The Show for May 7, 2026: Voting Rights Act in Arizona, Phoenix mural guidelines and more

The U.S. Supreme Court has weakened a portion of the Voting Rights Act. How the law has impacted Arizona's voting history. Plus, Phoenix is formulating mural guidelines, making some local artists nervous about restrictions on their creativity.

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'm Lauren Gilger.

MARK BRODIE: And I'm Mark Brodie. Coming up, why more than half of Arizona Medicaid recipients could lose their coverage within a couple of years.

LAUREN GILGER: And Texas is rolling out its own experiment in school vouchers. How different is it from what we did here?

MARK BRODIE: But first, Pinal County Attorney Brad Miller and his office are accused of using an encrypted messaging app to hide their communications from the public. Miller has acknowledged using Signal, but says it's mostly for sharing photos and discussing potential social media posts. But a former employee disputes that, saying the office used it for broader internal conversations. Signal has settings that can lead to messages disappearing after a specific amount of time, which can be a problem when that runs into records that are subject to public records laws. Reporter Richard Ruelas with the Arizona Republic has written about this. He joins me now to talk more about it. Good morning, Richard.

RICHARD RUELAS: Good morning.

MARK BRODIE: So, what exactly does County Attorney Miller say he's using Signal for? And we should point out that he has in the past said he doesn't use Signal.

RICHARD RUELAS: Correct. When I interviewed him in January, he had just told the New Times ... that he doesn't have the app on his phone. He told me in an interview that they do use it, and he said it was a fairly benign use. That, say, the example he used is: We're at the Sun City Republican Women's Club, we want to share a photo, the app that we're supposed to use through the county is clunky for sharing photos, so Teams seemed a better way to get the photo uploaded and just talk amongst staff, what are we going to post on Twitter about this?

MARK BRODIE: That turns out, though, at least according to a former employee who appears to be suing the — appears to be at some point in the future will sue the county, she says that's, that's not what they're using it for.

RICHARD RUELAS: Right. There was an employee who was let go. She says part of the reason she was let go was she raised concerns that she was told to use Signal and that she was told it was designed to skirt the open records law for the state of Arizona.

MARK BRODIE: ... Do you have examples or did she give you examples of the kinds of things they might be using it for that they shouldn't be?

RICHARD RUELAS: She did not speak to me. Her attorneys didn't speak to me. But she said in her notice of claim against the county that it was just generally recognized that our internal discussions in our office are going to be not subject to the state public records law. We want to keep them private.

MARK BRODIE: Did Miller dispute that?

RICHARD RUELAS: In our interview, he did dispute that. He said that if I filed a public records request, what I would see is what he said: the discussion of the photos, the discussion of what he called the headlines around the photos, and he said that he would provide those drafts for us if we asked.

MARK BRODIE: And of course, being a good reporter, you did ask, right? But that is not —

RICHARD RUELAS: [LAUGHS] Almost on the drive home I filed a public records request.

MARK BRODIE: [LAUGHS] In the lobby there, yeah. So, but like what he told you you would get is not what you got.

RICHARD RUELAS: I received in April a Signal message thread, a chain, that was not about photos or Sun City Republicans Club. It was a fairly detailed discussion about: What do we do if, say — just using as an example — Coolidge gets data from someone's cell phone and the Casa Grande Police Department wants it? Can we share that? And they were discussing an appellate court ruling about it.

That seems to be something that would be a work-related discussion that should be subject to the public records law. The thread was also topped, you could label a Signal chat with what you want to call it, and it was called like" "We're going to Nashville for a convention." So it was obviously also started because they were headed to some convention among county attorney's employees.

MARK BRODIE: So what did the County Attorney's Office say about what they sent you?

RICHARD RUELAS: They said two things: Only one employee used Signal within the office. Which is unusual because to, to post a message on a Signal chat, you need to be using Signal to do so. You can't just like phone one in.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah, who else is that person communicating with on Signal if he's the only one on it?

RICHARD RUELAS: Right. The only way to get a message through Signal is through Signal. They also told me that, "Oops, that should not have been disclosed to me through the public records law" because it was what they called "attorney work product," which was not disclosable. So they said those two things: that I shouldn't have seen it at all and that there was only one employee who used Signal.

MARK BRODIE: Was there any comment about why there were no photos, social media post headline-type things that came your way?

RICHARD RUELAS: There was not. I asked for a follow-up interview with County Attorney Miller — and we waited a couple weeks before posting the story, and we never got a response. And then we asked — we were told to send some questions by email to be followed up on, and we've received no response to those.

