**It's Friday October 9, 2026 and in this morning's issue we're covering:** NJ data center emitted staggering amounts of air pollution for nearly a year before regulators intervened, Urban, rural hospitals closing at similar rates, study finds, Faith leaders hold vigil for forthcoming family and children detention facility in Alexandria, Depression, Anxiety Plague Black Women a Year After Being Fired by DOGE, Asylum win caps immigrant’s two-year detention as courts weigh third-country deportations, Struggling with food insecurity in Central NC, Moving goods is one of KC’s biggest industries. Record diesel prices make it hard to keep trucking. **Media outlets and others featured:** Floodlight, Stateline, Verite News, MindSite News, Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, Carolina Public Press, The Beacon * * * ## REVEALED: NJ data center emitted staggering amounts of air pollution for nearly a year before regulators intervened Newly obtained public records shed light on emissions caused by DataOne’s unpermitted generator fleet **By: Evan Simon / Floodlight** This story_is from_ Floodlight_, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action_ , _published in partnership with The Guardian. Sign up for Floodlight’s newsletter_ here_._ DataOne, the Microsoft-linked New Jersey datacenter recently hit with a $1 million fine for running unpermitted generators, emitted large amounts of health-harming air pollution for nearly a year before state regulators stepped in, according to public records obtained by Floodlight. The Vineland facility’s 62 gas-fired generators became public in August after a Floodlight/Guardian visual investigation found them operating without permits. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection last week fined the company over the fleet but didn’t disclose how long the generators had been operating nor how much air pollution they had released into the surrounding community over the past year. Floodlight sent technical data about the generators — obtained through public records requests — to two experts to calculate the site’s emissions. “Our best estimate is that the generators emitted about 140 tons of NOx,” said Xiaomeng Jin, an assistant professor at Rutgers Department of Environmental Sciences.Her analysis would rank DataOne in the state’s top five NOx polluters of 2025, per EPA data. NOx are a dangerous group of smog-producing gases linked to asthma, heart attacks and even premature death. It’s “the most important air pollutant in the U.S. that affects most people,” Jin said. Longtime Vineland resident Tiffany Leone-Vespa lives about a mile from the data center and said the noise from the generators sounds like an airplane in the back of her house. “What health problems might I face in the future? Because I've been exposed to all of that. My kids have been exposed to it,” she said. The site’s potential NOx emissions are even larger, according to Jin and Bruce Buckheit — a former EPA air enforcement division chief. Both concluded that at full use, DataOne’s fleet could emit more than 1,500 tons of NOx per year. That is nearly twice the amount that the Linden Cogeneration gas-fired power plant, New Jersey’s largest NOx emitter, is allowed to emit. Operating the generators “results in very high levels of air pollution,” said Buckheit. New Jersey labels any facility capable of emitting more than 25 tons of NOx per year a “major source” and DataOne’s potential emissions are “well over” that limit, Buckheit said. Obtaining a major source permit requires extensive environmental reviews, best available pollution controls and public comment periods — all before construction can even begin. That didn’t happen at DataOne, despite the operation being capable of emittingmore than half the NOx put out by New Jersey’s entire power sector. > **“That is basically offsetting some of the air quality improvements [regulators] have achieved for decades,” Jin said.** DataOne did not respond to Floodlight’s emissions analysis. Instead, its spokesperson sent the same statement as they did in response to NJDEP's decision to fine them, saying the company is "transitioning to low-emission, quiet fuel cells as part of the site’s permanent power solution and have the necessary approvals in place for this solution.” The company disagrees with NJDEP’s determination and had argued the generators did not require permits — but plans to apply for them now. A Microsoft spokesperson wrote that "we expect our suppliers and partners to meet all applicable legal and regulatory obligations” and the company was working with DataOne “to support their completion of the facility's transition to its permanent long-term power solution.” In press releases, New Jersey regulators said the tractor-trailer-sized generators were detected during a July 29, 2026, site inspection but not during an earlier visit in December. However, the fleet was there to find, according to a letter DataOne later sent to NJDEP. The letter, obtained by Floodlight through a public records request, notes the generators first began to arrive in July 2025. Sixteen generators started operating in October 2025, with another 16 brought online in early February. By June, all 62 had been fired up. By the time state inspectors noticed them, the unpermitted fleet had collectively run for more than 46,000 hours in total, according to the letter. “How did 62 generators get installed and operated and nobody did anything until now? That blows me away,” Leone-Vespa said. “Clearly somebody wasn't doing their job.” A spokesperson for NJDEP declined to comment. For many Vineland residents, confirmation that DataOne’s generators have been running for nearly a year is a bittersweet vindication. Locals have reported strange noises emanating from the facility for months, with more than 100 noise complaints submitted to the Cumberland County Department of Health since March, according to records obtained by Floodlight. Many of the complaints list generators as the suspected source. “They're just running these monster generators. And they think, by right, they have every ability to do so at the expense of anyone else,” said local flower farmer Michael Atkinson. Atkinson's family has been farming a patch of land beside the data center for more than 70 years. He said DataOne is “one of the richest and worst neighbors that I have ever had to deal with in my entire life.” During a Vineland town hall meeting in late January, DataOne CEO Charles-Antoine Beyney told residents that his data center would be “polluting less than a farm.” Born in Bordeaux, Beyney told the crowd, “I’m too French to just kill my lungs, the lungs of your kids and all the community around us.” Beyney confirmed during that speech that DataOne was running generators, and he said NJDEP was aware — claiming the agency had been at the site that same morning and was “on us big time.” While the generators may have evaded state regulators for a year, local officials knew about them for much longer. A City of Vineland inspection activity report noted that “Phase 1 generators are online” in early February. And in May, a Cumberland County Health Department inspector responding to a noise complaint visited the site and reported that the source of the noise appeared to be two generators, “possibly more.” The inspector noted that the noise “exceeded a nighttime violation.” As part of the record fine levied against DataOne, the state is mandating the company apply for and obtain the required permits or cease operations, but is allowing them 45 days to do so, according to a NJDEP spokesperson. During that time, regulators are allowing the facility to continue running the generators — which are capable of emitting more than four tons of NOx in nearby neighborhoods each day. “I just don't understand how this is being allowed,” Leone-Vespa said. She hopes independent air monitoring can help protect her community in the future. Until then, she has little faith in New Jersey regulators to watch out for them. “It's like they don't care about the residents.” Floodlight_is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action._ * * * Urban hospitals are closing at roughly the same rate as rural ones, and the shuttered hospitals are more likely to have served communities with high poverty rates and fewer transportation options, according to a new study. (Photo by Dana DiFilippo/New Jersey Monitor) ## Urban, rural hospitals closing at similar rates, study finds By Nada Hassanein (Stateline) Published: October 8, 2026 Urban hospitals are closing at roughly the same rate as rural ones, and the shuttered hospitals are more likely to have served communities with high poverty rates and fewer transportation options, according to a new study published Thursday in the journal JAMA. Researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health analyzed hospital closures and openings that occurred between 2010 and last year. They found that closures increased by 4% year over year, while new hospital openings decreased 3% year over year. > Breast cancer survival rates higher in Medicaid expansion states, study finds The study comes as health systems across the nation brace for the effects of the broad tax and spending measure passed by congressional Republicans and signed by President Donald Trump in July 2025. The so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act is projected to cut federal Medicaid spending by an estimated $886.8 billion over the next decade, according to estimates by the Congressional Budget Office. The law includes $50 billion in rural health grants to be distributed to states over five years, but the funds are for a wide variety of initiatives, with limitations on how much hospitals can benefit. Public attention has mostly focused on struggling rural hospitals, but the Harvard researchers found that urban hospitals also have been vulnerable: The closure rate was 9.1% for urban hospitals and 8.3% for rural hospitals. Across both rural and urban areas, hospitals that were for-profit, small or safety-net, or served the most vulnerable counties — such as those with higher poverty rates or less access to transportation — were most likely to close. > US hospitals see stark decline of obstetric services, study shows Overall, 432 hospitals closed between 2010 and 2025 while 216 opened, leading to a net loss of over 24,000 beds. Rural areas were less likely to see a new hospital, as the new facilities were mostly urban, for-profit and small. Rural communities are more likely to have fewer doctors per capita and a lower overall number of patients. Of the hospitals that closed, about 73% shut down completely, while the remaining retained outpatient care, including rural emergency hospital care. The Midwest and the South saw the most closures overall, and there were more closures in states that didn’t expand Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act, according to the study. _Stateline reporter Nada Hassanein can be reached at_ _nhassanein@stateline.org_ _._ SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE * * * # Faith leaders hold vigil for forthcoming family and children detention facility in Alexandria By Robert Stewart, Verite News New Orleans October 2, 2026 _This article was produced in partnership with_ _Religion News Service_ _._ Local community activists and faith leaders from Louisiana and beyond marched and prayed Thursday (Oct. 1) at the fenced-off barracks and trailers at England Airpark, where federal immigration officials are preparing to open a privately-run facility to hold immigrant families and unaccompanied children awaiting deportation. The 528-bed facility — which sits next to Alexandria International Airport and is expected to open imminently — will be the second detention facility designated for children and families under President Donald Trump. “We lament the childhood moments that detention will interrupt: a familiar bedtime, a classroom full of friends, a meal around a family table, the freedom to play without fear, graduation, a birthday,” said the Rev. Robin Tanner, president of the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association, who flew in from New Jersey to attend the event and led a prayer in front of the facility. About 40 people attended the vigil. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) maintains it will be a temporary holding facility where families will stay while awaiting deportation flights or transfers to other detention centers. Those attending the vigil Thursday, many of whom have spent months opposing family and child detention in Louisiana, see the detention center as an alarming acceleration of the administration’s mass deportation campaign. The facility would be the “first and only” ICE facility dedicated to detaining and deporting unaccompanied minors, said Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director at Detention Watch Network, a coalition advocating for the abolishment of the immigration detention system. According to ICE’s website, the agency only holds unaccompanied children in rare instances. They are usually handled by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. But ORR is not involved in the Alexandria facility. ICE did not respond to questions about whether the facility is the first of its kind, when it would open or concerns regarding the facility’s impact on children. Instead, the spokesperson said the facility is not a detention center, but a temporary holding facility where families will stay while awaiting their deportation flight or transfer to another detention facility. Pastor Leigh Rachal, the executive director of the Louisiana Interchurch Conference — a multi-denominational, social justice-oriented nonprofit — has been organizing faith leaders to oppose the expansion of detention and deportation infrastructure in Louisiana. Rachal said she put out a call nationally to other faith leaders to join Thursday’s event. “This really is, I think, the human struggle to do better, to lift our hearts together (and) to seek the well-being of every neighbor,” Rachal said. Part of the Trump administration’s efforts to expedite deportations, the new facility is situated beside an airport that has become known as the country’s busiest hub for deportation flights. According to the most recent ICE Flight Monitor report, Alexandria saw roughly 340 flights in August alone, including domestic transfer and deportation flights. In February, the England Authority Board of Commissioners, the governing body of the former Air Force base known as England Airpark, voted to authorize the executive director of the airpark to sign contracts with the federal government to build the detention center. The executive director also said he signed a contract with the LaSalle Family Foundation to operate and manage the facility on behalf of the airpark. That foundation is the charitable arm of LaSalle Corrections, the private prison company that operates five immigration detention centers in Louisiana. Since news of the agreement broke, community members also have been concerned about reports of environmental contamination and the potential trauma associated with detaining children. They have been organizing and speaking out against the facility. Ralph Hennessy, executive director of England Airpark, did not respond to a request for comment, but he has previously downplayed the carceral aspects of the facility. “This is not something where people are kept in shackles and jail cells. The facilities are set up like a traditional dorm room with beds, refrigerators and microwaves,” Hennessy told Verite News in August. He has also insisted that the contract with the facility is finalized and has said the facility will open soon, without disclosing a date. The Rev. Liz Theoharis, the executive director of Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice based in New York City and a Presbyterian pastor, said she felt called to join the vigil and engage in the fight to shut the facility down. At the vigil, she led a prayer for the immigrant families who face family separation and whose family members are in detention facilities. > “From Genesis to Revelation, there’s this constant story of God freeing people, of God raising up faith leaders who put children first, who protect kids and families,” she said in an interview after the vigil. Tanner said she learned about the vigil from the Free Families coalition, a group of grassroots organizations working to end family detention in the country. Tanner refers to immigrant detention centers as “jails” and says, for her, they meet the definition of “concentration camps” — people are separated from their families, concentrated in one place and locked up in facilities such as Delaney Hall in New Jersey and the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas. Until now, Dilley is the only immigrant detention center for families and children. A report by Human Rights First and RAICES alleged “widespread due process violations, inhumane conditions, and lasting physical and psychological harm inflicted on families” at Dilley. “There is every reason to believe the same thing will occur here,” Tanner said. Walking back from the vigil, Diane Mobley, a Pineville resident who has attended multiple board meetings over the past few months and spoke out against the airpark facility, said that it’s hard not to feel hopeless when thinking about the children who will be detained at the facility. “They don’t deserve it. They’re innocent,” she said. Mobley, who said she grew up as a Southern Baptist but stopped attending church as she got older, said she appreciates the involvement of the faith leaders who showed up. But she was critical of the religious leaders in and around Alexandria who have remained silent on immigrant children being detained. “I’m really disappointed in the faith leaders who are not here. I think there are a lot of them in our community that should be speaking out and they’re not, and that part kind of goes to one reason I left (the church),” she said. Overall, the administration’s mass deportation efforts have drawn criticism and protests from faith leaders across the country. Earlier this week, Latino faith leaders were among those who signed a letter calling on the Trump administration and Congress to provide legal protection for long-term undocumented immigrants. The Rev. Gabriel Salguero, the president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition, said that pastors have seen the trauma that detention can inflict on children and families. “Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me,’” Salguero, who didn’t attend Thursday’s vigil, wrote in an email. “That is not merely a political position. For us, it is a pastoral convocation and a Gospel imperative.” He said he prays that American leadership will strike a balance between security and compassion. Like many at Thursday’s vigil, Mobley said she was also thinking about the long battle ahead and how she can help immigrant families and children who are detained in the Alexandria facility when it opens. “I feel determined,” she said. “If we can’t stop (the facility,) we’re going to try to help these people as much as we can.” This article first appeared on Verite News New Orleans and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # The Unseen Toll: Depression, Anxiety Plague Black Women a Year After Being Fired by DOGE by Lottie Joiner, MindSite News October 7, 2026 Darnese Foster in her backyard. Photo: Kuwilileni Hauwango/Capital B _Part 1 of a three-part series,_ FIRED: The DOGE Layoffs Hit Black Women Hard,_a collaboration between MindSite News, Capital B, The 19th and The Nation, edited by MindSite News._ Darnese Foster remembers the day she learned she was fired from her federal government job. “I was off that Friday, which was Valentine's Day. Then that Monday was the holiday,” said Foster. “I went to log in that Tuesday, I couldn't get in.” Foster thought her password had expired and needed to be reset. She called the help desk to submit her request. Then someone from the IT department called her back. “He said, 'You didn't get a phone call from your supervisor?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Well, unfortunately, your name was on the list of names that was denied access.’ I didn't know what that meant. I called my supervisor. He said, ‘Well, let me call you back. Let me talk to (the IT) supervisor to see what's going on.’" Later that day, they both called back to tell her that she was on a list of employees on probation that were being terminated during the mass firing. Foster’s initial reaction was numbness, then panic and dread. She had a child in private school and rent and a car note to pay. “I would go in a corner and cry,” Foster recalled. Now, more than a year after being fired from her position as a grant management specialist in the Department of Health and Human Services, Foster is struggling, not just financially, but to cope: struggling to stay strong, struggling to keep the faith. The constant strain, she says, has taken a toll on her mental health. “I thought I would have a job a year later,” Foster, 47, said. “The worry of where I’m going to get the money to do what I need to do and how long will I be out of work, it’s mentally draining.” ## Black women bore the brunt of the cuts When Trump eliminated diversity, equity and inclusion programs by an executive order in January 2025 and empowered Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to gut the federal workforce that February and March, thousands of Black women lost their jobs. But the job cuts did more than just dismantle a longtime pipeline that helped lift DC’s majority-Black community into the middle class; it also gutted the well-being of the Black women who hold up that community. A recent study by University of Maryland labor economist Brandon Enriquez found that DOGE cuts “disproportionately affected” the federal employment of Black women compared with other demographic groups. The study estimated that while DOGE “did not have statistically significant effects for any other race, gender, education, or age group,” it reduced Black women’s federal employment by 25%. “At its lowest point in April 2025, employment was almost 50% reduced for Black women, with little effect for other groups,” Enriquez noted, although there was a partial rebound in subsequent months. Given the overrepresentation of Black workers in the federal government, Enriquez concluded that the layoffs increased racial inequality. In many of the agencies that were targeted for massive staff reductions, women and people of color made up the majority of the workforce, according to a 2025 report by Sarah Javaid for the National Women’s Law Center. Javaid wrote that “while women made up 46% of the total federal workforce in September 2024, they represented the majority of the workforce” in the departments of Veterans Affairs, Education, Health and Human Services, Treasury, and Housing and Urban Development. People of color – including Darnese Foster – made up 46% of probationary workers, according to the report, including 65% of those at the Department of the Treasury, 55% at Housing and Urban Development and at Homeland Security, and 53% at Health and Human Services. Like some of her federal colleagues, Foster's probation was for two years. After years of contracting, first with companies in the private sector, then with the State Department, Foster had finally landed a permanent position at Health and Human Services. A single mother of two, she'd been in her job for a year and seven months when she got the shocking news that she had been laid off. “It was always my goal to try to get into the government,” said Foster. “My parents always said: 'Get with the government, it’s stable. You can grow. You can move up.'” > **At its lowest point in April 2025, employment was almost 50% reduced for Black women, with little effect for other groups**. > > –BRANDON ENRIQUEZ, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND Foster had been excited about her new job and working with her new co-workers. And she was proud that despite struggling with a learning disability and adult ADHD, she'd recently gotten a raise in her pay and job grade. Her work felt important to her, too. As a grant management specialist, her responsibilities included working with organizations such as hospitals or construction companies seeking government funding. If a hospital wanted new X-ray machines or a therapy facility wanted equipment, she helped them navigate the application process. “I had finally gotten my dream job. It was devastating to have it snatched from me,” said Foster. “I had things in my life that I was putting in order, and goals that I wanted to do. This is where I was going to retire from.” Darnese Foster (middle) and her children. Photo courtesy of Darnese Foster At the time of her firing, Foster’s oldest daughter was a senior in college and her youngest daughter, who was 9, was in private school and an avid dancer who took part in competitions. Since the firings, her daughter has continued to dance, but Foster can't afford the cost of competitions. “I try not to take too much from her because she's 10,” says Foster. “I did keep her in dance, so she doesn't lose all that she's learned, so she won't feel like, ‘Oh, I can't do anything.’" Foster says she has not been coping well. She received unemployment benefits for only six months. She lost the items in her storage unit because she couldn't afford the fees, and she has struggled to pay for her daughter’s private school tuition. She feels like she’s in a “sunken place.” “I’ll drop my youngest off at school and just sit in the car and cry,” Foster said. “What’s next? Where am I going to get the money to keep a roof over our heads?” For a 2022 study focused on Black women's gender and race-related stress, epidemiologists Meghan Tipre and Tiffany L. Carson conducted focus groups and found that the top stressors identified by Black women were single parenting, Black children's safety and finances. “Black women report higher levels of psychological stress than White women and carry a disproportionate burden of chronic conditions associated with psychological stress,” the authors wrote in the journal Women's Health Reports. ## Grieving more than a paycheck Dr. Raquel Martin, a licensed clinical psychologist who focuses on Black mental health, says abrupt termination can be both a financial stressor and a traumatic stressor, because it's not just about the loss of income. “It's the sudden loss of predictability and control, identity, community, and even future planning,” Martin says. “There's a significant association between unemployment and increased depression, anxiety, and psychological distress, as well as just life satisfaction overall.” Job loss is more than just about money, Martin points out. “When you think about job loss, you often think about money, but psychologically, abrupt termination can create a profound sense of instability, (and) human beings need and thrive off of predictability,” Martin says. “When employment disappears suddenly, people aren't just grieving that aspect of a paycheck, they're grieving a future of a world that they could count on.” And when demands exceed your resources, Martin adds, the stress can be almost unbearable. “When an experience overwhelms your ability to cope, and it leaves this lasting impact on your sense of self, safety, and sense of the world around you, that's trauma,” Martin said. “Trauma is not only what happens to you, it's also what happens inside of you, when you're repeatedly forced to adapt to conditions that threaten your safety or your dignity or your humanity or your ability to thrive.” The way people respond to trauma varies greatly from irritability to depression to becoming sedentary or changing eating habits. Foster said after her job loss, she sometimes slept all day or sat at her desk and scrolled. She also admitted being “a lot more snappy,” toward family and friends. Martin says some people who lose their jobs experience “low pressure tolerance,” which she describes as being really irritable so that every little thing makes you want to “flip a table.” > **I had finally gotten my dream job. It was devastating to have it snatched from me.** > > –DARNESE FOSTER Black women like Foster who are breadwinners and heads of household may be especially stressed since they are overwhelmed with guilt and shame for not being able to provide at their previous levels. Even though the federal firings aren't something that they brought on themselves, the experience left some, like Foster, shattered. “Mental health is affected by policy decisions, economic instability, and access to health care and employment protection. The solution can’t be only telling Black women to cope better with the trash circumstances that they didn't create in the first place,” Martin explained. “We have to ask, what does it mean when the people who are often expected to care for everyone suddenly need to care for themselves?” she said. “What got in the way of them being able to do that in the first place? How can we come together as a community?” ## What helps, and what doesn't When trying to comfort people who have been fired or experienced traumatic events, Martin suggests avoiding statements like “everything happens for a reason” or “stay positive.” Instead, she suggests, ask how you can be helpful: “How are you doing today and what would be helpful for you right now?” or “You don't have to carry this alone. What are some tangible things I can do?” But it’s also important, Martin says, that people experiencing this kind of stress let others help. She encourages staying connected to community and leaning into mutual aid. If neighbors want to bring dinner or provide a gift certificate, or if relatives want to take the kids to a park, let them. “I know how we feel about the system failing us, but when it comes down to Black people, the system has failed us for such a significant amount of time we have to remember that the goal is for us not to fail each other and still keep it going,” Martin said. Foster says she’s applied unsuccessfully for more than 100 jobs since her firing last year. In the interim, she braids hair and has worked as a consultant on political campaigns to make ends meet. She meets regularly with a mental health practitioner and tries to stay upbeat through prayer and affirmations. Nevertheless, Foster feels like she is failing — failing as a mother, failing as a provider, failing at parenting. “I feel like I’m almost 50 and I’m way behind. I don’t have a life insurance policy to leave my kids. No savings,” Foster says. “It weighs heavy for me as a mother.” It’s not only the stress of not having the money to do what she needs to do as a parent, but the stress of having to lean on her 23-year-old daughter and mother to help pay the bills. As she continues to look for full-time employment, she says she is drained by the rejections. Right now, Foster says, she’s holding it together, taking it one day at a time. “I do believe in God, but when you’ve been down in life and have had disappointments, it’s kind of hard to keep your faith,” said Foster. “You try to stay strong, but you wonder, when is there going to be light at the end of the tunnel? How long do I have to stay like this?” 