The UA has a big question to answer

So do the rest of us ... What we've been up to ... And that's a really expensive car wash.

We’re turning over the top of today’s Agenda to Jeanne Woodbury.

She reached out to us after we wrote about the Trump administration offering a Faustian bargain to the University of Arizona last week.

We loved her insights about how trans students would be treated if the UA accepted Trump’s deal, so we invited her to write an op-ed.

Take it away, Jeanne!

With the news of Trump’s latest demand letter to universities — sent to nine public and private institutions around the country, including the University of Arizona — came total certainty that, among whatever other demands his administration would impose in exchange for federal funding, there would be a mandate to adopt a strict, trans-exclusionary definition of sex and gender.

Certainty is a rare commodity these days; anyone who relies on federal grants, from community health centers to domestic violence shelters to universities, can tell you that.

The UA has as much as half a billion dollars contingent on their response to this latest demand. Why the UA made it on the list and not ASU or NAU is anyone’s guess, but the administration has implied that UA President Suresh Garimella’s previous capitulation on DEI programs was a factor.

We may never have an answer, but the question that demands an answer now is whether the university will capitulate to Trump once again.

Only time and the UA can answer that.

I know how I want them to answer. I know the stakes for trans and other marginalized student groups. I could point them to the section of the letter on enforcement that allows the Department of Justice to arbitrarily determine adherence to the compact and revoke all funding accordingly.

I could point to every historical example that if you give in once you will be made to give in again.

It’s an easy argument to make, but I can’t make their decision for them. Instead, there are two questions this moment has brought to the forefront for me that I want to invite you to consider as well.

1. Do you know who you can count on?

2. Do you know who can count on you?

Jeanne Woodbury is an associate lobbyist at Creosote Partners with a background in LGBTQ+ advocacy.

Do you know who you can count on?

Trans people live in the uncertainty of that question.

Even growing up in loving homes, we are not afforded the luxury to know that because our family loves us for who they think we are, they will love us for who we are in truth.

When we go to school, we can never fully predict which of our friends we can trust with the fact of our transition, or which of our teachers we can rely on to respect something as basic as our names or pronouns.

When we enter the workforce, there will always be the nagging doubt of whether an interviewer who seemed enthusiastic about our resume but went radio silent after an interview did so because they realized we were trans.

When we apply for housing and are denied on a check we should have easily passed, what can we think except that our name change records outed us? But we can never know for sure.

When I saw that the UA was on the list of recipients of this demand letter, I flashed back to my own time in college, when the fight was for basic recognition of trans students by the university.

To refresh my memory, I did a quick Google search to find the year the UA’s preferred name policy was implemented. To my delight, the first result I clicked on was a 2015 op-ed written by a friend of mine. (Do I know who I can count on? Her.)

In it, she recounts the experience of watching a trans student who, each day in class, scratches out and corrects their name on the student roster. She writes, “The class was LGBTQ Studies […] I spent years wondering how that student was forced to handle similar situations in other courses — economics, biology, French.”

The policy implemented in January of that year, allowing students to register a preferred name once and have it appear everywhere, eliminates that uncertainty. Instead of having to rely on every professor in every class, every semester, a trans student only has to rely on the policy — on the university.

Today, students at the UA can register the pronouns and names that they want to appear on rosters. If the university agrees to Trump’s demands, trans students will lose official recognition at school, will be outed and deadnamed in class, and will find it difficult to even remain on campus for extended periods of time because of the demand letter’s discriminatory bathroom policy.

Do you know who you can count on?

Trans students, waiting for an answer from their university, cannot know. And if the UA signs the compact, it will only get worse.

Do you know who can count on you?

Consider as you read this — you, the professor, firm in your conviction that your students can count on you; you, the chair or dean or vice president, hurt that anyone would doubt you; you, the parent; you, the classmate; you, the friend — consider that you may be wrong about yourself.

Would you risk your job to respect a student’s name and pronouns? Would you refuse to be the bathroom police, knowing that even one trans man using the men’s room could mean losing half a billion dollars in federal funding?

How can you know — how will you know — until you are tested?

Until the moment they made the choice to stop providing gender affirming care for trans youth, the decision makers at Phoenix Children’s Hospital, El Rio Health, and Prisma Community Health probably did not believe they were capable of it. Prisma in particular has a history and identity rooted in the LGBTQ+ community (it’s where I started hormones, back when it was called the Southwest Center for HIV/AIDS).