MARK BRODIE: So we should point out, and you write this in your article, that in and of itself, Signal is not necessarily a problem for public officials to use. It's just some of the settings that come with Signal and some of what can happen to the messages that — that can be a problem. Is that right?

RICHARD RUELAS: Correct. I mean, the public records law says that if you're working for the state of Arizona, what you produce at work needs to be saved and archived for posterity, history and for the citizens to know what's going on, to be able to look at it. So you can use whatever you wish, you just need to be able to retain it.

So Signal has settings that, if you choose as a user, you can say "delete all the messages in this thread after a week." But there has to be a method, if they think it's preferred to do communications with, they need to be able to retain it under the law in a way that we as members of the press, members of the public, can see the operations of our government officials.

MARK BRODIE: And am I right that we don't know what kinds of settings the people who use Signal in this office had it on? Like, we have no idea if they had it set to delete after a certain amount of time or didn't have it set to delete at all.

RICHARD RUELAS: Correct. I think there's a lot of still mystery around this because, again, receiving only one employee's Signal messages was unusual given the fact that there were obviously other employees on the chain. And that they told me these are obviously employees talking with each other about legal stuff that you shouldn't have seen. I don't know what settings they had or why they didn't disclose more of it, or at least tell me why they couldn't disclose it, but say this is what we use Signal for.

MARK BRODIE: A lot of questions, and one of them is whether or not the state attorney general is looking into this because she was asked to.

RICHARD RUELAS: The County Board of Supervisors, which has a long, multi-faceted feud with the county attorney, has asked the Attorney General's Office to look at whether the office is violating the public records law. So that request has been sent. We don't know what the status of the investigation is because the AG's Office typically doesn't comment on that. But there is a lot of dispute between the County Board of Supervisors and its county attorney.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah, sounds like a lot of questions, a lot of controversy there. All right, that is reporter Richard Ruelas with the Arizona Republic. Richard, thanks so much.

RICHARD RUELAS: Thank you.

LAUREN GILGER: For a long time, the city of Phoenix has been pretty hands-off when it comes to murals painted around the city. But now, the Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture is formulating mural guidelines to create some best practices for artists and property owners alike. They’ve been soliciting artist input, but it's unclear still if these will become suggestions or strict policies for the city. And artists here are unsure if they will help them in the public art process or restrict their creativity. Long-time Phoenix arts writer Lynn Trimble reported the story for Southwest Contemporary, and I spoke with her more about it and what she's hearing from local artists.

LYNN TRIMBLE: There are some artists who are concerned that the guidelines could eventually incorporate something that would impact on the aesthetics of murals or what they're able to paint and get approval for, if it should go in the direction of requiring permits. Now, that's not required now, but that's part of that ambiguity because as you're developing these guidelines, it's impossible to know what the endpoint will be. So there are some people concerned with the uncertainty.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. I mean, I guess it raises alarms particularly because of the, the context in which it's happening, right? Like you wrote in your piece here that lots of arts organizations and artists in general really feel a sense of paranoia is how you put it right now about basically censorship, about restrictions because of what's happening in the broader landscape. Tell us about that.

LYNN TRIMBLE: What we're seeing across the Southwest is the impacts of both censorship or erasure or sort of historical, attempts at historical change at the federal level. But we've also seen some accusations or allegations at the local level with museums in the Southwest, for example, wanting to restrict the types of things that are shown. So it is an environment where it makes sense for artists to be thinking about those, those types of questions.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. And it's a politically charged environment right now and a very divisive one. So I'm imagining that came up when you talked to some local artists about this — like, you know, will I be able to paint something if it hints at a political issue?

LYNN TRIMBLE: We had artists concerned about the politics, just the aesthetics. We had some concern that everything would begin to look the same, that there would become a kind of generic quality.

And of course, some artists are concerned about murals being used as branding — you know, they're just Instagram backgrounds, for example, or a way to try to sell mural tourism. That's a quote I got from another artist. So, you know, they have a whole broad range of concerns.

LAUREN GILGER: I, I should point out, this is a way — like painting murals is a way that a lot of artists can really make some money, right? Like it's these public projects in which, you know, you can be funded.

LYNN TRIMBLE: Funding is one of the issues, and it's a very touchy issue because artists have explained to me that there are some artists who lowball their work in order to get exposure, get their foot in the door, which can bring down what's offered to other artists.

So one of the things that could potentially be helpful in a set of guidelines is some way to help artists and commissioners know what's a fair market rate and how do we pay artists appropriately for their labor.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. There was also this effort a decade ago in Phoenix that became controversial at the time, Lynn, I'm sure you covered, in historic neighborhoods where the city had said, you know, maybe we need to limit or, or curtail some of the murals that are painted in those particular parts of town.

