the bitter end, but I figure he thought he was going to catch lightning in a bottle, and it just never happened.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah. Gaelle, when do you expect to hear who the candidates might pick as their lieutenant governor running mates? This is the first time that we're going to have these, so there's kind of no precedent.

GAELLE ESPOSITO: Yeah, I think they're going to wait a little bit here to get some separation from the primary news cycle. When things are a little bit quieter, they'll try to get attention out of those picks. But yeah, there's no precedent. There's a lot of ways to make a splash about it, and a lot of education that's going to have to happen with voters that this new position exists and why we're doing it. So I think there's a lot of potential there for good earned media cycles for both campaigns.

MARK BRODIE: Do you think that it will matter? ... Every four years there's talk about whether the vice presidential pick moves the needle or not. Do you think lieutenant governor moves the needle here?

GAELLE ESPOSITO: No, not unless they pick somebody who ends up being a complete dud. I mean, that's really it. Unless that person does something extremely controversial or has a scandal, I don't think it makes that much of a difference.

MARK BRODIE: What do you think, Jaime?

JAIME MOLERA: Sarah Palin might be moving into Arizona.

MARK BRODIE: She lived here for a while, right? I don't know that she still does, but she used to.

JAIME MOLERA: Yeah. I would agree. I think it depends on a lot of what the polls say, too. If the governor looks like she's pulling away from Congressman Biggs, then I would anticipate her waiting and saying, "You know what? I'm going to pick somebody closer to my political affiliation." But if it's really tight, then you might see her looking to get — there have been rumblings about Jimmy McCain in the mix or former Mayor of Mesa John Giles being in the mix. So a lot of that might play into it.

MARK BRODIE: OK. Jaime, let me stick with you and ask about a couple other statewide races. Gaelle mentioned Alexander Kolodin, state representative, won the primary for secretary of state. If you're the Fontes campaign, is that what you were hoping for?

JAIME MOLERA: Yes. Short answer: yes, absolutely.

MARK BRODIE: Do you think that he starts the general as the favorite?

JAIME MOLERA: Fontes, absolutely. I think it's going to be very hard for Kolodin with his record. He's just been very divisive within the Republican ranks, so that certainly gives Fontes an advantage.

MARK BRODIE: And in the attorney general race, there was a competitive primary on the Republican side between Rodney Glassman and Warren Petersen. Senate President Petersen won that. How do you handicap the general election three days after the primary?

JAIME MOLERA: That's going to be a very, very competitive race. Attorney General Mayes is a good candidate; she's been around politics for a long time. Her weak spot is going to be her relationship with the business community. She's been very progressive in her outlook, especially toward business interests. A lot of business groups were not happy with some of the things she's done. I think that might help Petersen, but it's still going to be a very tight race.

MARK BRODIE: ... If it's more than 300 votes for Mayes this time, it's a landslide compared to her race three and a half years ago.

GAELLE ESPOSITO: Yeah, Kris Mayes has been running an excellent campaign. She's been on TV, she has a great record and an ability to get attention to her causes. And she has been seen fighting for the little guy — even in rural Arizona, where she's been active in protecting water rights and standing up for communities out there. I think that she recognized how small ... that vote margin was, and she's going everywhere in the state to pick them up. I think she's running a really good race.

MARK BRODIE: Do you think that of the two candidates, she got the one to face in November that she wanted?

GAELLE ESPOSITO: I think I was feeling pretty good if I was her either way. Rodney Glassman is a perennial loser, so if he had won a race, that would have been the more surprising thing. But Warren Petersen is somebody who is fresh out of law school and does not have that much experience as a lawyer. He's not somebody who has done the job. And Kris Mayes has a great record where she's been standing up against monopoly corporations, fighting to protect water rights and consumer rights, and protecting renters from price gouging by landlords who have just been seeking to scam people. She has a great record to run on, and I'm feeling pretty good if I'm her.

MARK BRODIE: Jaime, one more race, an office you know well: superintendent of public instruction. This was another competitive primary, and the incumbent, Tom Horne, actually lost to Kimberly Yee in a race that was not a blowout, but also not terribly close. Is this an example of what you were saying earlier about Turning Point having a good night?