'You try to stay strong,' says Foster, who has applied to more than 100 jobs without success since her firing. Photo: Kuwilileni Hauwango/Capital B _Reporting for this story was supported by the Rosalynn Carter Fellowship in Mental Health Journalism._ This article first appeared on MindSite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # Asylum win caps immigrant’s two-year detention as courts weigh third-country deportations by Alexandra Markovich, Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting October 6, 2026 Weeks after Celestin Dima was shackled on a plane and came within hours of being deported to a country where he had never lived, the Burkina Faso native has been granted asylum. The decision caps a remarkable reversal for the African immigrant, freeing Dima after more than two years in ICE detention. Reopening his case already wiped away the removal order that allowed the government to try to send him elsewhere. Dima received protection from deportation to his home country, where he’d been persecuted for being gay. Yet he remained caught in a broader legal limbo AZCIR documented earlier this year, which left him and other immigrants stuck in detention despite having such protections. Dima was granted asylum Sept. 23 after the rule that had blocked him from seeking it was struck down in May. Attorneys say others affected by the rule have begun winning asylum cases, too, though the Trump administration is seeking to reinstate it. Meanwhile, a separate legal battle is unfolding over the government’s ability to deport immigrants to third countries, as officials attempted to do with Dima. A federal appeals court imposed new protections against such removals in September, only for the U.S. Supreme Court to suspend them days later while it considers the case. Dima’s future, however, no longer hinges on either legal fight. Now that he’s been granted asylum, years of uncertainty are finally over. “That is the first time (since arriving) in the United States—it’s the first time I’m happy,” Dima said after his asylum hearing. * * * The rule that initially made Dima ineligible for asylum was called Circumvention of Lawful Pathways, or CLP. Under the Biden-era policy, people who illegally entered the United States between ports of entry could not qualify for asylum, funneling people like Dima into lesser forms of protection that left them vulnerable to deportation. Until recently, it wasn’t clear whether asking judges to reopen asylum cases on the basis of the rule’s reversal would be successful. Proceedings can take months or more. But at Dima’s late September asylum hearing, the Department of Homeland Security did not contest his claim, according to his attorney, Marlene Berroa Rodriguez of Make the Road NY. The nonprofit provides resources to immigrants and other communities. “What we've been saying from the beginning—that the record was clear that he only lost asylum because of the CLP—was what ultimately won the case,” Berroa Rodriguez said. Attorneys representing immigrants previously barred from asylum under CLP have reported similarly uncontested cases, she said, describing it as a departure from the Trump administration’s typical approach. Anne Peterson, senior counsel at the San Francisco-based Center for Gender & Refugee Studies that helped challenge CLP, has tracked nine cases so far in which immigrants got asylum after previously being denied under the rule. She anticipates the reversal will “give a huge number of people a fair opportunity to apply for asylum,” though that could change if the government succeeds in reviving CLP—an effort now before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Berroa Rodriguez also cautioned that the work required in Dima’s case could make his victory difficult to reproduce broadly. “It shows how impossible this process is, and how labor-intensive it is,” she said. “How much can we actually replicate that at the pace that the government is going? I don't know that that's possible.” * * * The Trump administration has carried out third-country deportations at a scale previously unseen, removing more than 25,000 people since January 2025. To accelerate those removals, DHS relied on diplomatic assurances from countries that immigrants sent there wouldn’t face persecution or torture. This allowed U.S. officials to bypass giving immigrants an opportunity to raise those fears before deportation. Under the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ Sept. 18 ruling, immigrants with final deportation orders became entitled to challenging such removals, including by applying for protection under the Convention Against Torture. Had those safeguards been in place just two months earlier, they might have saved Dima from being put on the deportation flight. But the new protections lasted less than two weeks. On Sept. 29, the Supreme Court granted the government’s emergency request to continue third-country deportations under existing policy while it reviews the appeals court ruling, with oral arguments scheduled for December. Celestin Dima walks outside a U.S. Immigration Court in New York City on Sept. 23, 2026. Photo by Elise Swain for AZCIR For Dima, the pending decision no longer carries the same stakes. His asylum status generally protects him from deportation to a third country and makes him eligible to work in the U.S. In about a year, he can apply for a green card, the first step on a path to citizenship. It is a stark change from just weeks ago, when Dima was still locked in a Brooklyn detention center after more than two years in immigration custody. For the first time since arriving in the United States, Dima can begin looking ahead. Before fleeing Burkina Faso, he worked as a car mechanic. He hopes to do that again. * * * This article first appeared on Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # Struggling with food insecurity in Central NC by Lucas Thomae, Carolina Public Press October 5, 2026 For those seeking food assistance in Chatham County, visiting a CORA food pantry feels more akin to shopping at a grocery store than rummaging through a warehouse. CORA, which is an acronym for Chatham Outreach Alliance, operates two choice pantries in Pittsboro and Siler City. A choice pantry means that visitors are able to select what they want, rather than receiving a pre-packaged bundle of food. After filling out an intake form and receiving a membership card, visitors get a shopping cart and are assisted by volunteers who guide them through the pantry. Fresh produce is stacked on display tables. Refrigerators are stocked with high-demand commodities like meat and eggs. Ready-to-eat foods like bagged salads and bakery and deli items are also available, having been donated by local retailers. ##### **[** Subscribe for FREE to Carolina Public Press’ Daily, Weekend and Election 2026 newsletters.**]** In the lobby, next to a kids play area, recipe cards in both English and Spanish offer suggestions for how to use in-season produce. Currently on the menu is a collard green coleslaw, sweet potato wedges and lentil tacos. According to CORA executive director **Melissa Beard** , more people are using the food pantry than ever before. This summer, CORA served 1,695 children through its program which feeds students while school is out of session. That was a 17% increase compared to last year, Beard said. In addition, the number of new families who received food from CORA grew from 922 to 1,636 during the most recent fiscal year. Part of that growth was expected since CORA opened its second location in Siler City at the end of 2025. But the severity of that spike, combined with the increased utilization of its summer food program, pointed to a more worrying trend of growing hunger in the county. And the trend isn’t just localized to Chatham. Food pantry leaders told Carolina Public Press that food insecurity is becoming more common statewide due to rising prices, not just at the grocery store but in all areas of life. “We're seeing a lot of people make very hard decisions around making sure their kids have food, and they may not eat as a result of that, or having to pay for medicine, and therefore they can't afford food, or having to choose between transportation and food,” Beard said. “And it's just the economy and inflation that's driving so much of it.” Development and communications director **Rebecca Hankins** said many of the people she speaks with at the food bank are increasingly anxious about their finances, particularly seniors. One woman told Hankins that she was “devastated” about how little her money lasts in the grocery store these days. “It used to be that if she had $60 for the week, she could manage,” Hankins said. “But now, $60, if you buy meat a third of your budget is gone.” ### Hunger a growing problem in NC, food banks say **Jason Kanawati Stephany** , a vice president at the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina, didn’t mince words when describing the current state of hunger in the areas served by the food bank. “Our communities are facing the worst hunger crisis that we've seen in at least a generation,” he said. The Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina is one of the largest hunger relief networks in the nation, with partners in 34 counties in North Carolina, including Chatham. Last year, the food bank distributed 96 million meals across its service area. According to Kanawati Stephany, currently 180,000 more people are facing hunger in Central and Eastern North Carolina than did so during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The reasons for the increase are layered, and many families have unique reasons why they are struggling to put food on the table. It could be that one or more adults in the home are out of work, or that despite working their incomes aren’t matching the rising costs of groceries, housing and healthcare. Some in rural communities lack the transportation necessary to consistently access food. “All of these factors are different depending on the community, but the throughline is that people are doing everything that they can to make ends meet, and the math just isn't working,” Kanawati Stephany said. Prices aren’t just affecting people at home, but straining food bank budgets as well. Rising diesel prices brought about by the War in Iran have made it more difficult to fuel the fleet of trucks operated by the Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina. And when an outbreak of avian flu sent egg prices to record highs, they simply disappeared from the shelves of many food pantries. Cuts to federal programs meant to address food insecurity have also exacerbated the problem, Kanawati Stephany said. Two of those are the Emergency Food Assistance Program (EFAP), which distributes food to families who meet income eligibility requirements, and the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program (LFPA), which issues grants to schools and food banks to purchase produce from local farms. Kanawati Stephany recalled that in April of 2025, the U.S. Department of Agriculture canceled 90 truckloads of food supplies destined for North Carolina in response to the cuts. Federal support has trickled back over the course of the past year and a half, but shipments of food supplies originating from those programs have become “incredibly unpredictable,” he said. ### Gap between haves and have-nots in Chatham Chatham County, in many ways, is a microcosm of how food insecurity is playing out statewide. By per capita income, Chatham is the wealthiest of all 100 North Carolina counties, and parts of it are growing quickly, particularly in the east. In 2023, The Walt Disney Company announced plans to build a 4,000-home residential living community in Pittsboro, touting its proximity to the Research Triangle. That growth focused in eastern Chatham isn’t reaching all parts of the county, however. The western parts of the county are more rural with significant pockets of poverty. Unsurprisingly, these areas are also the epicenter of Chatham’s hunger crisis. “It blows my mind when I meet with people who are like ‘I didn't realize that hunger was an issue in Chatham County,’” Hankins said. “All you need to do is drive around.” Despite being based in Pittsboro, which is in the eastern part of the county, the staff at CORA knew that many of the people visiting the food pantry were coming from out west. Last year, they seized on an opportunity to merge with another hunger relief organization based in Siler City and open a new choice pantry there. “We knew it was the right thing to do and the right time to do it, because the need in the western part of the county really dictated that,” Beard said. CORA works alongside, and often collaborates with, a network of other hunger relief organizations. One of those is the Chatham Chuckwagon, which distributes fully cooked, frozen meals in Pittsboro and Siler City weekly. So far, the organization has given out 29,000 meals this year, a spokesperson said. Another is Feed-Well Fridges, an operation which stocks strategically located refrigerators across the county with surplus food donated from grocery stores, restaurants and caterers. These fridges are available to anybody and it's not uncommon for them to empty within an hour after each daily restock, co-founder **Susan White** said. Feed-Well Fridges placed an emphasis on serving western Chatham, with locations in Siler City and Goldston. “A community can be a relatively short drive from tremendous growth and prosperity and still have families struggling every day to put nutritious food on the table,” White said. In its three years of existence, White said Feed-Well Fridges has distributed 350,000 pounds of surplus food and more than 91,000 individual meals. But for all the good that these organizations are doing, they say they can never be a replacement for government assistance. The thought of having to sustain operations with increased demand, higher costs and fewer federal dollars is what keeps many food pantry leaders up at night, according to Kanawati Stephany. “We cannot replace the federal government's role forever,” he added. Hankins framed the issue by comparing CORA’s operations to the amount of food assistance distributed via the county’s Department of Social Services, which is about $7 million per year. “CORA absolutely cannot make up $7 million or even $1 million,” she said. “None of us could.” This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # Moving goods is one of KC’s biggest industries. Record diesel prices make it hard to keep trucking by Thomas White, Beacon: Kansas City October 6, 2026 Ryan Schmuhl started his trucking business — Schmuhl Brothers Inc., based in Kansas City, Kansas — in 1995 with his brother Ty and two big rigs. In 2000, he estimates, a 360-mile round trip cost about $90 in diesel. He said that the same trip, on the same lanes, costs about $490 today. “I used to take $500 bucks cash, and I had that in my pocket, and that’s what I spent for the whole week,” Schmuhl told The Beacon. “It’d be pretty hard to put something like $6,000 cash in my pocket to get fuel done for the week.” A gallon of diesel averaged $6.53 the week of Sept. 28 in the Midwest, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That price is nearly double from the first week of January 2026, when a gallon of diesel averaged $3.39. Takeaways 1. Higher diesel costs are likely to show up in consumer prices. 2. Midwest diesel averaged $6.52 a gallon the week of Sept. 28, nearly double the $3.39 average in the first week of January. 3. Small trucking businesses often work load to load and can’t raise rates quickly when fuel jumps. 4. Heavy-truck drivers in the area average $61,850 a year, making it one of the better-paying jobs that don’t require a degree. 5. High diesel prices are delaying some drivers' plans to go into business for themselves. That price shock most immediately hits anyone paying for diesel fuel. In Kansas City, that affects a lot of people and one of the area’s core industries. Nearly one out of every 10 workers in the Kansas City area works in transportation and material moving jobs, according to the most recent employment and wage report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That includes the area’s 26,250 light- and heavy-truck drivers, a profession that often is viewed as one of the better-paying jobs in the region. The average salary is $61,850 for heavy-truck drivers, and it doesn’t require a degree. That is on top of the nearly 4,000 single-employee trucking businesses in the area. The record prices at the pump have risen so sharply that a viral online video promised a nationwide trucker strike starting Oct. 1, though no union or trade group backed the idea and it doesn’t seem to have happened. However, sustained higher diesel costs have other consequences. They could mean added inflation or fewer drivers buying a truck to get into business for themselves, as Schmuhl did over 30 years ago before building a company that supports 75 employees today. “You’d obviously have to have more cash flow to get started,” Schmuhl said, pointing to higher costs and other hindrances. “So I wouldn’t suggest just anybody to get into it today.” Given the thin profit margins of trucking companies — 1% to 5%, Schmuhl estimated — the added fuel costs that aren’t absorbed are likely to make their way through the supply chain and show up on store shelves. ## Diesel prices hit the trucking career ladder differently The Beacon spoke to truck drivers filling up at three different Kansas City area truck stops in recent days. The conversations revealed that how the price hits depends largely on who owns the truck and who’s ultimately responsible for buying the fuel. Generally, there are four different truck driving career types. * **Company drivers:** Truck drivers who are W-2 employees and are generally paid by the hour or mile. Insurance, fuel, maintenance and overhead are paid by the company. * **Independent and leased-on owner-operators:** These drivers own or finance the truck independently and pay for all equipment and associated costs. Often this looks like a single-employee trucking business, and drivers can make more money but also assume more risk. * **Lease-purchase drivers:** These drivers rent a truck from a company with the option to buy it, gaining equity while working. This arrangement is akin to a hybrid of the company driver and owner-operator models. In most cases the driver is affiliated with a carrier and splits payment from shippers by percentage with the carrier. Most lease-purchase drivers also pay for fuel and overhead costs not covered by the truck’s warranty. * **Fleet owners:** Own multiple trucks and hire drivers. Depending on scale, fleet owners may spend more time managing the business rather than driving full time. Each type is hit by elevated diesel costs differently. One regional owner-operator, who asked to be identified only as Mike G., told The Beacon that he’s been driving for 25 years and he’s never seen anything like this. Since he owns his truck and covers all costs, he said he now buys only enough diesel to get as far as he’s driving on an individual run. To fill his two 100-gallon fuel tanks from empty, it could cost more than $1,300 at current prices. He said his truck gets about 7 miles to the gallon and his price at the pump for a 900-mile drive came to $763 on Wednesday morning. “It doesn’t look good,” said Mike G. “But everybody’s got to eat, so you do what you’ve got to do.” Diesel sold for $6.249 a gallon at a Kansas City-area truck stop as prices across the Midwest recently reached record highs. (Thomas White/The Beacon) He’s not the only trucking entrepreneur to feel the costs hit his pocket book. The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association — a trade group representing over 150,000 owner-operators and small-fleet owners from its national headquarters in Grain Valley, Missouri — told The Beacon that fuel is one of the biggest operational costs for the truckers they represent. In an emailed statement, association Executive Vice President Lewie Pugh said that small-business truckers make up more than 90% of trucking companies in America and that they are the first to feel increases at the pump. “Our members often work load-to-load and can’t simply raise their rates when fuel spikes the way their larger competitors can,” said Pugh. “While big oil companies have seen their profits nearly double this year, the sharp increase in diesel cost has quickly eaten up what little margin mom-and-pop trucking businesses have left.” Several company drivers told The Beacon that they are less concerned about diesel prices because they do not personally take on the cost of gas. However, Jerry Wood, president of Teamsters Local 955, said employee drivers could feel the effect in the future. “If we end up in negotiations with companies with drivers, I’m sure (fuel costs) will be part of their (arguments) to say they can’t afford to pay more wages,” Wood said. “I’ve not heard it yet, but I’m sure I will.” Schmuhl said that diesel prices complicate his company’s cash flow. His business has a fuel surcharge attached to shipping costs that it adjusts weekly. But diesel costs have been changing daily, meaning his company has to eat the cost while waiting to be paid by invoice 30 to 45 days later. ## Deterring business The rising cost of diesel could discourage or delay truckers from getting into business for themselves. Brandon Jamison is a company driver from North Carolina who was passing through Kansas City last week and filling up before shutting down for the night. He told The Beacon that he wants to own a truck and be an owner-operator — just a few weeks prior he put the business to paper — but current prices mean he needs to take it in steps. “I plan on starting my own business soon, so diesel prices are gonna affect me,” said Jamison. “I’m trying to wait for prices to go down first, because if I do it right now, I’d be screwed.” Jamison said in the coming months he intends to rent a truck, then shift to leasing to own before he hopes to ultimately own the truck and work independently. But from the lease-to-own phase onward, he has to take on the cost of diesel himself. Brandon Jamison, a company driver from North Carolina, says he wants to start his own trucking business but is hoping diesel prices to drop first. (Thomas White/The Beacon) So for now, he’s waiting. “I need to have enough money for the truck (payment) because that would come out no matter what,” Jamison said. “With truck prices (combined with) diesel prices, you can’t make no money right now.” ## Hitting store shelves Diesel costs don’t just hit truckers. Farming, construction and transportation equipment all run on diesel. If sustained, the higher cost could lead to broader inflation. Gregory D. DeYong, an associate professor of operations management at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, told the Springfield Herald News in Illinois that retailers and consumers are already seeing higher prices for meat and produce because of the high cost of diesel. “Because so much of transportation utilizes diesel, higher prices for fuel translate to higher consumer prices fairly quickly,” DeYong told the Herald News, noting that diesel prices could continue to climb without geopolitical change. In April, The Beacon reported that spiking diesel has affected the local food supply chain, including for the community food network Harvesters. Diesel is now roughly $1 a gallon more expensive and KCUR reported that the record fuel prices are raising the costs of feeding Kansas City. Schmuhl agreed that increased fuel costs will get passed on and could affect prices broadly. “Trucking companies just don’t have a margin to go ingest hundreds of dollars per load — it’s just not there,” Schmuhl said. “The end user ends up having to pay for this.” This article first appeared on Beacon: Kansas City and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * *

Published: October 1, 2026 **By Gibbs Knotts, Coastal Carolina University and Christopher A. Cooper, Western Carolina University, The Conversation** As the 2026 midterm elections approach, the U.S. Supreme Court has been busy with voting rights cases. In mid-September, the court barred the Trump administration from carrying out its proposed restrictions on mail-in voting for the midterm elections. In late September, the court ruled that the Trump administration could continue with a plan for various federal agencies to use a controversial database to identify and cull ineligible voters on the voter rolls. These decisions highlight the long history of struggles in the United States over who can vote, how votes are counted and who sets the rules that govern elections. As scholars of elections and Southern politics, we have selected 10 important moments in U.S. voting history. The point is not to identify the definitive 10, but rather to underscore that battles over the franchise are long-standing and do not move in a single direction. ## The 15th Amendment Passed by Congress in 1869, the 15th Amendment was the final Reconstruction-era amendment. It said that “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” This amendment helped bring about widespread participation by Black men and the election of many Black candidates to key positions in Southern states. In South Carolina, over 250 African American men were elected during Reconstruction, and South Carolina’s Joseph H. Rainey became the first African American to serve in the U.S. House. The amendment’s language was clear and permanent, but much of the progress that followed was short-lived. During the Jim Crow era, Southern states used literacy tests, grandfather clauses and other barriers to deny Black citizens the vote. ## The 17th Amendment Aiming to provide a check on the popular will, the framers of the U.S. Constitution specified that U.S. senators should be elected by state legislatures. But problems with this system emerged. Disputes within legislatures sometimes led to deadlocks, and many states opted to select senators in partisan primaries or a general election. As a result, Congress sent the 17th Amendment to the states in 1912. Ratified in 1913, it transferred the selection of senators from state legislatures to direct election by the people. ## The 19th Amendment The result of a long struggle for women’s suffrage, the 19th Amendment was first introduced in Congress in 1878 but did not pass over many years and subsequent introductions. Support increased after President Woodrow Wilson changed his position in 1917 to support it. Congress passed the amendment in 1919, and the states ratified it in 1920. It dramatically expanded the potential electorate. Because of the lingering effects of Jim Crow laws and racial discrimination, however, many Black women were still denied the franchise. ## Voting Rights Act The Voting Rights Act of 1965 dramatically reduced barriers to voting and created a process under which localities with a history of discrimination were required to obtain federal approval, known as “preclearance,” before making changes to voting rules. The results were immediate and substantial, resulting in increased Black political participation and representation, particularly in the South. According to one analysis, “Prior to the adoption of the Voting Rights Act, the median proportion of Blacks who had registered (in the southern states) stood at 39.4 percent. Just a couple of years after adoption of the legislation the median figure had increased to 58.9 percent.” The law was reauthorized in 1970, 1975, 1982 and 2006, transforming Southern politics and altering representation by increasing the voice and representation of African Americans in the region. ## McGovern-Fraser Commission The tumultuous 1968 Democratic National Convention, marked by riots, violence against protesters and dissent over the Vietnam War, led to the establishment of the McGovern-Fraser Commission by the Democratic Party, which proposed new procedures for selecting delegates to the national convention. Most notably, the changes opened the process to greater public participation and reduced the power of party leaders to choose delegates behind closed doors. McGovern-Fraser helped produce the modern primary system by changing the way presidential candidates are selected and shifting power from party leaders to primary voters. ## The 26th Amendment This amendment, ratified in July 1971, lowered the voting age from 21 to 18. The argument was simple — a person who is old enough to be drafted for military service is also old enough to vote. Support for lowering the voting age emerged during World War II, but the amendment was passed and ratified in 1971 in record time as support for the Vietnam War declined. It was the last constitutional amendment to expand the franchise. ## The National Voter Registration Act Also called the “motor voter bill,” the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 marked an important step in moving elections in America toward greater standardization by requiring state driver’s license offices to provide a way for people to register to vote. It also mandated other rules about how states must implement voter registration and how they must maintain voter registration databases. ## Bush v. Gore Following a closely contested 2000 presidential election in Florida, the Florida Supreme Court ordered a hand recount of contested ballots from Miami-Dade County. In the legal case Bush v. Gore, the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the recount, leaving Republican George W. Bush ahead of Democrat Al Gore in Florida and securing his election as president. The case focused attention on the administration of elections, as problems with what were known as “hanging chads” on the ballots as well as voting equipment and the “butterfly” ballots themselves became central to discussion of elections in America. It also led to the passage of the Help America Vote Act in 2002 that set federal requirements for polling place accessibility, voting systems and voter registration. ## Shelby County v. Holder In this 2013 case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the formula used to determine which localities were required to have their voting policies reviewed and approved by the Department of Justice no longer reflected current conditions and therefore was unconstitutional. Although Congress could create a new formula, it has not done so, and as a result the Shelby County decision effectively gutted the preclearance process created by the Voting Rights Act. Recent research shows that this decision has resulted in several racially discriminatory voting policies. ## Louisiana v. Callais In late April 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 6-3 ruling that a Louisiana congressional map devised to create a majority Black voting district was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander and that the Voting Rights Act did not require the state to draw it. In addition to affecting the specifics of the Louisiana map, Louisiana v. Callais made it much more difficult for plaintiffs to prove racial vote dilution claims under the Voting Rights Act. Many analysts believe that this may result in far fewer minority members of Congress. ## Not a straight line As is clear in this abbreviated tour of history, as well as in more extended treatises of the subject, the history of voting and elections in America doesn’t follow a steady path toward progress or retreat. It is marked by intense struggles, monumental victories and devastating losses. And many of the events on this timeline may represent all three, depending on a person’s experience and perspective. Another set of 10 events might provide different examples, but they would be unlikely to bring us to a different conclusion. _This article is republished from_ The Conversation_, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by:_ Gibbs Knotts_,_ Coastal Carolina University_and_ Christopher A. Cooper_,_ Western Carolina University **Read more:** * Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Act ruling makes it harder to protect minority voting power and alters the landscape of future elections * Federal election observers once played a key role in securing voting rights for all − but times have changed * Narrow mail‑in voting ruling by Supreme Court adds uncertainty to midterm elections without addressing constitutionality of Trump’s executive order _The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment._

By Liam Niemeyer (Kentucky Lantern) Published: October 1, 2026 An electric utility serving Western Kentucky counties is telling the state regulator it anticipates keeping its existing coal-fired and natural gas-fired power plants open beyond 2050, a projection amid state and federal efforts seeking to boost fossil fuel-fired power. On Tuesday, Owensboro-based Big Rivers Electric Corporation filed a new integrated resource plan before the Kentucky Public Service Commission, detailing the utility’s future plans for power plants, electricity transmission infrastructure and the direction of its future electricity demand. Such plans are required to be filed by Kentucky electric utilities before the commission every few years, detailing how the utility will provide an “adequate and reliable” supply of electricity to meet future consumer and industrial demands at the “lowest possible cost” generally at least over a 15-year outlook. Big Rivers Electric Corporation’s newest plan projects a future where, instead of retiring and replacing its existing fossil fuel-fired fleet, it instead makes “reliability” investments into its 40-year-old coal-fired D.B. Wilson Generating Station in Ohio County and its natural gas-fired turbines at its Robert D. Green Generating Station in Webster County. The utility wrote that “preserving and improving the existing dispatchable fleet produces lower-cost portfolios and stronger reliability and resilience than retirement and replacement strategies.” The utility, which also receives solar power and hydropower through contracts, said it would add additional renewables as it was “economically justified.” ## Energy sea changes The plans also provide a window into the decision-making process of utilities amid a sea change of federal regulation of coal-fired and natural gas-fired power plants. The Biden administration had sought to force such plants, particularly coal-fired power plants, to cut down on pollution including nearly all of climate-warning greenhouse gas emissions. The Trump administration within the past two years has now moved to reverse the Biden-era power plant rules including weakening rules on toxic air pollution and repealing limits on greenhouse gas emissions. The administration has praised the rollbacks as steps to stop past Democratic-led efforts to “destroy” coal and natural gas. The New York Times reported last month an industry group for coal-fired power plants pitched the idea of using emergency powers to keep coal-fired power plants operating to the Trump administration. An attorney with the environmental legal group Kentucky Resources Council who is familiar with Big Rivers Electric Corporation’s past utility plans told the Kentucky Lantern he’s heard from utilities in the past that the uncertainty, from administration to administration, of what fossil fuel and energy regulation will look like in the future is costly. “Uncertainty drives costs up. They can’t plan for a future where they don’t know what they’re going to have to do,” Gary said, who’s been critical of Trump-era regulatory rollbacks. In an emailed statement Wednesday afternoon, Big Rivers Electric Corporation spokesperson Stephanie McCombs said the utility doesn’t comment on active cases before the PSC. The state regulator will eventually issue a report that analyzes and critiques Big Rivers’ plan. While not the preferred outlook chosen by the utility, Big Rivers did model a scenario under which “increasingly stringent carbon regulations drive significant reductions in U.S. power sector emissions.” Under that scenario, the Wilson plant would be retired in 2032 and the utility would invest in 800 megawatts of wind power, 400 megawatts of natural gas-fired power and 200 megawatts of battery storage. The utility wrote that given Trump administration repeals of greenhouse gas emission rules are being litigated, the “long-term regulatory outlook remains uncertain” and “future carbon regulation remains a plausible risk”. But the utility also highlighted the role that laws passed by the GOP-controlled state legislature play in making it significantly harder for utilities to retire fossil fuel-fired power plants. Gary, whose group has also been critical of the state laws, said it limits utilities’ ability to choose a “least-cost option” for ratepayers while meeting electricity grid reliability requirements. State lawmakers have defended the laws as ensuring state energy policy is “driven by facts, reliability, and long-term competitiveness.” “How do you plan for an uncertain future where you also know that you have a limited choice of options due to state law makes it very difficult, I can imagine, for planners?” Gary said. The utility also noted in its plans that there’s been significant interest from prospective data center developers seeking power and electricity infrastructure. The utility has received 31 inquiries from data center customers, but only five of those inquiries have advanced beyond “initial stages.” Two of those five projects are a planned hyperscale data center at a former aluminum mill in Hancock County and a planned hyperscale data center at the federally-owned Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in McCracken County. Three other projects are “confidential development prospects” that “have not progressed beyond preliminary evaluation.”