LYNN TRIMBLE: There was a mural festival several years ago and the organizer lived in the Willo historic neighborhood. So a lot of murals were painted there, and there were some residents who took issue with either the very existence of the murals or the particular types of things that artists were painting.

So there was a very contentious meeting at Burton Barr Central Library, attended by, I want to say, a hundred or so people, including a lot of artists who spoke to this. That history is another reason that artists here are keeping a very careful eye on how this guideline process unfolds.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, absolutely. On the other side of this, though, we should say, Lynn, you did talk to some artists who thought, you know, maybe this could be a good thing in terms of maybe the pricing like you mentioned, but also maybe the city's trying to, I think the quote was "up its mural game."

LYNN TRIMBLE: Yes, we absolutely had some artists who said they like the idea of having best practices, both so that fellow artists are making quality work and they also want people who have murals painted to know what they need to do. Do they need to clear-coat it? Do they need to build in a budget for maintenance every five years? That type of thing.

LAUREN GILGER: Interesting. I wonder, Lynn, lastly, like what this, you think, says about the state of arts in the city?

Like, the city has been very, pretty like open-ended about murals painted here, pretty welcoming to them. There's been a lot of efforts to get more murals painted around the city, whether it's for tourism or for, you know, beautification or just making downtown more interesting, making neighborhoods more interesting, things like that.

Do you think this marks a turning point in that? Maybe like we've reached a critical mass of murals and the city's thinking maybe not so many?

LYNN TRIMBLE: What I always think about is, how do we center the artist and creative free expression here? And what I'm watching for is whether the city is potentially moving more towards murals as a way of promoting economic development, tourism.

In other words, is it, rather than a way of embracing creativity, is it a way to sell the city? Which can lead some decision-makers to narrow the scope of what they want to see on our walls. And of course artists, as one said about the story, "keep murals wild." That's their goal.

LAUREN GILGER: Keep murals wild. All right. We'll leave it there and see what happens. Lynn Trimble, freelance writer in Phoenix, long-time arts writer here, wrote this article for Southwest Contemporary. Lynn, thanks so much for coming on, I appreciate it.

LYNN TRIMBLE: Thank you.

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning and welcome to The Show here on KJZZ 91.5. I'm Lauren Gilger.

MARK BRODIE: And I'm Mark Brodie. Coming up, how a trip to the Arizona Black Rodeo inspired a playwright's latest production.

LAUREN GILGER: But first, Arizona's school voucher program is the first universal voucher experiment in the country, and every Republican-led state in the country has been watching it and some are now starting their own versions. Our next guest this morning takes us to Texas where Governor Greg Abbott signed a universal voucher bill into law last May after years of heated debate among lawmakers. But the Texas version of school vouchers, known as Texas Education Freedom Accounts, has some notable differences from Arizona's Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, or ESAs. Jessica Votipka is a reporter for the Arizona Agenda, and she joins us now with the tale of two voucher programs and the lessons they learned. Good morning there, Jessica.

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning there, Jessica.

JESSICA VOTIPKA: Good morning. How are you?

LAUREN GILGER: Thanks for coming on The Show. I'm doing well.

So, Texas’ program is much newer than ours. As I said, they just signed this into law in May, and they just announced this voucher program now in its initial year will have 96,000 students. But of course, Texas is a much bigger state. Tell us just how this new program has been received so far.

JESSICA VOTIPKA: Mixed. I mean, of course there's people who are not in love with vouchers, to say the least. But I mean, it's proven pretty popular amongst families who are looking to have a different choice of school ... for whatever reason.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. Let me ask you about some of the differences here. The one big difference it seems is in who controls the money for this program in Texas, right? Like it is not under their Department of Education as it is here.

JESSICA VOTIPKA: Right. Exactly. It's under their comptroller, which is kind of sort of like ... I'm trying to think of a good analogy. But yeah, it's part of the government but it's separate from the Department of Education.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. And in the fact that it's under the comptroller's office, does that mean there's more accountability on spending?

JESSICA VOTIPKA: I feel like it is. You know, it's always good to have someone on the outside looking in, keeping track of things. Though, they are also having an independent auditor. There's a group that's kind of independent of all of this, it's backed by Our Schools, Our Democracy. It's called the Texas Center for Voucher Transparency. So they've got that going on, too.

Nathan Linehan
Jessica Votipka

LAUREN GILGER: And when Texas lawmakers were shaping this program, debating it, they also require now an independent audit, right? Every year, of the program.

