The Show for Aug. 21, 2026: Friday NewsCap, writer-poet Britt Warner and more

Arizona voters will not decide the future of the ESA program, but they will vote on changes to election law. The Friday NewsCap panelists analyze those and the rest of the week’s top stories. Plus, how an artist from LA became smitten with Tucson.

Transcript

ANNOUNCER: KJZZ’s original production, The Show, is supported by Banner Health, Arizona’s largest nonprofit healthcare system. Last year, Banner reinvested more than $1.1 billion in community health and charity care. Banner Health, nonprofit for Arizona. bannerhealth.com/nonprofitforaz.

MARK BRODIE: Hi, I’m Mark Brodie, 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.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning, it’s The Show here on KJZZ 91.5 in Phoenix. I’m Mark Brodie. Coming up, the feds have provided some details of Colorado River cuts to Arizona and the other basin states, and an LA artist finds a new home in Tucson.

But first, it is time for the Friday NewsCap and some voices from the news this week.

MARISOL GARCIA: We were hoping to have voters be able to have a say this November on how much we all know they dislike vouchers. Instead, we’re going to have to spend some more time speaking to them about how we got to this place where $1 billion of our taxpayer dollars is being spent on this program.

KATIE HOBBS: I spent eight years in the Legislature watching attacks on our constitutional right to citizens initiative and continuing to raise the bar on getting measures on the ballot, and I voted against most of those — probably all of them.

ANDY BIGGS: I know that if you see a debate between us, you’ll vote for Andy Biggs. And you know what? They know it, too. And that’s why they’re not going to show up for a debate. But I’ll be there.

MARK DANNELS: All we’re asking is reimbursement for the good work we’ve done in Arizona and for our citizens, and we put that back forward to continue to sustain what we’re doing.

JOHN GILES: I felt like I needed to be there to advocate for people like myself that were being shoved out of the party. A few months ago, I realized that’s a lost cause right now.

MARK BRODIE: And with me to talk about the ballot measures we will and will not be voting on this fall, some new polls in the governor’s race and more are Christine Jones, former congressional and gubernatorial candidate. Christine, good morning.

CHRISTINE JONES: Good morning.

MARK BRODIE: And Stacy Pearson of Lumen Strategies. Stacy, good morning to you, too.

STACY PEARSON: Good morning.

MARK BRODIE: Stacy, I’m going to start with you. Prop 212, which was a measure that a public teachers union and some others put on to try to make some changes to the state’s ESA program — we can’t call them vouchers, we learned that from the State Supreme Court this year — that is not going to be on the ballot. They turned in an awful lot of signatures, it seems, to not have enough to qualify.

STACY PEARSON: Oh, it’s heartbreaking. And with citizens initiatives, it really is death by a thousand paper cuts. The cost is extraordinary, the strict compliance standard is insane. And to explain what that means, if you put PHX instead of the word Phoenix in the box that is for the city, your entire signature can be disqualified. If you transpose your address or your printed name or the — any mistakes in that line, if you color outside the box, if your signature — if the Y in Stacy goes down to the box below, the entire line can be disqualified. And so what winds up happening is the wealthiest among us have to bankroll citizens initiatives now, and they’re no longer in the hands of citizens.

MARK BRODIE: Is there — I hate to put it this way, but like, is there blame to be assigned here?

STACY PEARSON: The blame to be assigned is in the Legislature’s ongoing attempt to undermine our ability to have direct democracy. I mean, direct democracy was enshrined in the state’s constitution. We held out for it. Arizona, the 48th state, held out its constitution for direct democracy. And the Legislature in the past decade has chipped away at it in a way that really means direct democracy must be purchased. It can no longer be just grassroots.

MARK BRODIE: Christine, is it surprising, the end result here, and the number of signatures that ultimately were disqualified?

CHRISTINE JONES: Well, first of all, the number of signatures they got was significantly huge. I mean, we’re talking over 400,000 signatures. As to Stacy’s point, very expensive. They needed 60% of that or something. You know, we all go and get additional signatures just to guard against these strict compliance.

Here’s the problem: The rules matter, and we should ask people to comply with them. But this thing that we’re doing of challenging every single initiative on both sides — both sides do it, every single initiative gets a lawsuit or more — and, you know, basically saying to the citizens, “You don’t get to play this game anymore.”

Like, if we don’t want to do it, let’s just eliminate it altogether, because it is too onerous to get something on the ballot. The Legislature can refer it pretty easily — well, they could have if they had done it right — gets over there pretty cleanly.

And the procedural thing is important. I’m a lawyer, I like to follow rules. But honestly, come on. What are we doing? “Voucher” is a term of art. We’re all calling it vouchers, and suddenly now we can’t call it voucher? So I feel like it’s a little bit of form over substance at this point.

MARK BRODIE: Well, it feels like what you’re describing is sort of the letter of the law versus the spirit of the law. Is that a fair assessment?

