The Show for May 6, 2026: Humanitarian aid work on the border, Arizona's summer forecast

Under the first Trump administration, University of Arizona professor Scott Warren faced decades in prison for carrying out humanitarian aid work on the border. What the experience looks like to him now and in a new era of President Donald Trump. Plus, could a so-called super El Niño bring us some much-needed rain this summer?

Transcript

LAUREN GILGER: Hi, I'm Lauren Gilger, 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.

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, and welcome to The Show here on KJZZ 91.5 in Phoenix. I am Lauren Gilger. Coming up, a new Colorado River plan could save Arizona a lot of pain in the future, if the Feds accept it. And we meet a local professor with Valley Fever who is feeling the impacts of wildfire season.

But first, while the weather here in the Valley of the Sun has given us a bit of a break the last few days, don't be fooled; we are looking at temperatures in the 100s this weekend. And that won't even be the first time we break 100 degrees this year. We broke another heat record this year on March 18th, when temperatures at Sky Harbor International Airport hit 102 degrees. It was the earliest we have ever hit 100 here and the hottest temperature ever recorded in March. It came after we had the hottest winter ever in Phoenix, and a record hot spring. So, are we in for yet another record-scorcher summer? There just might be hope on the horizon in the form of a so-called Super El Niño heading our way. And here to tell us about it is Randy Cerveny, professor of geographical sciences at ASU and extreme weather expert.

Good morning, Randy, thanks for coming in.

RANDY CERVENY: Hey, my pleasure.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, so 100 already this weekend; this feels early, is it actually early?

RANDY CERVENY: A little bit early. We're going to get to 105 and that usually happens a week or so later in the year. But as you mentioned, we've already been up above 100 in March.

What of course a lot of people don't realize is we need that heat. It may not seem pretty, but in order to generate the thunderstorms that we're going to get later on in the summer, we need to have the deserts heat up because hot air rises and it draws in the moisture from the Gulf of California and from the Pacific Ocean.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, so in order to get those monsoons, we do have to kind of pay for it with these record, these really hot days, OK.

But what is it looking like in terms of a preview of this summer's weather? We've had these record hot summers many, many of the last couple of summers here in the Valley. Are we looking at that again?

RANDY CERVENY: Yeah, we are, unfortunately. It is going to be hot. But, to add to that, instead of using the normal word dry, we're going to put the word moist because it's probably going to be humid as well.

We're going to have a lot of moisture coming up from the Gulf of California and the Pacific Ocean. As you mentioned, we've got this thing called a super El Niño that's building out in the Pacific Ocean. And what that means is the center part of the Pacific Ocean is becoming really hot. Hot water is pouring over from Australia and from Asia and being pumped over to our side of the Pacific Ocean.

When that happens, it really messes up all of the weather patterns not only just for the Pacific Ocean, but the entire world.

LAUREN GILGER: Wow, the entire world?

RANDY CERVENY: Yeah. Basically, I mean there's good and bad things, it all depends on where you're living. The good thing I guess for the people on the East Coast is it means likely less hurricanes this year along the Atlantic seaboard.

For us, the opposite holds true, that in the Pacific we're going to have a whole bunch more hurricanes. Now, normally hurricanes don't cause us any problem, they die out before they get here. But if we have a lot of Pacific hurricanes that are off the coast of Mexico, the moisture from those hurricanes will be funneled up into Arizona and they are what trigger our Arizona monsoon.

LAUREN GILGER: So we could have a very wet monsoon season, which is coupled with that very hot weather that you're talking about we need ahead of time.

RANDY CERVENY: Right, so instead of hot and dry, try hot and moist.

LAUREN GILGER: Hot and moist, that'll be a weird summer for us but not bad, we need the rain, we'll take it, right? This is an interesting one because is the monsoon a different weather pattern, a different kind of system in terms of the meteorological language when it comes to, you know, the El Niño versus monsoons?

RANDY CERVENY: Well, in the past El Niño doesn't have a super big impact on us. The only thing that's probably helping us out that it will have this summer is that it's so strong. That because of that incredibly warm water that's going to be in the Pacific Ocean, it will charge up more Pacific hurricanes.

Those hurricanes drop a huge amount of moisture and it's that moisture that we have to watch. Now in normal El Niño years the number of hurricanes isn't enough to really impact us, but we're anticipating a really active summer here.

It may be more into New Mexico than Arizona; right now the long-term forecast for the summertime looks to have a lot of the moisture being funneled into New Mexico given the upper air patterns, the storm track.

