Surviving three governors
A Q&A with Will Humble … Reelection in the Age of Trump … And we’ll call them dysfunctional for free.
Few people understand the stakes of public health policy like Will Humble.
And yes, he’s terrified about the direction national health is heading under the Trump administration. (It doesn’t help that a vaccine skeptic with a worm in his head is running the national Health and Human Services department.)
Humble has worked in public health policy for more than 20 years, including by leading the Arizona Department of Health Services from 2009 to 2015. Now, he does advocacy work as the executive director of the Arizona Public Health Association.
We caught up with him recently for a wide-ranging conversation about what’s broken in public health, what might still be fixable, and what it’s like trying to do the job under three very different governors.
He says we should be scared about incoming federal attempts to slash Medicaid, but also the long-term domino effects we have yet to see from things like the National Institutes of Health research cuts.
”If you look at the way new drugs and new therapies and new medical devices even exist at all ... it’s because of the investments at NIH,” Humble told us. “When you cut NIH research like this, you're not just getting rid of the research for future therapies; over the long run, you're atrophying the network of people who do that kind of research.”
But doom-scrolling isn’t going to make anything better. Instead, he suggests calling your congressional representatives, volunteering for boards and commissions or anything that makes you “part of the solution.” His part is advocating for public health policy at the state government level, something he’s intimately familiar with.
Humble worked under three different Arizona governors when he led the state’s health agency: Democrat Janet Napolitano and Republicans Jan Brewer and Doug Ducey.
Back then, his work output didn’t depend on the political party in charge, even though Humble considers himself a center-left Democrat.
He had the best experience working under Brewer because of her “long leash” management style.
“Governor Brewer would forgive you if you didn't know an answer to a question about your agency, that was okay with her ... But if Governor Napolitano thought you should know something and asked a question, and you didn't know it, you were in trouble,” he said.
Ducey was “a much shorter leash type of guy,” which is ultimately why Humble left the department.
“I can't do my job this way, where I'm raising my hand to ask permission to go to the bathroom,” he said.
Ultimately, Humble is really grateful for his years leading the health department. But future directors might not be as lucky.
Gov. Katie Hobbs is in an ongoing feud with Republican Sen. Jake Hoffman, who heads the nominations committee, over the contentious hearings he puts her director nominees through.
Humble’s confirmation hearing went through the Senate Health Committee, when former Republican Sen. Carolyn Allen was in charge, whom he knew from previous political endeavors.
“It wasn't contentious or anything, but it also wasn't a rubber stamp,” Humble said. “But it was nothing like the sabotage that you see coming out of the Hoffman committee.”
And because of those now politically charged hearings, Humble thinks a lot of very qualified people are missing out on leading state departments.
“It has a huge chilling effect on getting talent into state government, which has real implications for the missions of all those agencies,” he said.
We ended our conversation with a few rapid-fire questions to get to know the man behind the job.
Q: What’s a misconception about public health that you think the general public doesn’t understand?
A:
”The difference between public health and health care. In clinical medicine and in health care, the patient is the patient. In public health, the community is the patient.”
Q: Would you describe yourself as a health nut, or do you ever indulge?
A: Humble doesn’t identify as a health nut, but he follows his grandfather’s motto: “Everything in moderation.”
Q: What do you think is the most important lesson we should take away from COVID-19?
A:
“Just how profoundly the political aspirations of elected officials can really impede a response, and how people are willing to make decisions that they know are going to kill people.”
Q: What’s the best advice you've received in your career that you still keep in mind today?
A: Humble said he received the best advice from a professor at Northern Arizona University who gave a lecture in 1981 about following “your path of heart.”
“I loved being the State Health Director … but I also knew the jig was up. This isn't going to be the same, and I don't want to spoil this experience by continuing to stay in a job that I know is wrong for me, and probably wrong for (Ducey),” he said.
Q: If you had to give a TED Talk on something completely unrelated to public health, what would it be about?
A: Humble would give a TED Talk on “the joys of having a kid with an intellectual disability.”
His 30-year-old son Luke has Down syndrome, and Humble said people with Down syndrome generally “live in the moment … like, the joy of just being, they have it. It's something that's part of them.”
Why we can’t have nice things: The dust-up with Arizona Democratic Party Chair Robert Branscomb, the general apathy in the Democratic base toward Gov. Katie Hobbs and the fractured relationships among Arizona’s Democratic statewide leaders means Arizona Democrats are heading toward an uphill fight in 2026, the New York Times reports. And although all five statewide Democratic officeholders basically called for Branscomb to resign last month, he keeps showing up to work — though he was uninvited from being the keynote speaker at the Maricopa County Democratic Party’s big fundraiser last month, the Republic’s Mary Jo Pitzl reports.
“Some joked, darkly, that Mr. Branscomb had accomplished the impossible: uniting the state’s constantly bickering Democratic elected officials,” the Times writes.
Treasure trove: If you wondered where the Trump administration’s obsession with the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang came from, Cochise Regional News and Phoenix New Times say they obtained a trove of documents tied to Project 2025 that explains it. Trump wants to galvanize political support for a broader plan to dramatically restructure and militarize law enforcement, nationwide, under his command, freelancer Beau Hodai reports in an ongoing investigative collaboration between the New Times and his Substack.
“To the average American, this administration's approach may be reminiscent of an angry monkey hurling shit at a wall,” Hodai writes. “But these anti-immigrant measures echo a plan that was meticulously crafted, out of public view, over at least the year preceding this Trump presidency.”