CHRISTINE JONES: Yeah, I think that’s a good way to say it, right? So we’re saying the conservative position should be: We don’t want fraud in the ESA system. We don’t want people to have to spend their money on a Chanel watch, or say for example, a NordicTrack or a trip to Disneyland. We want that fraud to be eliminated, and that’s something that we should all try to vote on, right?

Do we want you to get to pick what I do with my education dollars? No. I don’t want that either, right? So these sorts of things matter. But the problem is if we’re going to eliminate all of the signatures, even the duplicates, just because your name appeared on there twice — that feels like form over substance.

MARK BRODIE: So, Stacy, we heard from some of the folks who are pushing this because, obviously, there’s a good amount of money, as you both alluded to, involved in this, talking about, “OK, well now maybe we will put our efforts toward the Legislature.” Do you think those efforts will be any more successful than their effort to get this Prop 212 on the ballot?

STACY PEARSON: So, to Christine’s point, yes, it is going to be more successful because people are motivated by rage right now. And we talk a lot about the waste and fraud and abuse, to the point that I think that phrase is becoming less meaningful.

But we have no accountability on these homeschool kids. They are not taking standardized tests. I have no idea if the weirdos down the street from me are teaching their kids that we’re on a round planet called Earth that orbits the sun, or that 2 plus 2 is 4 and not 22.

I have no idea what those kids on the bikes all hours of the day, every day of the week, are actually learning. They are not being tested. So as a society, we’re going to have to deal with the worst homeschooled kids who think Earth is flat at some point.

MARK BRODIE: I feel like your next neighborhood block party is going to be a little more awkward now.

STACY PEARSON: Oh man, it’s weird. There’s a guy that I refer to as Don Jr. At some point, he’s going to figure out I call him that, too. So, yes.

CHRISTINE JONES: Yeah, so last time Stacy called the homeschoolers weirdos, I got in trouble. Like, as if I was the one that did it.

STACY PEARSON: I said it was kooky. I said kooky.

CHRISTINE JONES: Let’s just state for the record: There are a lot of homeschool students who are rock stars. I know a lot of them, and they are very, very well educated.

STACY PEARSON: Absolutely. And they can take a test. They should be able to take a test and show me what rock stars they are.

CHRISTINE JONES: They’ve gone on to great schools and they’ve become very well educated. They’re not kooks, OK? They’re not weirdos. But they should have accountability, I think is your point.

STACY PEARSON: Yeah.

MARK BRODIE: Christine, do you think that the groups who were pushing this ballot measure, do you think that they will be able to — obviously, their goal is now to flip the Legislature so that they can get some of these changes that they wanted in the ballot measure through the Legislature, which will never happen with the Republicans in charge. Do you think they have a chance?

CHRISTINE JONES: I know there’s a couple of really strong efforts to flip the Legislature that the Democrats are running. I’m not as bullish on that as they are, because I just think that there are enough legislative districts that are still leaning Republican that they’re probably pretty easy for the Republicans to pick up.

I wouldn’t sleep on it if I was a GOP candidate in some of those districts, because some of these people are very, very likable, really well spoken, smart, thoughtful, community-minded people. So I do think that their efforts are good.

Are they going to flip it? Probably not. However, the conservative position here and what the Legislature should do is to say: We want to build in some safeguards, we really care about parents being the first and best educators of their children, we want them to pick where their education dollars go, but we also are conservatives fiscally and we don’t want people wasting the money.

That is an OK thing for Republicans to do, and they should, because citizen initiatives, amending the Constitution, enshrining this permanently is probably not the best way for us to legislate. The Legislature should be doing that.

MARK BRODIE: Are you surprised that the Legislature hasn’t done that yet?

CHRISTINE JONES: I’m surprised they did it badly. I think the Republicans got too cute. They tried to get the military family exemption, they tried to get two bites at the apple, which we all know in the rules you cannot do. It has to be just a one-issue ballot measure. They could have handled this, and instead they flopped it up.

So I hope they come back around. I hope they build in the safeguards. Let’s not spend millions upon millions of dollars collecting signatures next time. Let’s have thoughtful legislators get together, say, “Look, we’re going to deal with this on a bipartisan basis” — it’s not controversial. We all want our parents to choose our education models — and let the Legislature refer it cleanly.

MARK BRODIE: One more question on this, Stacy, before we move on. Any chance the secretary of state’s race gets a little more juice because of this? I mean, the primary on the GOP side was almost all about vouchers.

STACY PEARSON: Right. I mean, certainly. Folks are paying closer attention to democracy writ large, and specifically direct democracy. I mean, folks who were circulating petitions — and I was entirely too close to this issue. We had a Protect the Vote initiative to enshrine our ability to vote by mail and vote early in the Constitution. We didn’t get enough signatures. It was constitutional. We would have needed $15 million. Someone to write a check like that?