JESSICA VOTIPKA: Sure. That's right. Yeah.

LAUREN GILGER: And I mean, that's a big difference from what we've seen in Arizona, right? Because we've seen the costs of this program go up, but also, you know, accountability is under debate. Like the state lawmakers on the Democratic side have tried very hard to get some kind of — they would love an independent audit, right?

JESSICA VOTIPKA: Sure. And of course, you know, you hear about journalists who are submitting public records requests and, you know, sometimes hearing radio silence. And I saw, I think it was on YouTube, an interview with Superintendent Horne. And he mentioned that they are very understaffed and that's one of the reasons they're having trouble keeping up with, you know, checking on things. And I appreciate that. I don't think that's the silver bullet to having accountability, but I think it comes into play and I feel for them, I do.

LAUREN GILGER: Let's talk about costs of the school voucher program here versus in Texas. We've watched in Arizona the ESA program cost really balloon. It's a billion dollars now. What about costs in Texas? They have a cap on this essentially.

JESSICA VOTIPKA: They do, and they're broadcasting it to go fairly high, you know, higher than they expect. So, you know, you can put a cap on things, but who knows how things will turn out.

LAUREN GILGER: What is the cap there? It's capped at a billion, which we've already met here, right?

JESSICA VOTIPKA: Right, right.

LAUREN GILGER: But a much bigger state of course. ... Let me talk to you about transparency with you, Jessica. Like, what do we know about who is enrolled in Texas's program? You mentioned here in Arizona, you know, journalists will send out records requests and not always get the answers they want. What do they know there?

JESSICA VOTIPKA: Yeah, so they're seeing a lot of students who, like Arizona, are already in private schools. And a statistic that really struck me was, you know — Texas students ... a little more than half of them, statistics are showing, are Hispanic. However, one of the smallest groups of students who are taking advantage of vouchers are Hispanic kids and Hispanic families.

LAUREN GILGER: In Arizona?

JESSICA VOTIPKA: In Texas.

LAUREN GILGER: In Texas. Interesting. Are there educational standards in the Texas program that have to be met for kids or for private schools that accept them?

JESSICA VOTIPKA: Well, kind of, sort of. So they're having a testing requirement. But unless you're a public school, you can pretty much pick any test you want. ... But the thing with that is — how do I put this? So when you do different types of tests, you know, state testing like we have, and then you throw in all these other random tests, it's kind of like — it's like baseball.

So you've got the pitcher and the catcher. They're both on the same team, they both have the same goal: to win the game, to do well. But when you look at — when you compare the two, you can't really accurately say, well, this pitcher is a better player than the catcher, or vice versa, because they're so different.

You know, and I think — I think a better way of doing it, in my opinion for what it's worth, is to just have one test that everyone has to take, and then you have the level playing field and you're getting everyone in the batting cage.

LAUREN GILGER: So Jessica, Arizona voters are looking at a ballot initiative coming up here, assuming it makes the ballot, that would do some of these things that we're seeing happen in Texas — like put an income cap on ESA families, not the same as a cap on the program in Texas, but a similar idea. They would add academic and safety standards for private schools that accept vouchers.

I mean, are there lessons learned here, you think?

JESSICA VOTIPKA: Oh sure. And I think, you know, Texas is a state that has learned lessons from us. ... There's been very little coverage comparing different voucher programs amongst states. The only one I was pointed out that there is one, that was written comparing Florida and Texas. And, you know, there are so many similarities, but something that a lot of the other states are doing are they're putting more guardrails down right from the get-go.

LAUREN GILGER: And that's exactly what we're looking at with this initiative on the ballot in November.

All right, Jessica Votipka, reporter for the Arizona Agenda, joining us. Jessica, thank you.

JESSICA VOTIPKA: Sure. Thank you.

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

MARK BRODIE: And I'm Mark Brodie.

The US Supreme Court last week struck down a provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in a case out of Louisiana. The part of the law in question deals with creating so-called majority-minority congressional districts. In the immediate aftermath, Louisiana and some other Southern states are now in the process of redrawing their congressional maps. The likely outcome is the elimination of seats in which the majority of voters are Black. Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen has said GOP lawmakers plan to file a lawsuit challenging Arizona's congressional maps. Those maps here, of course, are drawn by the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission. With me to sort through the Voting Rights Act's history and potential future here is Chad Westerland, an associate professor of political science in the School of Government and Public Policy at the University of Arizona.

And Chad, the Voting Rights Act has kind of an interesting history here in Arizona. It seems as though maybe the state wasn't top of mind when the VRA was passed in 1965, but maybe it wasn't super far to the back of mind either.