JAIME MOLERA: I think it absolutely has an impact and it had an impact on that race, because they came out and endorsed her. She was part of what was called their "golden ticket," so she definitely benefited from that. But remember, Kimberly Yee also has a name of her own. She was the highest Republican vote-getter in the last campaign statewide. I think that makes her a known entity, and she has done a very good job as treasurer. That really helped her in this race.

MARK BRODIE: Is that race down-ballot enough where anything going on in terms of regarding feelings about President Trump or Turning Point doesn't necessarily work its way down to Superintendent?

JAIME MOLERA: I think so. I think a lot of the races below attorney general — I know a lot of Democrats would like to say that's going to happen — ... but going back to the factor that there are 330,000 more Republicans, it's going to be difficult in those types of races for a Republican not to lose, unless you're a really bad candidate who has made a mess of your campaign or taken positions that are so extreme. ... Republicans should have a good opportunity to win these down-ticket seats.

MARK BRODIE: Gaelle, how do Democrats try to maintain to the extent that there is momentum at the top of the ballot, how do they try to keep that going down to a race like superintendent or the Legislature, some of those other races?

GAELLE ESPOSITO: We saw in 2018 with Kathy Hoffman, the Democrats be successful in picking this up. ... Yee is a better candidate than Frank Riggs on this front, so it's going to be a little bit tougher for Teresa Leyba Ruiz. But she has been really hustling out there doing the work. She has a great resume and experience as a teacher and administrator that folks will look to. ... With that level of down-ballot — it is largely a matter of how big of a year it is for Democrats, or if it is a better year for Republicans than folks maybe are expecting. Those national trends really impact that race more than the top three.

MARK BRODIE: Gaelle, let me start with the 1st Congressional District. This is a Scottsdale-Fountain Hills-East Valley district that David Schweikert, longtime representative. He of course ran for governor as we talked about. There were competitive primaries on both sides, and the ... national Democrats' pick did not win. It was Amish Shah who once again came out of this primary. What does that tell you?

GAELLE ESPOSITO: I mean, I was shocked to see how late the DCCC started spending. It was a week after ballots has dropped, and you saw that start to impact the vote totals as ballots were counted, and the race narrowed slightly. But it was too little, too late. ... Credit to Amish Shah: he hustles, knocks on doors, and he has deep conversations with voters. He started off with an advantage in polling and name recognition, and I think he did what he had to do to secure that. He was in mailboxes and he was out there in the field early, and he just ran a better campaign.

MARK BRODIE: What does he have to do differently this time to not have the same result as two years ago, when he lost to David Schweikert?

GAELLE ESPOSITO: ... Door-knocking is really successful in a crowded primary, and it is an important aspect of a general election campaign/ But being able to go up on TV and compete on all media outlets out there is going to be critical. You're going to see a lot of national money pour in to help there, but his campaign will have to control that message a little bit.

... He is also going to benefit from a better national environment than a couple of years ago, plus an open seat. He's running against a guy who was an NFL kicker and color commentator. ... The thing maybe he's best known for an "SNL" sketch about how mediocre of a kicker he was. So, I don't know that he's the best candidate for Congress, but he is charismatic at the very least. But they both are.

MARK BRODIE: That NFL kicker, Jay Feely, of course.

JAIME MOLERA: I think it makes him 80% more competent than most of the people we have in Congress, right?

[ALL LAUGH]

MARK BRODIE: What are your takeaways from that campaign on the Republican side, Jaime? ... Feely had the Trump endorsement, but Joseph Chaplik had deep ties with the Arizona Freedom Caucus and some of the far-right voters in that district.

JAIME MOLERA: Money makes a difference. Feely was able to get Turning Point support, he was able to get a lot of money early on, which made a big difference. It was a tight campaign. Chaplik ran a very strong campaign and tried to get to the right of Feely. Now Feely needs to position himself away from — like we talked about with governor. Same thing. ... He needs to say, "I'm going to be my own person and focus on these issues." I think Shah is going to try to tie him at the hip to President Trump, and that's the best chance that they have.

MARK BRODIE: Is that more important for Feely in a district that is not traditionally, anyway, not a super-MAGA district?