LAUREN GILGER: Skipping us a little bit, yeah. So, I mean when we say a lot of rain, like what does that look like and is this something we can prepare for?

RANDY CERVENY: Well, that's the tricky thing about the monsoon is that it's always a localized situation. That as you know when we have thunderstorms here in the Valley, one part of the Valley can get dumped on with an inch and a half of rain and another part of the Valley gets absolutely nothing. So it's very localized.

But what it will probably mean is that there's going to be more chances for those heavy rains, that we'll have more storms and if you have more storms the likelihood of you getting hit by a particular storm is going to increase.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. There is a fire burning near Buckeye, Randy, I want to talk to you about it. It's grown to more than 1,100 acres just as of this morning. It's not far from where a lot of people are living, it's not far outside the city at this point because so much has been built out there. This is an air quality issue.

NewsHazen Fire: The latest on the wildfire near BuckeyeGreg Hahne, May 4, 2026 The Hazen Fire is burning about a mile south of Buckeye residential areas and is bordering State Route 85. As of Tuesday afternoon it stood at 1049 acres and reached 10% containment overnight.
RANDY CERVENY: Absolutely. And it's one of the things that the National Weather Service and other organizations like the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality do, is that they have the ability with computer models to track the plumes, to track those smoke from those wildfires and actually see which parts of the Valley in this case are going to be impacted. So it's, our technology has greatly improved just over the last 20, 30 years.

LAUREN GILGER: What does that kind of fire smoke kind of effect have on air quality and on people's health as opposed to like smog?

RANDY CERVENY: Oh, it's very dangerous actually and it's one of the reasons why Arizona Department of Environmental Quality keeps such big controls about that. It's equivalent of the kind of situation that you might see during really bad dust storms.

In fact, one of the things that we're going to be doing this summer is coming up with a ranking system now for dust storms. We're going to try to show people how bad in terms of the air quality it gets based off of some of these dust storms that we're going to have this summer.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. So, just the beginning of wildfire season; what should folks know when it comes to air quality and smoke?

RANDY CERVENY: Just pay attention to the news, find out which areas are going to be most impacted and if you are in an impacted area, stay inside because the air quality within your house is going to be much better than what it would be outside.

Think about the times across the Valley on the Fourth of July or New Year's Day when all the fireworks are let off, that's kind of the sense that you can have with some of the smoke that's associated with these wildfires.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, OK, we'll leave it there. Randy Cerveny, professor of geographical sciences at ASU. Randy, thank you so much.

RANDY CERVENY: My pleasure.

LAUREN GILGER: And now let’s turn to someone who is personally impacted by this wildfire — the Hazen Fire burning near Buckeye — and the bad air quality it’s bringing with it. Kathleen Muldoon is a professor at a local medical school who lives in north Peoria not too far from where the wildfire is burning. And she has Valley fever.

News

Hazen Fire: The latest on the wildfire near Buckeye

Greg Hahne

The Hazen Fire is burning about a mile south of Buckeye residential areas and is bordering State Route 85. As of Tuesday afternoon it stood at 1049 acres and reached 10% containment overnight.

The disease caused by a fungal infection is common across the Southwest and California but highly underdiagnosed and for some, it can impact their health for years.

Kathleen is one of those patients and she’s on the line now to tell us more about what it’s like during wildfire season. Good morning, Kathleen.

KATHLEEN MULDOON: Good morning, Lauren, thanks for having me.

LAUREN GILGER: Thank you for coming on. So, let me just ask you first, like when you heard a wildfire burning south of Buckeye, what did you think?

KATHLEEN MULDOON: I thought, man, this is going to be a rough week for me. Right away. I mean I knew I could already sense it in my chest before I opened the door to smell the fire.

LAUREN GILGER: And you can smell it there?

KATHLEEN MULDOON: Oh, yeah, we can smell it in the mornings ... even this morning, a few days in, it smells like there's a wood fire burning just down the neighborhood.

LAUREN GILGER: Wow. So, how does this impact your health as someone with Valley fever and who has had it for a long time? We just heard Randy Cerveny talk about the air quality impacts. What does it feel like for you?

KATHLEEN MULDOON: The best way I can feel it, I can describe it — and I don't know if you can hear it in my voice but I can certainly hear kind of a graveliness, but it hurts in my chest to speak, it's almost like a heaviness. I used to describe it more along the lines of, you know, it felt like a donkey had kicked me in the chest.