CHRISTINE JONES: That’s a real number?

STACY PEARSON: That’s a real number. I mean, it’s nuts. We are way beyond the ability to have direct democracy without a billionaire funder. It’s nuts.

But yes, to answer the question, certainly, folks are paying attention, and they’re frustrated that they signed, they want accountability built into the education system. No one’s talking about taking away parental rights, but if you are telling me you’re educating your kid at home, have them take the test. I want to make sure they can add. We’re going to have to deal with these kids when they’re grown up. Make sure the Earth’s not flat. Go ahead, test them.

MARK BRODIE: Christine, you alluded to the military family bill, which would have been Prop 145 — also contained the so-called poison pill, which would have nullified Prop 212 had that passed — whole long, convoluted thing. Given that Prop 212 is not going to be on the ballot, is this, pardon the pun, less of a bitter pill for Republicans to swallow that theirs also got kicked off the ballot?

CHRISTINE JONES: Yeah, I think so. Look, school choice won, but it was procedural, right? It was by accident. So, yeah, it’s a temporary, sort of Pyrrhic victory. It’s not real, because we still have to, to Stacy’s point, we still have to come back around and fix the fraud.

Tom Horne had the audacity to say we should put some safeguards in the system, and he got primary challenged and beat. So, it’s a temporary, fake victory. We’ll take it for the minute. We won’t take ESAs away from people, which is always the goal here, but it’s got to get fixed.

MARK BRODIE: Stacy, is there any hindsight at this point, which of course is always 20/20, from those on the left that, gosh, you know, maybe we should have taken that deal in the Legislature when they were offering some kind of guardrails in exchange for us dropping the ballot measure?

STACY PEARSON: I mean, certainly hindsight’s 20/20, right? Getting a little bit of something is better than a lot of nothing, as it turns out. But I think the optimism is that Democratic enthusiasm among voters is as high as I’ve ever seen it. And it’s the only way Democrats are going to be able to secure statewide seats.

I mean, we have a registration disadvantage that’s as high as it’s been in a decade. I mean, we have 300,000 less Democrats registered to vote than Republicans, 200,000 fewer than Independents. So a whole of a half million voters means that we have to turn out our base in a way that overcomes those disadvantages. So, I mean, yes, we’re looking at really all options, and ideally, flipping a chamber in the Legislature to try to get some of this done.

MARK BRODIE: Are ESAs the issue that will continue to excite the Democratic base for this election, do you think?

STACY PEARSON: I think ESAs, education is always among the top three issues, and folks are getting increasingly frustrated with campus closures, with their neighborhood school turning over to a —

CHRISTINE JONES: Going away.

STACY PEARSON: Yeah, going away. That affects your property value, it affects where your — it changes the way you get up in the morning and get your kids off to school. If your commute is now 30 minutes and not 10 or five. It changes the way people live.

MARK BRODIE: Christine, one more ballot measure, this one we will be voting on, the State Supreme Court said we will, but we will have a description of it that is OK’d by Secretary of State Fontes. So it sounds like both sides got a little bit.

This is Prop 144, a bunch of changes to the way that elections are done, but not a lot of details on how some of those changes might actually be played out. We’ve been talking about ballot measures that maybe excite voters, get them to the polls. Is this one that those on the right might be excited to come out and vote for?

CHRISTINE JONES: I don’t think so. It feels like a little bit of a sleeper. And honestly, Adrian Fontes fighting over wording — is it voucher or is it ESA, or is it ACES or whatever — it’s so boring. Stacy talking about flat Earthers, that’s interesting, right? Me talking about is ESA money going to a private school, it’s interesting. How you style the ballot initiative, so boring.

Here’s what might motivate people: Nobody wants to be misled. Nobody wants all of the double, triple, quadruple negatives, and if you vote yes it means no, and if you vote no it means yes, and you don’t really know what you’re saying.

The other thing that I think really offends people because they’re not stupid is: Describe what the thing does, don’t advocate to me, don’t make the description adversarial, don’t make it try to tip me in one way or the other, just say what it is. For the love of God, could we not just have some kind of plain language without any advocacy for a change? That, I think, might be motivating.

MARK BRODIE: Christine, we’ve seen in the past, like in the last cycle, there were a number of ballot measures that the Republican Legislature put on the ballot, didn’t really spend much money on in terms of having a campaign for it, and many of them failed. I’m curious what you see for this particular one. Is this one that Republicans are going to maybe put some money, put some effort toward trying to convince voters to vote for it?

CHRISTINE JONES: I haven’t heard of anybody, nobody’s called me and asked me for a check, as an example. So I don’t actually know, but my sense is it’s way down the totem pole when you have something like Save Girls’ Sports on 318 coming, that’s a much more important issue on a bipartisan basis. You know, the vast, vast, vast majority of both — actually, all three party registration designations are in favor of that.

MARK BRODIE: And this is one that you’re working on, we should disclose.