**It's Friday October 2, 2026 and in this morning's issue we're covering:** District attorney elections linked to more prison admissions during ‘tough on crime’ era, 21% of poverty in Maryland driven by high housing costs, report says, Western NC housing recovery continues 2 years after Helene, NC received $75 million for childcare centers after Helene. Why haven’t any providers received funds yet?, Meet Chicago’s First Street Psychiatrist, NYC Ditches Federal Homeless Veterans Program, Citing Concern for Transgender Vets, $6B data center planned for Jefferson Davis, one of the poorest counties in the country, At meeting, community members ask to keep L.B. Landry High School open. But the district says that might not be viable, One-page ballot may not ease voting for Maricopa County voters with disabilities. **Media outlets and others featured:** Stateline, Maryland Matters, Carolina Public Press, NC Local, MindSite News, The City Reporter, Mississippi Today, Verite News, Cronkite News. * * * ## District attorney elections linked to more prison admissions during ‘tough on crime’ era By Amanda Watford (Stateline) Published: October 1, 2026 County and local district attorneys oversaw higher state prison admissions during election years than in other years during the height of the nation’s “tough on crime” era, according to a new study from Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law. State prison admissions were about 3% higher in years when district attorneys were up for election compared with non-election years, the study’s author found. From 1986 to 2006, that amounted to roughly 63,000 additional prison admissions. The findings suggest that electoral politics may have influenced prosecutors’ decisions about who enters the criminal legal system and how long people are sentenced to serve. But the study does not show that elections caused the broader rise in incarceration during that 20-year period, and its findings are limited to state prison admissions and sentencing during an era when incarceration was rising sharply nationwide. The study, led by Chika Okafor, an economist and assistant law professor at Northwestern, examined more than 4,200 district attorneys and prison admissions in nearly 40 states. The study was published in the October edition of the Journal of Public Economics. > States put criminal justice, marijuana policies before voters in 2026 Prosecutors represent the government and have broad discretion in criminal investigations over whether to bring charges, what charges to pursue, whether to offer plea deals and what sentences to recommend. In his research, Okafor found that prison admissions were about 4.3% higher in election years than in the previous year. Months sentenced to state prison also increased by about 3% in election years, or about 4% compared with the preceding year, according to the study. The increase was concentrated primarily in less serious, nonviolent cases rather than violent crimes. “For high-profile murders, the behavior is going to be kind of agnostic to where you are in the election cycle,” Okafor said in a news release, in part because voters may be more likely to remember such cases. Okafor also found that the election-year effects were strongest in parts of the South and in Republican-leaning counties. The effects declined as national support for harsher punishment softened after the mid-1990s, according to the study. During the 1980s and 1990s, politicians frequently campaigned on being “tough on crime,” amid the war on drugs and passage of the 1994 federal crime bill under President Bill Clinton. Prison populations grew dramatically during those decades. Okafor’s research suggests that prosecutors at the time may have responded not only to laws and formal criminal justice policies, but also to what they perceived voters wanted. “The study provides evidence consistent with prosecutors having responded to perceived voter preferences,” Okafor said in the news release. “That is why efforts to change public attitudes toward punishment deserve as much attention as efforts to change policies or officeholders.” But there are limits to what the research can establish. The study compares election years with non-election years. It does not measure every form of political pressure a prosecutor may experience throughout a term, nor does it establish that an election itself caused the broader increase in incarceration during the period. The broader “tough on crime” political climate could have influenced prosecutors outside election years as well, according to Okafor. Because of that, the 63,000 additional admissions associated with election years should not be interpreted as the total amount of incarceration attributable to electoral politics. The research also focuses on 1986 to 2006, a period that predates many of the major criminal justice policy changes adopted by states in the years since. “District attorneys are critical in promoting justice within the criminal legal system,” he said in the news release. “One responsibility is consistency: an office should charge and make plea offers the same way in an election year as in any other year.” _Stateline reporter Amanda Watford can be reached at_ _awatford@stateline.org_ _._ SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE * * * A new report says Maryland is among the states where high housing costs contribute most heavily to the state's poverty rate. (Photo Getty stock images) ## 21% of poverty in Maryland driven by high housing costs, report says Maryland is one of 10 states where high housing costs contribute the most to the state’s poverty level, according to a new report by the Pew Charitable Trusts, that attributes as much as 21% of Maryland's poverty to its above-average housing costs. By Danielle J. Brown (Maryland Matters) Published: September 30, 2026 Maryland is one of 10 states where high housing costs contribute the most to the state’s poverty level, according to a new report by the Pew Charitable Trusts. The report, released Tuesday, said approximately 21% of Maryland poverty is attributable to above-average housing costs, stretching the budgets of the state’s low-income families and offsetting positive impacts of anti-poverty measures such as federal food assistance. The Pew report says that Maryland and other states face a severe housing shortage that drives up housing costs. It urges states to prioritize building new units, arguing that a 20% decline in rental costs could significantly reduce poverty rates. “Not only does adding housing reduce rents, it reduces poverty as well because people have more wiggle room in their household budgets, and their limited incomes aren’t as strained,” said Alex Horowitz, project director on housing policy for Pew. While Maryland officials have pushed some measures to speed up new housing, Horowitz said more could be done to chip away at the state’s nearly 100,000-unit housing shortage. “Maryland’s taken a couple small steps to make it easier to build housing,” Horowitz said. “Clearly taken some steps in the right direction, but not to the degree that would be needed to dig out of a housing shortage.” According to state data based on the U.S. Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure in 2024, about 169,000 Maryland children fell below the poverty line that year, or 12.4% of that group. Approximately 400,000 Marylanders aged 18 to 64 fall below the threshold, or 10.6% of that age group, while 12% of those 65 and older, or about 131,000 people, fell below the threshold. The report — “The Housing Shortage Is a Major Driver of Poverty” — is based on research by Zachary Parolin, a professor at the University of Oxford in England, who looked at 2023 housing costs and identified states where the greatest share of poverty was due to high rent. Horowitz explained that the figures were calculated by looking at states with current affordability challenges and estimating how poverty may improve if rents were closer to the national average rental costs. “Maryland’s median rent right now is over $1,800. In the U.S., the median rent is a little under $1,400. So if Maryland added enough housing so that its median rent was in line with the national average … how much of its poverty is caused by that gap?” Horowitz said. “The answer, 21% of Maryland’s poverty is attributable to that.” Other states with the highest share of housing-driven poverty include Hawaii, California, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Colorado, Connecticut, New York and New Hampshire, as well as the District of Columbia. Hawaii topped the list, with the highest percentage of poverty driven by housing costs, at 34%. High housing costs are responsible for up to 42% of Hawaii’s child poverty, the report said. Meanwhile, Maryland had the seventh-highest percentage of housing=driven poverty, at 21%. The report shows that 17% of Maryland’s child poverty is driven by housing costs, lower than most of the other states. But the report says that efforts to boost housing supply can reduce poverty. They point to cities like Austin, Texas, and Minneapolis that built so much new housing that inflation-adjusted rents have fallen by 20%. If Maryland were similarly able to reduce inflation-adjusted rent by 20%, the state’s poverty rate could fall by 24% overall and for children, according to the analysis. “Housing costs are the biggest line item in most families’ budgets and so each dollar that goes to higher rents isn’t available to cover food, transportation, clothing, healthcare needs and day-to-day spending,” Horowitz said. “That’s why the poverty threshold is so sensitive to housing costs. High housing costs crowd out essential spending.” What type of housing to build is a question for research analysts and lawmakers. Horowitz says that while subsidized housing is still necessary, even building new housing for higher income households can create an “escalator effect” that helps the affordability challenge at large. “When there’s a lot of housing getting built, the escalator moves up, and people trade into better options,” Horowitz said. “High-income residents tend to move into new homes, and that frees up the homes that they were living in before. Those tend to be occupied by people whose incomes are a little lower, and so on.” > Financing, permit challenges stand in the way of building new housing, officials say But a significant housing shortage leads to the opposite effect, where lower-income households are frozen out of housing options and face increased risks of homelessness. “When there’s not a lot of housing getting built, the escalator moves down, and people trade down to find something they can afford,” Horowitz said. “It’s important to build subsidized housing too and the lowest-income residents still need housing choice vouchers.” The report suggests that lawmakers reform permitting and zoning laws to allow faster approval of new builds. Removing red tape in permit approvals has been a legislative priority for Gov. Wes Moore during his term, though his efforts often run up against county officials who may be skeptical of policies that weaken local authority. As lawmakers prepare for the 2027 legislative session, Horowitz suggests that they continue to push bills that encourage new housing options, such as legislation that makes it easier to convert office spaces into residential units, increase production of smaller “starter homes” homes on smaller lots, or remove the limit on how many non-relatives can live in a residential unit. “When not enough housing gets built, low-income residents get frozen out, and there’s not much to choose from,” he said. “Anti-poverty programs are crucial, but rising rents are consuming a lot of the dollars that we’re spending on those programs, and that’s money that households need in their pockets to cover day-to-day bills.” SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE * * * # Places to stay. Western NC housing recovery continues 2 years after Helene. by Walker Livingston, Carolina Public Press September 28, 2026 **Connie Guinn** is the mayor of Elk Park, a little town in Avery County, just a couple of miles from the North Carolina-Tennessee border on Highway 19E. It’s right by Roan Mountain, which Guinn pointed out from the mountain ridge where she lives. A few days ago, she got the keys to her completely rebuilt home, replacing the structure that was significantly damaged during Tropical Storm Helene two years ago. On Sept. 27, 2024, the remnants of Hurricane Helene, reduced to tropical storm strength, struck Western North Carolina, eventually causing the death of 108 North Carolinians. Many more people lost their homes and livelihoods. Many people who lived in Western North Carolina when Helene hit have since relocated to other areas because of a myriad of reasons — housing and financial pressures being some of the foremost ones. When Helene hit two years ago, the Elk River flooded 30 feet, which swept away and destroyed many homes in its immediate vicinity. There was one reported fatality in town, and seven across Avery County, a shocking number in a county of about 18,000 people. ##### **[** Subscribe for FREE to Carolina Public Press’ Daily, Weekend and Election 2026 newsletters.**]** Guinn wasn’t the mayor then, but she was heavily involved in the volunteer efforts. Her house wasn’t fully destroyed, but it was uninhabitable. Mud and debris had come down from up the mountain that their little neighborhood sits on and gotten up under her house. Guinn and Tommy returned to live in their home in the immediate aftermath of Helene, but they later discovered that there was black mold growing and that the home needed a new foundation. She received some funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, but was later contacted by RENEW NC, the state Department of Commerce’s single-family home rebuilding program, last year about doing a full rebuild on her home, she told Carolina Public Press. RENEW is still continuing its long work across Western North Carolina, including four other homes in Avery County. “The road is still bad in places down through there, down below Minneapolis,” Guinn said. Minneapolis is a small, unincorporated community in remote, mountainous Avery County that was heavily impacted by the storm. It’s one of a handful of communities in Avery that runs along the now-defunct East Tennessee-Western North Carolina Railroad, known better as “The Tweetsie.” The new home of Elk Park Mayor Connie Guinn and her husband Tommy, seen on Sept. 22, 2026. The original home on the site was badly damaged in 2024 during Helene. Colby Rabon / Carolina Public Press Guinn and her husband have been living in a short-term rental while her house has been under construction. They’ve been lucky enough to stay just down the road, she said. When she found out that she would be getting her home rebuilt so quickly, she couldn’t believe it. She spent her career in local government, and when she retired, she got bored. So naturally, she ran for mayor in 2025 and was sworn in in December. She had spent her career working as the town clerk, but when she retired in 2023, she couldn’t stay away. “I love this town,” she said. “My whole life's been here and working for the town, my kids grew up here, and I just want to give back and just do the best I can do for the town.” Guinn lived in her home, which is just up the road from town hall, for the past 33 years with her husband Tommy. She said she wants to preserve Elk Park’s small-town charm while keeping it relevant. She said she’d like to see a restaurant open up in town. Standing on the porch of her new home, rebuilt on the site of the old one damaged during Helene in 2024, Elk Park Mayor Connie Guinn looks out across her community in Avery County on Sept. 22, 2026. Colby Rabon / Carolina Public Press RENEW NC started work on her house last fall, and now, two years after Helene, she’s just waiting on the general contractor to sign off on the last couple of things before she moves back in, but she just got her keys to the home. “I didn’t think it was real,” Guinn said. ### Breaking down dollars Helene damaged more than 73,000 homes across North Carolina, which cost about $15.4 billion, according to the state’s Office of State Budget and Management. North Carolina estimates that the storm cost nearly $60 billion in total damages — but federal and state funding toward the disaster has only covered about $14.4 billion. Federal funding for the disaster falls short compared to storms like Hurricane Katrina, where the federal government funded about 70% of recovery. In **Gov. Josh Stein** ’s June letter to North Carolina’s congressional delegation requesting $10 billion for Helene recovery, he wrote that $3 billion should go to unmet housing needs. At a campaign rally in Gastonia earlier this month, President **Donald Trump** joked that he would withhold remaining federal recovery funds from North Carolina if Republican candidate **Michael Whatley** does not win the upcoming Senate election. He later said he was just joking. In March 2026, FEMA extended housing and rental assistance to Helene survivors until Sept. 30, when individuals living in temporary housing will have to relocate. Individuals who were still living in temporary FEMA housing in Helene-affected areas have been paying rent on a sliding scale since then, according to the agency’s website. FEMA gives disaster assistance grants to help with repairs, which max out at $42,500. The average cost of rebuilding a home is around $276,285, according to the Governor’s Recovery Office of Western North Carolina, or GROW NC. RENEW is one of the quickest-moving programs of its kind in terms of rebuilding single-family homes during disaster recovery. RENEW helps low- to moderate-income families and individuals rebuild their homes that were damaged by Helene. The program is funded by a community development block grant for disaster recovery (also called a CDBG-DR) from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Ryan Walker, construction manager with Renew NC, shows Elk Park Mayor Connie Guinn around her new home on Sept. 22, 2026. The original structure on the site was badly damaged during Helene in 2024. Colby Rabon / Carolina Public Press “It has been so gratifying to see how quickly the federal government approved our HUD action plan and got money to the state, and how quickly folks were able to get their applications turned in and select contractors,” **Scott Elliot,** the deputy director of engagement for GROW, said. “It's an amazing story of the good that the government can do.” Families and individuals must make less than 120 percent of their area median income to qualify for the RENEW Single Family Housing Program. The program has 2,200 active applications and has currently completed 150 homes in Western North Carolina. Many people who were affected by Helene don’t qualify for RENEW. The program has 5,696 ineligible or inactive applications, according to the program’s online dashboard. Applications for RENEW’s single-family housing program closed on Jan. 31 of this year. Funding gaps and the lack of insurance coverage for Helene damages have had a heavy economic burden on Helene survivors. Less than 1% of those affected by Helene had flood insurance. A number of nonprofits and volunteer organizations, commonly known as Volunteer Organizations Active in Disaster, have avoided taking government funding for rebuilding efforts because of some of the red tape, hurdles and bureaucratic processes that come with construction. For instance, in order to repair a home damaged by Helene, government agencies must do extensive documentation on the ownership of a home before repairs even begin. ### Red tape of rebuilding after Helene Disaster recovery happens in long, slow phases. In the immediate weeks after Helene, efforts were focused on doing water rescues and getting water and food into the region quickly. Last year, efforts worked to stabilize the region’s utilities and infrastructure. Today, as homes are still being rebuilt, recovery efforts are pivoting toward building back with resilience. **Molly Maynard** , the chief program officer at Pisgah Legal Services, has worked to help families navigate some of this red tape and help individuals and families find the best relief option for their rebuilding processes. Along with rebuilding through RENEW NC, some families can opt to have their homes bought out by the Hazard Mitigation Program, which is managed by FEMA at the federal level and the state Department of Public Safety. “A lot of times barriers that people are facing are that they have lived in a home for a long time and acted as the owner of the home, but it is inherited property, for example, and there isn’t a record that reflects their ownership,” she said. The CDBG-DR grant is one of the few disaster-relief grants that can also be used for multifamily housing. Some housing advocate groups, including Pisgah Legal Services, sent a letter to the Asheville City Council in May 2026 requesting that the remaining CDBG funds be focused on multifamily housing, rather than RENEW’s focus on single-family homes. But the council ultimately decided to allocate the remaining $19.2 million from the grant to the single-family program. Maynard also said renters were left out of Helene relief advocacy. She said some people continued to pay rent on homes that had not been repaired, and that is still the case in some areas, despite the FEMA rental assistance that is ending soon. A big misconception about Helene is that recovery is done — there are people who are still in temporary housing and many who have not found a new normal, Maynard said. “The way it’s set up, it almost assumes that because you didn’t own a house that got destroyed, you're fine,” she said. “That’s just not the case.” Extreme Weather Survivors is a national network that connects those who have experienced natural disasters, like Helene. **Gina Heath** is a community organizer with the group who was born, raised and still lives in Marshall in Madison County. After Helene, 25 of the 27 homes in her neighborhood near the French Broad River were destroyed. She did not lose her home, but lost property and utilities for her camper and was displaced for six months after the storm. Heath said she thinks there have been minimal safety nets for those impacted by Helene. She’s seen some of her neighbors who have fallen through the funding gaps still live in trailers or in temporary housing. While FEMA maxes out at $42,500, some people with damaged or destroyed homes in Marshall got just a fraction of that. “I did not hear any say, ‘Oh, I got a nice good FEMA check; that’s gonna really help,” she said. “I did not hear a single person say that even though I was on a street with homes that were completely destroyed.” There are a number of nonprofits and religious organizations, such as Baptists on Mission, Samaritan’s Purse and the Appalachian Service Project, that have rebuilt homes that were damaged or destroyed during Helene. Baptists on Mission, an arm of the North Carolina Baptist Convention, has fully rebuilt 1,163 homes that were destroyed during Helene, with roughly 100 more in progress. Samaritan’s Purse, another Christian organization that is based in Boone, has rebuilt 300 homes damaged by Helene across Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee. Some of these groups repaired homes in Heath’s neighborhood, along with a grassroots recovery movement in Madison County that has turned into the county’s long-term recovery group. These groups, which are now active in many Helene-affected counties, connect survivors of the storm with nonprofits that provide many different kinds of resources. “If you didn’t have organizers on your street or in your holler with you, you might have fallen through the cracks,” she said. ### Coming home after Helene In Black Mountain, about a 20-minute drive east of Asheville, **Vincent Groce** is finally getting back into his home, thanks to RENEW. After living in a motel while his rebuild has been in progress, he’s excited about being able to cook his own meals in his own kitchen and be in his own space again. “I’m ready to get home and get my stuff in here, get set up and clean,” he said. “I just come home and just enjoy the peace and quiet again.” Vincent Groce of Black Mountain stands in the kitchen of his newly rebuilt home, two years after Helene devastated his residence and those of many of the people in his community. Walker Livingston / Carolina Public Press Like Guinn, Groce continued to live in his home in the months after Helene. Like Guinn, Groce is also a native of Western North Carolina and lived in his home for 12 years prior to Helene. He lives with his grandson and his dog. In the immediate aftermath of the flood, he traveled to Greensboro when I-40 reopened to stay with his daughter, but returned when power and water came back on. But one day, his grandson, who lives with him, fell through the rotted flooring in his room on the other side of the home. He lives in a community of mobile homes — some of his neighbors have homes that still bear physical damage from Helene and others have had repairs completed. On Sept. 18, Groce got to see his rebuilt home for the first time with members of the Governor's Recovery Office and the RENEW team. Groce feels like the new home has lifted a burden, and he’s been trying to help others in his community awaiting repairs find resources, either through RENEW or other avenues, he said. Rebuilding is still continuing in Western North Carolina, no matter which group or agency is doing it. “Thank you for all that you have endured and for just being a beacon and a model, and for everyone else, and to remind us of why we do what we do, " Elliot told Groce. “Even though the government people would say this is short, it's been two years.” This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # NC received $75 million for childcare centers after Helene. Why haven’t any providers received funds yet? by Lilly Knoepp, NC Local September 24, 2026 When strong winds of Hurricane Helene devastated Western North Carolina in fall 2024, daycare teacher Amitra Tutt said she and her mother, Cynthia Logan, felt blessed. The Forest City in-home daycare they run avoided flooding and experienced only a three-day power outage, unlike nearby Lake Lure and Chimney Rock which saw massive flooding. But their Tiny Tots Daycare building didn’t escape unscathed. A tree from a neighbor’s yard fell on the roof. The daycare, which Logan has operated for more than 25 years, closed for a month to make $36,000 in repairs to the roof and siding. Tiny Tots is one of dozens of daycare facilities in the region that suffered physical and financial damage from Helene. It looked like help was on the way for Tiny Tots and other childcare facilities in Western North Carolina when federal relief flowed to the state in February in the form of a $75.8 million grant for storm-related damage. But now, two years since the storm, none of those funds have left state coffers, leaving childcare staff like Tutt wondering if they will ever get help. Eight months after the storm, the Division of Child Development and Early Education (DCDEE), a unit in the state Department of Health and Human Services, put out a call for daycares in areas affected by Helene or by Tropical Storm Debby, another storm which caused a statewide emergency the month before Helene. The announcement asked providers in affected areas to complete a report called a Disaster Impact Report. Childcare operators had until July 1, 2025, to complete an application so that the state could make its application to the federal government by mid-September 2025. Across the region, 129 childcare facilities filed Disaster Impact Reports with DCDEE, noting damages, lost wages and additional services. Of those, 54 completed the reports, totaling approximately $5.7 million requested in assistance. Tutt first completed the form in April 2025, hopeful for some relief. She and her mother had received the $750 allocation from FEMA for food replacement, but they didn’t get any funding from FEMA for the roof. While their home insurance covered a small part of the cost – about $4,500 – the business insurance did not provide any coverage. The pair was left on a payment plan with the roofing company that, because of interest, they estimate will cost nearly $70,000 to pay off. “We're praying that we get it because it's been a big strain,” Tutt said. The federal government notified North Carolina officials of the $75 million award in February 2026, but a DCDEE spokesperson told NC Local the funding was not released by the federal government until May. Although “states were allowed to move forward with the funding after the kickoff meeting” in May, according to the DCDEE spokesperson, the department has yet to distribute funds to any of the 54 applicants. The department has focused on hiring a disaster support team, developing a program for new childcare facilities on college campuses in the region and exploring a wage supplement program for providers, a DCDEE spokesperson told NC Local in an email. The agency has also been “planning for statewide emergency preparedness and response events that will be conducted in 2027 for all childcare operators,” she said. DCDEE declined NC Local’s requests for interviews. The division has started hiring staff to “support and oversee the disaster funds,” the spokesperson told NC Local. DCDEE has spent $25,000 for staffing. That's the first chunk of the $75.8 million that has been spent, according to DCDEE. The department said it hired a project manager in July 2026 and four disaster relief consultants this month. The staff “will be the first point of contact for childcare operators who are in need of assistance,” the spokesperson said. The agency plans to begin reimbursing childcare operators in the fall, a timeline some potential recipients say is too little, too late. Marcia Whitney, president and CEO of Buncombe County’s Verner Center for Early Learning, said she expected more help from the state. “It's been disappointing, to be completely honest. I felt heartened when two weeks after the storm our state government said, ‘We're going to be doing something to help you all,’” she said. Like much of Buncombe County, the Verner facilities – one at Warren Wilson and one at Emma Elementary School – closed for five weeks due to lack of water, leaving more than 200 children without a facility. The centers applied for about $38,500 in DCDEE funding as reimbursement for business expenses including mental health support groups that Verner offered to families of young children in Swannanoa. The application request is just a small part of what Helene cost the center, Whitney said. “It's better than nothing. And two years after the storm it feels less impactful. It would have been a great joy if it had been sooner, but here we are,” Whitney said. “We'll be glad to receive it, whenever it is received.” ## Waiting for help In the 25 counties FEMA declared disaster areas immediately after the storm, 820 licensed early childhood education providers were in operation when the storm hit. The affected counties experienced a net loss of 145 childcare facilities from October 2024, immediately following Helene, to September 2026, according to the agency. Rural counties suffered some of the greatest net losses of licensed childcare facilities, a March DHHS report showed. Some childcare centers in the region closed permanently after the storm. Matt Calabria, director of GROW NC, the governor’s recovery office for Western North Carolina, acknowledged the need for a fast response. “We have prioritized speed, and we know that dollars are most effective when they are deployed early and strategically to help folks get back on their feet,” he said. “It's much better to help a business or a childcare center bounce back a month after the storm than 12 months after the storm.” Calabria said the recovery efforts aim to deploy state funds in the interest of speed, but there is a desire to leverage federal funding when possible. While the recovery office pushes for quick and effective relief, the responsibility for providing assistance services ultimately rests with the agencies, he said. “A lot of what we have done is programmatic oversight of the various programs trying to coordinate across agencies,” he said. “The details of this program and of most programs are handled by the agencies themselves.” One area of concern expressed by childcare professionals in the region is the lack of communication from the agency about the funding. The DCDEE spokesperson said information was distributed through a weekly newsletter for childcare facility operators and quarterly virtual and in-person NC Child Care Commission meetings. Verner Vice President Kaitlyn Guyer, who submitted their application in July 2025, said they have not received any direct communication about their application since submission. “There hasn't been a lot of that information and so it's just sort of been a waiting game,” Guyer said. The report was submitted into an agency portal Guyer said she checks frequently hoping for any updates. Guyer said she hopes their application included the correct information because she hasn’t filled out an impact report before. “It's a little confusing. I imagine other providers who don't do a lot of grant applications might have been a little confused,” she said. The Christine W. Avery Learning Center (CWA) in Swannanoa is one of hundreds of childcare centers that haven't applied for the DCDEE funding yet. It’s not that the center, which opened under new leadership in the week before the storm, doesn't need the additional funds. But almost two years after the storm, the center has been working through a number of other grants. Damage to school supplies and furniture totaled more than $150,000, not including damage to the facility. Lost income, which is eligible for reimbursement, totaled about $120,000. Managing director Sandra Lovelace said the center has been able to recover 70% of losses through grants and partner funding. Lovelace said their head of operations focuses on grant writing, but it is difficult work. “It's a paperwork hill to climb in order to get and achieve those funds,”Lovelace said. “It's on our to-do list. I know right now we're in a heavy grant writing season for a couple different things.” ## **Nonprofits and state funding fill immediate needs** While the bureaucratic hurdles slowed the response of the federal funds, a state allocation of $10 million by the General Assembly to the North Carolina Partnership for Children for Helene-affected counties was the first line of defense for support. By the end of June 2026, the organization had distributed $6.35 million through local affiliates, serving 7,808 children in 14 of the 16 eligible counties, according to a GROW NC report. Local partnerships gave out the grants to childcare centers in their regions. So far, these funds have served 7,808 children in 14 of 16 eligible counties, according to GROW NC’s August 2026 report. Verner was one of the recipients of the state funds, receiving about $14,400 for mental health and bilingual resilience training they provided after the storm, Guyer explained. While they waited on DCDEE funding, Verner received assistance from a variety of other sources including NC United Way and an Emergency and Disaster Relief Fund funded by Dogwood Health Trust, WNC Bridge Foundation, and the Community Foundation of Western NC (CFWNC). Liability insurance also covered lost revenue and food lost during the power outage. “Basically all of our expenses and lost revenue that were directly related to Helene and its immediate aftermath have been covered by a variety of funding sources,” Guyer said in an email. They