But someone who had grown up with asthma I think put better language to it for me, because I never had any kind of respiratory illnesses until four years ago now, is that I can feel my lungs. Like I can feel a pressure when I'm trying to push air out. And as you mentioned, I'm a professor so I talk for a living — and it's exhausting.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. So I want to back up and talk about that four years you mentioned, right? Like you found out you had Valley fever in 2022. You were admitted to the hospital that year, diagnosed with pneumonia. And it was a while until you were able to find a doctor to look at the scan of your lungs and figure out what was really wrong.

KATHLEEN MULDOON: Yeah, in fact, I was never admitted. I went to the ER, but I was kind of sent away after a few hours and some scans with a generalized diagnosis of pneumonia, you know, with areas of lung collapse, but no treatment, no diagnosis. I had to pursue it myself ... Since then I've learned that even here in Arizona where Valley fever is prominent and endemic, it can take three weeks to a month to get a diagnosis.

LAUREN GILGER: Wow. So what did you think, like when the doctor looked at that X-ray of your lungs and you said one was all white basically, it was not black as it should have been.

KATHLEEN MULDOON: Yeah, on an X-ray, you know, empty air space which should be filling your lungs is black and I think I went to the ER on Aug. 1 and wasn't until October until I found a pulmonologist who actually pulled up the scans. And, yeah, just looking at all that opaque whiteness as if there's something dense in your lungs, as if it's bone, was shocking. And made a lot of sense given how hard it had been for me to catch my breath, how exhausted I felt, how much strain it felt just to produce the air to have a conversation, let alone give a lecture.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. And as we mentioned this is really common especially here in Arizona. It's this fungus that's sort of found in the dust here that people breathe in. A lot of Valley fever cases, you know, clear up and don't last so long. Why has yours lasted so many years?

KATHLEEN MULDOON: I don't think anyone knows, right? It's one of these things where we don't know how our individual physiology responds to the fungus. And why I wasn't able to fight it off, I don't think is exactly known. I was never given fluconazole, which is a standardized treatment anti-fungal. I was given antibiotics with the misdiagnosis at the very beginning, and I have read some — I don't know if it damaged, I don't know if it prolonged my treatment but it certainly wasn't the appropriate course of treatment for a fungus in my body.

So, I just — I don't know that that's known. It's one of those things where there's something individual about our responses to the various attacks, you know, that come to us just by living life ... I just don't know that level of science has caught up yet.

LAUREN GILGER: So, you, I know, still wear a mask in lots of places over your mouth and nose because of your Valley fever. I'm guessing you're staying inside a lot right now as you don't want to breathe in that smoke. But tell us like all of the maybe little ways in which still having Valley fever today has really impacted your life.

KATHLEEN MULDOON: Well, I think wearing the mask is the first thing because, you know, people automatically assume or they'll even ask, like "Are you sick, why are you wearing that mask?" It's become stigmatized in some way even though I would have hoped that it would, you know, go unquestioned that I'm either protecting myself or somebody else that I love, you know, from the various communicable diseases that we can get from being — living in community with each other.

So, you know, constantly having to explain or just feeling stigmatized by that. But I think as you mentioned in the last segment, it's been a little bit of cooler weather, so we have to keep our doors closed and not able to enjoy that right now because the air quality, I just don't want that smoke in my house.

I'm very conscientious, I have three children, about how they play outside and the wind conditions and the weather conditions. I spend a lot of time looking at the weather report, which actually the air quality doesn't always reflect how I experience the air, and I just have taken some time to rethink my baseline and what exposure means for me. So I definitely take different precautions about going outside, about masking even outdoors — especially now this past week even as I go from like, you know, the parking lot to my office.

LAUREN GILGER: What do you want people to know about this, Kathleen, about this disease, the impacts of it, the way you live your life because of it?

KATHLEEN MULDOON: You know, Valley fever is something that we're all exposed to, it's not, you know, I think a textbook explanation can be, you know, if there's construction or if you're gardening or if you work in landscaping. But there is so much environmental exposure just with the monsoon seasons or as the winds pick up that I think many of us are exposed to inhaling this fungus at any time.

And knowing that can help people take precautions about how they want to protect their respiratory system when they are outside and not just during dust storms, but just as someone who lives in Arizona.

If you are feeling like flu-like symptoms that don't go away, I would ask for a Valley fever test because it's not often given given that the symptoms are kind of just can be any number of things. But we are in a highly endemic area, and I do believe that patient advocacy and asking for that test, you know, in urgent cares or your doctor's office if you are going in not feeling right, can go a long way to getting the appropriate treatment earlier in the course of the disease.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, we'll leave it there. Kathleen Muldoon, a professor at a local medical school, she lives in north Peoria. Kathleen, thank you very much for coming on the show, I really appreciate it.

