Journalists’ Roundtable: Fake electors case, budget negotiations and more

It’s Friday, which means it is time for another edition of Journalists’ Roundtable. This week, “Arizona Horizon” host Ted Simons was joined by Camryn Sanchez of KJZZ, Dennis Welch of AZ Family and Jeremy Duda of Axios.

This week’s topics:

• Fake electors case heads back to grand jury
• Negotiations on the state’s budget for fiscal year 2026
• A proposed extension of Proposition 123
• Immigrant arrests occurring after court hearings
• DOJ closes its civil rights investigation into Phoenix Police Department

On the fake electors case heading back to the grand jury:

Camryn Sanchez: “It got remained, which kinda means it has to go back to where it came from, from this judge who says that the prosecutors, meaning the Attorney General’s office and her people, didn’t give the actual text of an important federal law to the grand jury who indicted the so-called fake electors when they first indicted them. So now they have to go back and do it properly.”

Dennis Welch: “You’re almost at the five year mark at this point and it behooves anybody out there to run this out as long as they can. Because it’s starting to get some distance between what happened in 2020 and now, I think it’s part of a legal strategy. The people I’ve talked to at the Attorney General’s office [are] pretty confident they’ll be able to go back to the grand jury and get more indictments, but again, it’s about the time that it takes.

Jeremy Duda: “Where this really hangs them up is not just the distance from the actual incident they were charged over, it’s that we have an election next year. [Attorney General] Kris Mayes is up for re-election and if she loses to a republican, it’s kinda difficult to see a republican Attorney General continuing with this case.”

On negotiations on the state’s budget for fiscal year 2026:

Camryn Sanchez: “The legislature is currently on a break.The House came in for one day and decided to go on break for two more weeks, and the Senate is coming back next week but we don’t know how long they’re gonna stick around for. They’re saying they’re on break to really buckle down and work on the budget, so I hope that that’s the case.”

Dennis Welch: “I keep hearing that some lawmakers really want to wait and see what happens with the May numbers, and those don’t come out until June. We have a lot of volatility in the economy right now, stemming from trade wars, tariff wars and stuff like that. So there’s some uncertainty there. I know businesses right now are holding off on making big investments and big decisions, so maybe [the] government might be taking some of that same posture at this point? Kind of a wait and see attitude?”

Jeremy Duda: “I don’t think there’s just a lot of agreement. Not between the legislature and the Governor’s office and not even between the House and the Senate.”

On immigrant arrests occurring after court hearings:

Dennis Welch: “There’s a lot of concern about this whole thing. Imagine, these are migrants who came here, applied for asylum, asked for asylum, which was completely legal and allowable under American law. They followed the process, they’re going to their court appearances. They show up there and ICE agents, who are masked up, we don’t know who these agents are, [are] showing up and taking these folks away.”

Jeremy Duda: “Worth noting, we saw this in a number of other cities, it wasn’t just Phoenix. In Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, I think Dallas and Seattle. We saw this for two days this week, certainly wouldn’t surprise me to see it again or something similar, something more. Obviously, we see so much pushing of the envelope, pushing of new boundaries by the Trump administration when it comes to immigration enforcement.”

Camryn Sanchez: “The question is, what are these people supposed to do going forward? Let’s say you are a person seeking asylum legally. You go to your court hearing, if they decide that your case isn’t good enough, you’re basically getting taken and thrown away. But if you don’t show up to court, you’re in violation of the law because you didn’t make your appearance. Now you’re in trouble if and when they catch you for that. So are you supposed to show up and hope you can plead your case, or are you supposed to hide at home and hope they don’t get you for not showing up for court?”