JAIME MOLERA: I think Shah is the best candidate for Feely in a lot of ways. There was a reason why the DCCC was pushing Marlene Galán-Woods so hard — is they saw polling data showed Shah was a fairly progressive ... legislator. And that's the position he was going to be in Congress. They knew in that particular district, which is a centrist district that still leans Republican. He's going to have a tough time with his positions he's taken in the past. So I think they see Feely as the best choice, and that's why if it would have been Chaplik, than I think I think that would have been maybe a difference. But Feely is certainly the best candidate for the Republicans.

MARK BRODIE: Gaelle, one more question on this district for you. Is it going to be awkward — you mentioned national money coming in for Shah — ... between the DCCC and him? Because they obviously endorsed one of his opponents, and he wasn't shy about saying he wasn't thrilled about it.

GAELLE ESPOSITO: He shouldn't be thrilled, but there are no permanent enemies or permanent friends especially when you're on the same team. Shah cracked a joke at his victory party that hopefully he'll get their endorsement now. ... They will bury the hatchet on this pretty quickly and work together to win this seat. And I think Shah had a record where, for being in a solidly blue district as a legislator, he broke with the party pretty often. So, I think he does have the profile for the district. I think his experience as a doctor is something that will contrast nicely to football kicker.

MARK BRODIE: Well, apparently they both were with the New York Jets at the same time, right? ... Shah was one of the sideline physicians when Feely was a kicker there, so kind of an interesting — I'm not sure either of them necessarily wants to bring up the Jets and their connection to them during this campaign. But that's a Giants fan talking, so take that for what it's worth.

Jaime, one of the other — maybe the other competitive district in Arizona is CD6 in Tucson where Juan Ciscomani is the incumbent. He did not have a competitive primary. JoAnna Mendoza, the Democratic nominee. How do you see that? Obviously, we're still a ways out, but how do you see that race shaping up at this moment?

JAIME MOLERA: Well, both of those districts, Congressional Districts 1 and 6, are going to be ground zero for the national fight to who controls Congress, who controls in this case the House of Representatives. So, you're going to see a lot of money —more money than I think we've seen ever coming into our state.

Juan Ciscomani has a candidate that I think is going to be very good. She, former military, not seen as too progressive, even for being in that part of the state down in Pima County. So, Juan needs to really do a better job of positioning himself away, again, from the administration and showing that he's more centrist, and that's going to be a better fit for that district. But it's going to be a tough race. I think they're going to have a tough time holding on to it.

MARK BRODIE: What do you think, Gaelle?

GAELLE ESPOSITO: I think Juan Ciscomani is toast, quite frankly. I think he is in a rough position. I think his polling shows it. I think being a down-the-line vote nearly 100% of the time for the Trump administration was a gamble he made to survive a primary challenge, and now it's going to hurt him in that general. And I think JoAnna Mendoza is an absolutely stellar candidate who I think is going to flip that seat.

MARK BRODIE: All right. Jaime, one more congressional question. In CD5, this is Andy Biggs' district that he of course left to run for governor, former Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb — this is a very, very conservative district. Mark Lamb had, let's say, some baggage going into the primary, still won handily.

JAIME MOLERA: Couple of stories, right?

MARK BRODIE: A few things that were maybe a little unsavory. He, of course, is denying it. We should say he is saying that it's not true. But he still won pretty handily in that race. Is there any reason at all for him to be concerned in a general election given all the stuff swirling around?

JAIME MOLERA: I don't think so. I think just the advantage of that district —

MARK BRODIE: The registration advantage.

JAIME MOLERA: The registration advantage is massive. Now, I think he needs to get some good attorneys because the moment he gets into Congress, there's going to be some investigations going on, and so that's where they need to make sure that they have all his facts straightened out.

MARK BRODIE: Gaelle, is there any reason to think that national Democrats might spend a penny in that district?

GAELLE ESPOSITO: No, I wouldn't if I were them. It's so far to the right, and I think once the congressional investigations start, maybe then you start to uncover a little bit more and you have the opportunity for more stories that do enough there to where you have sort of an Alabama in 2017 or whenever that was situation where Democrats flipped a super red seat. But I think that he is pretty well-positioned right now.

MARK BRODIE: OK. So, we have about a minute left. I want to ask each of you, what was your biggest surprise based on the primary results? Gaelle, I'll start with you.

GAELLE ESPOSITO: I don't know if it was a surprise, but it was a really good night at the legislative level for progressives in the Democratic caucus. I think you saw them win a lot of open seats, flip some incumbents, taking out Lidia Hernandez in LD24 by pretty large margins.