KATHLEEN MULDOON: I appreciate you, thank you.

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, it is The Show on KJZZ 91.5, I'm Lauren Gilger. Coming up, it is a difficult conversation a lot of people who have aging parents will need to have at some point; when is it time to take your parent's car keys away from them?

Next up this morning we have some big news on the future of the Colorado River. Arizona, California, and Nevada have struck a deal about the river's management after more than a year of deadlocked negotiations.

The so-called Lower Basin states are putting forward a proposal that would make sweeping cuts to our water use across the Southwest and prop up the nation's two largest reservoirs, which sit in northern Arizona: Lake Powell and Lake Mead.

At this point, water levels are so low amid climate change and ongoing drought that the reservoirs might just stop working — and that is something everyone wants to avoid. But states across the West have not been able to agree on how and who should take most water cuts.

KJZZ's Alex Hager is covering it all and he joins me now to talk more about it. Good morning, Alex.

ALEX HAGER: Good morning, Lauren.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, Alex, what is in this plan?

ALEX HAGER: So, the plan is to leave water in the river across Arizona, California and Nevada. It is not yet detailed how exactly that would happen. We can make some informed guesses, but at the end of the day what it does is leave water in the Colorado River system to keep those reservoirs operating normally. And what it does is kick the can down the road a little bit on negotiations; it buys us time through 2028 to come to a bigger agreement about managing the river among all seven states that use it for a longer amount of time.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, so kicking the can down the road, but cuts are involved here. I mean when we're taking less water from the river that means we're getting less water from the river, right? Who's going to take those cuts?

ALEX HAGER: We don't know yet, but like I said we can make some informed guesses. So, in the past similar cutback plans have been facilitated by writing checks to farmers to pause irrigation on some of their crops. We are almost certainly going to see cuts to the Central Arizona Project; that's a big canal that brings water to the Phoenix and Tucson areas. And cities that draw from that canal, they can use less Colorado River water especially for short periods of time, by leaning harder on other sources, like the Salt River Project here in Phoenix or drawing more groundwater during that time. And these cuts are likely going to be easier to tolerate whether you are a farmer or a city because they are only expected to last through 2028.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, short term in that sense. This plan, Alex, comes from Arizona, California and Nevada as we said, after the federal government put out its own proposal, right? Which would have been really, I think the quote was "devastating" to particularly the Central Arizona Project you mentioned there.

ALEX HAGER: That's right. The initial plan to cut back on water use and help prop up these reservoirs was made by the federal government and when it was released, leaders here in the Valley pushed back hard. They said that this plan was unacceptable, they said it would be devastating. The leader of the Central Arizona Project said it appeared that they were trying to wipe us here in the Valley off the map. This would not do that. I talked to the Central Arizona Project earlier this week, and they said these cuts have gone from devastating to difficult but still possible to be managed.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, so it's kind of doing it on their own terms.

ALEX HAGER: That sounds about right.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. So this is just a proposal from the Lower Basin states and just a proposal, right? What about the Upper Basin states? What do they have to say?

ALEX HAGER: They're not wild about this plan. I know that, I've talked to a representative from the Upper Basin states, and they have some big issues with the details. Part of this plan involves drawing down some other further upstream reservoirs in Wyoming and in Utah, taking that water and not only leaving water from down here in Lake Mead and Lake Powell, but taking water from upstream and adding it to Lake Powell.

They have an issue with that plan, and they also pointed out that this does not save the river, it keeps both major reservoirs kind of on the precipice of crisis without letting them fall over, but it keeps them close to the edge of crisis.

So, it is yet to be seen whether their approval is necessary. Basically the next step is for the federal government to decide whether to sign off on this plan wholesale, take parts of it and incorporate it into a different plan. They might take parts of suggestions from the Upper Basin states and incorporate those into a final plan.

But now it seems like the decision-making power is in the hands of the federal government. The federal government was fairly significantly involved in the development of this proposal from the Lower Basin states so there is reason to believe that they will likely implement a lot or at least some significant portions of this Lower Basin proposal.

LAUREN GILGER: And does this, Alex, avoid the kind of big elephant in the room that everyone's been talking about for the last year as these negotiations have been deadlocked, that, you know, this is going to end up in court and that will be bad — particularly for us? Are we maybe not going to end up in court if the feds approve this plan?