still have a pending application with DCDEE, but Guyer acknowledged the other relief they received puts them in a better position than other applicants. “We know that many other childcare providers in our region have not been as fortunate!” she said in an email. Asked about the delays, Calabria said he understands the on-the-ground perspective. “The paradox of recovery in virtually every major area is that you can be moving very fast compared to your peers and your past and the national experience and still from the survivors' perspective be moving slowly,” Calabria said. Tutt in Forest City said the wait is taking a toll. “It's been very stressful, and it's been causing a lot of stress, depression, anxiety," she said. "I wake up with a headache stressing myself every day. I know it's because I'm worried about my mom and her health problems and stuff, and she's stressed about it too.” _Note: Dogwood Health Trust is a funder of NC Local. See our editorial independence policy_ here_._ This article first appeared on NCLocal and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. * * * # Meet Chicago’s First Street Psychiatrist Sam Jackson was once a student of James Withers. This week, the pioneer of Street Medicine watched Jackson take over Chicago’s Street Psychiatry pilot program. by Josh McGhee, MindSite News September 28, 2026 Dr. Jim Withers (left) and Dr. Sam Jackson (right) at South Shore Cultural Center for the official launch of Chicago’s street psychiatry team. Photo: Roxanna De La Torre To the young Sam Jackson, now a Chicago psychiatrist, his Uncle Mike was the All-American Man: quarterback and captain of the football team. And handsome with a curly-q cowlick like Elvis. But, when Mike got sick — paranoid and hearing voices, symptoms of his schizophrenia — that all changed. There was no more school and no more football. He became a wanderer — not just around Iowa, where he grew up — but the country: Pittsburgh, Denver and Boston. Then, one day police burst into Uncle Mike’s apartment and shot him in the arm and stomach while he was holding a knife. “The apartment manager knew he had an illness, knew he was off his meds and called for help specifically to get him to a hospital,” Jackson told MindSite News. “He was in the hospital for months, and in sort of a twisted sense of justice, the police department sued him for assault because he had a knife. He ended up in prison for several years for essentially the crime of having a serious mental illness and being in his home with a knife while people broke down the door and shot him.” That incident, which occurred when he was just 10 years old, would propel his journey to become Dr. Sam Jackson, Chicago’s first street psychiatrist, he said Wednesday afternoon on the South Side at the official launch of the city’s Street Psychiatry pilot program. Two five-person teams composed of a psychiatrist, psychiatric nurse, social worker, peer responder and an addiction specialist have been working the streets since July. Currently, the teams, which cover the entire city, have about six patients each. The goal is for each team to serve 25 patients, which they’re meeting at shelters, public transit stations, parks, park district buildings and, even, Cook County Jail. Each patient is seen at least twice a week. “As a provider, there's no feeling more defeating than knowing someone needs help and not having the tools, resources or flexibility to meet them where they are,” Ryann Billitteri, project manager for the Officer of Substance Use and Recovery Services, said at the launch event. “Programs like these are changing that.” ## Chicago’s Street Psychiatrist: **The Beginning** Dr. Sam Jackson in a talk after his speech at the South Shore Cultural Center (Photo: Roxanna De La Torre) Jackson began working with the unhoused by volunteering at homeless shelters. Eventually, he met Dr. Jim Withers, who walked the streets of Pittsburgh in the early 1990s delivering medical care to the unhoused. After speaking with Withers, he aspired to become a street psychiatrist, especially after he saw how many people were already doing the work. Still, his uncle’s story didn’t come to the forefront of his mind until George Floyd was shot in 2020, he said. “I reflected not just on the community violence that I was seeing in Brooklyn by police, but also my own family’s trauma,” he said. He interviewed his uncle and his grandmother because the details of the incident weren’t shared or discussed. That’s when he was given a box of medical records and court filings about his uncle. “I was given the torch of injustice — figure out what you can do. As a psychiatrist, I wanted to have non-police crisis response. I wanted to improve our crisis response system generally, but I also wanted to dedicate myself more upstream to prevent the crisis,” he said. Eventually, he was inspired to learn from Withers, a 2015 CNN Hero and founder of the Street Medicine Institute, on the streets. Withers, who is considered a pioneer of street medicine, has introduced his methods to small groups of students for years taking them under the viaducts and into the woods where the unhoused live. Even after three decades of teaching students, Jackson was a memorable standout, Withers told MindSite News. “He came with his own deep sense of purpose, commitment and imagination. I had hopes for him, but I think he’s exceeding them with his leadership in making this a field of medicine — street psychiatry — and his ability to collaborate with people,” he said. “I watched him in action yesterday, and the people love him that he serves.” The pilot program is funded for a year with the option to renew for an additional two years. Grants and funding aren’t the key to success, but commitment and collaboration are, according to Withers. “It’s about people that have gotten to know their sisters and brothers on the street and won’t turn their back on them no matter what,” he said. “A successful program has to have people with lived experience guiding them on the street, but also holding the team accountable for whether we’re drifting off the real needs of real people. When you’re in the street you realize, I can’t do this by myself. I have to get to know the other services, I have to talk to them. I have to find a way to make this work, not just get polarized.” This article first appeared on MindSite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # NYC Ditches Federal Homeless Veterans Program, Citing Concern for Transgender Vets ### The city says the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs would require it to discriminate against trans vets to receive funding. The VA says that’s “false.” By Andrew Giambrone, The City Reporter Sept. 24 6:07pm EDT Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration is pulling out of a federal program meant to help veterans transition out of homelessness, alleging the Trump administration would have required New York City to discriminate against transgender vets seeking shelter to receive the funding. But federal officials are denying that claim, and say the city walked away from the program after the veterans agency notified the Mamdani administration the city would receive less money than it had in the past. The size of the funding discrepancy was not immediately clear, but the city will no longer participate in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ Grant and Per Diem program as of Oct. 1, the start of the federal fiscal year. The Borden Avenue Veterans Residence shelter in Long Island City has benefited from the program for nearly two decades and was not on the list of GPD grantees released last week. The department announced $318 million in those grants to hundreds of organizations nationwide for three-year periods beginning next month. > _Know something about this story that we don't? Talk to our reporter Andrew Giambrone at agiambrone@thecityreporter.nyc._ In response to The City Reporter’s inquiries, the city Department of Homeless Services confirmed it is dropping out of the program — introducing uncertainty around future funding for the Borden Avenue shelter, which serves more than 200 veterans through a combination of federal and city dollars. "The agency did apply for the grant, but the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs only awarded a small portion of the previous awards while requiring that the agency discriminate against certain veterans by excluding transgender veterans from seeking shelter in VA-funded beds,” DHS spokesperson Neha Sharma said in a statement late Tuesday. “As a right-to-shelter city, we decided it was in the best interest of the veterans we serve to ensure access to shelter for all veterans experiencing homelessness. Veterans Day parade goers move up Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, Nov. 11, 2025. “There has been no disruption to critical services for veterans residing at this site, and the city is actively assessing and planning next steps,” she added. The city’s longstanding right to shelter generally guarantees a bed for anyone who needs one. DHS did not directly answer specific follow-up questions, including how the VA was purportedly requiring the department to discriminate against trans vets and whether DHS raised any concerns about this with federal officials. Quinn Slaven, press secretary for the VA, said in a statement that the city’s allegation “is false.” “VA has limited resources and distributes these awards based on past performance, demonstrated need and ability to provide high-quality service to veterans,” he said. “With these factors in mind, VA evaluated the Borden Avenue facility and determined that it could not justify a larger award.” An Aug. 7 letter obtained by The City Reporter and signed by the acting executive director of the VA’s Veterans Health Administration said the city’s grant would end on Sept. 30, as DHS had “chosen not to pursue continuation of the grant.” According to the VA, the city agency relayed that intention after U.S. officials provided a preliminary award amount for the next grant period. The revelations follow a cordial meeting between Mamdani and President Donald Trump at Gracie Mansion on Monday, after which the mayor said they had spoken about “how to improve the lives of New Yorkers,” especially when it comes to the city’s high living costs — a key driver of local homelessness. ## Lawmaker Demands Answers City Councilmember Joann Ariola (R-Queens) sent a letter Tuesday afternoon to DHS Commissioner Erin Dalton, demanding answers about the agency’s decision to quit the GPD program. Councilmember Joann Ariola (R-Queens) attends a full Council meeting, Oct. 10, 2025. “The city has a responsibility to pursue every reasonable resource available to support our veterans,” Ariola wrote. “Federal funding opportunities should not be disregarded without a compelling, transparent justification, and the burden should not fall on veterans who depend on these services.” Ariola’s office estimates the current grant amount at around $4 million a year for between 125 and 150 beds. It is unclear whether the Borden Avenue shelter is the only city shelter that currently benefits from the GPD program. “This should not be an either-or choice,” Ariola told The City Reporter in a statement Wednesday. “We can make sure transgender veterans have a place to stay without walking away from millions of dollars that could help other veterans in need.” In her letter to Dalton, the councilmember requested a “detailed written response” within two weeks about why the department was ditching the program, including supporting documentation and whether DHS “intends to reconsider its decision and pursue future federal grant opportunities.” * * * # $6B data center planned for Jefferson Davis, one of the poorest counties in the country By Katherine Lin, Mississippi Today September 30, 2026 A $6 billion data center is being planned for Jefferson Davis County. The developer, Eagle Rock Partners, hosted an informational meeting on Tuesday to talk with people about their concerns and answer questions about the project, which is called the Big Woods Technology Park. Construction could begin as early as 2027. “Get informed. Get answers – straight from the people who know,” read a flyer for the meeting in Bassfield. **READ MORE:** Your questions about Mississippi data centers, answered Eagle Rock Partners told Mississippi Today that the company is in the design stage and is working on submissions. It is proposing a three-building complex that will be around 2 million square feet and said it will not request abatements or incentives. The company expects the project to create 200 permanent jobs and over 1,000 temporary construction jobs. “Eagle Rock looks forward to creating new opportunities in Jefferson Davis County and creating resources for them to continue the ‘Mississippi miracle’ for their community,” the company said. Gary Russell Bass, director of the Jefferson Davis County Economic Development Association, said residents can go to a website the developer has set up to find answers about the project. Bass said he wants the project to be transparent to the public and be a model for how to develop a data center well. The website for the Big Woods Technology Park says the data center would use a closed loop cooling system to consume minimal water and use natural gas generation located on site that will need to be approved by the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality before operation. The site is on private property, and Jefferson Davis County does not have zoning, which means that the developer has more leeway to build what it wants. WDAM reported that some residents expressed concerns at Tuesday’s meeting over water usage, utility rate hikes, noise and opportunities for community feedback. Bass said that he did not seek out a data center, rather the developer approached him. When he first met with the developers, he said he shared many of residents’ apprehensions but, through conversations and due diligence, many of his concerns about water usage and electricity were addressed. He said the project is in an isolated part of the county, away from homes and that the Board of Supervisors is working on agreements between the county and the developer to make sure residents will have the best possible outcomes. Jefferson Davis is one of the poorest counties in the country with a population of about 11,000 that has declined in recent years. Bass said the jobs, investment and expected tax revenue from the data center “could completely transform this county.” Eagle Rock Partners is developing data centers in Georgia and South Carolina, and recently it canceled plans to build one in Illinois. There are seven data center campuses under construction in Mississippi. Collectively, they represent over $55 billion of investment in the state. Local officials in other counties have said data centers present an opportunity to boost tax bases and make infrastructure upgrades. Amazon is expected to pay millions of dollars in taxes each year to the Canton Public School District that could go towards repairing buildings or raising teacher salaries. Compass Data Centers has partnered with Meridian Community College on a workforce development program. However, many data centers have faced stiff community opposition in Mississippi and across the country over water, electricity rate hikes, environmental impact and concerns about artificial intelligence. In Southaven, Elon Musk’s SpacexAI has resulted in multiple lawsuits over the company’s use of mobile gas turbines. Residents can hear the turbines day and night and worry that the turbines are hurting the area’s air quality. _Correction, 10/1/2026: This story has been updated to remove incorrect information about a lawsuit filed by the Southern Environmental Law Center._ This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # At meeting, community members ask to keep L.B. Landry High School open. But the district says that might not be viable. by Safura Syed, Verite News New Orleans September 29, 2026 Hundreds of alumni and community members packed L.B. Landry High School’s auditorium Monday (Sept. 28) night, asking to keep the school open after its operator, Algiers Charter Schools, voted last week not to renew the contract that keeps the school running with the Orleans Parish School Board. Wearing gold and blue, the school’s colors, supporters addressed NOLA Public Schools district Superintendent Fateama Fulmore and asked that the district either run the school directly or identify another charter operator to take it over after Algiers Charter Schools contract ends at the end of the 2026-2027 school year. The district was informed of the operator’s decision of nonrenewal on Sept. 3, according to a report by independent news site the Lamplighter. “No decision has been made by NOLA Public Schools or the Orleans Parish School Board,” Fulmore said. “In fact, I haven’t even received the documents from the action that’s already been taken. It's not in my possession yet. I know the meeting has occurred. They have made a decision, but what I'm trying to explain to you all is that there is a process by which this happens.” Fulmore said that a decision about Landry’s future would be formally made on Dec. 9, when the Orleans Parish School Board is scheduled to vote on charter school renewals and closures. During Monday’s meeting, Fulmore told community members that options to keep the school open might not be viable. The school, which is housed in a sprawling $54 million campus that was built with post-Katrina federal recovery funds, has experienced severe enrollment declines over the past several years. And another charter school network might not have the money or resources to take on an underenrolled school, Fulmore said. With lower birth rates and a shrinking population in the city, the NOLA Public Schools district is experiencing some degree of underenrollment at a number of schools. But the decline at Landry has been dramatic. Its enrollment has fallen from more than 1,200 students a decade ago — when it was known as L.B. Landry-O.P. Walker College and Career Preparatory High School — to 496 during the 2025-2026 school year, according to district data. It has earned a D performance score for the past three years. Responding to calls for NOLA Public Schools to take over Landry directly rather than hand it over to another charter operator, Fulmore noted that the city’s only district-run school, The Leah Chase school, is among the district’s underenrolled campuses. “I’m direct-running a school now that people don’t send their children to,” Fulmore said. The district has at least one “charter on the shelf” — an approved charter agreement without an operating school — that could run a high school. But the decision, Fulmore said, will be made in December. For many attendees, the root cause of the issue isn’t district underenrollment — it's the charter school model itself. Bridgette Martin, who graduated from Landry in 2003, before the city’s schools were handed over to charters in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, said she wants the district to bring back the traditional public school system. She said the district should acknowledge that underenrollment isn’t just due to low birth rates. Around 23% of children in New Orleans either attend private schools or are homeschooled — higher than the national average of 14 percent, according to the Data Center. The city, however, had higher than average private school enrollment both before and after the switch to a charter-based model. “There's so many schools that are still closed and yet you're still saying you're not succeeding,” Martin said. “So, is closing schools answering the problem? Or do we need to re-strategize a new way to answer the problem?” The closure leaves Edna Karr, which is run by InspireNOLA, as the only high school on the city’s West Bank. Karr’s enrollment has been stable at more than 1,000 students for the past five school years, according to district data. Wearing gold and blue, the school’s colors, L.B. Landry supporters called for the school to remain open next year. But district officials are not sure that will be possible. ### **New district policy** The meeting at Landry was one of three community outreach events planned by the district to address and inform the public about underenrollment, and new policies that will be shaping the school system. The district has lost about 7% of its students since 2019, according to Fulmore’s presentation, partially due to declining birthrates and migration out of the city. Fewer students in seats and stagnant per-pupil funding mean that schools can’t utilize economies of scale, and that serving students becomes more expensive, Fulmore said. To mitigate this, the district has encouraged charter operators to close or consolidate their schools, bringing more students into one location. The board has also enacted policies that make it easier to close schools, and the Louisiana Department of Education has changed its school performance score system, which will increase the number of schools receiving lower scores. The district factors those performance scores into their decisions on whether or not to keep a school open. The district has said it needs to close five to six K-8 schools and two to three high schools by the start of the 2029-2030 school year to increase fill rates at individual schools. Fulmore told the crowd that she came to speak “from a place of facts.” But attendees at the meeting pointed to the legacy of the school, which first opened in 1938 and became a high school in 1942, and its namesake Dr. Lord Beaconsfield Landry. It was the first in Louisiana to be named after a Black person. U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, who grew up in Algiers and still lives there, urged the district in an open letter to keep the school open, and to “begin a transparent search for a qualified operator, publish a clear transition timeline, and provide the enrollment, financial, and academic support Landry needs to remain open.” _Robert Stewart contributed reporting._ _Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the date on which Algiers Charter Schools informed the NOLA Public Schools district of its decision not to renew Landry's charter contract._ This article first appeared on Verite News New Orleans and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # One-page ballot may not ease voting for Maricopa County voters with disabilities by Noah Flug, Cronkite News September 24, 2026 PHOENIX – Maricopa County will reduce its general election ballot from two sheets to one in November, potentially improving efficiency for Maricopa County elections officials but not necessarily making the ballot easier for voters with disabilities. Sey In, an attorney with Disability Rights Arizona who works on voting rights, said in a statement the effect depends on each voter’s individual needs, the ballot design and how the person votes. “Generally, we can’t say whether a one-page ballot is more or less accessible than a two-page ballot,” In wrote in response to email questions. Fewer statewide measures made the reduction to one page possible, though the average Maricopa County voter will still see more than 80 contests on the ballot, 57 of which are judges seeking to remain in office, the Maricopa County Elections office said. Adrian Borunda, a communications officer for Maricopa County Elections, said moving from two sheets to one is “easier logistically” as the county will have half as many sheets to prepare, mail and tabulate. The ballot in Maricopa County for the 2024 general election was two pages. In that election, Borunda said the county handled about 4.1 million ballot sheets. When designing the ballot, he said the county considers readability and the number of contests a single sheet can hold. Arizona’s Election Procedures Manual says ballot text should be no smaller than 8-point type and must have enough spacing to be clearly understood. Bill Gates, an Arizona State University professor who leads its Mechanics of Democracy Laboratory and served on the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors through 2024, stated the shorter ballot has clear administrative benefits, but whether it makes voting easier, particularly for those with disabilities, remains to be seen. “You can make the ballot physically shorter without making the voting task easier,” Gates wrote in response to questions. “Cognitive burden comes from the number and complexity of decisions, the amount of information voters have to process and how easy it is to find and understand each contest.” An election staff worker analyzes a voting ballot in the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center on Nov. 5, 2024. (File photo by Dylan Wickman/Cronkite News) For Robert Murphy, a 19-year-old college student with autism, the one-sheet format is less important than its readability and his ability to vote by mail. He said polling places can be stressful and transportation is difficult because he does not yet have a driver’s license. Murphy said the new format would not pose a personal problem “unless the font’s really small or hard to read.” Under federal law, voting systems must give voters with disabilities the same opportunity for access, privacy and independence as other voters. Maricopa County says each vote center offers curbside voting and an accessible voting device. Voters using the device make selections through a touch screen, audio or tactile controls. The machine then prints their selections for tabulation. The county also offers braille and large-print ballots. County records show those services are used. During the 2022 general election, 1,503 voters used accessible devices in person and 27 braille ballots and 362 large-print ballots were distributed. David Carey, who has limited hand movement because of a spinal cord injury from a gunshot wound, votes from home. Although one sheet means less paper to handle, Carey said the key issue for him is whether he can vote without relying on another person. “The main goal should be privacy, independence and equal access,” said Carey, who is chairperson of the AZ Disability Advocacy Coalition. Maricopa County has expanded its accessible voting options after a 2018 federal civil rights advisory report said long lines may have prevented some voters with disabilities from casting ballots during that year’s election. The county adopted a vote-center model in 2020, expanding accessibility and allowing voters to use significantly more locations rather than relying on one assigned precinct. While the one-page ballot will make things easier for the county, Gates warned election officials against trading fewer sheets for a more crowded design. “The danger is solving the paper problem by creating a readability problem,” he stated. Borunda maintained reducing the ballot from two sheets to one would not affect readability. He said the ballot-design team considered all voters, including those with disabilities. Officials considered “everything from readability to how many contests we can get on the page,” Borunda said. This article first appeared on Cronkite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * *

By Anita Wadhwani (Tennessee Lookout) Published: September 23, 2026 A federal judge on Wednesday denied a request for a preliminary injunction that would prevent the Tennessee Highway Patrol from conducting pretextual traffic stops in tandem with federal immigration agents. U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger ruled the Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition had not made a “clear showing” it was entitled to the injunction at this stage of the litigation. The coalition had sought the injunction as part of its ongoing challenge to the constitutionality of state troopers conducting traffic stops of motorists suspected of being noncitizens and then allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents — riding along or stationed nearby — to demand immigration papers and detain drivers. The coalition, which filed suit in May against the Tennessee Highway Patrol, or THP, and its oversight agency, the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security, is alleging the practice violates motorists’ rights under the 4th and 14th Amendments. Seven Tennessee residents joined as plaintiffs. In a swift ruling, issued one day after a court hearing to consider arguments over the injunction, Trauger expressed deep skepticism that the immigrant coalition could ultimately demonstrate that the cooperative traffic stops violated motorists’ rights under the 4th Amendment, which protects individuals against unreasonable searches and seizures. > Immigrant advocates seek immediate halt to highway patrol traffic stops conducted in tandem with ICE Trauger wrote the immigrant advocates had “no likelihood of success” on the claim “even if the court accepts as true that the THP troopers, pursuant to a policy, are pretextually pulling over non-White motorists in Memphis for the purpose of aiding ICE agents to investigate the motorists’ immigration status.” “Supreme Court precedent is clear: a pretextual traffic stop supported by probable cause to believe a traffic violation has occurred does not violate the Fourth Amendment, irrespective of the arresting officers’ subjective intent.” Trauger gave more weight to the immigrant organization’s allegation that the traffic stops violated drivers’ 14th Amendment rights against discrimination, signalling the argument may have merit if supported by more evidence. The evidence introduced thus far in the ongoing litigation “though not robust” is “sufficient to establish some likelihood of success on the merits” of the Fourteenth Amendment challenge to the traffic stop as “motivated by a discriminatory purpose” or having a “discriminatory effect,” she wrote. Trauger noted that data and evidence submitted to support allegations of discriminatory traffic stops conducted in tandem with ICE focuses heavily on a weeklong operation in Nashville in May 2025 that resulted in scores of immigration arrests. That operation has formally ended and Trauger indicated she needed more evidence of ongoing constitutional violations in the state, specifically in Memphis where the THP is part of the Memphis Safe Task Force, a multi-agency effort including federal immigration enforcement, convened last fall by President Donald Trump. Trauger also ruled the Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition had a right to sue on behalf of its members, dismissing arguments by state lawyers that the organization lacked standing to pursue legal action. ## The order gov.uscourts.tnmd.109839.41.0 SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX.

By Lori Kersey (West Virginia Watch) Published: September 24, 2026 West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey has issued a state of emergency for two counties in Southern West Virginia after heavy rains this week caused flash flooding. Boone and Lincoln counties are included in the state of emergency, which will be in place 30 days unless ended early by another proclamation. “Our emergency responders are working to protect West Virginians as flooding continues to impact communities in Boone and Lincoln counties,” Morrisey said in a news release late Wednesday night. “I urge everyone in the affected areas to remain alert, avoid flooded roadways, and follow instructions from local emergency officials. We are making state resources available to support communities and first responders wherever they are needed.” A series of storms beginning Monday brought repeated periods of heavy rain across the state, overwhelming streams, creeks, drainage systems and low-water crossings, Morrisey’s office said in a news release. The state of emergency allows the state to coordinate and deploy personnel, equipment and other resources necessary to support local emergency response and recovery operations, the news release says. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE

By Andrea Tinker (Alabama Reflector) Published: September 24, 2026 The State Employees Insurance Board Wednesday voted to increase premiums for state employees and dependents, citing rising healthcare costs and concerns over the stability of the program. Premium rates will go up by $15 effective Jan. 1, the first across the board increase in 11 years. “I think it’s very important to note that the reason for the recommended premium increases today is not because it’s been 11 years, but rather because the financials of the plan demonstrate necessity,” said Stephanie Azar, the Chief Executive Officer of SEIB, during the meeting. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX. The board oversees insurance for approximately 102,000 state employees and family members. Without the increased premiums, SEIB was projected to end fiscal year 2028 with a $81.4 million deficit. The increase passed with board member Bob Childree being the sole no vote. During the meeting, Childree said he wanted to exempt retirees from the increase because they have not received cost-of-living adjustments. “We are in a crisis. We are in a serious crisis, and I’m going to tell you that retirees are suffering more in this crisis than any other constituency group,” Childree said. Currently, there are over 20,000 retirees who use state insurance. Azar said after the meeting that the board’s expenditures have “been exceeding revenue for several years,” which is why retirees had to be included in the increase. Earlier this month, the SEIB executive board recommended increasing the premiums by $20 across the board. Board member Connie Grier wanted to drop the cost to help alleviate financial strain on employees. “To some people, $5 is $5, and those that are paying both those rates, that’s $10 less out of their household,” Grier said. With the $15 increase, the estimated financial impact will be around $9 million instead of the $12 million financial impact the original $20 would have provided. Along with the premium increase, SEIB also approved other changes to benefits, including: > $5 increase on single Standalone Coverage for Dental, Cancer and Vision ($15 to $20) > $6 increase on single Standalone Coverage for Dental, Cancer and Vision ($24 to $30) > Tier 2 60- and 90-day prescription drug costs: from 30, 60 and 90-day prescriptions having 20% copay with minimum $45, maximum $85; to only 60 and 90-day prescriptions having 20% copay with minimum $90, maximum $170 > GLP-1 prescriptions: from having a 90-day supply to 30-day supply > Medicare Part D prescription cost share increases > Tier 1: 30-day copay $3 to $6; 90-day copay $12 > Tier 2: 30-day copay $23 to $40; 90-day copay $80 > Tier 3: 30-day copay $53 to $60; 90-day copay $120 > Tier 4: 30-day copay $53 to $60; limited to 30-day supply SEIB plans to sk the Legislature for a $75 per member per month increase for FY28, bringing the state rate to $1,250 per member per month. That is an estimated $480 million impact to the General Fund budget for SEIB’s roughly 32,000 active members. Azar told the board there’s a possibility that with a tight budget, SEIB could remain level funded for FY28. “Me being somewhat familiar with the headwinds that that general fund is facing, I would say there could be a possibility we will be level funded in 2028. I can’t speak to that, but it is something we have to assume could be a real possibility,” she said. Faye Nelson, chair of the board, said the board should consider putting “skin in the game” in order to get funding from the Legislature. “You are going to be dealing with a very tight budget and new legislators, new governor, and we need to find a way to empower her to have some level of negotiating when she’s talking,” Nelson said.