MARK BRODIE: Chad, the Voting Rights Act has kind of an interesting history here in Arizona. It seems as though maybe the state wasn’t top of mind when the VRA was passed in 1965, but maybe it wasn’t super far to the back of mind either?

CHAD WESTERLAND: Yeah, I think that’s exactly right. When the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965, there were three counties in Arizona that were covered for using literacy tests in the past. But it was very much thought of primarily as Southern states in Black-white racial terms in, with respect to racial discrimination in voting after the passage of the 15th Amendment.

So there was initial coverage of Arizona in the Voting Rights Act, but that actually ended fairly quickly. There’s an opt-out process for the VRA, and the counties that were covered were uncovered by 1966, 1967.

So as we sort of think about sort of the history of the VRA in Arizona — and I think this is kind of true nationwide — that it was conceived of not solely but primarily as a remedy to these violations in Southern states with respect to voting.

MARK BRODIE: So was it seen maybe as more of a deterrent in a place like Arizona? Like, OK, we know you’re not necessarily doing all this stuff now. Don’t start.

CHAD WESTERLAND: Yeah, no, I think it was thought that there were the use of some of the discriminatory tools that were present in other places — like literacy tests were what got Arizona initially covered.

But one of the really interesting things about the VRA is that it has always had sunset provisions built into it, and the length of those have varied over time. But it wasn’t very long, so the VRA was basically five years and then extended longer. And one of the extensions in 1972 covered places that had discriminated, that had not made voting materials eligible in languages other than English if you had a large enough population to sort of trigger that requirement.

And so what gets Arizona fully covered as a state by 1975 is this predominantly — it’s the language requirements. And I don’t think the Congress was really sort of thinking about that in 1965. It was one of the things that they learned as they were kind of continually thinking about what the VRA meant, how it was applying, where it should apply, what problems we needed to solve.

And so Arizona’s coverage starting in the middle of 1970s was really more sort of new information for Congress, just a problem they hadn’t really thought about when the VRA was originally passed.

MARK BRODIE: Is it safe to say that one of if not the biggest impacts on Arizona from the Voting Rights Act was the pre-clearance provision, where if a state or a municipality was going to make a change in elections it had to be approved, basically, by the federal government?

CHAD WESTERLAND: One hundred percent. And, you know, so what the pre-clearance does is it, any change to your election laws at any level within your state needs to be approved by federal courts before it can go into effect. And Arizona was covered like many other jurisdictions until 2023.

And so what that meant was anytime a map was drawn by the Independent Redistricting Commission in Arizona, just as one example, before that map could even begin to be implemented, it would have to have federal approval before it would go into effect. And so this pre-clearance and sort of this idea of you’re covered by the VRA, that’s what we’re referring to.

And we do need to point out that can happen on a sort of a local level. Most coverage of the VRA is just statewide, but Arizona qualified statewide because of the language requirement — because materials were only available in English and we had a large enough non-English population to get us covered by the VRA.

MARK BRODIE: So you mentioned the Independent Redistricting Commission, and I’m curious to get your perspective on how redistricting, at least on the congressional level, might be impacted by this new Supreme Court ruling dealing with the VRA, given that it’s not the state Legislature that is drawing the maps in this state.

CHAD WESTERLAND: Yeah, it’s — the answer that’s not very satisfying at this point is that it’s unclear. But I do think Arizona is not in the same situation that Louisiana or Alabama is in terms of the minority-majority districts that explicitly have been drawn.

And so what we had before the decision last week was the idea that the Voting Rights Act actually mandated the creation of minority-majority districts in places that are covered by the VRA or that have had sort of issues with historical discrimination with respect to voting.

Arizona doesn’t have a ton of districts that look like that. And at the congressional level, southern Arizona is a perfect example. We have a district that basically goes between the middle of Tucson to Yuma. That’s Adelita Grijalva’s district. That district is a fairly heavily Democratic district kind of regardless of how those lines are drawn. The lines kind of get drawn in the middle of Tucson in these different ways.

So the idea that that district just as an example would go away under a redistricting plan from the Independent Redistricting Commission — it’s really, really hard to see how that could happen. And anything’s possible as we draw these maps, but one of the things that the commission has to do is lay a grid over the state as they sort of start drawing the lines. And so to carve up southern Arizona and especially the current Grijalva district in a way that would put that seat in jeopardy is hard to see.

There’s maybe more that can happen with Maricopa County and Phoenix, it’s just so compact and there’s sort of different ways to draw districts up in Maricopa County, but an immediate effect like what we’re going to see in Louisiana, I don’t see that before 2030 in Arizona.