CHRISTINE JONES: Yeah, fair disclosure, yeah. I support it. Most parents don’t want their minor daughters changing and, you know, showering with boys, biological boys. So I think that’s probably more motivational, and there’s just a limited amount of money to go around, you know? The Terry Goddard initiative that made the disclosures important has really discouraged out-of-state money, so now you’re just really limited to the donors in state.

To Stacy’s point, how many billionaires are there that want to put $15 million behind one of these? It’s got to be something sexy, it’s got to be something that’s interesting, and something that impacts them, their children, their grandchildren, you know, somebody.

MARK BRODIE: Do you agree, Stacy? I mean, election integrity is like, it seems like one of the few things the president, for example, really enjoys talking about all the time. Like it’s a pretty consistent Republican talking point.

STACY PEARSON: Well, and in full disclosure, we’re working on the No Campaign on 144, and it is undeniably a path to end mail-in voting and early voting. That’s it. I mean, it is in the language that the Legislature will continue to control, and essentially the path to end mail-in voting. So I find it hilarious that 80% of the voters in November will cast their mail-in ballots. If they vote yes on 144 —

CHRISTINE JONES: It’s the last time.

STACY PEARSON: It’s the last time. If you vote yes to end the very method by which you vote, it’s lunacy. And so, yes, I think 144 is going to get interesting, and that was very much a response to the proactive constitutional amendment that we were running to enshrine mail-in voting rights in the state’s constitution.

CHRISTINE JONES: Is there public polling on that?

STACY PEARSON: Oh, yeah. It’s —

CHRISTINE JONES: That’s been released? On 144?

STACY PEARSON: I don’t know.

CHRISTINE JONES: Sorry, I didn’t mean to derail you.

STACY PEARSON: No, but yes —

CHRISTINE JONES: It will be soon.

STACY PEARSON: I mean, they’re going to have to spend millions and millions and millions to try to fool voters into voting against their own way of voting.

MARK BRODIE: OK. So, guys, let’s talk about a couple of polls looking at the governor’s race. There was a poll from Noble Predictive Insights that found that Gov. Hobbs is leading Andy Biggs by 13 points, 48% to 35%. This is, of course, that’s a pretty big margin, especially considering that the governor won by what, 17,000 four years ago. Another poll from American EnCore found the governor up 45-40.

It seems like both polls have the governor roughly in the same ballpark, like mid- to upper 40s, not quite 50, but mid- to upper 40s. They both have her up, but one obviously by a lot more. Obviously, polls, snapshot in time. We’re still what, three months away from the election? What do you make of these, Christine?

CHRISTINE JONES: I mean, as a candidate, we tend to try to disregard the horse race polls as much as possible. Two things that I would say stand out here: First of all, there’s no good way to spin this. These are both bad for Biggs, on just a statistical purpose.

There’s two things I thought were really interesting. Hobbs has already consolidated 86% of Democrat support, and Biggs is only at 75% of Republicans. So fully one in four Republican voters are saying that they don’t support him. That’s a problem for Biggs, whether you’re behind five or 13.

The other thing is at 48, Hobbs already has 48 support in Mike Noble’s poll, 45 in the other. She’s almost at the tipping point. I think this is a bad, bad sign for Biggs, and I think the Republicans got to have a thing to get people to get that 300,000 vote advantage at the polls to vote for the top of the ticket by some other means than being excited about the candidates, because they don’t seem to be particularly excited about the candidates this cycle.

MARK BRODIE: What do you think, Stacy?

STACY PEARSON: The death knell of any candidate is when they say, “The only poll that matters is the election day results.” And I saw a Biggs supporter on X this week say exactly that.

CHRISTINE JONES: A Biggs supporter?

STACY PEARSON: I’m like, “Oh, look at you dusting off your resume. This is cute.” Like, there is — it is very difficult — first, Katie Hobbs has never lost an election, hard stop. She’s never lost. And it is very —

CHRISTINE JONES: Has Biggs? I don’t think Biggs has either.

STACY PEARSON: That’s a good question. But it is very difficult to unseat … an incumbent. Yeah, it’s very difficult to unseat an incumbent. And she’s done a perfectly lovely job. She is — it’s so funny the criticism about it not being more exciting. I want a governor to be boring. Go be boring. Go just do policy stuff. Go stay out of the news. I appreciate it very, very much. I think we need to make leadership boring again.

MARK BRODIE: So, I mean, obviously it’s better to be up 13 or five than down, but there’s still so much time, Stacy, before Election Day. There’s going to be debates that the governor and her running mate will not be participating in, that Andy Biggs and his running mate, Sine Kerr, will be participating in. There’s going to be lots of stuff happening between now and then.

Is it — I mean, I assume if you’re the Hobbs campaign, you don’t want to just assume, “OK, look, these polls show we’re up, we’re good,” because, like, certainly not, the race is not over.