Phoenix’s forest burns: The Greer Fire has now torched roughly 20,000 acres and prompted mandatory evacuations in parts of northeastern Arizona, per AZFamily. Dry conditions and strong winds helped the fire spread quickly through the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest while firefighting crews are struggling to contain it and animals are fleeing the forests for cities.
We can always rebuild!: The Payson Town Council decided not to adopt a Wildland-Urban Interface building code designed to reduce the risk of wildfire embers setting whole city blocks on fire. Local contractors complained that the new requirements could drive up the cost of housing, so the council dropped the planned vote and asked the contractors to come up with an alternative plan, the Payson Roundup’s Peter Aleshire reports.
“I have received a bunch of phone calls, since this item was in the newspaper,” said Councilor Suzy Tubbs. “It triggered a bunch of concern and fear from our local contractors.”
Apprentice star to create new show: Department of Homeland Security officials are vetting a proposal to create a reality show making immigrants compete for citizenship for your viewing pleasure, the Daily Mail reported. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, or “ICE Barbie,” as the Daily Mail called her, is considering a pitch from Duck Dynasty producer Rob Worsoff to have immigrants travel by train around the country and compete in regional cultural contests, like log rolling in Wisconsin. The winner would get sworn in as a citizen on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. Worsoff told the Wall Street Journal “this isn’t ‘The Hunger Games’” for immigrants. Instead, it’s supposed to be hopeful. A DHS spokeswoman said they’re in the “very beginning stages” of the vetting process and Noem hasn’t seen a pitch for the show yet.
Dismantling tools to fight fascism: Nearly 600 journalists at Voice of America, which was started in the wake of WWII to provide pro-democracy news in repressive countries around the world, got the axe last week and the Trump administration put VOA’s building up for sale, the New York Times reports. Never mind that a judge has ordered Donald Trump to maintain robust coverage at the agency because the president can’t just decide to kill an independent agency that Congress has funded. Former TV news anchor and twice-failed candidate Kari Lake, now a senior advisor for VOA’s parent agency, was pretty stoked. She announced last week that the station will now run Trump propaganda from the formerly fringe One America News Network.
Trump just broke a court order and fired 600 journalists.
This is what it looks like when power silences the press.
McMahon saves: The U.S. Department of Education reversed a record $37.7 million fine against Arizona-based Grand Canyon University, which had been levied under the Biden administration over GCU’s misleading marketing for the price of its programs, the Republic’s Helen Rummel reports. The private, Christian school has maintained that the Biden administration’s fine was "selective enforcement” against it.
One more thing to worry about: A strange beam of light pointing into the sky like a spotlight was visible across the entire southwest U.S. on Friday night and nobody seems sure what it was, the Republic’s Rey Covarrubias Jr. writes. It might have been STEVE (Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement) or a Chinese rocket or maybe a light pillar created by ice in the atmosphere.
Big news, readers: The Agenda is officially opening up advertising in our weekly policy verticals — Education Agenda, AI Agenda, Water Agenda and more.
For a long time, we’ve had potential advertisers banging on our doors — asking to sponsor and support the Agenda and get in front of our deeply informed, highly engaged, Arizona-savvy audience.
And honestly, we’ve mostly blown them off.
We didn’t have a real system in place to handle it, we didn’t have time to deal with it and we didn’t want to mess with what we were building before it was solid. Now, we’ve got someone to handle ads so we don’t have to, and we’re finally turning on a revenue stream we’ve left sitting on the table.
And because we're sustainably supported by you subscribers, we get to do this on our terms.
You read the Agenda because we call it like it is — that won’t change. We’d rather lose a sponsor than lose your trust — and if it ever comes to that, we won’t hesitate.
But there are a ton of great organizations doing real, meaningful work in Arizona — the kind we’d actually feel good about partnering with. Like Education Forward Arizona — our first official sponsor of Education Agenda. They’re nonpartisan, do important and thoughtful work on education policy and we use their data all the time. We’re proud to partner with them.
And we’re excited about what’s possible — more ambitious reporting, more local journalism jobs and a stronger Agenda across the board.
Advertising will help us keep building the kind of scrappy, independent newsroom Arizona needs and keep the newsletters widely accessible.
So if you're an organization doing meaningful work in Arizona — and you're looking to reach people who actually pay attention — here's your moment.
Why sponsor The Agenda?
Reach 20,000+ civic-minded Arizonans across the state
Connect with policymakers, government staff, journalists, advocates and insiders who actually shape policy
Appear alongside smart, independent reporting people trust
Be part of the movement to build a stronger, more diverse media ecosystem in Arizona
Got something worth saying — and want the right people to actually pay attention?
Sponsoring a policy vertical puts your message in front of Arizona’s most dialed-in readers and helps make possible the kind of local journalism you believe in — smart, independent and built to serve the public good.
The Scottsdale City Council paid a consultant $10,000 to tell them that they’re the most dysfunctional council she’s ever seen.
We’ve told you a few times about the war between new Scottsdale Mayor Lisa Borowsky and the city council — last week, for example, the council voted to strip her office of two employees via a surprise attack at a meeting. Chaos ensued.
Recently, the council held a retreat to work through their problems. They even hired a fancy facilitator to help them be less dysfunctional.
It didn’t work.
Borowsky got testy with the facilitator, and started beefing with the city manager, and accused them both of coordinating against her with the other city councilmembers, as the Scottsdale Progress’ Tom Scanlon details.
The facilitator has worked with more than 130 government agencies. But she’s never seen one score lower in the “team culture” category than the Scottsdale City Council.