**It's Friday September 25, 2026 and in this morning's issue we're covering:** New Jersey says DataOne’s 62 generators are illegal. It’s letting them run for 45 more days, Helena tables decision about federal grant program with new immigration strings attached, Native American tribes wanted to join the Chesapeake Bay partnership. Not anymore, NC town appears headed for dissolution, NC leaders call Chemours deal historic, but nearby well owners are still skeptical, Childcare Is Key to Disaster Resilience, Nolan Wells may have drowned, but questions remain: How? And why? **Media outlets and others featured:** Floodlight, The Daily Montanan, Maryland Matters, Carolina Public Press, North Carolina Health News, The Daily Yonder, Mississippi Today. * * * ## **New Jersey says DataOne’s 62 generators are illegal. It’s letting them run for 45 more days.** The state's $1 million fine comes less than a month after Floodlight’s visual investigation publicly exposed the Vineland site’s generator fleet for the first time **By Evan Simon/Floodlight, Brad Racino/Floodlight** This story_is from_ Floodlight_, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action_. _Sign up for Floodlight’s newsletter_ here_._ New Jersey regulators issued their largest-ever fine against a data center on Tuesday following a recent Floodlight investigation that found DataOne’s facility in Vineland operating at least 45 generators without a state permit. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection’s $1.07 million fine against DataOne “sends a clear message that these facilities will not be constructed or operated with impunity in this state,” said Commissioner Ed Potosnak in a press release. DataOne, a Microsoft-linked AI data center, has stirred controversy since it broke ground in 2025 due to consistent noise complaints, unpermitted construction and a combative zoning process. The site lies roughly 40 miles outside Philadelphia and is slated to provide AI computing power to Microsoft as part of a $17-billion deal with Nebius, a Dutch AI infrastructure giant. The NJDEP’s press release says the tractor-trailer-sized machines “were not observed” during the agency’s previous site inspection in December — but they were this past July. Last month, Floodlight flew a thermal drone alongside the facility and found the site operating 45 of the site’s 62 generators. NJDEP then confirmed to Floodlight that they’d never issued permits for the machines, which emit substantial amounts of health-harming air pollution linked to asthma, heart attacks and even premature death. At the time, former Environmental Protection Agency Air Enforcement Chief Bruce Buckheit said that DataOne’s actions “violate federal law” and that the company should immediately stop operating the generators. The state is mandating DataOne apply for and obtain the required permits or cease operations, but is giving the company 45 days to do so, according to a NJDEP spokesperson. During that time, regulators are allowing the facility to continue running the generators. “I suspect the company is breathing a sigh of relief at being allowed to continue,” Buckheit told Floodlight after reviewing the order. Environmental groups have questioned whether NJDEP’s actions go far enough. “While the fine may be record setting for the DEP, $1M does not affect companies like DataOne,” said Matt Williams of Sustain SJ, an environmental advocacy group. He added that “Ceasing operations immediately would be the appropriate response.” A social media post co-authored by several New Jersey activist organizations said: “We also have to ask how a project this massive was able to install and operate dozens of generators before the state stepped in. The public only learned what was happening after an independent news outlet flew a drone over the facility.” In response to questions about Tuesday’s fine, a DataOne spokesperson told Floodlight: “We are transitioning to low-emission, quiet fuel cells as part of the site’s permanent power solution and have the necessary approvals in place for this solution. While we disagree with the temporary generator determination, we will apply for the air permits for the temporary generators and are in communication with the Department of Environmental Protection regarding its findings and the fuel cell transition timeline.” The spokesperson did not say whether DataOne will appeal the state’s fine. Floodlight_is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action._ * * * The City-County Building in Helena is pictured on Friday, Sept. 18, 2026. (Jordan Hansen / Daily Montanan) ## Helena tables decision about federal grant program with new immigration strings attached By Jordan Hansen (Daily Montanan) Published: September 21, 2026 A routine $53,000 grant for the city of Helena led to an uproar after citizens discovered new requirements to cooperate with federal immigration officials. The grant would have funded cameras around city buildings with federal dollars administered through Montana Disaster and Emergency Services. But the Helena City Commission tabled the contract last week after immigration advocates uncovered new provisions by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. “This appears to be an attempt to use federal funding to pressure our local government into participating in federal immigration enforcement,” said Valerie Hellerman, director of the Helena Area Refugee Resettlement Team and one of the city’s consistent voices for humane treatment of immigrants. “It seems to me this is an underhanded attempt to bring ICE further into our community through the back door.” The contract is one of many similar agreements across the state. Montana Disaster and Emergency Services has distributed more than $31 million to cities and towns through the Department of Homeland Security program since 2019. Terms and conditions of the Helena contract obtained in a public records request by the Daily Montanan show significantly different requirements between a 2020 grant award and the most recent version. A Helena city spokesperson said all grants have obligations, and they can change over time. “It’s not unusual for grant terms and conditions to fluctuate cycle to cycle and change under different state or federal administrations,” said Helena spokesperson Amanda Opitz. ## **Program funds security upgrades** The State Homeland Security Program has been around since 2003 as an initiative to beef up security around possible targets in towns and cities throughout the country. In the 2025 fiscal year, the program doled out about $373.5 million in federal funding to states, which could divide it as they saw fit, according to the Congressional record. Cities across the country have long accepted the funds as a way to get needed upgrades using sources outside of normal municipal budgets. Helena city officials discussed this during a meeting last week, pointing to worrisome trends in the city’s budget. “These grants are super critical for us to be able to get various things done,” said Helena Mayor Emily Dean. “We really try to be aggressive in going after grant money so that we can allocate general fund dollars to other projects.” But cities must agree to certain stipulations set forth by the federal government. A 2020 version of the grant award referenced foundational American laws, including Title IX, the Age Discrimination Act, and the 1968 Civil Rights Act. The current version of the grant award is more complex and adds provisions related to immigration and prohibitions on diversity, equity and inclusion. It includes a stipulation that a city accepting the money from the Department of Homeland Security cannot be a “sanctuary city” and asks the city to agree that it will respect “prohibitions on harboring, concealing, or shielding from detection of (people living in the country without permission).” Other compliance includes local law enforcement providing access to those who have been detained by local law enforcement, “such as when an immigration officer seeks to interview a person who might be a removable (person)” and also states cities cannot “leak or otherwise publicize the existence of an immigration enforcement operation.” Another provision tells municipalities they must comply with every presidential executive order. Multiple lawsuits have been filed against some of the grant award agreement terms that include a ban on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. These are specifically noted in the grant award Helena is considering. One of those, a case playing out in Illinois including almost two dozen states, alleges the federal government is “holding critical emergency preparedness and response funding hostage unless states promise to devote their scarce criminal enforcement resources, and other state agency resources, to the federal government’s own task of civil immigration enforcement beyond what state law allows (in some states) or requires (in others).” In other recent grant awards through Montana Disaster and Emergency Services to other municipalities, including one approved by the Missoula County Commission on Sept. 8, the grant award language is identical to the one tabled by Helena. ## **Residents react** Immigration discussions have been tense during the past year-and-a-half in Helena, as many members of the public have expressed to the commission they want as little to do with federal immigration enforcement as possible. Helena citizens pushed back against federal immigration policies after the arrest last year of a resident who had tried to gain U.S. citizenship for years but whose identity was mistaken. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement called for the arrest. “I honestly can’t believe we’re still here,” said Helena resident Ashley Fisher at a commission meeting last Monday about the grant. “You promised us no cooperation with ICE … and here you are stabbing us in the back.” Meetings in Helena regarding immigration have drawn large crowds, and this week’s meeting did as well, with the commission chambers full and overflow rooms with TVs broadcasting the proceedings. About 60 people spoke against Helena accepting the DHS money. The city’s governing body eventually voted to table the decision on whether to accept the $53,000 as city commissioners questioned staff about the award. But the tabled item can be brought back to the city commission. At the meeting, city attorney Rebecca Dockter said citizen concerns about immigration compliance were unfounded in her legal opinion. The agreement with DHS also requires local law enforcement help with immigration operations if asked to do so by federal officials, which already happens to some degree, unless local resources are not available. “I think the legal argument is that this language does not apply,” Dockter said during the meeting. “Even if it does, we don’t have the resources to do the work that it’s requesting.” A previous attempt to address ICE activities in Helena brought threats from the state attorney general and governor unless the city withdrew an immigration proclamation. With the threat of losing state funding, the city withdrew the proclamation. Attorney and Helena resident Andres Haladay told the Daily Montanan there were serious concerns with the grant award, adding that it should be expected, at some point, that Helena comply with the terms if city officials sign the contract. Haladay is with Upper Seven Law and has been working on a number of immigration cases but said he was not representing the firm with his remarks. “You better assume you’re going to have to follow contract provisions,” Haladay said, pointing to his work with state contracts in the Department of Corrections. “Otherwise, you’re going to court at some point fighting over this.” Dockter maintained, both in the meeting and in a memo circulated to city staff and commissioners, that some provisions in the contract canceled out others, specifically around language about coordination with homeland security and potential anti-DEI rules. Dockter also wrote in her memo that she had reached that conclusion after conversation with state Disaster and Emergency Services. The city directed questions from the Daily Montanan about the legal conclusion to the state, which said it sends out the grant awards in accordance with federal law. But some commissioners were not convinced. “I have more questions than I have answers,” Commissioner Melinda Reed said. “And that makes me uncomfortable.” * * * Virginia Indigenous tribe chiefs observe the Dec. 2, 2025, meeting of the Chesapeake Executive Council, where the Chesapeake Bay partnership agreed to study how to formally include the tribes in bay cleanup planning. It was supposed to issue recommendations by July, but tribal leaders say they have been stonewalled. (Photo by Christine Condon/ Maryland Matters) ## Native American tribes wanted to join the Chesapeake Bay partnership. Not anymore. By Christine Condon (Maryland Matters) Seven federally recognized Native American tribes are ending their bid to formally join the Chesapeake Bay cleanup, saying they have been disappointed by the response from Bay Program leaders. The Virginia-based tribes began their quest last January, hoping to be added as a single signatory — the status awarded to each of the state governments surrounding the bay — when elected officials in the Chesapeake Bay region approved a new agreement for restoring the bay in December. Their effort fell short, but the state governors in the bay region commissioned a Chesapeake Bay Program committee to study the idea, approving a document that called Indigenous knowledge “vital to the health of the Chesapeake Bay.” Several chiefs were in the front row of the crowd as the governors approved the directive during a December convening at the National Aquarium in Baltimore. But discussions reached an impasse earlier this month, according to a statement shared on Monday by the Indigenous Conservation Council of the Chesapeake Bay, a consortium of all seven tribes, at a Bay Program committee meeting. Tribal leaders say the bay partnership proved unwilling to offer signatory status, a failure to recognize tribal sovereignty, said Melissa Ann Ehrenreich, executive director of the council. “If people are not willing to create a seat at the table, why should you sit under the table?” Ehrenreich asked in an interview. “That was what they were suggesting: For tribes to sit under the table and catch crumbs.” In its statement, the council said that it voted “to withdraw from all discussions and formal engagement with the Chesapeake Bay Program,” until tribal sovereignty is respected. The Chesapeake Bay Program said in a statement Monday that it “remains committed to working with Tribes, to the extent that they would want to engage.” “While the partnership did not extend an option for adding signatories, we remain committed to working together on the foundational elements of advancing and respecting Indigenous guardianship and Indigenous knowledge within watershed restoration planning and implementation,” read the statement. Chief Anne Richardson of the Rappahannock Tribe said she walked out of a September meeting with Bay Program officials before its conclusion because of her frustrations. That meeting was convened to prepare a formal resolution that the Bay Program could approve in December. Richardson said she and other tribal leaders believed the resolution would set the tribes on a path to signatory status. But more than an hour into the meeting at the Upper Mattaponi Tribal Center in Virginia, Bay Program officials broke the bad news, Richardson said. To her, it felt like tribal leaders had been “led down a primrose path,” only for the door to be slammed in their faces more than a year later. “It was insulting, and I thought it was very disrespectful to the tribal leaders,” Richardson said. But the tribes got support Monday from organizations including the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, among the largest bay-focused nonprofit groups, along with the Choose Clean Water Coalition and the Nature Conservancy. “It’s unacceptable that the Chesapeake Bay Partnership is not following through on promises to engage in good faith and meaningfully include tribes in the partnership,” Chesapeake Bay Foundation senior policy director Keisha Sedlacek said in a statement. “Enough delays. We urge decision-makers to make things right.” > If people are not willing to create a seat at the table, why should you sit under the table? That was what they were suggesting: For tribes to sit under the table and catch crumbs. > **– Melissa Ann Ehrenreich, executive director of the Indigenous Conservation Council** During the Bay Program meeting Monday, the tribes also received support from Bill Dennison, provost and vice president for academic affairs at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. Dennison, a longtime bay scientist, is an executive board member on the Chesapeake Bay Program’s Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee. “To move forward, we’ve got to engage with all knowledge that we can integrate to restore this magnificent bay and watershed,” Dennison said during the public meeting. In its statement, the Indigenous council wrote that tribal leaders were “stonewalled” when they tried to discern why the other states had decided not to allow the council to become a signatory, on a level playing field with the governors of Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New York, Virginia and West Virginia, and the mayor of Washington, D.C. As a signatory, the council would be able to cast a vote in decisions about the bay clean-up effort. In addition to each of the states and Washington, D.C., the federal government and the Chesapeake Bay Commission —which represents legislators in the region — are also signatories with voting power. The seven tribes, which all earned recognition from the federal government between 2015 and 2018, formed the Indigenous Conservation Council of the Chesapeake Bay in 2022. The council includes the Upper Mattaponi Indian Tribe, Rappahannock Tribe, Pamunkey Indian Tribe, Nansemond Indian Nation, Monacan Indian Nation, Chickahominy Indian Tribe and the Chickahominy Indian Tribe – Eastern Division. > Maryland officials grapple with ‘bizarre’ Trump executive order on Chesapeake Bay The Chesapeake Bay Program decision is particularly “ironic,” Ehrenreich said, given that President Donald Trump (R) last week signed an executive order signaling a possible retreat from federal agencies involved in the bay cleanup, and railing against “rain taxes” collected by some bay jurisdictions in order to fund stormwater management programs. “These are tough times for the Bay Program when it needs leadership,” Ehrenreich said. “And tribes are willing and ready to step up, when their tribal sovereignty is acknowledged and respected.” If it changed course, the Chesapeake Bay partnership would not be the first clean water partnership to add Indigenous leadership. The Puget Sound Partnership, for example, includes several tribal representatives on its leadership board. “When the Chesapeake Executive Council decides it is ready to uphold tribal sovereignty and provide space at the leadership table for us, then we will be happy to renew our conversations,” read Monday’s statement from the council. But in the meantime, the tribes plan to continue their environmental projects in their homelands, Richardson said, including efforts to rebuild oyster and herring populations and restore shorelines and wetlands — projects that employ Indigenous knowledge and focus on adding to, rather than extracting from, the land. “Western science didn’t need what we had,” Richardson said. “And so we’ll just keep doing what we’re doing.” SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE * * * # Ronda beyond help? NC town appears headed for dissolution. by Mackenzie Thomas, Carolina Public Press September 22, 2026 Ronda, a small town situated along the Yadkin River in Wilkes County, has been on the North Carolina Local Government Commission’s Unit Assistance List for just over a decade. In that time, the LGC has highlighted concerns including late audits, budget violations and deficits in the town’s water system, according to LGC records. On Aug. 11, **Kendra Boyle** , the LGC’s director of fiscal management, warned officials during a town meeting that Ronda was facing “severe and immediate financial distress” if town leaders didn’t make some serious changes. Town officials appeared at the latest LGC meeting on Sept. 1 and pleaded with commissioners for enough time to hold a vote that would let their citizens, rather than a state panel, decide the fate of the town. ##### **[** Subscribe for FREE to Carolina Public Press’ Daily, Weekend and Election 2026 newsletters.**]** With the town already facing the possibility of not being able to meet payroll in a few months, the commission was already questioning its viability. It gave Ronda certain tasks to complete before returning in October, but a majority of town officials decided to heed the commission’s advice and move forward with dissolution. State Treasurer **Brad Briner** , chair of the LGC, commended Ronda for its decision. “We appreciate Ronda leaders’ willingness to do what is best for their citizens and taxpayers,” Briner said in an LGC statement. “These elected leaders took the Town’s financial challenges seriously and our staff is ready to work with them, Wilkes County and other stakeholders to ensure a smooth transition.” To ensure a smooth dissolution process, the LGC will continue to work with the town and help officials navigate these next steps. Moving forward, questions remain about what the future holds for the struggling community. ### History of financial problems in Ronda Ronda was founded in 1907. The vast majority of the roughly 436 people who live there spent their lives working at textile mills and furniture factories, making just above minimum wage. Most of its current residents are over the age of 65, with many of them living off limited Social Security, Acting Mayor **Kevin Reece** said. Its history of financial troubles isn’t new. Over the past 15 years, the town’s water system has had one issue after another related to its aging infrastructure and has bled the town’s water and general funds dry, Reece said. As a result, the town was spending more than what it had, which is a violation of state budget law, LGC Secretary **Denise Canada** said. While Reece said he believed these issues would be fixed eventually thanks to millions of dollars in grant funding the town had received from the General Assembly, it wouldn’t be resolved anytime soon. Since fiscal year 2021, the town has submitted audits to the LGC anywhere from roughly one and a half months to almost a year late. All of its audits are now up-to-date, but Canada said turning those audits in on time is paramount to ensuring financial stability. “One thing that I’m often saying is it’s not submitting the audits for the sake of the audit,” Canada said. “It’s so we can assess the condition of the finances, and this is a case where we have the audits and we can assess the condition of the finances, and the finances are concerning.” A cement sign sits beside a stop sign outside the Ronda town hall and public library building, seen here on Sept. 17, 2026. Frank Taylor / Carolina Public Press Ronda Commissioner **Bobby Munsey** also attributed some of the town’s issues to a past financial consultant, **James Michael Boaz**. He was employed with the town for at least a decade, Reece said. A former town manager in nearby Pilot Mountain, Boaz was accused of embezzling town funds during his time there and was arrested in May. His next hearing is scheduled for Oct. 12, according to court records. High turnover in the position of mayor didn’t help either, with the town having seen five different people in the position over the past two years, Munsey said. The town is rich in history, just not much else. “This town’s been there a long time,” Reece said. “A lot of history, just not a lot of money.” ### Decision to dissolve Ronda Despite the concerns voiced by the LGC at the latest meeting, Reece insisted that town officials didn’t have enough “clarity” yet to determine the next best step. While he said he recognized the authority of the LGC to take control if they deemed it necessary, he argued whatever action taken next should be decided by town citizens. “They should be able to vote to decide their fate, and they should be able to vote with facts, knowing if we want to move forward with the town, our tax rates, our property taxes are probably going to triple,” Reece said. “Then they determine if they can afford it and if it’s worth that to them to be a town.” At its Aug. 11 meeting, the town board voted to ask the General Assembly to grant them a referendum on dissolution, which would present the question of dissolution to Ronda residents in a direct voting process. However, Canada said, even if approved, the earliest a referendum could be held on the issue is November 2027, which would be far too late to address the issues at hand, according to a letter sent to legislators in August. Town officials initially believed the wait would be worth it. “I think we can get by long enough to put it on the ballot,” Reece said. “We got a couple hundred voters, right? We have a nice little town hall. We used to hold elections there. If it’s so important that this board and the members of the General Assembly believe that we should dissolve, I don’t know why we couldn’t have a special election.” But it never got to that point. In a town board meeting on Sept. 8, Ronda commissioners voted 3-1 to initiate the dissolution process, which will be followed by a final vote at some point to make the dissolution official, WFMY News 2 reported. The timing issue ended up being the deciding factor, once town officials realized a special election wouldn’t be possible, Reece said. **Joy Billings** , a lifetime resident of Ronda, said that while she’s enjoyed living in Ronda and appreciates its small-town nature, she believes the dissolution has been a long time coming. “The town should have dissolved years ago,” she said. Billings told Carolina Public Press that she took issue with the way the water system was being run and a mysterious $3 surcharge that was just added on to her monthly bill. It went up from $52.24 to $55.24 a month, and it wasn’t addressed until the next town meeting she attended, she said. “To me, that’s a lot of money, especially if somebody’s on a fixed income,” Billings said. “I’m not, thankfully. I am still working, but there are some senior citizens around here that are retired.” When asked about the surcharge, Reece said it was a recommendation from the League of Municipalities, which has been working with Ronda since it’s been on the UAL. “With the resources that we have, we tried to share it as much as possible, and I personally tried to make sure people know about it,” he said. Billings also pointed out that the town doesn’t have many businesses bringing in money in the first place: there’s a Dollar General, a restaurant, a convenience store, but not much else. “There’s no money in Ronda,” she said. However, Billings said she doesn’t think other residents necessarily feel the same way about dissolution. “A lot of the people that live here still think that it’s a town, that’s a big deal,” Billings said. “It’s a big deal to have a town.” Munsey is one of those people who doesn’t want to see the town go away, citing concerns about residents losing certain town services, how to continue maintaining its municipal park and cemetery and more. He voted against dissolution earlier this month. Reece said he simply doesn’t see any other option than to dissolve. “Financially, I don’t see how the town can afford to be a town. I don’t,” he said. “I think it’s a waste of the citizens’ money. I think it’s a waste of sales tax dollars.” Even so, he’s still disappointed, he said. “It bothers me that Ronda has so much history,” Reece said. “It’s a proud community of hardworking people that’s been there since 1907, and to see it go away at no fault of the citizens is sad.” ### More units in trouble Ronda is not alone in its financial troubles and is not the only town to pursue dissolution within the past year. The town of Speed in Edgecombe County dissolved its charter in June after consistently failing to turn in audits on time, CPP previously reported. CPP asked LGC staff whether submitting audits on time could’ve made a difference in Ronda’s case, but they said town leaders shouldn’t have to wait for an annual audit to know whether they’re operating in the black. “LGC staff can identify concerns, provide guidance and technical assistance, and monitor units’ progress but it is ultimately the governing board's responsibility to make the necessary decisions and operate within the unit’s financial means,” LGC staff said in a statement. “Timely audits can provide an important independent assessment, but a governing board should not have to wait for an annual audit or LGC intervention to know whether it's operating within its means.” Based on fiscal year 2024’s audited financial statements, 145 units across the state were on the UAL last year. Roughly 154 units are anticipated to be on the next list based on fiscal year 2025 information, according to LGC staff. As far as any other units that are in hot water financially, LGC staff noted there are others that they’re keeping a close eye on, three of them being issued a notice and warning — the highest level warning the commission can give — this year: Rowland, Littleton and Rocky Mount. While a notice and warning doesn’t necessarily mean a unit is headed for dissolution like Ronda, it does mean the LGC has “serious concerns” about its financial management and other issues, LGC staff said. ### What’s next? Town officials will still return to the next LGC meeting on Oct. 1, except now they’ll be hammering out the details of the dissolution. At that meeting, the LGC will be expecting a written plan from the town that addresses the concerns from the notice and warning and will include the decision to dissolve, LGC staff said. “Our office has been in communication with the town to offer assistance and support as the Town undertakes this process,” they said. Under GS 160A‑825, the dissolution process consists of adopting a resolution of intent to dissolve, releasing a statement to residents, conducting multiple public hearings and coming up with a plan to distribute the town’s assets before adopting a final resolution, which must get the LGC’s stamp of approval. At this point, Ronda is currently working on the wording of the resolution and waiting on a contact person from the LGC to be assigned to the town, Reece said. Once all steps have been completed, Ronda will no longer be officially recognized as a town, which could be as early as June 30, 2027, Reece said. It will merge into the unincorporated area of Wilkes County, which is land that doesn’t fall under any specific municipality. Instead, it’s governed by the county government, LGC staff said. Living outside of a designated municipality means that citizens will likely have to contract with private companies to receive certain services formerly provided to them by the town. One example of this is garbage collection, which is usually a service provided by a municipality. Other services like water and sewer can vary, with some counties providing it and others not. Statewide, 42% of North Carolinians live in unincorporated areas, LGC staff said. In Ronda’s case, it has a water system that will continue to function even after the town dissolves, but its fate will depend on whether a new water association is formed, or if another comes and takes it over, Reece said. Ronda will also still have bills to pay. It currently owes roughly $200,000 toward a loan to expand the lines for its water system, which would likely be paid off by 2032 if the town made payments of roughly $30,000 per year, Reece said. However, Munsey said this is far from over. Even though the town is pursuing voluntary dissolution, the process can be so drawn out that the town could still turn things around financially and reverse the decision at a later date, before the dissolution is finalized. “We’re working tirelessly to try to resolve all the issues we’ve had,” Munsey said. “LGC’s been here, they’re helping us to get things resolved. It’s not a cut-and-dry deal.” If and when those issues will be resolved remains to be seen. Despite its troubles, Ronda and its residents remain a close-knit community. A look down the road through the small town of Ronda, with the community volunteer fire department at right, seen on Sept. 17, 2026. Frank Taylor / Carolina Public Press “I had my house burned down eight months ago to the ground, and the town of Ronda, they just came out and supported us, helped us rebuild and everything,” one Ronda resident said during the LGC meeting. “They’re just a great town of people out there. I never would have thought that in the years I’ve been alive, a small town like that would come together and help people that you really didn’t know.” Reece said he believes it’s this spirit that will help carry the community through whatever challenge they face next. “Growing up around there, riding my bicycle, walking through the community. I knew everybody. I've probably had a drink of water or soda or something to eat in about everybody's house when I was little,” he said. “We were a wonderful community, and everybody helped everybody.” This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # NC leaders call Chemours deal historic, but nearby well owners are still skeptical by Will Atwater, North Carolina Health News September 21, 2026 #### Takeaways * A legal settlement will compel Dupont spinoff company Chemours to pay $590 million over long-term PFAS contamination. * Some private-well owners distrust Chemours-installed filtration and still rely on bottled water. * Expansion of public water lines to affected homes could help, but residents say they’re tired of promises. Cedar Creek resident Vickie Mullins and her family have dealt with PFAS-contaminated water for years, and she doubts that a new $590 million agreement between the state, affected governments and the chemical companies will make any real difference. That agreement, announced on Sept. 10 by N.C. Attorney General Jeff Jackson, involved  Chemours, DuPont and Corteva and centered around air and water PFAS contamination tied to the Chemours Fayetteville Works plant. “When I see some action and I have water coming out of my faucet that I can drink safely, I’ll believe it,” Mullins said. “Until then, I’m not getting my hopes up.” Mullins said her daughter, Stephanie, died of liver cancer at age of 44 on Aug. 29, 2025. She also believes years of PFAS contamination may have contributed to multiple health problems she has seen in her community. “For many decades, a chemical plant outside Fayetteville knowingly discharged PFAS, or forever chemicals, into the air and water,” Jackson told a crowd made up mostly of news media and public officials.The releases “led to downstream contamination of drinking water for over half a million people in our state.” Mullins is among Lower Cape Fear residents who said the settlement brings renewed attention to contamination they have lived with for years. But the announcement does not resolve their questions about safe drinking water, enforcement of Chemours’ existing obligations or the potential health effects of PFAS exposure. #### **Lack of trust** Jackson was joined in making the announcement by N.C. Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Reid Wilson and Cumberland County officials at the site of the Gray’s Creek Water Project, which is intended to extend public-water service to residents whose private wells have been affected by PFAS contamination. “Forever chemicals like PFAS, including GenX, pose serious harms to human health,” said Wilson, referring to the form of PFAS found predominantly in Chemours’ discharges. “Roughly 3.5 million North Carolinians currently drink water with PFAS levels above federal health standards in drinking water. That’s one out of every three people in this state. … These are people and families and communities.” PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), which are called forever chemicals because of their persistence in the environment, are a class of thousands of identified synthetic compounds linked to cancer, reproductive harm and hormone disruption. Prized for their ability to resist water, grease and stains, the compounds are found in a host of products across multiple industries, including cosmetics, clothing and food packaging, even mascara and dental floss. In 2017, reporting revealed that Chemours, a company spun off from chemical industry giant DuPont, had discharged GenX and other PFAS into the Cape Fear River from the Fayetteville Works plant near the Cumberland-Bladen county line. The companies’ PFAS releases also contaminated air, soil and groundwater in surrounding communities. Although research has linked exposure to some PFAS with a number of health harms, it is difficult to draw a straight line from PFAS exposure to any individual illness. After outlining the settlement’s payment structure, Jackson said, “There is nothing more important than ensuring that people have access to drinking water that is clean, and that these companies that polluted it are held accountable.” Of the new settlement’s $455 million in guaranteed payments, $75 million will go to the state. The remaining $380 million will be divided among the 11 local governments that joined the agreement. Cumberland County will receive $161.5 million. Residents were not impressed. “Well, as far as the settlement announcement — it's a joke,” said Gray’s Creek resident Jamie White. “That should have been in the billions, not this little $500 million.” Because of the harms they’ve experienced, some drinking well water owners don’t trust filtration systems that were installed by Chemours. Mullins said she only uses water from her well for laundry and washing dishes. Through the consent order, her family receives 36 gallons of bottled water every two weeks, she said. Out of an abundance of caution, Mullin said her youngest grandson has never experienced what many take for granted each day. “He doesn't know what it's like to drink water from a spigot,” she said. “That’s sad — and he’s not the only one, I know.” #### **Consent order was supposed to fix things** In February 2019, Chemours, the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality and Cape Fear River Watch entered into a court-enforceable consent order. It requires Chemours to sample private drinking-water wells, provide replacement drinking water to qualifying properties, reduce PFAS releases to the Cape Fear River, control air emissions and assess and remediate groundwater contamination. Under the order and subsequent DEQ direction, a private well with GenX concentrations above 10 parts per trillion qualifies a household, business, school or public building for permanent replacement drinking water, usually through a public-water connection or whole-building filtration system. Chemours must offer bottled water while the permanent supply is arranged. Other properties can qualify for up to three under-sink reverse-osmosis systems when a well contains combined levels of certain listed PFAS above 70 ppt or an individual listed PFAS above 10 ppt. Cedar Creek resident Vickie Mullins responds to a comment during a Sept. 15 meeting at the Stedman Recreation Center, where representatives from the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality and N.C. Department of Health and Human Services briefed residents on Chemours’ obligations under the 2019 consent order and its 2020 addendum. The agencies discussed private-well sampling, replacement-water options, PFAS controls at the Fayetteville Works plant and health resources for residents. Gray’s Creek Elementary and Alderman Road Elementary schools recently were connected to Fayetteville’s public-water system. Officials said the next phase is to expand water infrastructure so more homes and other properties in the district, including private-well owners, can connect to the system. “For years, Cumberland County residents have lived with the consequences of contamination they did not create,” said Cumberland County Board of Commissioners Chairman Kirk deViere in a release. Cedar Creek resident Mike Watters is one of those residents. In 2019, a blood test showed Watters’ combined PFAS level was 29.2 nanograms per milliliter. That level was above the 20-nanograms-per-milliliter category in National Academies guidance, which associates PFAS blood levels above that amount with an increased risk of adverse health effects and recommends clinical follow-up. The guidance does not determine whether PFAS caused an individual illness. Watters is being treated for polycythemia vera, a rare blood cancer. A 2021 Pet and Equine PFAS Exposure Study found PFAS in the blood serum of Watters’ dogs. Because of the consent order, Watters is among residents who have filtration systems installed on their wells. The settlement comes even as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has withdrawn guidance that encouraged states and wastewater utilities to use existing Clean Water Act authority to curb PFAS pollution before it reaches rivers and drinking-water sources. The Southern Environmental Law Center said the move could make it harder for states and utilities to press industries to control PFAS at the source, though the group said withdrawing the guidance does not eliminate their underlying authority to do so. #### **Complaints aired at community meeting** At a Sept. 17 meeting at the Stedman Recreation Center, representatives from the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality and the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services briefed local residents on the 2019 consent order with Chemours and its 2020 addendum. DEQ focused on Chemours’ obligations for well sampling, replacement water and PFAS controls at the Fayetteville Works plant, while DHHS discussed the potential health effects of PFAS exposure and how residents and their doctors can get guidance and testing resources. At that meeting, Watters told officials there’s a problem with how some systems are installed. According to Watters, many of the granular activated carbon installations did not meet the 2019-approved “Drinking Water Compliance Measures” design or later design updates outlined in the consent order. He discussed how he solved iron buildup in his system by adding an iron softener and inspecting wells where other users had reported problems. “I tested four different sites,” he said. “Out of the four different sites, three were horrendous. I would not use my water. I would not even take a bath because there was slime bacteria and all sorts of things.” His neighbor Jamie White is one of the well owners who had Watters investigate her well. She described her well as technically working but unsafe and improperly plumbed, with bacterial contamination, chemical breakthrough and a configuration that may be sending contaminated water into the house. “From the day they installed the granular activated carbon filter, I bought bottled water,” she said. “I don't trust it. We still have chemicals that leak through.” White said she spends as much as $50 per week on bottled water. #### **Turning of the spigot** The county has launched a project to “provide public water service to 218 existing homes, including 184 properties impacted by PFAS contamination,” according to information provided on the county’s website. The remaining $135 million of the $590 million settlement is a reserve fund, financed by DuPont and its sister company Corteva, that the state could use if Chemours cannot meet its long-term obligations under the 2019 N.C. Department of Environmental Quality consent order. Those obligations include providing clean drinking water to families with PFAS-contaminated wells. Toward the end of the September meeting, Cedar Creek resident Betty Melvin asked state officials, “what are you going to do for us?” She added, “My dog has cancer [...] the water is giving us rashes.” Michael Scott, director of N.C. DEQ’s Division of Waste Management, told those gathered that the agency’s role is, in part, to enforce the consent order. “We're working to provide solutions for clean, PFAS-free drinking water. That's through the filters that we talked about tonight, through the granular activated carbon or the reverse osmosis.” As part of its investigation into problems some well owners are facing, N.C. DEQ has shared its findings with Chemours. The agency told NC Health News that it is still awaiting a response. This article first appeared on North Carolina Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # Childcare Is Key to Disaster Resilience by Anne Vilen, The Daily Yonder September 21, 2026 The day before Hurricane Helene blew into Western North Carolina, Jeneal Hensley, a licensed family child care provider, was taking care of five children in her Swannanoa home. She’d been in business as The Little People’s Place in her house by the river for more than a decade and had cared for dozens of the town’s preschool-age children, along with some of her own grandchildren. Hensley loved her child care routine, but that ordinary Thursday would turn out to be the last normal day she remembers. Before dawn the next morning, her daughter who lived nearby called to urgently insist: “leave now.” The river was rising, and residents were evacuating. Jeneal and her husband drove out through nearly a foot of water, abandoning her home, belongings, a life-time of photographs, and her livelihood to a merciless flood that would take it all. “I was in a state of shock,” she says. “I made the comment, ‘oh, I guess it’s gonna take a couple of months to clean this up. My husband put his arm around me and he said, ‘Try a year.’ I thought, ‘No way I will be out of business for a year,' but it was actually more than 500 days.” During that time while Hensley floundered, trying to sustain her own family while living in space donated by her church, filing for unemployment, and dealing with insurance agents and contractors who first gutted and then rebuilt her house from the ground up, the families who counted on Jeneal also faltered. Many child care programs were closed for weeks. Some parents also lost jobs to the storm or had damage to their own homes. Others were displaced and eventually moved their kids to other child care settings. Of the five she’d cared for before the storm, only one returned. “He was here the first day I reopened,” said Hensley. “Couldn’t wait to get back.” For Hensley and her community, the return to normal after the disaster took much longer than anyone thought it would. Her recovery, and the survival of the entire early child care ecosystem that working families across the region depend on, relied heavily on local agencies, organizations, and individuals who gave money, resources, and time to sustain these small businesses. A new documentary, created by Home Grown and a recent report from The Dogwood Health Trust which funds regional non-profits that support child care providers, provides a playbook for other communities where disaster may strike next. Both stress what child care providers and families themselves have reported: Established relationships with the grassroots groups whose daily work is helping families are the lifeline for immediate response after a disaster and the nucleus where long-term recovery begins. “Climate events lay bare the fragility that already exists,” in the child care ecosystem, says Joe Waters, the co-founder and CEO of Capita, a think tank that researches and recommends policies to support family health. In Western North Carolina, like many rural areas, child care needs, especially for infants and toddlers, are often met by home-based child care providers–some operating licensed family child care homes and unregistered providers caring for the kids of family, friends, or neighbors (FFN’s). While many families prefer home-based care and depend on these providers in order to work, profit margins for licensed family child care homes are extremely slim and many struggled to stay afloat even before Hurricane Helene. In Buncombe County, the bull's eye for Helene damage, for example, only 7% of infants and toddlers were enrolled in licensed child care (including centers) in 2025, according to a report from the Buncombe County Partnership for Children. A recent survey of parents in the county backs up the truism that working parents often leave the workforce if they are unable to afford child care. Others lean into a patchwork of part-time care provided by family, friends, neighbors, or nannies, often scheduled around a revolving door of shift work: one parent working, while the other cares for the kids, neither one getting much sleep. After Helene, while the Buncombe County Partnership for Children “was instrumental in getting early childhood providers linked up with FEMA and the National Guard” according to assistant director Caroline Rodier, there were hiccups for family child care homes because they aren’t “non-profit” or “public.” Those on the city water line didn’t have running, potable water for several weeks. In the interim, they had to submit a re-opening plan that ensured they had clean water and hygienic procedures for making formula, washing hands, changing diapers, and toileting. Those plans had to be approved by the county health department, which further delayed reopening. “In the end the agencies agreed to help all centers and home-based programs because they felt it was a public good,” but the policy debates between agencies and absent or conflicting guidance frustrated care givers who just wanted to open their doors and take care of families. Now, organizations and governments at the local and state level are culling the lessons learned from Helene to better prepare for the next emergency. The North Carolina Child Care Health and Safety Resource Center established guidance for agencies and organizations that support child care providers to prepare for the immediate aftermath of a disaster event. A Hurricane Helene State Child Care Task Force, headed by the North Carolina Partnership for Children, has generated a list of questions to ask following an emergency. But using these tools requires coordinated communication between state agencies and individual providers, including familiarity with the state’s disaster plan. Eric Ager, state representative for North Carolina, and the patriarch of a fifth generation family farm in Western North Carolina, agrees. “We have not done enough at the state or at the federal level to understand how important [child care] is. . . . We’ve got to shift our thinking so that child care is infrastructure . . . not to see it as money we’re throwing at a problem, but to see it as an investment in our economy.” Toward that end, Waters recommends a systems-level approach that improves the conditions for families with young children generally. For Western North Carolina and other rural regions, that means fully and specifically including home-based child care providers–both licensed and unregistered–who are caring for the majority of children. “Home-based child care providers are resilient and motivated to help families and their communities,” said Waters. “I spoke with one provider who had lost the roof on her house, but she was eager to reopen because she had children in her care whose parents were EMTs, whose parents were in construction, whose parents were linemen with the internet company, and she had to open so that her community could rebound.” Emergency workers like these often work nontraditional hours when most child care centers are closed. Home-based programs like Mama Freda’s Tiny Tots, operated by Arikco Watkins, are licensed for second shift and even overnight care. “My second shift families, they work in a factory,” said Watkins. “I have a nurse who works 12 hour shifts, sometimes from 6 in the evening till 6 in the morning.” Another thing that local and state officials agree on is “the importance of community-driven responses, neighbors taking care of and looking out for one another,” said Rachael Sawyer, Buncombe County’s Director of Strategic Partnerships. “Certainly in the post-Helene days and weeks, when communication was limited and transportation from one place to another geographically was limited, it was those grassroots endeavors that helped people take care of each other and their kids.” For home-based providers across Western North Carolina, mutual aid came from the Family Child Care Center and Enrichment Foundation (FCCEF), headquartered in Charlotte, a peer-led network of home-based child care providers that leads with both hearts and hands. Leaders at FCCEF already knew most of the family child care homes in the region and they recognized that what providers and families need most in the first days after disaster strikes is fast, flexible, cash. After Helene, providers and families lost power, internet, phone service, even access to clean water. ATM machines were down. Roads were impassable. Gas stations that had gas couldn’t take credit cards. In that situation, cash was essential for purchasing groceries, gas, and other basic necessities. The day after the storm, Alissa Rhodes, who had recently closed her own family child care home in Swannanoa to be the Foundation’s secretary and director of communications evacuated her own family to stay with her sister in Maryland. The next day, she started reaching out to check up on home-based providers in seven counties across the region to find out what they needed. The answer in many cases was simply cash. She and president Vantoinette Savage then contacted Home Grown, a national collaborative of funders that advocates for home-based care givers, which had an already established model for direct cash assistance to family child care providers. Thus was born the Home-Based Child Care Emergency Fund for Severe Weather and National Disaster Response, which provided grants of $800 to $1500 to 89 caregivers across the region. “Not having strings attached to the Home Grown funds was spectacular. . . they gave funds very quickly. You didn't have to get an estimate and then send that in and then or get it done first and then get reimbursed. You tell them what you needed, and then they just showed up with what you needed or gave you what you needed,” said Kanika Fox, who’s been running a child care business out of her rural Hendersonville home for 28 years. Rhodes and Savage also provided critical emotional support, directing providers to other community resources and connecting them to other providers in similar situations through online gatherings and old-fashioned phone trees. “Understanding that you’re not going through this alone, that there are caring community members and organizations, and having a local organization that can help you navigate the complex systems of disaster response” is really critical, according to Natalie Renew, Home Grown’s executive director. Home Grown’s Emergency Fund also supported home-based care givers in the disaster zone following wild fires in Los Angeles, California. Renew argues that especially in rural areas where large child care centers are often inaccessible and unaffordable, investing in home-based child care is investing in essential infrastructure–as part of emergency response to a natural disaster and as preparation for future disasters. “Home-based providers deserve to be elevated and invested in during these times of crisis, because they're not just standing back up their own business, they are essential infrastructure that shows up for children, for families, and for other care providers when they need it,” Renew said. “They are highly motivated to resume childcare services so that families can get back to work, to ensure that essential workers have child care overnight or early morning. And we are all better for that resilience and commitment and leadership on good days, and especially on bad days when disaster strikes.” * * * This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # Nolan Wells may have drowned, but questions remain: How? And why? by Mina Corpuz, Mississippi Today September 22, 2026 The parents of Nolan Xavier Wells say they will continue to push for answers about his death, after a Jackson County grand jury concluded that he likely drowned and no one would face criminal charges. Their attorney Ben Crump and the Rev. Al Sharpton said that the grand jury report doesn’t close the book on Wells’ death or answer lingering questions about what led to it or how the 18-year-old died. His mother, Christine Wonsley, said she received a text message from Jackson County District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath Monday evening, not long before McIlrath posted the grand jury’s redacted report and a video explaining its findings on Facebook. Monday was Wonsley’s birthday. “Last night was a reminder that our son’s life does not matter to those who hold positions that are supposed to serve and protect the public,” Christine Wonsley said Tuesday during an online news conference at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Georgia. Christine Wonsley smiles as she is presented with a birthday cake for her son during a vigil for Nolan Wells at Greater St. John AME Church in Biloxi on Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2026. Wells, who was Black, traveled from Ocean Springs to Horn Island on the Fourth of July with friends. His body was found in the water off the Mississippi Gulf Coast barrier island two days later. While the grand jury heard evidence that he likely drowned, both the state medical examiner and a pathologist who completed an independent autopsy ruled Wells’ death as undetermined. In a preliminary report, Dr. Roger Mitchell, the pathologist hired by the family, said all other causes must be ruled out to conclude a death was by drowning. Mitchell also wrote that the record and examination doesn’t establish whether Wells entered the water on his own or was forced into it, and whether he was conscious when it happened. Because of lingering questions and Mitchell’s findings, the family’s legal team called for the district attorney to keep the death investigation open and to look further into blunt force injuries documented on the back of Wells’ head and neck, including whether they contributed to his death. Attorney Ben Crump, who represents Wells’ parents, released Mitchell’s final autopsy report Tuesday, which the pathologist was able to complete after traveling to Mississippi and gaining access to reports from the state medical examiner. Mitchell concluded that two red discoloration marks were blood. The state examiner identified them as contusions early in the investigation, but did not explain where they came from, he wrote. “That is not nothing,” attorney Liza Park, a member of the family’s legal team, said about Mitchell’s updated findings. “That is where we begin to begin to understand what happened to Nolan Wells.” If new evidence is uncovered relating to his death, a grand jury can meet again to consider it and decide whether to charge anyone. Mississippi does not have a statute of limitations for murder charges. The family’s legal team and the NAACP are calling for McIlrath’s office to release the state’s autopsy report and the investigative file. They also continue to ask the U.S. Department of Justice to complete a federal review as requested by the Congressional Black Caucus in August. Forensic experts are examining Wells’ cellphone, and Crump said they will talk about what they found in an upcoming news conference. Crump asked the public not to attack Wells’ parents for continuing to seek answers. The case gathered national attention and sparked discussion about Mississippi’s history of investigators not examining the deaths of Black people with the same rigor as the deaths of white people. This summer, at least three out-of-state people have been charged with threatening to kill or hurt witnesses in the investigation, including Wells’ friends and their family members. Friends of Wells have said they faced death threats from their names, pictures and personal information being shared online. Attorney Russ Latino, who is representing a former teammate of Wells, sent a cease-and-desist letter to at least one content creator, the Sun Herald reported. Attorneys representing the three friends who traveled to Horn Island with Wells threatened to sue Sharpton, Mississippi Today has reported. This week, the same attorneys also said they would sue “The View” co-host Sunny Hostin for comments she made, the Clarion Ledger reported. On Monday, attorneys representing the friends acknowledged the grand jury’s decision not to indict, including one who demanded that Crump apologize to three of Wells’ friends. “We still have a First Amendment right here, and we still have the right to ask questions when our children are unalived in inexplicable ways,” Crump said at the Tuesday news conference. “We won’t stay silent, we won’t let it be swept under the rug and we won’t go quietly into the night because Nolan deserves better than that.” This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * *

I started my newspaper career in small, rural towns. Like anything, there were both positive and negative experiences. This part of journalism is more about giving readers and community members a record of what’s happening in their community. It normally doesn’t lead to large investigations and nationally-recognized awards. I’ll attribute to David Simon the distinction between the craft of journalism and the news business. Community journalism is definitely about the craft, but there are moments when it’s in line with the news business and winning awards. One example is when the paper in Washington, NC won the Pulitzer Prize. I’m mentioning the town of Ronda in Wilkes County, North Carolina since a dissolution would mean more questions would be difficult to answer. From its water system to law enforcement, the points of contact would be different and might not be as communicative. There would need to be another group to take care of parks and green spaces. Citizens could be taking their trash to the landfill. Yes, there would be an elected member of the county’s board of commissioners to contact, but the residents of Ronda would be part of a larger group instead of having the usual contacts in town. Ronda is in Wilkes County, NC is west of Winston-Salem and these places are both different. I’m mentioning Ronda since I read the town is likely heading to a dissolution. One of my first newspaper jobs was in nearby Elkin, in Surry County and I was the sole person in the sports department. We covered East Wilkes High School in Ronda and I made multiple trips to the school and can remember the gym being packed for basketball games. This was a small, rural area that saw a lot of textile mill jobs leave. That was the story in the other two counties this paper covered. When I worked in Kings Mountain, NC, I covered the small town of Grover, which bordered Cherokee County, South Carolina. While the town has a website and a couple more positions that I didn’t remember being there when I was, the town council eventually did not fill an opening for police chief and instead contracted with Cleveland County for law enforcement. This means instead of having someone in town to respond to matters, residents would have to wait for the sheriff’s office in Shelby, which is about 30 minutes away from southern Cleveland County. What I’m saying is if Ronda had its own police personnel, it’s possibly gone and those citizens are having to rely on the Wilkes County Sheriff’s Office, Rural governments are not easy to cover. They’ve been grossly undercovered by multiple outlets (until recently) except when the worst of bad news happen. In my experience, it’s best if the people in small town government see a member of the media start when things are routine. Then when the bad news hits, it’s likely that reporter has built some trust and someone would talk. I’d like to add more emphasis on ‘likely’.