There's still an undecided one down in Pima County for the state Senate seat between Alma Hernandez and Rocky Perez that could be another big pickup for progressive Democrats. So, I think you saw a continuation of the shift we've been seeing nationally, which is people want fighters out there. People want folks who are willing to take on what we've been seeing from the Trump administration and fight for their priorities at every level. And so hopefully we'll continue to see that at the Legislature.

MARK BRODIE: All right. Jaime, what was your biggest surprise?

JAIME MOLERA: I guess, we talked about it earlier, the only slight surprise was the margin of victory that Andy Biggs had over Schweikert. I think that bodes well for his campaign, because you just don't get those votes. You really have to work it, you have to have a good organization. I know the Biggs campaign does have a good organization, and I think they're going to be formidable come November.

MARK BRODIE: All right. Jaime Molera, Gaelle Esposito, thanks to you both for the conversation. I really appreciate it.

JAIME MOLERA: Thank you.

GAELLE ESPOSITO: Thank you.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning. It's The Show on KJZZ 91.5. I'm Mark Brodie. Coming up, in the next installment of our summer soapbox series, a road trip home with a life changing revelation.

But first, the Trump administration is implementing new rules for international students at American colleges and universities. Under these new rules, those students will generally be limited to staying in this country for four years unless they get an extension. Students have previously been allowed to stay until they finished their programs. Supporters of the change say it'll cut down on the number of international students who come to the country for school and don't leave. Critics, meanwhile, argue many students need more than four years to finish their degrees, especially postgraduate ones. With me now to talk more about this is Johanna Alonzo, admissions and enrollment reporter with Inside Higher Ed. Johanna, good morning. Thanks for being here.

JOHANNA ALONZO: Thank you so much for having me.

MARK BRODIE: So, what is the thinking behind this? Why is the administration trying to implement these?

JOHANNA ALONZO: Well, you basically nailed it on the head in the intro. There is this um the way that they described it is that they're worried about overstays, so students who remain in the country longer than they should or who continue to take classes as a means of staying in the country longer. And they did provide some data in this regulation that says that there are about I think they said 2,000 or 2,100 students who entered the country on an F1 visa between 2000 and 2010 and are still here.

MARK BRODIE: I mean, that doesn't seem like a whole lot when you look at the universe of college students in this country.

JOHANNA ALONZO: No, I do think that the the number is relatively small. And then also that 2000 to uh sorry, um yeah, 2000 to 2010 range is pretty big, so we don't know if the students have been here for 26 years or 16 years. But yeah.

MARK BRODIE: OK. So, I mentioned that there is the possibility of getting an extension. Is there a sense of like what that process will look like or how easy or difficult it might be for a student let's say they come for undergrad and want to stay for grad school like how easy it might be to get an extension?

JOHANNA ALONZO: That is a really good question. So, in the rule itself, it is discretionary, but they did sort of say, people we know people are really worried about this, this won't be hard for students that have legitimate reasons to need to stay beyond four years. Um So, we're not 100% sure what that's going to look like. It's going to be a while till this starts happening and till we know what it's going to look like.

The fear from some students and some international education professionals is that the government doesn't always understand nuances of higher ed, of, you know, very specific programs or research that might require students to stay longer. And there are some fears that the government and USCIS will look at something that is very academically legitimate but they might not understand the nuances of it and that could cause some issues.

MARK BRODIE: What are universities saying about this? I mean, especially, you know, big public universities like here in Arizona like they you know, really kind of rely on international students paying out of country tuition to, you know, to bring in a good amount of money.

JOHANNA ALONZO: Yes, that is absolutely true. International students, a lot of them pay full tuition, and a lot of schools do rely on that tuition. And on top of that, there is this question of the workload for the institutions. A lot of worry that they're going to have to hire more staff just to sort of facilitate these extension requests, and that that could be very costly as well, so it's not even just about the tuition.

MARK BRODIE: Well, that's interesting. So it might not just be on the students to do it, maybe a selling point for a university could be, hey, if you need an extension, we will help you with that.

JOHANNA ALONZO: I think a lot of institutions would be planning to do that. You know, most institutions that have a significant number of international students have staff members that help with different parts of the visa process.