ALEX HAGER: It turns down some of the heat. There's the potential that lawsuits could fly in a lot of different directions depending on what happens. So, because this does not cut so severely into the Central Arizona Project's allocation, some of the potential for a lawsuit from Arizona towards the federal government or from Lower Basin states towards the Federal Government, maybe that goes down a bit.

But, you know, this does not necessarily eliminate the potential that the Lower Basin states sue the Upper Basin states or maybe the Upper Basin states sue the federal government. So it turns down the heat a bit but does not eliminate the chance of a big messy court battle. That's what they're trying to solve in those longer-term negotiations.

Between now and 2028, if this plan in whole or in part gets implemented and preserves the reservoirs long enough to have more time for more talks, those talks will really be focused on how do we manage the river with cuts that we can survive without having to sue each other?

LAUREN GILGER: You mentioned these are less severe cuts to the Central Arizona Project, but those still will be cuts, right? How will we or will we feel this, at least in the short term, under this proposal here in the Valley, in cities? Like will this impact people's lives?

ALEX HAGER: It is unlikely to impact people's lives in a big way. First of all, we don't know that this plan's going to be implemented yet, it would still need a sign of approval from the federal government. But the way that I think it'll show up in the Valley is mostly going to be behind the scenes. A lot of city water departments around here, they are working feverishly in the background to make sure that people who own kitchen faucets and lawn sprinklers do not have to deal with this by making sure that their cities have a diverse portfolio to draw from.

So, in times when there's less Colorado River water available, those cities will draw a little bit more from another part of their portfolio, like the Salt River, like groundwater. A lot of these cities have been storing a little bit of excess water in underground savings banks for times just like this.

There are some cities that are better prepared than others, but we're even seeing programs get set up by Phoenix and Tucson to create exchanges, to create a way for cities that are better prepared to help out the cities that are less well prepared in times just like this.

LAUREN GILGER: This though, as you said, is only a two-year plan, it's sort of a stopgap. Why would this look any different in two years, or maybe it will look worse in two years when negotiators have to come to a broader proposal?

ALEX HAGER: That's right, this is buying more time for negotiators, and I think it really does raise the question if they couldn't solve it in the past few years, what difference is two more years going to make?

One thing that might be different is that states are talking about bringing a mediator into those negotiation rooms. The Upper Basin states were the ones who suggested it most directly and it sounds like there is some interest from the Lower Basin states.

Basically we have been sending the same seven individuals and their support staffs to the same negotiation rooms for a number of years now, and they have not come out with anything. Bringing a third party in there to help them bridge their differences might make a difference and it sounds like they might be enthusiastic about doing that.

LAUREN GILGER: KJZZ's Alex Hager, thank you so much.

ALEX HAGER: Thank you, Lauren.

LAUREN GILGER: In January of 2018, University of Arizona professor Scott Warren was volunteering in the southern Arizona desert with humanitarian aid group No More Deaths.

He had worked with them for years leaving out jugs of water, food and first aid kits on known migrant trails and, helping migrants at what was called “the Barn” — a humanitarian aid station in Ajo, about 40 miles north of the border.

Then, on Jan. 17, Warren was arrested for harboring two migrants from Central America who had been staying at the barn.

It was an escalation of actions that had long been going on on the border under the first Trump administration, when federal opposition toward border humanitarian aid was ramping up.

And Warren — a then-37-year-old geography professor at University of Arizona — was right in the middle of it.

He was facing up to 20 years in prison. But, by the next year, he was acquitted by a federal jury in Tucson.

TV REPORTER: We are following some breaking news in the case of a border activist accused of harboring migrants. A jury has found Dr. Scott Warren not guilty. He was acquitted on all charges, which includes those two felony counts of harboring a migrant. Today is a very exciting day for him and his supporters.

LAUREN GILGER: His lawyers argued that humanitarian aid was not illegal even if the migrants they were helping were undocumented and that Warren’s actions were guided by his religious beliefs.

Today, Warren sees it all in a new light. He recently spoke at Arizona State University about spirituality, migration and moral courage.

I spoke with Warren more about what the experience looks like to him in the rear view mirror nearly a decade later and under a new Trump era. And it's today's Deep Dive.

SCOTT WARREN: The day I was arrested, I had actually a few days before that been sort of served with a misdemeanor prosecution notice for work we'd been doing in putting out water on the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. So a lot of things were kind of happening in that regard in terms of the Border Patrol and sort of land managers' stance towards border humanitarian aid.

But unbeknownst to us at that time, the Border Patrol was also surveying a property in Ajo called the Barn, which has served as a kind of base camp for various humanitarian aid groups in that area. And we'd been providing humanitarian aid to two men from Central America who had done the whole crossing of Central America and Mexico and found their way into Ajo.