By Robbie Sequeira (Stateline) Published: September 15, 2026 Declining birth rates mean fewer students. And that means more districts grappling with whether to close or merge schools. “The big shrink” is how Marguerite Roza, director of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab, described what is happening nationally. “When there are fewer young people, obviously it’s going to change the shape of public education,” Roza said. “As more and more schools are existing that are half empty, some downsizing needs to take place for them to live in their current financial structure, and districts are really loath to do that.” Driven largely by declining birth rates but worsened by several other factors, district and school board decisions to close and consolidate schools can draw anger and anxiety from parents and students. Many states are stopping short of forcing mergers, but taking a variety of steps to encourage them. The expiration of one-time federal pandemic relief funding has worsened the financial pressure on school districts, Roza said. The COVID-19 pandemic also accelerated interest in homeschooling, virtual education and other alternatives to traditional public schools, according to Megan Bowen, high school director at the U.S. Career Institute, a Colorado-based online education provider. And the immigration crackdown also may play a role. Before being elected and becoming House speaker in the Colorado legislature, Democratic state Rep. Julie McCluskie was a public school employee at Summit School District in one of the state’s rural resort towns. She told Stateline the reasons for the state’s yearly decline in public school students — and in her district — includes heightened immigration enforcement under the second Trump administration. “I think the demographic decline in birth rate is an obvious factor to point to, but certainly in my community we have seen immigrants leave because of what’s happening on the national landscape and that has been part of our decline,” she said. McCluskie in 2024 proposed a formal study of declining enrollment but the provision didn’t pass. She said the issue wasn’t getting enough attention then, but as student numbers continue falling, schools may seek a glide path. “It is going to force us to do things differently in our school settings,” she said. More than 1,000 public schools closed nationwide in the 2025-26 school year, according to preliminary National Center for Education Statistics data. It’s the fourth year in a row that school closures have gone up. School closures were taking place prior to the pandemic, as National Center for Education Statistics data show more than 1,000 public schools closed each school year from 2010-11 through 2019-20. But closures took a dip during the pandemic. Now closures and consolidations are rebounding and districts across the country are making tough decisions with budget challenges coinciding with falling enrollment. > Public school enrollment continues to fall In Austin, Texas, the school district’s board approved the closure and consolidation of 10 schools for 2026-27 that will affect almost 3,800 students. A restructuring plan in Cleveland, Ohio, will lead to 29 fewer schools across the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. Other cities including Houston, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia have similarly identified schools for closure or consolidation as they grapple with similar trends of declining enrollment and aging facilities. For districts and schools, this means continuing to pay for principals, nurses, librarians, custodians and maintaining other costs of running a school even when the student population drops. The number of students is expected to continue declining. Nationwide, U.S. enrollment dropped from nearly 50.8 million to almost 49.4 million K-12 students between 2019 and 2024, or 2.8%, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. That number is projected to drop even further to about 46.9 million students by 2031, the center data estimated. Enrollment declined in 40 states between 2019 and 2024, the data showed. West Virginia saw the largest drop, at 8.1%. Hawaii, New Hampshire, Mississippi, New Mexico and Maine followed, with each losing more than 7% of its K-12 enrollment. David Steiner, executive director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy and a former New York state education commissioner, said this “demographic time bomb” poses financial trouble for schools. “Just because your number of students goes down, doesn’t mean that your fixed costs go down,” Steiner said. “(Schools have) got fixed costs, they’ve got budgets that are shrinking, a school population and a teaching force that is shrinking and it’s very, very difficult to put all those pieces together.” ## States encourage mergers States have different rules and assistance for school consolidations. Vermont has long been a unique case when it comes to education funding. Up until now, property taxes from across the state had been pooled under a complex funding formula; school districts proposed budgets that were voted on at the local level. That’s changing. Although lawmakers dropped a proposal to force school districts to consolidate, they passed new laws under which funding formulas will change and the state will require school districts to form regional committees that will consider merging. Vermont has lost about 20% of its student enrollment over the past two decades, the state’s Education Secretary Zoie Saunders told Stateline. Saunders said the decline has financially hamstrung districts and schools and access to public education, making it “more dependent on ZIP codes.” “For the last two decades, the state of Vermont has been struggling to achieve scale,” Saunders said. “We want those dollars to get into the classroom and so the work that we’re doing in Vermont, is more than right sizing.” > 4-day school weeks are growing in popularity, despite a lack of data on the effects In Arkansas, a 2004 law had required school districts with 350 students or fewer for two consecutive years to consolidate or be annexed. In 2023, lawmakers softened their approach to make the decision to be consolidated or annexed voluntary. The change came as parents and community members raised concerns over the loss of rural schools and long bus rides, the Arkansas Advocate reported. A 2022 peer-reviewed study examining Arkansas’ consolidation policy found either no effect or small positive effects on math and English language arts achievement, but found no evidence that consolidation reduced overall costs nor shifted a larger share of district spending into classroom instruction. In California, after the Oakland Unified School District approved a series of school closures in 2022 that drew criticism over their potential disproportionate impact on Black students and a lack of community engagement, the legislature passed a law that requires financially stressed districts to undergo an equity impact analysis before a school can be closed or consolidated. California’s Department of Justice found that the proposed closures, rescinded by the Oakland school board in 2023, would have disproportionately affected Black and low-income elementary students as well as high-needs students with disabilities. Under the 2022 law, districts need to publicly explain why schools were selected, where displaced students will go, how programs will be maintained, what happens to the vacated buildings and how transportation will work. In their analyses, districts must consider building conditions, operating costs and expected savings, unused capacity, student demographics and transportation among other things. The policy comes as California’s public-school enrollment has fallen nearly 8% since 2016-17, a loss of roughly 485,000 students. Illinois enacted a new law in 2025 allowing the State Board of Education to award grants to districts to encourage reorganization feasibility studies. Initial legislation would have gone further with a requirement that the state board identify neighboring districts that could be good candidates for consolidation studies, but lawmakers ultimately approved a voluntary grant program. Beginning this year, the state can provide up to $16,000 for studies examining enrollment projections, school capacity, potential building closures, transportation, finances and academic programs. ## What happens to students? Olathe, Kansas, native Nicole Trendel has a second grader who attends Black Bob Elementary, one of the six schools that the Olathe Public Schools has recommended for closure. Trendel is one of many parents raising concerns before a final vote on the closures takes place in October. In addition to declining enrollment caused by lower birth rates and rising home prices, district officials have cited financial pressures from special education underfunding. For Trendel, the enrollment pressures facing Olathe are also tied to affordability, including rising property taxes, school bond measures and increasing costs of raising children. She said she and other parents are criticizing a lack of communication and transparency on the decision to close the elementary school as well as how students of the school’s dual-language immersion program will fare being moved 2.3 miles to Arbor Creek. “We’re just asking to get the full picture,” she said. “We know nothing about where our kids are going. We know nothing about what next year’s gonna look like for them.” A recent study tracking students affected by hundreds of Texas school closures from 1998 to 2015, found that, although short-term test score declines generally faded, affected students were less likely to graduate from high school, attend or complete a four-year college or be employed as young adults, and had lower earnings in their mid-20s. > States try new measures to get chronically absent students back to class Schools often serve as neighborhood hubs for after-school programs, health services, family support and other resources, while a vacant building can become a deteriorating asset if districts do not have a plan for what comes next. Angira Sceusi, executive director of RedefinED Atlanta — a nonprofit focused on improving access to high-quality K-12 public education across metro Atlanta — said states could require districts to separately track the academic performance of students displaced by consolidation rather than simply measuring the overall performance of their new school. “What are the students from the consolidated school doing?” she asked. “How are they doing as a cohort, and are they thriving or not?” Sceusi said students should be moved to higher-performing schools when their previous schools consolidate, an approach she said research has shown is critical to creating better opportunities rather than merely moving children from one building to another. States could also consider temporary “stabilization funding” to help districts manage the transition, she said, although she was not aware of states currently incorporating such a policy into their consolidation plans. That money could support students leaving a school, but also students already attending the building that receives them, and the latter is frequently overlooked, according to RedefinED Atlanta officials. “Even though there’s an existing school that kids are coming into, in effect there is a new environment that they’re all stepping into,” Sceusi said. Roza, of Georgetown, said many current superintendents and school board members have never been in a situation with so much change to public schools enrollment and funding. “A lot of the leaders of these districts haven’t lived through a moment of contraction,” Roza said. “So it’s really demanding a new skill set from them that they haven’t practiced.” She added, “Another thing is that these districts don’t do the work of downsizing, and then they turn to the state and say, ‘Oh my God, we don’t have enough money. You need to give us more money.’” In addition to deciding the future of a school, Roza said that districts are trying to avoid making other whiplash decisions that could cause community backlash such as eliminating advanced courses, electives, athletics or other programming. _Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at_ _rsequeira@stateline.org_ _._ SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE

By Danielle J. Brown (Maryland Matters) Published: September 17, 2026 Developers say that having to navigate the “complex web” of federal, state and local regulations contributes to the rising cost of housing and rent, which winds up pricing more and more Marylanders out of housing options. Lori Graf, CEO of Maryland Building Industry Association, told the House Economic Matters Committee Tuesday that, at a national level, the costs it takes to comply with health, environment and other government regulations account for 26.4% of the final cost of a new housing unit. “It’s a national figure, but it definitely translates to Maryland,” she told the committee. “It may be that Maryland is a little bit higher.” She added that each bump in housing costs knocks thousands of Maryland families from the dream of homeownership. It’s estimated that for every $1,000 increase in the cost of a medium-priced new home, an additional 2,955 households are priced out in Maryland, Graf said. It’s why she and other members of the building industry urge Maryland lawmakers to cut back on the red tape that slows down the approval process for new development in the state. “We have so many regulations and so many things, and we don’t propose that any of that is easy to get rid of,” she said. “But, it is very challenging to go through all of the processes, and at any point, something can hold you up.” > Financing, permit challenges stand in the way of building new housing, officials say Her comments followed a presentation by the Department of Housing and Community Development for the committee outlining the many factors contributing not only to Maryland’s housing shortage of some 100,000 units, but also the state’s skyrocketing housing costs – some of the highest in the nation. “High housing costs are not driven by a single factor,” Housing Secretary Jake Day said. “They are an accumulative result of land costs, construction costs, of financing costs, taxes and fees, of regulatory requirements and perhaps most importantly the time and uncertainty imposed on a project before a shovel ever hits the ground.” This year, the Moore administration pushed legislation that will grant housing developers “vesting rights” to ensure that projects are not delayed by having to incorporate new local policy changes created in the middle of the build. That law aims to avoid delays in construction timeline for new builds, which not only delays completion of new housing but adds to cost of development for that project. It also provides the “certainty” that builders say they need to find Maryland a more viable place to build, according to Day. But Del. Steven J. Arentz (R-Upper Shore) says policies set by the Maryland Department of Health and Maryland Department of the Environment also gum up the building process. “When I talk to people – I deal with a lot of builders, I’m in that business – and the reason they’re not building homes is they can’t make money,” Arentz said. “And the reason we’re not making money in this state is because we have a tremendous amount of regulations that it’s just crushing business … MDH, MDE — they’re crushing us as far as what we can and can’t do at the local level.” Day said that he and the housing department agree that regulations continue to be a hurdle for developers but there needs to be a balance. “I don’t want to let the state off the hook, we deserve as much scrutiny as our local partners,” he said. “We have to find the right balance in policymaking to protect the Maryland environment, the occupants of the housing, and addressing high housing costs.” Day acknowledged that there is more to be done, noting that the high cost of housing in Maryland is driving residents out of the state. “42% of young renters say they’re considering leaving the state. The reason they cite: high housing costs,” he said. “91% of full-time workers say that affordability is a huge or medium obstacle to homeownership. “Maryland’s high housing costs are driving people away from choosing Maryland. There’s a lot more work to do,” Day said. “Maryland is a thin state – nowhere in Maryland is far from an alternative.” SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE

**It's Friday September 18, 2026 and in this morning's issue we're covering:** Somali men in ICE custody say a ‘refueling’ stop became weeks at Guantánamo Bay**,** Effectiveness of NC certificate-of-need law meant as healthcare guardrail in doubt, Less work, fewer tips for hospitality workers during “brutal” summer slump in New Orleans, Arizona promised secure treatment for its sickest psychiatric patients. Seven years later, it still doesn’t exist, **Media outlets and others featured:** Sahan Journal, Carolina Public Press, North Carolina Health News, Verite News, Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, * * * ## Three Minnesota men are among a group of eight Somalis who have been held at the U.S. military facility since late August. By Mohamud Farah (Sahan Journal) Published: September 15, 2026 As many as 12 Somali deportees have passed through the U.S. detention facilities at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in recent weeks and eight remain, according to two Minnesota men still held there. One of the men, St. Paul resident Abdullahi Adam Mohamed, said he was told by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents that he was being deported from Louisiana to Somalia with a refueling stop in Cuba. He’s now been at Guantánamo for three weeks. Seven of the Somali detainees are currently located at Camp 6, a military detention center known for housing high-risk inmates, and the eighth is in isolation, Adam said. The two Minnesotans, and a third man interviewed by Sahan Journal, say they had active asylum cases and work permits, but were targeted for removal as the Trump administration stepped up deportations. They all describe punishing conditions at Guantánamo, aggressive shackling of prisoners, constant cold air and round-the-clock surveillance. Adam, 31, said he was detained on Dec. 12 at the beginning of Operation Metro Surge. “They pulled me over and asked me for my work permit,” he told Sahan Journal in a 10-minute phone interview from Camp 6. “I asked them if they had a warrant, and the reason they pulled me over.” “‘We are immigration officials. We know you’re Adam Abdullahi, and we don’t need a warrant.’ That’s what they told me,” he said. Adam said he doesn’t know why he was targeted. He has two misdemeanor snow emergency parking citations, but no other records in the state court database. In a statement for this story, the Department of Homeland Security said the Somalis held at Guantánamo Bay, who all arrived on the same flight, posed a threat. “This flight of illegal aliens to Guantánamo Bay included some of the worst of the worst with criminal histories including aggravated assaults, weapons offenses, robbery, multiple larcenies, police obstruction, possession of burglary tools, receiving stolen property, trespassing, unauthorized use of a vehicle, multiple drug charges and DUIs,” the statement said. DHS did not answer any other questions regarding the detainees. ## **Building a new life in St. Paul** Adam arrived in the U.S. as an asylum seeker in March 2023, obtaining a work permit and Social Security number. He quickly established his own mechanic business and worked for Amazon, where he traveled to different states to repair vehicles. When Adam was detained by ICE, his family was heartbroken, his cousin Naima Ali said. They believed his Social Security number, work permit, clean record and consistent appointment attendance would allow him to continue his asylum case, especially since he had an upcoming appointment that could lead to approval. Over the past nine months, Adam has been transferred from the Freeborn County Jail in Albert Lea, to a detention center in Covington, Kentucky, and then to Louisiana. An immigration judge ordered his removal on May 14, and Adam has no pending appeals. “They say we will go to Somalia from Miami, but first we will stop in Cuba for refueling and then go to other countries before reaching Somalia,” Adam said. Initially, he and the other Somali detainees were told they would be deported to Somalia, but instead found themselves in Guantánamo, where he and his fellow detainees have been held for nearly 20 days. Adam reached out to the Somali Embassy in Washington, D.C., and learned that ICE had reported his deportation to Somalia on Aug. 12. “I am here in Guantánamo,” he said. “I came to the U.S. to be safe,” Adam said. “I used to work and support my mother who died while I was in a detention center in Covington.” He described life in Guantánamo as challenging, citing the constant air conditioning that leaves the environment frigid, along with cold food and water. “When we come together for food, we’re all coughing all the time,” he said, “as if we’re in a coughing competition.” ## **Turned back at the Canadian border** Hassan Abdi Abtidoon, 31, is another Somali asylum seeker from Minnesota now detained at Guantánamo Bay. He came to the U.S. as an asylum seeker on Jan. 3, 2023, and moved to Minnesota, where he worked as a driver for Uber and Lyft, and held various factory jobs. As he watched the increase in anti-Somali rhetoric, fueled by social media comments by President Donald Trump, and then fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by immigration agents during Operation Metro Surge, Hassan became concerned about the outcome of his asylum application. His lawyer was overwhelmed with cases and had stopped responding to his calls, he said. When Hassan received a removal order from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) on April 6, he decided his best option was to seek asylum in Canada. On May 19, Hassan attempted to claim asylum at a border crossing but was stopped by Canadian authorities. They subsequently handed him over to U.S officials, who transferred him to Kandiyohi County jail in Willmar, which has an agreement with ICE to hold prisoners. Hassan’s family members expressed deep concern for his well-being following his detention at Guantánamo Bay. Abdiaziz Abdullahi, Abtidoon’s cousin, cited the facility’s troubling reputation and history. “It’s shocking and frightening that Hassan is being held in Guantánamo.” Hassan is described as an industrious, law-abiding individual with no criminal history. “He is a social person,” Abdiaziz said, “a talented poet, and is beloved by his friends and family for his generosity and capability.” Sakariye Abdi Mohamed Credit: Provided ## **Pulled over by a state trooper** Sakariye Abdi Mohamed, 22, is another Somali asylum seeker detained in Guantanamo Bay. He arrived in the U.S. in January 2023, and obtained a Social Security number, a work permit, and a commercial driver’s license. On Oct. 28, 2025, while driving a truck in Alabama, he was pulled over by a state trooper, who asked if he was a U.S. citizen or held a green card. Sakariye had neither. “The trooper was very aggressive to me and called ICE agents, who took me to a detention center in Alabama,” he said. “After eight days, they transferred me to another detention center in Louisiana, where I spent 11 months.” He said he was informed that he would be deported to Somalia with a stop in Florida. However, he was instead transferred to Guantanamo Bay, arriving on Aug. 26. “When we asked the officials about our prolonged detention at Camp 6,” he said. They said it was a federal decision from Washington, D.C., and offered no further explanation.” A third Minnesota man, who Sahan Journal could not reach, is also being held at Guantánamo, the three others said. ## **Concerns about legal access, due process** Shortly after Trump began his second term in 2025, he issued an executive order to expand the Migrant Operation Center at Guantánamo Bay to accommodate up to 30,000 people. Since then, ICE detainee counts at Guantánamo Bay have fluctuated from a high of 255 in February 2025, to three in August that year, according to the Deportation Data Project. In June, the last month for which data is available, nine deportees were held at Guantánamo. The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups have challenged the legality of holding immigrants facing civil charges in a military prison where they have limited access to family members or legal counsel. “There is no legal authority for migrants to be detained at Guantánamo, especially in Camp 6,” said Yumna Rizvi, of the Center for Victims of Torture. The language of the current administration mirrors that of the post-9/11 Bush administration, she said. “They are framing individuals held in Camp 6 as ‘high-priority criminal aliens.'” “The tactics, rhetoric, and narrative used at Guantanamo, originally designed for counterterrorism, are now being repurposed for immigration enforcement,” Rivzi said. “This raises significant concerns about due process and access to legal counsel, which appear to be systematic violations by design.” Marc Prokosch, who represents Adam, said he’s been able to track the cases of six of the eight Somali detainees currently held at Guantanamo Bay. Four were recent asylum-seekers, he said, but two had been in the U.S. for decades. All had final orders of deportation, he said, but no other additional charges. Hassan said the U.S. immigration authorities obtained a to-go-home letter from the Somali Embassy and said they’re deporting him to Somalia. He spent one night in a Louisiana detention center and found himself in Guantánamo. Sahan Journal contacted the Somali ambassador to the U.S. in Washington, D.C., to inquire about the distribution of “to-go-home” letters aimed at facilitating the deportation of asylum seekers. Ambassador Dahir Abdi said the process has changed, with U.S. immigration agents now coordinating directly with Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. “The system is centralized now and we don’t do it here anymore,” he said. “I never expected to be arrested in a prison established for the terrorists who I fled from,” Hassan said. He called the prison a “terrible place.” In addition to restrictions on phone calls, Hassan said there were limited opportunities for exercise. However, he mentioned that detainees can interact with one another. “During the day, we have a few hours together,” he said. He and Adam both expressed concern about the surveillance cameras installed in the bathrooms at Guantánamo Bay. The cameras continuously record, leaving no room for privacy. When asked about his impending deportation to Somalia, Hassan said he would face additional challenges because of his time at the U.S. military prison. “People believe that those who are detained in Guantánamo are terrorists and bad people,” he said. He said his name would become synonymous with Guantánamo. “Life in Somalia would be difficult under any circumstances, but this new stigma makes it even worse.” _Sahan data reporter Cynthia Tu contributed to this story._ The post Somali men in ICE custody say a ‘refueling’ stop became weeks at Guantánamo Bay appeared first on Sahan Journal. _This story is being shared with permission by the Sahan Journal, a local newsroom in St. Paul, MN. To learn more, please visit https://sahanjournal.com/._ * * * # Effectiveness of NC certificate-of-need law meant as healthcare guardrail in doubt by Lucas Thomae, Carolina Public Press September 15, 2026 In 1971, North Carolina passed its first certificate-of-need law. Copying a model which started in 1960s New York, the program would require medical providers to seek permission from the government before expanding or developing new services. The idea behind the policy was that it would prevent unnecessary spending by hospitals, which had been rapidly growing in the economic boomtime following World War II. Under a more centralized system, state health agencies aimed to reduce costs and ensure access for all patients. But just a couple years after the law’s passage, the North Carolina Supreme Court struck down the state’s certificate-of-need program. ##### **[** Subscribe for FREE to Carolina Public Press’ Daily, Weekend and Election 2026 newsletters.**]** Aston Park, a 50-bed nonprofit hospital in Asheville, had sued after the state denied its application to replace its aging facility with a new 200-bed hospital. Fearing that there weren’t enough physicians in Asheville to staff a new hospital of that size, North Carolina’s Medical Care Commission wrote in its decision that the proposed facility "would be an unnecessary and weakening duplication of services.” Aston Park argued to the Supreme Court that the certificate-of-need process violated the state Constitution’s anti-monopoly clause. The court agreed, ruling that the law granted “exclusive privileges" and the power of monopoly to existing hospitals. The law was struck down, but the certificate-of-need program wasn’t dead — just dormant. In 1974, Congress passed legislation incentivizing states to implement certificate-of-need programs of their own. With the blessing of the federal government, North Carolina revived its law four years later, including language about legislative findings in order to get around the court’s earlier objections. North Carolina remains the only state in which a legal challenge to its certificate-of-need law succeeded, even if that victory was short-lived. Aston Park never ended up building the 200-bed hospital at the center of the lawsuit. In 1975, it transferred its acute care beds to Memorial Mission Hospital and transitioned into a senior nursing facility. To this day, Mission Hospital — now under the control of Tennessee-based, for-profit HCA — enjoys a de facto monopoly in the region, thanks in large part to the current certificate-of-need law. This is the second installment in Battling for Beds, an investigative series by Carolina Public Press about how certificate-of-need disputes between competing health systems have hampered the state’s ability to meet healthcare needs in its fastest-growing communities. This article interrogates the effectiveness of certificate-of-need laws and examines how the process has been exploited to protect existing hospitals. The previous article investigated the extent to which legal delays have stalled the development of new hospital beds and undermined the state’s healthcare planning process. The final article explores proposals for reforming North Carolina’s certificate-of-need process and laws or abandoning them altogether. ### Certificate-of-need law: Guardrails or outdated relic? Nearly every US state adopted some form of a certificate-of-need program in the 1970s after Congress made it a requirement to receive funding for certain public health initiatives. However, reception to the policy was divided. In 1986, Congress repealed the law. Some states subsequently ended their certificate-of-need programs, but North Carolina is one of 35 states that has kept its law in place. There have been several attempts to get rid of the state’s certificate-of-need program since it was revived in 1978, both through legal challenges and legislative means, but so far none have stuck. North Carolina’s program remains among the most restrictive in the country, as it requires certificates of need for 23 different healthcare services. Only three states — Hawaii, Vermont and Kentucky — restrict more services. But do certificate of need laws actually keep healthcare costs down, as they were originally intended to do? Critics of them say that, in fact, they do the opposite. One of those critics is **Donald Bryson** , CEO of the John Locke Foundation, a libertarian think tank based in North Carolina. “Certificate-of-need artificially restricts supply, which just means that prices are artificially inflated over time,” Bryson told CPP. But others disagree. **Josh Dobson** , the CEO of the North Carolina Healthcare Association — the lobbying arm of the state’s hospital industry — told CPP he “fundamentally disagrees” with the idea that repealing certificate of need laws will lower costs. Instead, Dobson said getting rid of the laws would only serve to destabilize the finances of hospitals that are already operating under tight margins. The certificate-of-need program offers hospitals some protection from what they call “cream skimming.” That is when a non-hospital, like an outpatient surgery center, selectively chooses patients based on their profitability or insurance status. Hospitals, which are required to provide charity care and often lose money to low Medicaid reimbursements, don’t have the luxury of turning down unprofitable patients. “These other providers, if you will, can cherry pick who they want to see and who they do not want to see,” Dobson said. “They are able to flip the lights off at 5 o'clock. They are not required to be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and they don't have to provide free care for 20 to 30% of the people that walk in the door through charity care. “So it's not fair to say that it's a free market issue, when the playing field is not level.” ### What research says about CON programs’ impact According to Wake Forest Law professor **Mark Hall** , the effectiveness of certificates of need is a more nuanced topic than advocates on either side of the issue would like to admit. One thing however, is clear: they haven’t protected patients from soaring healthcare prices. “The laws haven't succeeded in controlling costs as much as we'd like,” Hall said. Even with certificate-of-need laws in place, hospital costs have far outpaced normal inflation for years. If more health systems were allowed to build competing facilities, Hall said, it could push them to lower prices. However, transforming the state’s hospital landscape into a purely free market could have adverse consequences. For example, relaxing certificate-of-need laws could be a nail in the coffin for many rural hospitals that are already struggling financially from low patient volume and recent cuts to the federal Medicaid program. “If there weren't those questions asked and constraints put on uncontrolled expansion, you could expect the larger hospitals in cities to invade those (rural) territories … just build a better hospital and drive the rural hospitals out of business,” Hall said. Many academics have attempted to quantify the impact of certificate-of-need laws, both by comparing states with and without them, and also by studying what happens when a state repeals its certificate-of-need requirements. One of those researchers is economist **Stephen Slivinski** of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Washington, D.C. In August, he co-authored a report which included a literature review of existing research on the impacts of certificate-of-need laws and what happens after they are repealed. Slivinski’s takeaway: the worst-case scenarios which the hospital industry warned about haven’t seemed to take place in states that ditched their certificate-of-need laws. “The academic research on this is fairly strongly in favor of the proposition that the sky won't fall if you liberalize or get rid of CON laws, and in fact, the opposite often occurs,” Slivinski said. Most studies found that certificate-of-need programs were associated with negative impacts to prices, access and quality of care. A majority of those studies also found that those conditions tended to improve in states that repealed or reformed their certificate-of-need programs. “CON laws are typically associated with worse outcomes in terms of health outcomes, in terms of cost, in terms of access, even things as simple as the amount of time it takes to drive to a hospital from where someone might live in a rural area,” Slivinski said. The Cato Institute report also found that states without certificate-of-need laws tended to have greater access to providers who offered services like obstetric care and neonatal ICU beds. North Carolina has struggled with maternity care deserts, a problem which research suggests could be made worse by the state’s certificate-of-need law. In the end, Slivinski said, these programs don’t do much other than insulate incumbent hospitals from potential competition. “There's no argument for health or safety or access that holds up,” he said. “So the only argument that really holds up is, well, maybe this is just cartel protection.” ### Stopping the clock on CON awards While hospital systems often go head-to-head in competitions over beds and medical equipment, they are generally unified by their support for certificate-of-need laws through the North Carolina Healthcare Association. The association has argued for decades that these laws are essential to financial stability and access for all patients by keeping service providers “right sized.” A more critical perspective is that certificate-of-need programs allow powerful hospitals to maintain control over their turf, like HCA in Asheville and Duke Health in Durham. Through costly litigation, these systems can make it difficult for potential competitors to break in, even if they do manage to win DHHS’ approval. It may also ward off potential competitors from even applying in the first place. In cases where the state decides to allocate beds or medical equipment to a new competitor, the spurned