MARK BRODIE: Which is when the next redistricting would be happening anyway, right? After the 2030 census.

CHAD WESTERLAND: Correct. So what could happen —and we’ve seen these statements already from the state Legislature that they’re going to look into all of their options and challenge any potentially district that might be based on race.

I do need to point out that currently — and this is a little bit unsettled — but using race as a condition in drawing districts is not necessarily unconstitutional. It’s just not mandated under the Voting Rights Act any longer. That could change, certainly, but given the timing involved this, that’s going to be litigation that’s going to take years, not months, to sort of figure out the details on that front.

MARK BRODIE: Sure. Is it possible at this moment to look back and sort of determine what the impact of the Voting Rights Act has been on Arizona?

CHAD WESTERLAND: Yeah, I mean just nationwide, it is hard to capture just how important the VRA has been in terms of just measurable successes. And this is in some ways part of the conversation we’re having over the last 10 or 15 years is the VRA’s a victim of its own success. That we have measurable gains: the gaps in terms of registration rates between Black and white voters in places like Louisiana is radically different in 2026 than it was in 1965.

In Arizona, the progress from the VRA has certainly mattered, but we still have a reasonable gap between registration rates and turnout rates between Latinos in Arizona and whites in Arizona. That’s persisted. It’s not as big as it used to be.

But again, Arizona was also a state that wasn’t — we didn’t have the gap that Alabama or Mississippi had in 1965 in terms of registration rates. And so that’s not to minimize the effect of the VRA, but it’s just we didn’t have to the same extent the structural issues that had persisted in largely Southern states prior to 1965.

MARK BRODIE: All right, that is Chad Westerland, an associate professor of political science at the University of Arizona. Chad, thanks so much, I appreciate it.

CHAD WESTERLAND: Thanks, Mark.

MARK BRODIE: Among the many provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act are new rules around Medicaid. In states that expanded the program, like Arizona, enrollees will have new work requirements. States will also have to check eligibility for the coverage every six months rather than annually like they do now. And a new analysis from the Urban Institute finds between 27 and 55% of Medicaid beneficiaries in Arizona could lose their coverage in 2028. That computes to between 123,000 and 246,000 Arizonans. With me to talk more about this is Matthew Buettgans , a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, and Matthew, what do you think are some of the biggest takeaways from the data you found about the impact of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on state Medicaid enrollment?

MATTHEW BUETTGANS: Yes, many people have noted that this will decrease enrollment significantly. But not only did we quantify that, but the major thing that we added was that we looked at different decisions that states have when implementing this and found that it makes a huge difference. I mean, depending on the decision states make, the number of people losing coverage could be cut in like about half.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah, well, let's talk about that. You break them into what you're calling high mitigation scenario, medium mitigation scenario, and low mitigation scenario. What are you referring to there?

MATTHEW BUETTGANS: So in general it's state efforts to mitigate coverage loss is how that is framed. So, for example, a lot of this is dependent on quality data matches in real time to verify that people are either compliant with the work requirements or fall into one of the exemptions that can be verified. Now, states can make different efforts for those data matches. The data matches themselves will require some — a lot of things that currently are not being done.

So this will be new. And 2027 may sound like a while in the future, but that's not a lot of time for states to develop completely new administrative systems. So the systems may not initially work as intended. So it's the intensity that states use automatic data matches and their effectiveness. And some critical populations, it's difficult to get information for. Such as those who are self-employed. Like a lot of quarterly wage data, they don't show up there.

So you've got to look at other sources rather than like the sources that states currently use if you want to find them. And there's no easy answer on that.

MARK BRODIE: Well, it sounds like what you're saying is that even in states where they maybe want to take these sort of high mitigation scenarios and try to prevent people who should stay on Medicaid from being dropped, those efforts might not work, they might be unsuccessful and people might get dropped anyway.

MATTHEW BUETTGANS: Yes. ... So even in our high mitigation scenario, we're projecting a 25% drop in the Medicaid expansion population due to the OBBBA provisions. So there will be coverage losses. You can minimize them, but not—but only to a certain point.

MARK BRODIE: Are there lessons that you think we can learn about what this might look like based on how it's gone with states implementing provisions on SNAP on the food assistance program?

MATTHEW BUETTGANS: We're looking at that. There are important differences, and that's very recent. So more relevant are like the experiences of some states that have implemented work requirements in the past, such as Arkansas, New Hampshire, Michigan.

MARK BRODIE: For Medicaid specifically?