And Border Patrol saw me talking to these two men and essentially determined that they were in the country illegally and they came in and they did a raid on the Barn and they arrested me and they arrested the two men from Central America and I was charged with the federal crime of harboring for having provided, in the arrest information they said that I had provided food, water, beds, and clean clothes to those two men over the course of three days.

LAUREN GILGER: Right, right. Do you know what happened to those two men?

SCOTT WARREN: I don't know, no. They were deposed in the case and then they were deported.

LAUREN GILGER: It's interesting how your paths crossed in that very fateful moment. I mean, were you surprised at the time? Things had been ramping up, this was under the first Trump administration, as you said you had been served misdemeanor charges for this kind of stuff, but this is work that humanitarian aid group workers like you had been doing for a long time on the border, right?

SCOTT WARREN: Yeah, you know, I would say I was definitely surprised to be arrested, wasn't expecting that by any means, though not surprised by the kind of general stance of the federal government at that time towards border humanitarian aid. You know, and that had been made pretty clear by the attorney general at that time and other kinds of policies and I think, you know, we've seen some of those more aggressive enforcement policies really, really play out all across the country, you know, in the current administration.

But at that time the signal was clearly coming that like anybody who was helping somebody who was a migrant or undocumented in any way, including giving somebody water or food or clean clothes or something or even providing legal assistance or anything like that, that those folks might also be targeted in some kind of way. So, you know, we knew the general context.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. So, you were acquitted a year or so later, but it was a long time, a long process, a big fight, lots of press coverage, you became the face of this kind of fight in a lot of ways.

Did you feel like at the time you were in peril of losing this and ending up serving time in a real way? Did you feel like you were a martyr? Did you feel like you were glad maybe to be in that case to be able to fight it and represent what you felt was important?

SCOTT WARREN: Oh, that's a great question. I wasn't glad to be in that situation by any means, I would say, but, you know, I think all of us, I was the defendant but so many other people were involved and so many folks have been doing that work and the two men who were arrested with me were deported. So there was a larger sort of movement there, a larger community and, yeah, as the defendant I had this pretty interesting role in all of that.

And so I was aware also of the opportunity that it created and also, yeah, the danger potentially or the possibility, but that's where I think all the people who supported me and my pro bono lawyers and all the folks in No More Deaths and other volunteers and family and loved ones who were navigating so much so that I would not be completely overwhelmed and could actually, you know, navigate and make decisions and all that.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. And as we mentioned, this centered around religious convictions of your own and the case was partially argued on religious freedom grounds. Tell us about those religious convictions; some of the groups you work with are explicitly religious groups. Was this religiously motivated for you, this work?

SCOTT WARREN: Spiritually, yes. And this is where the details of how this works as a legal defense are quite interesting. There also is a law in the U.S. called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which sort of has this broad framework that creates a kind of additional hurdle you could say for prosecutors who are trying a case. Where if somebody's actions were deemed to be against the law and prosecutors are then going to prosecute that person, well the Religious Freedom Restoration Act comes into play and there can be additional hurdles for the prosecutors to have to jump, so to speak.

LAUREN GILGER: So is this about you say a spiritual belief system as opposed to a strictly religious one? What are those beliefs? Like is this just in the sacredness of human life?

SCOTT WARREN: It is, yeah. It stems from my experiences in doing this work for many years and particularly where we did use the Religious Freedom Restoration Act defense was in the misdemeanor charges where we had been charged with the abandonment of property for putting water out in the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge.

Which is an area where many people had died there, many migrants had died there and have continued to die in that area and at the time in particular we were involved in many of those recoveries of the people who had died.

And so for me personally going out there and putting water out was not just a humanitarian concern, of course that was a major part of it, but also had this spiritual aspect of actually just honoring those who had come through that space and people had died in that place and it made it a very kind of sacred place as well.

And, you know, this is wildlife refuge but it is Indigenous land, it's O'odham land, it's ... O'odham land, like it already holds a sacredness for so many people of that place so this is certainly not like a new concept that places could have a kind of sacred quality to them or doing this sort of thing would also be a sacred act. But my experience directly came from doing that work and having been involved in so many of those recoveries over the years.

LAUREN GILGER: And you're still doing that work today in Ajo, I understand. I wonder what it looks like now, especially in comparison to some of the peaks in border crossings that we've seen over the past, you know, decade or two that you've been there.

The border is I know significantly quieter today under the second Trump administration, but what are you seeing?

