Tucson, Arizona
Cnn
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The special Eats coffee is a work in progress: new gas pipes that have just been installed, the walls ready for a new layer of paint and the kitchen supports stacked with pots and pans for future work.
It is a next crucial chapter for Tamara Varga and her passionate project: helping people with special needs, including her two sons. The project includes two food trucks, a candy shop and soon the restaurant, with autistic workers, Down syndrome and other challenges. The restaurant now has 50 workers; Varga hopes that there will be more as the company will develop and that its restaurant serves not only food, but offers kitchen training.
“It’s a lot of work,” said Varga by visiting the kitchen. But also, this: “It’s my passion. And it’s my call. This is what I am supposed to do, and it fills my life, and it blesses me.”
Varga is a devout Christian and a republican for life, a supporter of Trump who participated in CNN “Everywhere on the card»Project during the 2024 presidential campaign. We revisited with it and others in our Arizona group To obtain their evaluation of the first 100 days of President Donald Trump’s new mandate. Most take -out meals were not good news for the White House:
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Each voter with whom we talked, even Trump’s supporter, Vargas, said the prices did not drop as fast as they had hoped.
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Trade is essential in this border state, and the disorders caused by the erratic price threats of Trump injure large and small businesses.
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The illegal border crossings are decreasing, a great promise of Trump held. But companies along the border complain about legal passages are also decreasing, and say that their sales have dropped up to 40% in the last 100 days.
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How Trump will make changes is increased alarms.
Varga is still counting as a Trump supporter at 100 days. But his questions about what’s going on in Washington are potentially disturbing for the White House and the GOP Congress.
“I feel good with a lot of promises he has made on the countryside, but I also worry about a few things,” said Varga in an interview on the Tucson restaurant website. “I am worried about Medicaid and Medicare and Social Security. He said he was not going to cut them. That he was just going to find waste and I really hope he will stick to that. ”
Varga looks closely at the budgetary debate, knowing that the Republicans cannot operate their mathematics Without finding giant savings in these social security net programs.
“I’m not for the cuts,” she said. “It is important because we have to take care of people with disabilities and our elderly people and those who depend on it. And they cannot survive what right now. We cannot cut. ”
Asked if she was convinced that Trump will hold her promise not to Cut social security and health insuranceVarga said: “I’m worried, but I hope.”
Varga said his cost of living was “a little down”, but added “there is still a lot of work to do”. The constant pricing are now part of the problem, she said.
“This causes disturbances,” said Varga. “We make gift baskets, and I noticed that the items we have put in our gift baskets have increased.”
For the moment, she takes the president as speech when he says that a pain is necessary to repair broken trade relations. “If he does not pass, however, he goes that many people turn against him.”
Some other notable changes in our conversations with Varga before the 2024 elections:
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She no longer believes that Trump says that the 2020 elections were faked.
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It is open to supporting the Democrats for a local office because of its disappointment with certain Republicans of Arizona.
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She does not agree with friends who call Trump a dictator or wonder if he is a good person. But some complaints sound true. “Sometimes I agree,” said Varga. “And things will change better or he will lose me, even.”
Melissa Cordero is a veteran and liberal -democrat of the Air Force – a progressive organizer who always tries to understand what went wrong in November.
“We just have to become wicked,” said Cordero.
The scope of the change in the last 100 days means that Cordero feels a little dizzy.
“I am going constantly,” does he do that? “She said.
Curdero’s life has been assigned by the new administration in several ways. She and other members of a group of progressive veterans, Common Defense, recently visited a group of veterans deported to Juárez, Mexico. She says she has just lost a modest conservation subsidy of National Sciences Foundation Because it was part of a Dei program. She noted that her parents, the two veterans, feared losing their federal job. And she participated Thursday in a Tucson demonstration against Trump Cup in the veterans department.
“There is no one who answers phones,” she said. “Mental health, cutting, cutting, cuts in this area. This is what we have all the veterans most needed. ”
Cordero is an exhausted and energetic mix when Trump is angry and she tries to improve her organizational work.
“I am angry because the communities I hold the most are attacked,” said Cordero. “The LGBTQ community, the Trans community. What really made me angry was immigration and what happens to deported veterans. ”
Tucson is in the county of Pima Blue reliably, although Trump ran a little more there in 2024 when he won the Arizona and swept the battlefields.
Rio Rico is about an hour in the south in the county of Santa Cruz, which leads to the border of Mexico. Trump won 32% of the votes there in 2020; 40% in 2024. But the price turmoil beats the local economy.
“It’s a new courageous world,” said Matt Mandel, a Sunfed executive, a large food distributor with a giant warehouse a few kilometers from the border crossing of Nogales. Each warehouse product was from Mexico. He hummed with activity during our visit, buzzing forklifts to lift vegetable pallets from refrigerated storage rooms and run them towards waiting trucks.
“The biggest problem we have so far is uncertainty,” said Mandel in an interview. “We talked about prices, then the prices are disabled. We have prices. They came into play for three days. They were canceled. But the constant threat of “What If” makes us very difficult to plan ”
Mandel shares Trump’s goal to stimulate American manufacturing capacity. But he does not understand the threats of pricing of carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes and other products making a stands here between the farm and the table.
“Food has no meaning (at price) at all,” said Mandel. “All you are going to do is increase these costs for consumers. People have used to have all their fruits and vegetables all year round, and this is entirely due to imports. So putting prices on imports will only limit the offer, increase prices or both. ”
Ray Flores sees pricing disorders in its results: he has more than a dozen restaurants, from high -end sites like Charro Steak to the most relaxed, La Monica, named Tía Monica, an aunt of Flores who inspired the first of restaurants, El Charro, more than 100 years ago.
“We are seeing less expenses definitively,” said Flores. “We see figures drop from 7 to 8% around the system right now, and we have stores at different prices.”
Conversation of constant prices is trusting consumers.
“There is a little apprehension to celebrate, right?” is how Flores said. “There is a certain fear of spending this additional money.”
Flores is a real independent disgusted with both national parties. He agrees with certain Trump priorities, including the reduction of public spending and the expulsion of undocumented migrants which can be credible to criminal activities.
“But I am a little disconcerted by the way they did things,” said Flores in an interview. “It seems a bit random.”
Flores sees too much impulse and emotion, not enough planning and collaboration.
On a scale of 1 to 10, it marks the first 100 days at 5.
When what about the next 100 days?
“I don’t want it to get worse, right?” I don’t want aggressive and somewhat mean decision to take root in everything we do. But I don’t want to crash either. So, for me – in the middle – I hope it will be better.… If we could finish at 7, it would be really nice. ”