MATTHEW BUETTGANS: Yes, on Medicaid specifically. New Hampshire and Michigan never fully completed the implementation process, they were running it and before they actually started disenrolling people they discontinued those programs. So we do have the experience of those states.

And the one thing that comes out really clear in that is if people have to manually verify whether they comply with it or are exempt, then a large share — a majority in all of those cases — would end up getting disenrolled without us really knowing if they were exempt or compliant.

So whenever you introduce an administrative barrier like that, if you can't automatically verify it, there will be disenrollment. Um, and what we've what our work and work of many others has shown that a majority of Medicaid expansion enrollees are already working. And of those that aren't, a majority of them, you know, have certain health conditions or caregiving responsibilities or some other factor like that that is an exemption under the law.

MARK BRODIE: Let's talk for a minute about what you found with Arizona and going from the high mitigation scenario to the low mitigation. You found that basically Arizona at a minimum would lose 27% of enrollees in—in Medicaid here would lose their coverage. The medium mitigation scenario found 44% would lose coverage, and in the low mitigation scenario 55%, 246,000 Arizonans would lose their coverage. Obviously, that's not great for those individuals, but let's say that that one of those actually comes true, like what does that mean for the healthcare system here?

MATTHEW BUETTGANS: Yes. We'll start for the beneficiaries themselves. And the literature is clear that Medicaid expansion coverage without that, people are going to forego necessary healthcare. There were studies that Medicaid expansion reduced mortality and had a number of other health benefits.

Also, it's been established that Medicaid expansion has increased the financial security of enrollees. And in fact has decreased barriers to employment. So there's a number of health and economic benefits to the people getting Medicaid coverage that will be foregone if they lose that coverage.

Now, looking more broadly at the health system, there will be more uninsured people that healthcare providers will see and treat. So it will be an issue for healthcare providers and their revenue as well.

MARK BRODIE: Is this sort of a foregone conclusion at this point?

MATTHEW BUETTGANS: Yes, that is correct. The Congressional Budget Office and others have also done broad national projections of the number of people who'd be affected, and they're within our range. So definitely it will do that, and those provisions were designed to do that. And OBBBA, a lot of the federal spending cuts, the reason for that was to partially offset tax cuts elsewhere.

MARK BRODIE: Matthew Buettgans is a senior fellow at the Urban Institute.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning, it's the Show on KJZZ 91.5. I'm Mark Brodie.

LAUREN GILGER: And I'm Lauren Gilger.

Sonja Camille had just moved to Arizona from Chicago when she came across the Black rodeo, and she loved it. She loved it so much she made it the topic of her newest play, "El Dorado's Gold." It's being performed at ASU's Kerr Cultural Center starting tonight after a workshop at the Phoenix Center for the Arts last year. I spoke with Camille more about the play, Black cowboys, and her first impressions of the Black rodeo.

SONJA CAMILLE: It was amazing because I just got here, just moved from Chicago, and even though there are cowboys in Illinois, I just was not around them. But just getting here with the adventure of it all and just loving Arizona, I ended up going to the Black rodeo for the first time with family members and it was so much fun. And just seeing the, the entertainment, the competition, the music, it was just an amazing experience.

LAUREN GILGER: It looks like a blast. Yeah. And sort of, you know, a welcome to Arizona thing, right? Like it's Western, although you're right, they are all over the country. And I understand you kind of grew up watching Westerns, right? Like "The Lone Ranger" with your dad, but didn't quite look the same as, as the Black rodeo, right?

SONJA CAMILLE: Right. It was mainly my grandfather who was staying with us at the time, my parents were taking care of him, and he had his small black and white TV and I would be in the room with him while he's watching the Westerns and my dad would, too.

In fact, my dad had a couple of cowboy hats he would wear. And this is Chicago, so — and he loved country music. So, yeah, so it was that and, yeah, I grew up watching but I just didn't see our faces.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. So when you realized this was something that Black people had historically been involved in, I'm sure that was eye-opening for you.

SONJA CAMILLE: From the beginning, yes, very eye-opening.

LAUREN GILGER: That's really cool. So you did a lot of research, I understand, in writing this play, understanding Black rodeo culture, Black cowboy culture, the history of it. Did you spend a lot of time at the rodeo?

SONJA CAMILLE: That's how I met some of these cowboys. So it's a funny story: I'm sitting in the bleachers and one of the cowboys — well, two of them came by and they saw me and they were like, "Can we take a picture with you?" I was like, "Sure."

So that's how I got started. So I started following them on Instagram and then I started to learn about these events. And so I was like, well let me just show up at some of these community events, picnics, 'cause they do things for the community, for the children. So the more and more I was around them, the more and more I became more intrigued and I was like, I have to write about these guys.