STACY PEARSON: Well, and she has the money advantage, right? The governor has fundraised an extraordinary amount of money. She has the support, full support of the Democratic Governors Association, the DGA. So we’re talking tens of millions of dollars that are coming into the state to talk about her record and to make a debate more irrelevant.

And the Republicans, the Republican machinery has not invested the same way in Andy Biggs for a variety of reasons, some of which I’m certain are these poll numbers, that he is at an extraordinary disadvantage, and his voting record is not one that is standing the test of time.

I mean, we’ve got — he’s got some issues with the votes that he took in the Legislature, and I think some of that is being reflected in the poll, because the governor herself has the financial advantage to be able to remind people that he voted to protect the Colorado City pedophiles.

MARK BRODIE: Well, and how significant is that money advantage? I mean, Andy Biggs is somebody who’s never really had to raise a ton of money, because he’s always been in very safe legislative and congressional districts. Obviously, there will be Turning Point money, and you would think that resources wouldn’t be a concern, but maybe they will be?

CHRISTINE JONES: Yeah, I’m surprised at the stark difference, frankly, the big gap between the Hobbs money and the Biggs money. Does TP Action or Turning Point come in? Probably, right?

Although I have to say, the negative ads that are being run against Biggs are widely ineffective. They’re meaningless. People turn off the television or turn down the volume when they come on. So I think if the DGA is to spend a lot of money, they got to improve their ads.

But look, the Republicans — and particularly somebody like Biggs, who’s been in the East Valley, he’s been in office a long time, he’s been in a very safe, conservative Republican seat the entire time, no matter what the legislative district number was or the congressional district, and he’s used to being able to win a primary, win a general — that’s not the case here, right?

We are legitimately a swing state now. I hate to admit it live on the air, but we are purple. We have two Democratic senators, and it matters what we — who we pick in the primary. And we haven’t done a good job of — I’ll just acknowledge — we haven’t done a good job of that as Republicans, and we got to get better at it, because ideologues are not winning general elections.

I will say one other thing: Katie Hobbs should debate. I think it should be an obligation for people who want the public trust. We call it public service, and it should be about serving the public, not yourself. I did 55 debates when I ran for governor. She can do one.

That is obnoxious for her to hide in the basement and not debate and come out and just answer some policy questions. Andy Biggs is not Kari Lake. He’s not a flamethrower. He will have a thoughtful policy conversation with her, and she should show up.

MARK BRODIE: All right. Unfortunately, we’ll have to leave it there. Christine Jones, Stacy Pearson, thanks to you both. Really appreciate it.

STACY PEARSON: Thank you.

CHRISTINE JONES: Thank you.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning, it’s The Show on KJZZ 91.5, I’m Mark Brodie. Coming up, in the next installment of our summer soapbox series, what happens to a friendship when you commit to a 12-hour road trip beach day? But first, in Tucson, a chubby U of A boy with shaggy hair adjusts his backpack as he and his friend head up to University Boulevard, and he’s saying music’s terrible now and the world’s ending, what’s the point, as a hummingbird alights upon a palo verde. That’s just one of the astute observations about the Old Pueblo that our next guest documents on her social media, and soon in a new book of poetry and prose titled “In Tucson.” Britt Warner is not just a writer, though, and she’s not just a poet. She’s something of a jack of all trades. She’s an artist, musician, writer, Pilates instructor, and childhood equestrian whose writing is as varied as her interests. She moved to Tucson after the wildfires in her hometown of Los Angeles, and many of her poems are about acclimating to the desert. My co-host, Lauren Gilger, spoke with her more about that.

BRITT WARNER: I grew up a competitive equestrian rider, so I jumped and missed a ton of school, ended up culminating the junior career at Madison Square Garden in the finals there. So that focus can be applied to pretty much anything. The creative stuff was so instinctive and just part of who I was and am from the get-go. So I think it can be confusing for people to try to put me in a box, and that’s ultimately their problem. To me, it all makes sense.

LAUREN GILGER: You’re from Los Angeles, right? You spent a lot of time working and living as an artist there?

BRITT WARNER: Yeah, born and raised in LA. I realized for quite a few years I didn’t want to stay in LA and just didn’t know where else I wanted to be. And then in January of 2025, the fires destroyed the towns of Altadena and Pacific Palisades. I lived near Altadena. We had to get out of there. And my sister-in-law’s best friend lives in Tucson. Her father has a duplex and Airbnb’s one side, and they said, “Come on down, get out of there. Let’s just have you wait it out here.” So that was how I got to Tucson.

LAUREN GILGER: Had you ever been there before?

BRITT WARNER: I, like so many people, have passed through on the 10 on the way to somewhere else. Right, right. But no, no. I had no idea what to expect, no expectations. I just remember waking up on that first morning and it was so quiet. And I walked to the nearest cafe and sat down with my journal and coffee and began to write about what I was experiencing and haven’t stopped.