SCOTT WARREN: Yeah, we all are still doing humanitarian aid work in the borderlands and around Ajo and other parts of southern Arizona, so that all continues and water is being drunk and we know that people are walking through that desert still.

But, yeah, I think like everybody else our understanding is there's generally fewer people making that crossing, but people are still making that crossing.

LAUREN GILGER: So I wonder, I mean it strikes me that you won that case, you did not go to prison, you were able to continue doing the work that you're still doing today. But I wonder what it feels like now especially in light of what we're seeing across the country today in terms of immigration enforcement and the crackdown that we've seen from the Trump administration. It has extended far beyond the border.

SCOTT WARREN: That's right. And so some of the nuances of the legal case are important here because and while we did use a Religious Freedom Restoration Act defense in those misdemeanors, we didn't need to use one in the felony case where I was being charged for harboring, which was the one that actually would have carried potential prison time.

And the reason for that is because the jury said it's not a crime to give somebody food, water, clean clothes, and a place to sleep as we did. And so I'm not a lawyer and I'm not giving any kind of legal advice to listeners for sure, but I think this is something really important and of course informs the kinds of things that are happening today where I think you have an administration that's willing to use all kinds of intimidation factors and would probably like people to assume that certain kinds of things are a crime or against the law, but in reality that's not the case in many instances.

LAUREN GILGER: And because of you.

SCOTT WARREN: Well, you know, I mean I think my case because it had such a high profile certainly played a role in that. Yeah, so, we'll take the win in that regard.

But like I said many other people and folks have been like navigating this stuff for many, many years, long before there was ever a No More Deaths or a Samaritans group, and people in the borderlands of this place, Indigenous and local people that have been like providing humanitarian aid and living this issue just in everyday life.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. I want to ask you lastly about something that you have said that there's a difference between intellectually knowing that this is, you know, something you believe in, that it's a good thing to serve migrants in the desert, it's protected, it's not illegal, that kind of thing.

But then there's a difference between that intellectual knowledge and then living it. What do you think about having lived through it?

SCOTT WARREN: Yeah, I mean it provides a whole set of experiences and perspectives through which to sort of understand this work and myself and my relationship to this place. So, it's everything.

LAUREN GILGER: All right, we'll leave it there. Scott Warren, a geographer and border humanitarian aid worker, joining us from Ajo. Scott, thank you very much for this conversation, thanks for coming on, I appreciate it.

SCOTT WARREN: Yeah, you're welcome, thank you.

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, it is The Show here on KJZZ 91.5. I'm Lauren Gilger.

There were more than 50 million licensed drivers in the U.S. over the age of 65 in 2022 according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That was a 77% increase since 2004. But the CDC also found more than 700 older drivers are hurt every day on average in car crashes. In many cases, the job of figuring out when those older drivers shouldn't be getting behind the wheel anymore falls to their kids and many of those children say that decision can be an extremely difficult one. That was the case for our next guest. James Causey is a columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and a contributor at USC's Center for Health Journalism. He wrote a first-person account of his experience taking his dad's car keys away. My co-host Mark Brodie spoke with Causey and asked what he learned that surprised him while doing the research for the piece.

JAMES CAUSEY: What I learned is that, and it didn't really surprise me but what I learned is that this is probably the hardest conversation for most children to have with their adult parents because it's hard to do, it's a role reversal, and they don't know how to do it and do it right.

MARK BRODIE: In thinking about this, and I don't know how it was in your family, my dad taught me how to drive, so I would imagine it would be really difficult in that kind of situation to then have to sort of turn around and say, okay, mom or dad, who taught me how to drive, it's time for you to stop.

JAMES CAUSEY: Yeah, think about this. So my father is from-was from Mississippi, he actually started driving at like nine years old driving around in a tractor and things like that and for me it was like, I still remember the road trips we would take to Mississippi from Wisconsin and my father would drive the whole time with only stopping for gasoline and he took pride in that. So for me to take that away from him, I got to tell you, I cried a little bit when I had to make that decision because it was very hard for me to do that because I felt like I was taking away like some of the last of his independence and it was tough for me to do that.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah, well what was that conversation like? Because as you write there were times when maybe you thought about it but didn't end up taking away the keys; what was the conversation like when you finally had to do it?