Ultimately, I think most schools, both because, yeah, they do get that international student tuition and and that can be very beneficial, but I think if you're admitted to a school, most schools are are interested in helping you succeed there. They don't want you to leave after four years with an incomplete degree. So yeah, I think I think in most cases schools are definitely planning to help with that part of the process.

MARK BRODIE: Sure. How do the rules in this country compare to American students or other foreign students going to other foreign countries and how long they're allowed to be there and what, you know, what the the status is there?

JOHANNA ALONZO: Yeah, this is a good question. And I will say this is not my absolute area of expertise, but I will say my understanding is that in a lot of countries, there are some limits to initially how long your visa lasts when you're studying internationally. In a lot of countries, it is not this blanket four-year policy. It is more that if you enter and you're going to be doing XYZ degree, and the institution says, yeah, this is a five-year degree, your visa will be five years.

So, the U.S., the duration of status rule that allowed students to stay until they were done actually was fairly unique in its flexibility. It's coming a little bit more towards what some other countries have, but there are still distinctions between this new four-year policy and what is common elsewhere.

MARK BRODIE: So, this is obviously not the first time the Trump administration has tried to enact or enacted a policy related to international students. I'm curious what you're hearing from universities and maybe what you're hearing from from other professionals in this space in terms of what the overall impact has been and sort of where this rule might fit into that.

JOHANNA ALONZO: Yeah, so all of last year, we had quite a few uh troubling things for international students, including folks might remember when students' SEVIS statuses were terminated. This is the online database that tracks international students. That was a big ordeal. There was a freeze on F1 visa interviews early in the summer of 2025. That led to some big delays and students having problem problems getting those interviews.

So, there was a lot of anticipation that international student numbers would decline, and they did. There were a few different sources that showed declines in international students, declines in new international student visas, which is a pretty good indicator. This is something that's sometimes sort of hard to measure and we're getting different numbers from different sources, but I do think that decline in new F1 visas was a pretty good tell.

So, I think that those worries are coming true, and this could be you know, it's all these factors coming together. It's both like if you can't get a visa interview, it's it's just not going to happen. But I think there's also the fear of something going awry while you're here.

And as the U.S., one of the biggest draws for students was, you know, this flexibility. Duration of status is really, really attractive. OPT, which is the system that allows students to work after international students to work after they graduate, that it still exists, but um it's something that the Trump administration has indicated they might not be a huge fan of, um and that's another huge selling point.

So, I think students are just more saying like, the things that we really thought were cool about going to the U.S. to study like we're not 100% sure that they're that they're as as strong as they once were.

MARK BRODIE: Sure, interesting. All right. That is Johanna Alonzo, admissions and enrollment reporter with Inside Higher Ed. Johanna, thanks so much. I appreciate it.

JOHANNA ALONZO: Thank you as well.

MARK BRODIE: Saloons are certainly a staple of the American West. From gun slinging cowboys to hard drinking outlaws to hard scrabble sheriffs, when you think of the Wild West, you most likely think of saloons. Homer Thiel documented hundreds of the saloons that crowded Tucson streets in the late 1800s. He even dug one of them up. Thiel is an archaeologist and author of the book, "Saloons of Tucson: Arizona Territory," a 337-page chronicle of the rich history of Tucson saloons. Earlier this year, my co-host Lauren Gilger spoke with him about the characters, drinks, and the inspiration for the book, an excavation of the Cactus Saloon on historic Block 83 in downtown Tucson.

HOMER THIEL: You'd be surprised what is preserved under buildings and asphalt parking lots in both Tucson and in Phoenix. Once you strip off the building foundations and the parking lots, you're going to find the remnants of both historic period stuff and also the pre-contact Native American villages are waiting to be found.

LAUREN GILGER: Hmm. So, when did you start to realize what you were discovering under there was saloons?

HOMER THIEL: Well, so prior to even starting the project, we look at Sanborn fire insurance maps, which are maps created by fire insurance companies so that adjusters in New York City can know what buildings are to be insured in downtown Tucson. And these maps in Tucson started in 1886 and go up into the 1950s. And so you look at those and you can see which buildings are there, and they'll say saloon on them. And then then you look at city directories or newspapers and you can identify what they are, like in this case, it was the Cactus Saloon.

LAUREN GILGER: Okay. Tell us about the Cactus Saloon. When you started digging under the city for this particular spot, what'd you find?