LAUREN GILGER: Were you surprised by your reaction to this place? Did you expect to like it, to love it, to stay?

BRITT WARNER: No, I had no expectations. I just felt a sense of calm. And when I got back to LA, I missed Tucson and began to pack up my life, say my goodbyes to everybody. I took a trip out to Tucson to look at places to live and throw some stuff in storage and fully committed in a way that I never have to another place outside of California and was determined to let another environment shape me for some time. I remember when I was staying here during the fires and my host was showing me around downtown, there was this sense of people just hanging out. Not running around frantically. It didn’t feel as anxiety-ridden. There was just this sense of peace that called to me. Yeah, here I am.

LAUREN GILGER: So you’re getting to know this place, and it sounds like you’re doing it through your writing. Like you write these kind of interesting little snippets, musings, maybe observations, like little pieces of poetry about Tucson. When did you start doing that? Was that on that first morning when you woke up in Tucson during the fires?

BRITT WARNER: No, it was a little bit before coming to Tucson when the fires hit. I began posting on Threads because I was trying to process everything in real time, and what better place than social media? I say that tongue in cheek. And then once I moved to Tucson, I didn’t know a ton of people, but wanted a place to put the feelings I was experiencing, the observations I was making, but also it was a way to entertain myself. That’s what writing and art have always been to me, is first and foremost to make myself happy or to figure out exactly what I think. And often I don’t know until I can see it written out in front of me.

LAUREN GILGER: So I want to read a few of these, because they’re sometimes funny, sometimes really serious, sometimes really beautiful. One of my favorites is this one. It says, "After it rains in Tucson, the smell of creosote seeps through the thinly paned windows, beyond the mesquite shutters, past the saguaro-ribbed ceiling, and into my parched soul," which I love. And that smell of creosote to anyone who lives in the Sonoran Desert is so emblematic of this place.

BRITT WARNER: It’s so distinct. Even before it rains here, the creosote begins to emit a fragrance that is unlike anything else I’ve ever smelled. And it carries a nostalgia for, of course, the people who’ve lived in Arizona forever, but even to those of us who are new to it, it feels emotionally resonant.

LAUREN GILGER: But it helps you, it sounds like, process it and realize what it is that you love about this place by writing it down.

BRITT WARNER: Absolutely. That and just wherever you are in the world, there’s always something you can complain about or find to be problematic. And I find it’s really helpful to continue to notice things as an observer, as an anthropologist, to stay curious, to stay interested, to keep my sense of humor, because I can err on the too-serious side at times. So, yeah, it’s just a lot of fun.

LAUREN GILGER: But some of these are funny. I mean, you also write, “If you’d braved the Trader Joe’s parking lots in LA for as many years as I had, you would move to Tucson, too.”

BRITT WARNER: Funny thing, I went to the Trader Joe’s, the new one off of Broadway here, just the other day with my boyfriend, and he was already like lamenting how crowded the parking lot was here. And I just looked at him and said, “You have no idea.”

LAUREN GILGER: You write a good amount here about why you moved to Tucson. One says you moved to Tucson to level up the adaptive traits you’ll need to survive climate change.

BRITT WARNER: And the kindness of strangers.

LAUREN GILGER: And the kindness of strangers. Like, that’s a beautiful contrast there, right?

BRITT WARNER: I will say, the kindness of strangers freaks me out still sometimes, because Tucson does feel like a small town within a city. And I’m used to feeling somewhat anonymous. Like when I want to just disappear into my own world, my own thoughts, I’m used to being able to do that in bigger cities. And in Tucson, it’s harder because inevitably I’ll run into a million people I know. And I’ve been here for a short time. People are so warm and welcoming, and that’s incredible and just new to somebody who’s used to being guarded from living in a larger city.

LAUREN GILGER: So I know you haven’t been in Tucson all that long, and you’re still sort of trying to figure out how you feel about and in this place, but I mean, so far, like as you’re writing about it, observing it, gathering these thoughts together, especially as you make a book out of it, I mean, how do you think Tucson is changing you?

BRITT WARNER: It’s changed me in that in larger cities like Los Angeles, so many people are trying to do the same thing that it feels oversaturated and you end up playing shows for all your friends rather than strangers. I feel so embraced here in a way that’s like a full body sigh, where I’m fully myself, creating everything I want, being as weird as I want to be, and I don’t feel shy about it, I don’t feel nervous about how it’s going to look.

LAUREN GILGER: All right. Well, that is Britt Warner, an artist in Tucson. The “In Tucson” book is coming out in October. Britt, thank you so much for coming on The Show. It was great talking to you.

BRITT WARNER: Lauren, thanks for having me.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning, it’s The Show on KJZZ 91.5, I’m Mark Brodie. The federal government has finally released details of new rules for allocating Colorado River water. The feds last month unveiled a framework for how cuts might work. Now that framework has been filled in with big cuts to the lower basin states of Arizona, California, and Nevada. With me now to talk about what all of this looks like is KJZZ’s Alex Hager. Hey, Alex.

