If a cabinet secretary visits town but nobody in the press or public knows about it, does it make a sound?
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. visited the Tucson area Tuesday, attending a meeting at Marana Health Center. Representatives of Southern Arizona hospitals attended the roundtable session, hosted by U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani, the Tucson Republican.
The event was one of a series of activities Kennedy undertook in Arizona over five days ending Wednesday, but only the last one was announced to the public or press in advance.
On Wednesday morning, Ciscomani talked about Kennedy's visit in an interview with Tucson restaurateur Grant Krueger, who hosts a weekly radio show on KVOI, 1030-AM. (More on this below.)
"We had a very good roundtable with him," Ciscomani said of Kennedy. "A lot obviously to say on rural healthcare and preventative health care."
"We had the CEOs of the major hospitals in the area from TMC to Carondelet, Banner. We also had El Rio, we had Chiricahua health center, we had Marana that was hosting us," the congressman went on. "We had practitioners like cardiologists, chiropractors as well, we had a good mix of people to give the secretary an idea of where we are and the challenges we’re facing."
"It was a great conversation, nothing that wasn’t all true. He needed to hear everything, both the things that are working well for people and the things that are not."
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., seen here at a fireside chat at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas last month, made an unannounced stop in Marana during a swing through Arizona this week.
Julia Strange, vice president for external affairs at TMC Health, said the company's president and CEO, Jennifer Mendrzycki, attended and touted TMC's farm-to-institution produce program, its food-as-medicine initiative and its telecardiac rehab program.
"It was an honor to be invited to have a seat at the table," she said.
On Saturday, Kennedy visited Camelback Recovery's residential treatment campus in Peoria, HHS reported in a press release.
On Monday, Kennedy visited Ability360, which the department described as "a Center for Independent Living (CIL) in Phoenix serving Americans with disabilities."
On Tuesday, Kennedy also visited the Banner Sports Medicine High Performance Center in Scottsdale
On Wednesday, Kennedy held the one previously announced appearance of his visit. He was the keynote speaker at the Tribal Self Governance Conference at the Gila River Indian Community's Wild Horse Pass Resort and Casino, the Arizona Republic reported.
He got applause, the Republic reported, when he said he had made more trips to Indian Country in a single year than any other HHS secretary.
The controlled access could in part be explained by an unwanted pair of questions Kennedy received in Phoenix a year ago. At an event legislators held to celebrate the nutrition-related bills, an Associated Press reporter had the temerity to ask Kennedy about measles vaccines and was shut down by legislators. Since then, criticism of his policies on vaccines have only grown.
Kennedy was the second cabinet secretary of the week to visit Southern Arizona. As the Star's Tony Davis reported, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum visited Tucson Monday and held a roundtable on water, to which the press was invited.
Ciscomani avoids questions
Krueger's 22-minute interview with Ciscomani was a relatively rare opportunity for the public to hear the congressman take questions, but as it turns out, a restaurateur who backs Ciscomani was probably not the best person for this job at this time.
As with Kennedy's appearances, Ciscomani has carefully managed his public appearances and has not submitted to much hard questioning. In keeping with that trend, Krueger, who owns restaurants at St. Philip's Plaza and elsewhere, asked Ciscomani about the visits by cabinet members, congratulated him on last year's tax bill, and talked with him about federal funding for Arizona, among other subjects.
Ciscomani
OK topics, but the interview occurred two days after Pres. Trump threatened Iran with annihilation on social media, saying "A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again." And the interview occurred one day after a fragile ceasefire deal was struck, leaving the Strait of Hormuz in an unclear status, with oil and gasoline prices remaining high.
And of course, Congress has still not made any declaration of war or authorization of military action, despite the Constitutional requirement they do so. Those topics didn't come up in the interview.
Also this week, a Star reporter sought comment from Ciscomani on the war but was met with silence.
ICE limits spark complaints
State legislators have filed an additional complaint against a local government in Southern Arizona, for trying to block federal immigration enforcement from using their properties.
Previously, Rep. Quang Nguyen, a Prescott Republican, filed a complaint with the Arizona Attorney General's Office about Phoenix and Tucson over their policies blocking federal authorities from using their city properties for civil immigration enforcement actions.
Now, Sen. Warren Petersen and two GOP colleagues have filed a similar complaint against Pima County over their similar policy. They say the county is violating state law by passing a resolution Feb. 17 that blocks federal immigration agents from using county property for civil enforcement actions.
A state law, ARS 11-1051, says "No official or agency of this state or a county, city, town or other political subdivision of this state may limit or restrict the enforcement of federal immigration laws to less than the full extent permitted by federal law."
Under a separate state law, the attorney general's office has 30 days to uphold or reject the complaint. In the worst-case scenario, state law allows state-shared revenue from cities or counties that violate state law and are subject to these complaints.