HOMER THIEL: So, we targeted the backyard areas of the buildings on this particular project because that's where you find the outhouse pits and the wells. And prior to running water, people had outdoor bathrooms, and they would use them for maybe 5 or 10 years, and then they would pick up the building and move it, and then they'd use the old outhouse pit as a trash dump. And so we excavated an outhouse from the Cactus Saloon. We would dig down in 1-foot levels, collect the artifacts, do another level, We take soil samples to get the plant remains, we collect all the animal bones, and we found a large amount of artifacts.

LAUREN GILGER: Like what?

HOMER THIEL: Well, we found various types of alcoholic beverage bottles, whiskey and gin and champagne and wine. We found soda bottles. We found many shoe polish bottles, so there was a shoe shine stand inside the saloon. We found fragments of an Anheuser-Busch mirror that once hung up behind the bar, and one of the cool things we found was pieces of the front window with words painted on them. We had the letters N Y for New York. That was probably advertising a type of beer. And we had the letters F O O for food. And one of the things that people don't know about old time saloons is they offered a free lunch if you bought a beer. And in this case, the Cactus Saloon, you'd get a sardine or a cheese or a ham sandwich once you bought a beer.

LAUREN GILGER: Once you bought a beer, you get your ham sandwich with it. That's awesome. I mean, so so what intrigued you about this idea of old saloons in Tucson? Was it this this excavation and finding these old things? Or did you start to realize this was a broader picture? There were a lot of these around back then.

HOMER THIEL: So, this started out as the archaeology project. I did some research in the other saloons, and this project took place in 2005. And that meant, you know, reading through reels of microfilm. But in the years since then, all the newspapers have been scanned in and are available online, and so you could search the word saloon and find articles about saloons. And during COVID, when I didn't have anything else to do, I decided to research every saloon in Tucson and found information on over 300 of them.

LAUREN GILGER: 300 of them, my goodness. So this was quite a a saloon town, it sounds like.

HOMER THIEL: Yes, at one time there were at least 34 separate saloons for a town of less than 10,000 people.

LAUREN GILGER: My goodness. I mean, I have to say it does sort of play into the idea of what a town like Tucson might have been like back then like this idea of the Wild West. Is that what you found when you started researching these places that it was gunfights and raucous drinking that we might assume based on old movies?

HOMER THIEL: That is exactly the opposite of what happened. So in the um the territorial period, I I searched from 1860 to 1914, and during that 54-year period, there were eight murders associated with saloons. Saloons really served a purpose for all the many single men in Tucson who didn't have any other entertainment venues. And so going to saloons and having a drink, playing a game of cards, that was a fun activity to do. I mean, there was an eventually an opera house and eventually they had movie theaters, but there wasn't much else to do.

LAUREN GILGER: So it was a kind of a community center almost.

HOMER THIEL: Yes. And each of them was different. So if you if you wanted to go to the Mexican saloons down on Meyer Street, you could go there, or um you could go to the ones that had restaurants associated with them and have a meal and have a drink. A lot of them had gambling games of various types. Um They also had music, but eventually the city of Tucson decided to start cleaning up things and eventually music was banned from being in saloons.

LAUREN GILGER: Music of all things, not the gambling?

HOMER THIEL: Guess what? Gambling was also banned. Ah, there you go.

LAUREN GILGER: I mean, so so tell us about some of your favorite tidbits, maybe characters that you've uncovered in this. Like there are owners and people a lot of immigrants who came in and started saloons in Tucson, it sounds like.

HOMER THIEL: Yes, so there were a lot of Italian, Austrian, French, and German saloon owners or at least employees. There was a guy named Mr. Barlogi who was from Italy, and he had a machine where you crank the handle and looked in this opening and you could watch sort of an old-fashioned movie. Well, somebody reported them and the sheriff came and looked at that movie and was horrified that it was a dirty movie. So he took the machine into the sheriff's office and went up and reported it to the mayor and city council, and they all trooped down to the sheriff's office and they all cranked the handle to watch this movie and were just horrified by it. And so they called in Mr. Barlogi, and he said, I didn't know this was a bad thing, you know, um and then they took his license for operating a saloon away.

LAUREN GILGER: Over a bad movie, huh?