MARK BRODIE: The federal government has finally released details of new rules for allocating Colorado River water. The feds last month unveiled a framework for how cuts might work. Now that framework has been filled in with big cuts to the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada. With me now to talk about what all of this looks like is KJZZ’s Alex Hager. Hey, Alex.

ALEX HAGER: Good morning, Mark.

MARK BRODIE: So let’s go back to late July when this framework came out. What — remind us what that all looked like, what that all entailed.

ALEX HAGER: Yeah, the big headline was that the federal government said two things. One, “We’re going to put out this framework that will manage the river for the next 10 years, but we’re going to do new plans in two-year increments within those 10 years.” So basically every two years, we’re going to get all of the policymakers together and tweak the exact amount of water reductions we’re making over the course of two years in response to river conditions.

That was the first thing. The second thing they said was, “We are giving ourselves the authority — we believe we have the legal authority — to cut water for the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California, Nevada by up to 40%.” So those were the two things that made waves here in Arizona.

MARK BRODIE: And at the time, Arizona folks, water officials and others, they weren’t that thrilled with all that.

ALEX HAGER: That’s right. They spent the last few weeks expressing that pretty vocally. I mean, they said that these cuts could be catastrophic to the people and economy of this state. They have long described the potential for cuts of that size as devastating. And they made the case to the federal government that they needed to adopt the counterproposal from Arizona, California and Nevada that would soften the blow of those cuts and avoid the most devastating, most catastrophic outcome.

MARK BRODIE: So how closely did the federal government kind of hew to what the Lower Basin states wanted?

ALEX HAGER: Well, we know that they chose not the worst option in the eyes of the Lower Basin states. They are going to cut water by about 20%. This is actually a combination of two things. So they are going to mandate a certain amount of cuts, and then in conjunction with that, Arizona, California, Nevada are volunteering additional cuts. And that all adds up to a little more than 20% of the water that typically in the past few years has ... flowed to Arizona, California, Nevada.

MARK BRODIE: So it could have been worse.

ALEX HAGER: It absolutely could have been worse — and it still could. That’s the big thing, is so far in the limited reaction we’ve seen since these rules came out less than an hour ago, we have seen some leaders saying, “Look, this is a bridge. This is not a permanent solution. We expect these rules to last — we know these rules will last for two years, and in October of 2028, we are going to have to have some new ones.”

So we still could see the kinds of catastrophic, drastic cuts starting in 2028 that Arizona’s been talking about. But we know that for at least two years, there’s a little bit of stability knowing that these Lower Basin states are not going to have that worst-case outcome.

MARK BRODIE: Upper Basin states have been making the case that they shouldn’t take any cuts at all. Lower Basin states, of course, disagree with that. What did the feds say about the Upper Basin?

ALEX HAGER: The upper basin states are not going to be required to make mandatory water cutbacks under this new plan. So that’s Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and New Mexico. They have long argued that they already take cuts. Even if they are not mandated by the government, their argument is that they have a legal obligation to send a certain amount of water down basically every year to Arizona, California and Nevada. But because the river starts in those upper states as snow in the Rocky Mountains, they say low-snow years, which we’ve been having a lot of lately, throw that balance out of whack. Basically, they have to send a fixed amount of water down every year, but the amount of water they are given to send has been a lot lower. And the difference, they say, amounts to the kind of cuts that the federal government might otherwise mandate.

MARK BRODIE: So 20%, a little more than 20% cuts to Arizona, California, Nevada. What might that mean? What might that look like here?

ALEX HAGER: Well, the interesting thing is it’s not going to show up at your home or business, for the most part. These cuts are not a surprise. The Colorado River has been really sagging under drought and climate change for 26 years now. And these kinds of cuts, maybe not the specific amount, but this kind of cut has been on the radar of the people who manage our water here for a long time. And for the most part, the cities that are going to be hit the hardest have been putting contingency plans into place for the better part of a decade. And because of that, the utilities that bring water to our homes have a huge backup plan in place.

MARK BRODIE: So in theory, then, as you say, we’re not in a situation where we’re going to turn on our tap and nothing’s going to come out or there’s not going to be water for the kinds of things that we need.

ALEX HAGER: I can say with almost universal certainty that that will be the case, at least for the next two years. Most cities and utilities have a diverse water portfolio, so they’re not just getting water from the Colorado River. So when you cut into the amount of water that those cities can access from the Colorado River, they can just lean harder on one of those other sources of water — groundwater, for example, water from the Salt River. And even cities that don’t have these robust portfolios where they can go and get water from another system, there are exchanges in place where cities that have a lot of water are entering deals to share some of it with cities that don’t.

MARK BRODIE: So what might the next two years look like, because as you say, this could get worse in two years. Is there a sense that the states might start — or maybe they’ve already started talking about what the 2028 version of this might look like?