LAUREN GILGER: You have to write about these guys.

SONJA CAMILLE: And women — there were women, too.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. So you got to know some of the people involved in this. And I understand like some of the characters in the play, like you based specifically on a person that you know, right?

SONJA CAMILLE: Yeah, And so the first time I reached out to, his name is Shahid, I reached out to him and told him what I wanted to do. I'm getting stories in my head. I'm hearing people, you know, so that's what happens when you're a writer.

LAUREN GILGER: Yep.

SONJA CAMILLE: And I told him, he said, well, just come on out to the ranch and just start talking to us. And I'll tell them who you are. I was like, oh, really? You know, so right away, though, I mean, one of the cowboys asked, so why are you here? And I actually have that line in the play because there is a writer that I kind of base myself on.

So I started from there and I just told him who I was, a playwright from Chicago, and I want to write a story about them. So once they started talking and telling me about themselves, it was just like conversation and I'm writing and I'm recording. So I spent time a few days on the ranch, just right there and getting to know some of the horses and all that. It was amazing.

LAUREN GILGER: The horses, too. You gotta have the horses?

SONJA CAMILLE: The horses were a very big part of the story, too.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. So let me ask you about the staging of this, right? Because it's a Western on stage. I mean, you can't put a horse on stage, can you? How do you do this?

SONJA CAMILLE: It's funny this — when my aunt saw the show for the first time, she was on the front row and she said — she told me that she said, "I hope she's not going to bring horses out," because she's terrified of, of the horses.

But no, we were able to — and that's the thing about theater, you get the audience to feel. They don't necessarily have to see, but they, if they can feel it. So, it works with sound effects. Just get those horses in there by hearing them. So, yeah.

LAUREN GILGER: You hear them. And they make sense, I like that.

So this is a story of Tucker Callahan, based on one of the cowboys that you met and spent time with, right? He returns home after having betrayed his family and the story kind of goes from there. Kind of a prodigal son story it sounds. Tell us a little bit about the, the arc of this.

SONJA CAMILLE: Exactly. He left for three years to join the white rodeo. And there were some other, some other things that I can't reveal.

LAUREN GILGER: Don't give it all away.

SONJA CAMILLE: I won't. But he felt like he just had to get away. He felt like he no longer wanted the responsibility of carrying his family on his back. So he came back to make amends and from there his younger brother was not crazy about seeing him, and that's some of the conflict.

But after a few days his mom gives him these letters from his great-grandfather. These letters were specifically for Tucker. Right, yeah. So this was his first time reading these letters.

LAUREN GILGER: It does sound like there's an arc of, of history, of family legacy in this, right? That probably rings true to some of these cowboys in real life.

SONJA CAMILLE: Yes. And I got inspired by telling a history because a lot of us — a lot of people don't know like the history behind it. So that's why I wanted to go back to the Fulani tribe. The Fulani tribe is a, a tribe from Nigeria, but mainly they're nomads, so they kind of travel from country to country.

But they were known to be great horsemen and herdsmen. And so I wanted to get some history in there just to show how much Black people did contribute to the cowboy culture.

LAUREN GILGER: That's really interesting. Yeah, yeah. So I mean, does this feel like or has it felt for you like a reclaiming? I wonder what reaction did you get from the cowboys who saw the show, whose characters were playing out there?

SONJA CAMILLE: Yeah. So one of the things I did do, I had the cast visit the, the ranch so I can tell them, well, this is a character I based your character — I mean, this is the person I based your character on.

LAUREN GILGER: So the actor playing Tucker met the guy Tucker's based on?

LAUREN GILGER: Right. So when those real people saw it, what'd they think?

SONJA CAMILLE: Oh yeah. I was on pins and needles like making sure like that was the number one thing that I wanted to do because I wanted to be true. I wanted to be authentic. So, when they saw it, because they showed up like — a lot of them.

So I had an auditorium almost full of cowboys and cowgirls. So the word got around, and for them to want to take pictures of me after the show, I got thumbs up and they are ready to come back for, for this performance as well. So that made me feel really good, that I was true to, to the culture and true to their story.

LAUREN GILGER: That's amazing. You got the literal and figurative thumbs up from the real cowboys.

Sonja Camille, playwright, director, her new play is “El Dorado's Gold.” It'll be showing at ASU's Kerr Cultural Center May 7, 8 and 10. Sonja, thank you so much for coming on, congratulations on the show.

SONJA CAMILLE: Thank you.

MARK BRODIE: 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 @kjzztheshow.