JAMES CAUSEY: Well, when we finally had to do it and I say we because my wife and my mother were part of this, my father started-started with fender benders here and there and unexplained scratches on the car and then him saying that he would get turned around and he'd start coming home later and later, started having some issues with memory. And my father-it was one night he just did not come home which was unusual. And we went to the police station to try to file a missing person's report and they said no he's, you know, maybe there's nothing really wrong with him, you know, and he did come home the next morning and he said that he got turned around and we were scared to death and we were going to take his keys that time. But the time that we took his keys really occurred probably like a couple of months after that where he didn't come home and he was missing for three days. Turns out he was in another state, he was in Morris, Illinois and we live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And we were in a police station filing out a missing person's report when we got the call that he was found and I knew right then and there that this was going to be the last time that he drove.

MARK BRODIE: Was he resistant to stopping driving at that point?

JAMES CAUSEY: Oh my god yes. When we actually went to go get him the next morning to pick him up from Morris, Illinois, my father was like, "Hey y'all, I just got turned around," and I was like, "No dad, do you realize what's going on? Man you were missing for three days, we had no idea where you were." On the drive home, he kept saying, and this is when I knew something was really wrong, he kept saying, "Why is this taking so long to get home?" And I'm like, "Dad, you were missing for three days, you can't drive no more." And I could see him stewing in the passenger side like, "What are you talking about? I'm still going to drive." And when we got home, my wife said, "Okay, honey, you need to take his keys." And I said, "Dad, you got to give me the keys." He said, "My keys stay in my pocket." And so I was just going to let it go but my wife and my mother said, "Go to the hardware store and get a club to put on the car because he can't drive, it's just not safe," and that's what I ended up doing. And we put the car in the garage and he never drove after that. And it was contentious, he was pretty mean and bitter over that.

MARK BRODIE: Did he eventually understand why you had to do that?

JAMES CAUSEY: I think it took-it took us a good three months because what we did we had to make some real changes in-in our lifestyle. My wife was-she started-became my parents' primary caregiver because my mother had some health issues and my father was having some early dementia issues. So she stopped working to take care of them full-time. And one thing that she did she tried to make sure that he didn't lose his masculinity, so to speak. So she would take him to McDonald's so he could still see his friends but she would just drop him off and pick him up. She would take him to go get his lottery ticket, she would do those kind of things and she wouldn't put a time frame on how long it should take. But we understood that he still needed a something else to replace that urge to drive. So we got him-him involved in a Veterans Administration program for men and this program was like for a lot of men just like him, men who could no longer drive and who needed something else to do. It was like a veterans daycare. And so he was-he got involved in this and he was reluctant to go at first but he made friends with men who he probably would have never met before in his life and he started learning other activities that he probably would have never got an opportunity to learn in his life, like he learned curling. My father and curling are those-if I could tell you two things that should probably never go together, it would be my father and curling. He actually learned curling. He learned art, he started painting. He got a chance to bond with men who he probably would have never met that way, so I think that replacement, when you do if you ever have to take keys away from your parents you have to find something to replace that that void that they're going to experience and that's what we did.

MARK BRODIE: Did you guys ever have a conversation about this maybe later on after he'd maybe accepted it or been okay with the fact that he wasn't driving anymore? Like did he come to terms with it and maybe even appreciate the fact that you had done it?

JAMES CAUSEY: Yeah, I can tell you the time when I think he really fully accepted it. So one thing that my father and my mother what we used to do, my wife and I, they love going back to Mississippi to visit their relatives in the South every summer. And it was the year, two years after we took his keys. And we were taking him to Mississippi, him and my mother, they ride in the back seat and share their stories of growing up in the South while my wife and I would drive. And I tease and I look back at my father and I say, "Hey dad, you want to try to hit this highway?" And he said, "No, no, y'all got it. The roads look a lot different than when I used to drive these roads back in the day. Y'all doing good, y'all doing good." And I knew right then and there he had accepted it.

MARK BRODIE: How did that make you feel that knowing that he was okay with it, knowing that he wasn't dangerous anymore behind the wheel and that even though it had been really painful, you mentioned you cried, I imagine there were some unpleasant conversations associated with this, that ultimately he was at peace with it, you were at peace with it, and everybody sort of acknowledged it was the right thing to do?

JAMES CAUSEY: Yeah, it's bittersweet in a way because even though this happened like two years after-he went about two years without driving-my father suffered from pancreatic cancer and died like a year after that. So he didn't get long I guess I didn't really get a long time to enjoy that part with him and so I feel a little bad about that part as well. But one thing that I know and I know that he would have appreciated it is that we did this because we love him and loved him. And even though my father's no longer with us, it was the best decision all the way around and I wouldn't change anything else about it.

MARK BRODIE: James Causey is a columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

LAUREN GILGER: 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 was created by Jon Hoban and 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 at @kjzztheshow.