HOMER THIEL: Yes. And of course, of course, I'm really curious, what was it? What was in the movie? Yeah.

LAUREN GILGER: So so you have to tell me because 337 saloons you've kind of uncovered here and documented in this book and you've spent a lot of time learning about these places and documenting them. If you had to pick one that you could go back in time and go to, what would it be?

HOMER THIEL: I would go to Well, there'd be two. I'd want to go to the Cactus Saloon because I dug it up. And then there was the Congress Hall Saloon, and that one started in May of 1868. And that one was the fancy saloon, and the the surviving photographs of the interior show just how beautiful it was. And they had a cabinet of minerals and an elk head, and um, you know, it was it was interesting place.

LAUREN GILGER: All right. Well, you've given us quite a history lesson. That is Homer Thiel, an archaeologist and author of Saloons of Tucson: Arizona Territory. Homer, thank you for coming on. Thanks for telling us so much about this. It's fascinating stuff.

HOMER THIEL: You're welcome.

MARK BRODIE: And now here's the latest essay in our summer soapbox series on the topic of road trips. For Phoenix writer and graduate student Amanda Kehrberg, one particular drive across the country wasn't just a road trip. It was the beginning of a journey.

AMANDA KEHRBERG: My dad and I were about 30 minutes outside Albuquerque when I realized I'd forgotten my favorite pillow. It was back at the hotel, camouflaged in a crisp white case. It was a Goldilocks pillow—down feathers, just the right amount of give and pushback, like a good parent. We decided not to go back. I could get another pillow.

I was on my way back from graduate school in Oklahoma for the summer. We'd already taken a few detours—stood on the grassy knoll in Dallas, snapped selfies with George W. Bush's rather lumpy early portraiture at the presidential library, and cheered on the Oklahoma City Thunder in the playoffs. In Albuquerque, we stopped by the Candy Lady, and my dad posed as Walter White from Breaking Bad with a box full of bright blue rock candy designed after the show's iconic meth. His arm started to shake under the weight—little tremors, like it did at dinner the night before.

I kicked my shoes off and stretched my feet out on the dash. "Tell me about Tiger," I said, while I got to work building Ritz cracker sandwiches of cheddar cheese and summer sausage.

Tiger was a little mutt puppy born on the U.S. Naval Base in Keflavik, Iceland, where my dad was stationed for a year in the 1970s, working on aircraft equipment in a massive hangar while nearby stations scanned the oceans for possible Soviet activity. My dad's Navy stories were always my favorite road trip entertainment—a classic bildungsroman, but with more comedy. He'd joined the Navy to avoid the Vietnam draft and spent his first three years on an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean. He told of day trips to Pompeii, playing "don't look" with his bunkmates, the time the jet blast picked him up and threw him across the deck like a leaf.

But the best stories were of Tiger—how he would jump into your arms when you patted your chest; the time they were driving around the base in a freezing Iceland winter in a U.S. Navy-issued open-top Jeep, and Tiger was yeeted out of the side on a sharp turn. Tiger always landed on his feet. He once chased down a taxiing aircraft—just a tiny brown and gold fluffball barking and yelping at a gigantic plane, followed by my dad waving his arms to stop. And then Tiger just bounded over to the plane's front wheel, lifted his leg, and peed.

Crackers and Tiger tails were running thin as we reached the winding mountain roads near Rock Springs. "I need to tell you something," my dad said. "They know what the tremors are. It's ALS."

And then he told different Navy stories—how veterans are at least twice as likely to get ALS; how the incidence rises for those who worked around aircraft; and how much support the VA offers. He had waited to tell me till we were getting close to home, where my mom was waiting to take off the sunglasses hiding my red, swollen eyes and wrap me in a big hug. But I wished later that we'd gone back for my pillow, so I could have had at least one more hour of stories and sandwiches and safety.

MARK BRODIE: That was Phoenix writer Amanda Kehrberg. You can hear more soapbox essays at kjzz.org.

Thanks for listening to The Show's podcast. The Show is produced by Sativa Peterson, Nick Sanchez, Amber Victoria Singer, Athena Ankrah, and Ayana Hamilton. The show is created by Jon Hoban. Our executive producer is Amy Silverman. You can find more of The Show and sign up for our newsletter at theshow.kjzz.org. You can also find us on Instagram @kjzztheshow.