Before you are put in the position of making such a decision, ask yourself: Where is my line? What compromises am I willing to make? Who am I willing to sacrifice?

Before you are tested, test yourself. Speak out!

If it feels scary to do so, that is how you will know you are doing what counts. Demonstrate to the people in your life that you are willing to take risks for them when it is required.

For the UA, the test is already in progress. We all know the stakes when the pencils are down.

So, President Garimella, do you know who can count on you? It’s hard to tell.

If you’re still not subscribed to our new weekly newsletters covering water, education and artificial intelligence, here’s what you’re missing.

Education Agenda

The 2026 primary election battle between Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne and State Treasurer Kimberly Yee, who wants Horne’s job, is already getting contentious. The two are trading barbs via letters and news releases in a political tit-for-tat that includes name-calling and accusations.

And a tiny rural district in Nadaburg, Arizona, is caught in the crossfire.

Nadaburg is facing what would otherwise be considered a good problem: It’s growing so fast that it needs more money to keep up with enrollment.

There’s a mechanism in state law to let them access additional funds.

Horne says the district is eligible. But Yee says he’s wrong, and she cuts the checks.

Elsewhere in the Education Agenda, intern Alysa draws on her years at Arizona State University — the spiritual home of Charlie Kirk’s campus debates — to write one of our most popular editions ever: Tumultuous times: A Kirk and Crow story.

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A.I. Agenda

Artificial intelligence is good at a lot of things, but perhaps most of all, it’s a great yes-man.

There’s a name for this problem: AI sycophancy, and it’s leading AI models to flatter us over even our dumbest, most dangerous ideas.

And that constantly supportive voice can turn dark quickly when people struggling with a mental health crisis turn to AI for help. AI models have encouraged several young people to harm or kill themselves, and psychologists and Congress are taking note.

Also in the A.I. Agenda, check out the newest starlet in Hollywood: An AI-generated “actress” named Tilly Norwood.

She’s bad news for actors. But technically speaking, she may sidestep that strike-ending agreement with the actors’ guild that created the first-ever guardrails around AI actors.

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Water Agenda

In Arizona, they say whiskey is for drinkin’, water is for fightin’.

And there’s a whole lot of fightin’ going on over Arizona’s water resources.

Fondomonte, the water-guzzling Saudi-owned alfalfa farm in northwestern Arizona, is fighting back against Attorney General Kris Mayes’ novel attempt to use public nuisance laws to stop them from pumping. The company has asked a judge to throw out Mayes’ lawsuit, arguing Mayes is inventing a “backdoor” way to exercise regulatory authority over groundwater pumping that she doesn’t possess.

Meanwhile, the “Upper Basin states” at the head of the Colorado River are fighting with Lower Basin states like Arizona over who should have first dibs on the dwindling river’s water supplies. For years, the feds have been playing referee and threatening to step in and settle the dispute in a way none of the states will likely be thrilled about. But as the deadline moves closer, it raises questions about their legal authority to do so.

Maybe the saying should be that water’s for suing.

And in today’s edition, we catch up with Kyle Roerink, the executive director of the Nevada-based Great Basin Water Network, about a new report on the “indisputable evidence of drier times ahead.”

Unfortunately, constantly writing about state politics means we are extremely online.

Fortunately, you can be extremely online with us — and at least you’ll learn something between the memes and meltdown threads.

Follow the Arizona Agenda wherever you doomscroll! We’re on: Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, Threads and Facebook.

The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office came into some unexpected savings this week.

A court-ordered audit revealed the office’s cost of complying with reforms ordered under a racial profiling case is nowhere near the advertised $226 million.

From 2014 to 2024, the audit found that 72% of reported costs that were attributable to the Melendres case had nothing to do with it.

Instead, the office rolled a golf cart and premium cable into the price of justice.

That’s bad news for a lot of prominent Republicans, who’ve used the ballooning price tag as a reason to free the sheriff’s office from federal monitoring.

And it certainly doesn’t look good for Sheriff Jerry Sheridan, who previously called the mandated reforms “ludicrous” and “crap.”

Turns out, so were the expenses.

Some of the improperly billed items include:

• Cable TV charges from Cox Communications — $7,669

• 42 patrol vehicles — $1.3 million

• A golf cart — $11,805

• A transit van — $43,948

• Tasers — $1.8 million

• Car washes — $3,259

• A single photocopier — $72,119