ALEX HAGER: I am going to make an educated guess here and say that the states have not necessarily done that. They have spent basically the last two-plus years negotiating over the rules that came out today — and they could not come to an agreement. They failed to agree.

MARK BRODIE: Which is why the feds had to step in.

ALEX HAGER: Exactly. And so the seven leaders from the seven states that use water from the Colorado River, they do not see eye to eye on how it should be shared. That is the reason that we are in this position today. They have spent a lot of time in closed-door meetings disagreeing with each other. ... So the idea that they have to go back quickly and restart those negotiations is probably pretty unsavory to most of the people who have lost a lot of sleep over the same negotiations for a couple years now.

MARK BRODIE: So would that indicate — and of course, this is very speculative at this point — but is it a reasonable assumption then that there’s at least a chance that the feds might have to step in in 2028 and do this whole process again and say, “OK states, this is what we’re telling you to do,” as opposed to you figuring it out for yourselves?

ALEX HAGER: There is definitely a chance that that happens. I think the federal government has made it very clear that they do not want it to happen. The states, for the most part, also do not want it to happen. These guidelines, this 10-year system that I’ve been talking about, it is designed to allow the states to agree and kind of throw everything else out the window. So they said they’re going to keep all meeting together, the state leaders, the federal leaders, and if they can put their heads together and come to a consensus, they kind of just scrap the plans we’ve been talking about today and replace them with the new ones. They would prefer to agree, and they’ve built a system that accommodates that.

MARK BRODIE: Alex, we’ve been hearing a lot about lawsuits potentially and the states setting aside money for that. Do you get the sense that might still be on the table, or since the feds basically adopted what the Lower Basin states had asked for, that maybe that’s not going to be an issue right now?

ALEX HAGER: I would say we are not out of the woods yet on that. The states have been quietly jostling around and hinting that they could take this to court if they wanted to. I have not yet seen Arizona’s reaction to today’s announcement, but in their most recent reaction, they said, “Look, remember, we are not not going to sue.”

MARK BRODIE: OK, see what happens. That is KJZZ’s Alex Hager. Alex, thanks as always.

ALEX HAGER: Good to be back, Mark.

MARK BRODIE: It is now time for the next installment of our summer soapbox series. Some road trips are planned for months in advance and carefully mapped out, while others — like the one taken by writer and photographer Morgan Kubasko — are more impromptu.

MORGAN KUBASKO: The golden rule of improv is “Yes, and.” And so was my golden rule for the summer of 2023. That summer felt like a true summer. I had finished my sophomore year of college, moved off campus with a part-time job, and a handful of my out-of-state college friends were staying in Arizona for the break. My friend Alex and I spent nearly every weekend together. We soaked in the sun, window-shopped at the mall, and took a number of impromptu road trips.

As any other Arizona native can attest, the optimal summer plan is avoiding the 115-degree weather. Logically, Flagstaff or Prescott would be the perfect destination for a day trip outside of Tempe, but we thought, why not think bigger? Alex and I shared a love of the beach and decided that the roughly 12-hour drive to San Diego and back was something we could accomplish in a day.

Our first trek further west began at 5:00 a.m. at the end of May. Alex’s apartment was in downtown Phoenix, so we figured I’d spend the night there, as if being 20 minutes closer was going to make the trip feel any shorter. We fueled up on Red Bull and gas station snacks, blared a chaotic playlist of songs, and yapped each other’s ears off while we drove.

As Alex and a handful of my friends can attest, vulnerability is not my strong suit. While I am a lover of intellectual conversations and opinionated debates, being open about myself is something different. But there is something special about a road trip conversation. The open road provides a fluid space where small chat blossoms into deeper dialogues. There are only so many songs you can sing along to before the lack of conversation becomes apparent.

We started by discussing work, love lives, nights out, and as the cacti turned into palm trees, we dove into career goals, hardships, and everything in between. Those conversations followed us out of Alex’s old white Jeep and onto the beach and into restaurants and shops. And when the time finally came to head back to the desert, we were closer friends who didn’t want the trip to end.

If you thought doing a day trip to San Diego was already ambitious, we decided watching fireworks at Disneyland would be the perfect endcap to the day. Despite the fact we already had a long drive back, we switched directions, traveled further up the coast, and sat in Downtown Disney while a pattern of flashes lit up the night sky.

The drive back home was exactly what you’d expect: a little delirium mixed with a growing desire to be in bed. But even when we fought against our heavy eyelids and took turns sleeping, we still managed to maintain moments of banter. Those times of connection were what made that summer feel like a true summer. Spur-of-the-moment adventures and saying yes to the little things created a special magic that radiated beyond car doors.

MARK BRODIE: That was writer and photographer Morgan Kubasko. You can hear her story again and find more soapbox essays at theshow.kjzz.org.

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. 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.