incumbent will often argue in an appeal that the decision should be reversed on technical grounds. Such was the case in Buncombe County, where HCA argued that AdventHealth’s proposal for a new hospital in Weaverville didn’t properly follow application guidelines and therefore shouldn’t have been approved in the first place. The courts ultimately ruled against HCA, but the legal battle still managed to delay the issuance of AdventHealth’s certificate of need by three years. Cement structures await installation at the site of the future AdventHealth hospital in Weaverville, seen on Sept. 10, 2026. Colby Rabon / Carolina Public Press DHHS has a generally streamlined process for most parts of the certificate of need process, but what it can’t control is how long it takes once an objector to an approved project elevates an appeal up through the court system. In the case of AdventHealth Weaverville in Buncombe County, the timeline went like this: * **Jan. 1, 2022:** The State Medical Facilities Plan determined that Buncombe County needed 67 new acute care beds. * **June 15, 2022:** AdventHealth, Mission Health (HCA) and Novant Health submitted competing applications for the beds. * **Nov. 22, 2022:** DHHS approved AdventHealth’s application for a new hospital in Weaverville, allocating them all 67 beds. Mission’s and Novant’s applications were denied. * **Dec. 21, 2022:** Novant and Mission filed appeals contesting AdventHealth’s approved application, pausing the issuance of the certificate of need. * **December 2025:** Three years later, the North Carolina Supreme Court ends Mission’s bid to overturn DHHS’ decision, allowing AdventHealth to receive its certificate of need and begin building the Weaverville hospital. Once a new competitor manages to get its foot in the door, like AdventHealth in Buncombe County, it doesn’t necessarily solve the issue of continuous delayed projects. Counties like Wake and Mecklenburg with multiple established systems still experience logjams as those competitors jockey in court over a limited quantity of hospital beds. > The introduction of an alternate hospital may increase access and patient choice, but it hasn’t led to new beds or medical equipment being deployed any quicker. In fact, competition surrounding certificates of need incentivizes health systems to contest their rivals’ approved projects for as long as possible. > These legal delays are in direct conflict with the state’s goal of creating enough hospital capacity to meet demand. But what’s preferable for public health isn’t necessarily the best option for health systems’ balance sheets. “It tells you that the financial stakes are really high,” Hall said. “It’d be one thing if all the competitors just put in their proposals and accepted what (DHHS) had to say… let’s move on and let bygones be bygones because we need some hospital built and this affects people’s welfare. “But each hospital is looking at their individual position and saying, ‘We think we have a legal case to make, and we are willing to go to court to state that case.’” ### Why appeals keep happening, even if they don’t win North Carolina’s general statutes do require appellants of certificate-of-need decisions to pay a bond, between $5,000 and $50,000, which may be paid to the winner of the CON if a judge finds that the appeal was frivolous or intended to cause an unnecessary delay. In the case of hospital projects that cost hundreds of millions of dollars, a winning system facing appeal may petition the judge to increase the bond to a maximum of $300,000. However, proving that an appeal was purely a delay tactic set up a high legal bar to overcome. The threat of financial penalty hasn’t deterred health systems from increasingly launching legal challenges to their competitors’ approved projects. That’s the case even though appeals are rarely successful. The more likely outcome is that health systems stuck fighting over a certificate of need may enter into a legal settlement with each other and DHHS. In the case of acute care beds, the parties may agree to split the available beds and each walk away with their own certificate of need. That is precisely what happened during the 2024 application cycle in Mecklenburg County, when Novant Health appealed DHHS’ decision to award 89 new hospital beds to Atrium Health for an expansion of its Carolinas Medical Center. In a settlement agreement, DHHS agreed to issue 45 beds to Atrium, while Novant walked away with 44 for its Presbyterian Medical Center. UNC Health and Duke Health entered a similar agreement after Duke spent four years contesting DHHS’ decision to allow UNC to build a new hospital in southern Durham County. Eventually, the parties agreed that UNC could build a new 102-bed near Research Triangle Park, while Duke was awarded 44 beds that it was originally denied in previous cycles. The construction site of a new UNC Health hospital near the Research Triangle Park in southern Durham County, seen on Sept. 14, 2026. Lucas Thomae / Carolina Public Press These success stories seem to have signaled to health systems that contesting their competitors’ projects is worth the risk of having to pay a bond. In 2025, 12 out of 14 acute care bed projects approved by DHHS statewide were appealed, which is a much higher rate than in previous years. So far in 2026, six of eight approved acute care projects have been appealed. That totals out to 454 beds waiting in legal limbo. And that number will only get larger — DHHS hasn’t yet ruled on another 22 applications for a total of 1,473 requested beds this cycle. Putting those beds into service before hospital overcrowding becomes a serious issue might be DHHS’ greatest challenge yet. This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # Veterans find purpose on the farm by Will Atwater, North Carolina Health News September 10, 2026 **Key Takeaways:** * The Veteran’s Farm teaches agricultural skills while offering former military members structure, community and a path into civilian life. * A state grant will help the nonprofit expand programs and support veterans in crisis as they wait for VA benefits. * The program connects veterans interested in farming with an industry seeking its next generation After serving five years in the Marine Corps and another 10 as a Department of Defense contractor, Robert Elliott found the transition away from military life difficult. The jobs he took did not last, he said, and neither did his first attempt at college. Elliott was at a low point. “I started going down to a really dark place in my mind,” he said. “A lot of folks that get out of the military in the first year, statistically speaking, wind up having really hard transitional issues.” Missing the camaraderie and structure of military life, Elliott said he returned to something familiar: farming. He was raised on a family farm in Louisburg, North Carolina, where he helped tend tobacco, corn and cattle, and he drew on that experience and the discipline he developed in the Marine Corps to give agriculture another shot. Farming restored Elliott’s sense of purpose, he said, and he began to wonder whether it could offer other veterans a route into civilian life. In 2015, he founded The Veteran’s Farm of North Carolina, a nonprofit that provides veterans with agricultural training and support as they pursue farm careers. #### **A way to ease into civilian life** The Veteran’s Farm of North Carolina trains military veterans in agriculture, with the goal of helping them build careers and find community after service. The nonprofit aims to address two challenges: helping veterans navigate civilian life and preparing a new generation to enter an aging farm workforce. Before founding The Veteran’s Farm in 2015, Elliott helped create Soldiers to Agriculture, a five-week training program now offered through N.C. Cooperative Extension in Cumberland County. The program introduces veterans, military spouses and active-duty service members preparing to leave the military to agricultural careers through classroom and hands-on instruction. The General Assembly provided new support for The Veteran’s Farm in its 2026 state budget; the nonprofit is slated to receive a $250,000 nonrecurring directed grant. Elliott, now 47, said the money will help the organization expand. The grant comes as North Carolina’s agricultural sector looks to bring new farmers into the industry. The average U.S. farm producer was 58.1 years old in 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Census of Agriculture. That aging workforce is a concern in North Carolina, where agriculture and agribusiness had an estimated $111.1 billion economic impact in 2022, according to a 2024 analysis of USDA data by NC State University economist Mike Walden. “Encouraging the next generation of farmers and ensuring they are prepared is important to the long-term success of agriculture in North Carolina,” North Carolina Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler shared in an emailed statement. “The Veteran’s Farm program works with military members who are interested in farming after their service ends, providing a solid educational foundation and mentors to help them prepare for a career in farming.” Retired Army Lt. Col. Andrew Scruggs served 21 years before retiring in 2025. The Cumberland County resident said he and his wife became interested in homesteading during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he began to see “how fragile our economy can be, and also our food supply and supply chain.” The couple began considering a land purchase and looking for ways to become more self-sufficient by growing food, Scruggs said. His wife learned about The Veteran’s Farm of North Carolina, and he decided to enroll after attending one of the nonprofit’s open houses. Scruggs began the training program in January and finished in May. Scruggs says one of the key points about the program is how it prepares veterans to enter agriculture without overextending themselves. “[Elliott] gives you a baseline understanding of what it means to be a small production farmer and helps you start in a smart, controlled way that fits your capabilities, instead of slinging out $200,000 on equipment and going down the wrong path,” Scruggs said. #### **Classroom and hands on training** The Veteran’s Farm offers several training options for veterans and service members interested in exploring agricultural production, volunteer staff member Robin Tutor said. Its flagship program, the Veterans Agricultural Training and Education Program, is a five-month course that combines classroom instruction, labs and farm tours with hands-on farm experience. After the first two months, which cover core agricultural skills, veterans move into a more individualized phase of the program. That portion includes a farm project, a business plan and more work experience, Tutor said. For active-duty service members preparing to leave the military, the organization offers the Farm Military Agriculture Program. The two-month course uses the same classes, labs and tours as the five-month course but is designed as a military-transition and career-exploration opportunity. Participants typically stay on active-duty pay while enrolled, Tutor said. The Veteran’s Farm also offers Basic Agricultural Training, a five-day course available by request for people seeking an introduction to farming. For participants who want to continue beyond VATEP and Farm MAP, the organization offers or connects them with apprenticeships and additional hands-on work experience through partnerships with workforce development, apprenticeship, university and community college programs. #### **Building more than farm skills** Elliott said some veterans enter The Veteran’s Farm’s training programs seeking more than the skills needed to pursue agriculture as a career. He recalled one participant who was dealing with a traumatic brain injury and a knee injury from military service. “One day he came to me and he was like, ‘Hey, listen, if it’s OK with you, can I just go sit with the cows today?’” Elliott said. “That’s what he wanted to do for the remainder of the time that he was here. I’m like, that’s absolutely fine with me.” Elliott said he knew the participant was unlikely to graduate from the program and become, as he put it, a “rock star farmer.” But the farm could offer time and space to adjust to life outside the military. “What the farm is doing is giving them time to decompress while they’re trying to get out of the Army,” Elliott said. “It kind of brings them down out of the tempo of the military.” Elliott said that one of the obstacles that former military personnel face when they leave the service is the lack of routine. “There's no structure,” he said. “In the military, everything you need is pretty much taken care of for you, or by somebody on your left and right.” #### **Suicide prevention** The loss of structure combined with other challenges can have devastating effects. Suicide is a serious concern for veterans. In 2023, 6,398 veterans died by suicide nationwide, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. The agency reported that 61 percent of those people had not received VA health care in the last year of their lives. “We've lost six of my guys to suicide,” Elliott said, speaking about people he served with. He and Tutor are developing a suicide-prevention model with the University of Arkansas that draws on what he sees as overlapping pressures facing veterans and farmers. “The same issues that veterans face that are leading to the suicide statistics in the veteran community are the same exact things, just in a little bit of a different format, that farmers are facing now,” Elliott said. Farmers and others in farming, fishing and forestry are among occupational groups with elevated suicide rates, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2021, the rate among men in that occupational group was 49.9 deaths per 100,000 male workers, compared with a rate of 32 deaths per 100,000 males in the general population. Elliott said The Veteran’s Farm works with a mental health expert who spends time getting to know the students, and teaches coping mechanisms to deal with stress. One goal is to make sure that veterans are signed up to receive health care through Veterans Affairs because the process can take a while, he said. “If they're not enrolled in it already, they're looking at eight to nine months before they get to see the first therapist, and you know that's usually just a basic intake,” Elliott said. “If we're talking about [roughly] a year between getting someone who is having a life crisis to the point where they can actually get in front of somebody with the benefits they have, there's a lot that can go wrong in that year.” To help address this, Elliott said the organization plans to use part of their new state funding to pay for veterans experiencing crisis to receive treatment from local providers while waiting for their VA benefits to become active. But Elliott and others involved with The Veteran’s Farm say that, for some veterans, farming can offer a way to carry forward the purpose they found in military life. “In farming, there is a sense of continuation of service,” said Scott Marlow, a former board member. “For people in the military, it’s very much about [that], and farming is a way to continue serv[ing] other people by growing food. And that’s not a small issue.” For more information about The Veteran’s Farm and their courses, visit their website or call 919-721-2039. This article first appeared on North Carolina Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # Less work, fewer tips for hospitality workers during “brutal” summer slump in New Orleans by Jasmine Robinson, Verite News New Orleans September 14, 2026 The start of the summer was the beginning of the end of Amara Sylvester’s time working at a fine dining restaurant in the French Quarter. As a server, she relied on tips to make money at work. But instead of waiting on tables, she was often sent home early because business was slow. With 12 years of experience working in hospitality in New Orleans, she knows slowdowns in the summertime will happen. But this summer felt different. When she took home an $87 paycheck for a week of work. At another point, her water got shut off at home because she couldn’t afford the bill. “Me and my family are going to be on the street if I continue to work here,” she recalled thinking at the time. She got a second job at another French Quarter restaurant earning an hourly wage working in the kitchen. Things weren’t better there. She could only get weekend shifts because business was slow. Her weekly paychecks never reached $400, she said. “I was going through a real hard time, especially when I was working both, and I still wasn’t even able to pay my bills because that’s how slow it was,” Sylvester said. It’s a reality that countless hospitality workers endure every year during a period known as the “summer slump.” This is when tourism slows — generally attributed to sweltering heat and a decrease in conferences, conventions and other special events that are foundational to the local tourism economy. As tourism drops off, so does business at the city’s restaurants and bars. Each year from June through September, hospitality workers in New Orleans have to cope with less tips, fewer shifts or even layoffs as their employer tries to keep the business afloat. According to some who spoke with Verite News, this summer was harder than usual to weather financially. A tourist walks with her suitcase past a barrier blocking Decatur Street on September 11, 2026. In the third quarter of 2025 (July through September), food and beverage workers in Orleans Parish earned an average of $580 weekly, the lowest of all four quarters, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Wages peaked in the fourth quarter, when workers earned an average of $650. Third quarter data is not yet published for 2026. Walter Leger, president and CEO of tourism marketing agency New Orleans & Company, said the summer slump has posed a challenge in New Orleans for more than 40 years. “I think the sophisticated nature of the workers in this field is that they recognize some of these months are not as ideal as others. For them to have to plan accordingly is something that I think they've grown accustomed to,” Leger said. Despite New Orleans’ hospitality scene being a major draw for tourism, it’s among the lowest paying industries in the region. The New Orleans metro area’s 50,000 food prep and serving-related workers — which includes all food and beverage workers — earned an annual median wage of $26,000 in 2025, according to the BLS. This includes tips. For Kamari Stevens, a bartender at a Mid-City bar, prepping for this summer meant picking up extra shifts in April and May. When he talked to Verite News in early September, he was working three days a week at the bar with shifts ranging from eight to 12 hours. He said he knows bartenders in the Central Business District and French Quarter whose jobs only schedule them one day a week this time of year because business is so slow. “You just learn. I've heard my elder New Orleanians be like, ‘Alright, the summer's going to be slow. So prepare, tighten your belts,’” Stevens said. But Stevens said his paychecks aren’t going as far as they used to due to economic inflation. According to the BLS Consumer Price Index, the cost of consumer goods rose 3.4% during the 12 month period ending in August 2026, led by a surge in energy costs. Uncertainty around tariffs has also troubled the industry since the Trump administration first enacted new tariffs in April 2025. “As the cost of things start to rise, it’s hard because you don’t want to pass those costs along to your customers, but you also do want to give your employees raises because you know that their cost of living is increasing,” said Mara Baumgarten Force, a professor of finance at Tulane University and a member of the city’s revenue estimating committee. Force is also a member of the Verite News Board of Advisers. Due to a lag in when tourism data is published, it’s unclear if data aligns with anecdotal accounts from hospitality workers who say this summer is the worst they’ve worked through. June hotel occupancy hovered around 55%, as presented by the New Orleans Convention Center at its August board of commissions meeting. That’s slightly higher but nearly on par with June 2025. New Orleans & Company shared data with Verite News showing that “out of market” visitation to downtown from June through August of 2026 increased by 5.4% year-over-year. The data was pulled from Placer, an AI-powered tool that analyzes foot traffic. “Anecdotally, I spoke to some folks just last week who were so pleased with how strong July was for them this year,” Leger said in an August interview with Verite News. “But I also hear anecdotally from people who are saying this is the most challenging year they've had.” In the summertime, New Orleans has historically enjoyed a boost in international tourism. But workers say there’s a noticeable drop in international guests they’ve served this year. Recent data from the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport seems to match this. In its May 2026 report, the most recent at the time of publication, the airport reported that about 6,100 passengers got off of international flights at Armstrong. That’s a 44.9% decrease from May 2025, when about 11,100 passengers got off of planes coming to New Orleans from out of the country. This data also includes U.S. citizens returning to the country. French Quarter bartender Eric Smith working on September 11, 2026. Aaron Knecht is a bar manager in the French Quarter. The veteran bartender said he’s worked in more than 40 bars in his career, and that French Quarter establishments are the hardest hit during the summer slump. “Right now, it's almost like every business and every bartender in the general area is behind on a poker machine they're really sure is going to pay out,” Knecht said. For tipped workers like bartenders, foot traffic is critical to earning sufficient wages. But the reality, he said, is that some workers don’t make a living during the summer. “It's really, really hard for morale when somebody comes in and works an eight hour shift and barely makes enough to cover the Uber back and forth because it was slow,” he said. A new, unanticipated factor made an already challenging summer "infinitely worse,” he said. The bar was one of dozens of businesses on upper Decatur Street where construction fencing for a Sewerage & Water Board project has blocked roads for a year. Fencing in front of the bar was removed in mid August, though some obstructions still remain on nearby blocks. Regarding the officials in charge of construction and those organizing relief to businesses, Knecht said they’ve shown “blatant disrespect” for service industry workers by not being more considerate of the year-long financial hardship it has caused them. The fenced-off construction zone on Decatur St. is seen from Turtle Bay, a French Quarter bar, on June 8, 2026. **WORKERS CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE** JD Eubanks has worked in the restaurant industry for 30 years and his recent jobs have been as an executive chef at fine dining restaurants in the French Quarter. He called this summer “brutal,” and said he’s observed employers “aggressively” reducing labor costs in order to turn a profit. Businesses drastically cutting workers’ hours — or laying off staff only to refill those positions in the fall — is common, he said. He sees these business practices every summer in New Orleans, especially in the French Quarter. When it comes to cuts and layoffs, hourly staff like cooks are vulnerable because they’re more expensive to retain than staff making a tipped wage, like servers. The minimum wage for tipped employees in Louisiana is $2.13. “The quality of guest experience goes down, the quality of food goes down because they're still wanting the same results with less people,” Eubanks said. Chef JD Eubanks in the walk-in fridge at a French Quarter restaurant on Wednesday, April 2, 2025. For restaurants, labor management also includes delegating tables to servers — directly impacting how much in tips a server will make. Restaurant workers have told Verite News that toxic workplace politics can result in problematic decision making by managers. Eubanks said this can bleed into selecting staff for shift cuts and layoffs, too. What a business might see as a short-term solution to save on costs during the summer can have life altering effects on a worker. “Saving money causes [workers] mental health issues and it also is costing people broken hearts, broken homes, lost assets, lost income,” Eubanks said. For Sylvester, working two jobs didn’t provide her the stability she needed to take care of her family. There were times she was sent home early from her serving job due to a lack of patrons. And at her kitchen job, she said the $17.50 hourly pay wasn’t high enough given her responsibilities as a fry cook. Her wife works in restaurants too, which doubled the uncertainty that they’d be able to support their two kids and dog. “I feel like I can't perform my job if I'm under so much stress. I still go to work but I don't feel like I give my best,” Sylvester said. She left both jobs for what she hopes are greener pastures as the summer winds down, working as a server assistant at a French Quarter restaurant hotel. Amara Sylvester, a server at a restaurant in the French Quarter, poses for a portrait on September 11, 2026. Robert LeBlanc is the founder and CEO of the LeBLANC+SMITH hospitality group made up of bars, restaurants and hotels. LeBlanc said last summer was tougher financially than this summer on his businesses. He gave credit to New Orleans & Company for promoting programs like COOLinary and Tales of the Cocktail to drive business. But he still has to strategize for the summer. He said that at his restaurants, some employees’ schedules get reduced from a 40 hour week down to 32 or 33 at worst, and he doesn’t do summer layoffs or temporarily close his businesses, a common practice for New Orleans restaurants. “These people are important to us and we would rather incur a bit more labor cost when it's really slow to reinvest in the people who allow us to do really well when it's busy,” LeBlanc said. It’s the type of people-focused approach that Eubanks wants to see more of in New Orleans restaurants. “We have to be fiscally responsible, but we also have to be physically responsible for human beings. I think that's the piece that's really missing in the city,” Eubanks said. This article first appeared on Verite News New Orleans and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # Arizona promised secure treatment for its sickest psychiatric patients. Seven years later, it still doesn’t exist. by Jasmine Demers, Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting August 13, 2026 _This article is published as part of the_ Mental Health Parity Collaborative_, a national partnership between AZCIR, The Carter Center and other newsrooms throughout the U.S._ Larry Bootsma was 23 years old when he experienced psychosis for the first time. His parents still remember the phone call from his apartment. He was panicking, saying bugs were crawling out of the vents. He was later diagnosed with schizophrenia. Larry exhausted nearly every level of Arizona’s behavioral health system over the next 25 years, including its most intensive public services for people with serious mental illness, or SMI. He was ordered by a judge to receive treatment, assigned to work with a specialized team of psychiatrists, nurses and case managers, and eventually given a court-appointed public guardian. Despite those interventions, Larry never found lasting stability. He lived on the streets and cycled in and out of hospitals and treatment centers, occasionally landing in jail as his illness worsened. And then, on the morning of Sept. 24, 2025, the 47-year-old, known to his family as “Larry Bear,” was found dead at a bus stop in Phoenix, just outside of the mental health clinic where he received treatment. The medical examiner said he died of a drug overdose. “All this didn't have to end like this. That's the hard part for me,” said Helen Bootsma, Larry’s mom. “He could have gotten better.” The cycle of failed treatment that preceded Larry’s death reflects a gap that Arizona has recognized for years: The state has no appropriate treatment options for people with mental illnesses too severe to be managed in the community but who don’t qualify for long-term hospitalization. Advocates estimate that up to 3% of the roughly 63,000 Arizonans with serious mental illness—nearly 2,000 people—could fall into that gap. Lawmakers tried to address the problem in 2019 when they authorized secure behavioral health residential facilities, small group homes where patients could receive longer-term, court-ordered treatment in a secure setting. AZCIR found that in the seven years that followed, the effort repeatedly faltered amid contractor failures, funding gaps, legal complications and provider challenges. It wasn't until April 2026 that the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, the state's Medicaid agency, began seeking providers to operate the long-promised facilities. Even then, it could not say when they would be up and running. In the meantime, some of Arizona’s sickest psychiatric patients are left rotating through costly, short-term interventions that experts say repeatedly fail to produce meaningful recovery. * * * Two days before Larry died, Helen received a message from his treatment team at Terros Health. Larry had picked up his medications and was compliant with his court order. By the state's own standards, the system was doing what it was designed to do. But the team also mentioned that Larry was mixing methamphetamine with fentanyl and following it with alcohol. His daily use had increased substantially since his detox a week earlier. The message ended with an explanation that his parents had gotten countless times before: “Terros policy is to meet the client where they are. We will continue to encourage Larry to seek assistance for his substance use when and if he is ready. Of course, substance use is never a reason to psychiatrically hospitalize someone, so Larry’s increased use is not a legitimate reason to amend his (court-ordered treatment).” His treatment team could encourage care, monitor his condition and respond when he was in crisis. But unless his illness put him in immediate danger or left him unable to care for himself, they had few options to keep him in treatment. Most of Arizona’s behavioral health system is built around this kind of voluntary model. And a lot of the time, it works. But Larry, like many people with the most severe forms of SMI, had anosognosia, a neurological condition that left him unable to recognize he was ill. It is a primary reason people with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder refuse medication, walk out of treatment and experience repeated relapses. One in four adults with serious mental illness also has a substance use disorder, which can worsen the symptoms of mental illness and make long-term recovery that much harder. For people who can’t voluntarily engage in treatment, a few days or weeks of care is rarely enough to stabilize them, said Josh Mozell, a mental health attorney and president of the Association for the Chronically Mentally Ill. > "They cycle through things like (group homes) and homelessness and crisis centers and interactions with police and fire. All the while getting sicker and sicker and sicker—and almost irredeemable." > > josh mozell "They cycle through things like (group homes) and homelessness and crisis centers and interactions with police and fire,” Mozell said. “All the while getting sicker and sicker and sicker—and almost irredeemable." That cycle defined Larry’s adult life. * * * In the five years before he died, Larry was hospitalized at least 26 times for a total of 280 days, according to a timeline compiled by his parents. Between hospitalizations, he was placed in behavioral health residential facilities at least 10 times. The group homes provide around-the-clock care but patients can leave whenever they want. Each of Larry’s stays was followed by another crisis and another hospitalization. “What a waste for him to be admitted in each one of these situations and then not have a positive outcome,” said Helen, who is also an advocate with Arizona Mad Moms, an organization that supports families of people with serious mental illness. “Each one of these would have been—could have been—an opportunity for wellness.” According to an AHCCCS report, nearly half of the roughly 8,000 people with serious mental illness discharged from unlocked residential facilities in fiscal year 2025 were hospitalized within a year. In the same report to the governor, the agency acknowledged that conditions such as anosognosia mean some patients are "unable to engage voluntarily in interventions, including antipsychotic medication and community support," and that court-ordered treatment "may be necessary for stabilization." That’s why lawmakers authorized secure residential treatment seven years ago. * * * * * * Unlike traditional residential facilities, patients could not simply walk out, giving them time to stabilize on medication, gain insight into their illness and ideally transition to a less restrictive setting. The homes, each capped at 16 beds, are meant for individuals under court-ordered treatment whose repeated hospitalizations, homelessness or arrests show they have been unsuccessful in less restrictive settings. Judges could authorize placements ranging from three to 12 months. Under those criteria, Larry would have qualified for a placement. And his parents believe it could have made all the difference. “In a secure environment and taking his meds,” Helen said, Larry “was a different boy.” His parents saw that version of him one last time in the weeks before he died. During his final hospital stay at Aurora Behavioral Health, he was on clozapine, an antipsychotic medication primarily used for treatment-resistant schizophrenia. Larry was like his old self, they said—cracking jokes and discussing football, Carl’s Jr. and music. "We talked about things that a normal couple of guys would talk about," his dad, Elvern, said. A week later, he was gone. * * * Public records and interviews show Arizona’s effort to build secure facilities stalled after a series of setbacks. AHCCCS awarded grant funding to a provider in 2020, but the project ran into delays finding properties, rising construction costs and budget constraints. After the provider failed to meet the terms of its agreement, AHCCCS halted the project and ended the contract in 2022. Lawmakers approved $25 million for the construction of five secure facilities that same year, but the funding was pulled from the state budget after AHCCCS was unable to move the project forward. Attempts to restore that funding failed two years in a row. Instead, lawmakers approved a $5 million appropriation in 2025 for AHCCCS to restart the effort. "We thought we could pass the law, and the agencies would get the rest done," Mozell said. "That's just not the truth. If you're going to get something done that actually builds a level of care in the system … you have to hold these agencies' hands." The project hit another roadblock after county attorneys identified a pathway in the law that allowed people charged with a dangerous crime—and found mentally unfit to stand trial—to be placed in secure facilities alongside civil psychiatric patients. Mozell said providers were unwilling to participate until lawmakers passed a measure separating the two populations in 2025—a fix that cost the project another year. Disability rights and civil liberties organizations have also long raised concerns that expanding secure or involuntary treatment could come at the expense of patients’ rights and due process. "People with disabilities have the right to receive services in the least restrictive setting that's appropriate for their needs," said Asim Dietrich, a supervisory attorney at Disability Rights Arizona. Citing shortages of community treatment teams and overburdened case managers, he contended that "if more resources were focused on home and community-based services, we likely wouldn't need the (secure facilities)." Supporters of secure treatment say the due process concerns, while valid, mischaracterize how the facilities would actually work. By the time someone qualifies for placement, a judge has already determined that less restrictive options have failed and the legal standard for involuntary care has been met. "More than any other place in the behavioral health system, there's going to be due process," Mozell said during a 2019 legislative hearing, as lawmakers considered creating the facilities. Leslie Carpenter of the national Treatment Advocacy Center, which has long advocated for expanding involuntary treatment options for people with severe mental illness, thinks the debate has become too polarized. Both sides agree that community-based services need strengthening, she said, but for the sickest patients, secure treatment fills a gap that community care alone cannot close. "A secure setting does not automatically have to be a bad setting," said Carpenter, the center’s senior legislative advocacy manager. “I would propose that the number of people we’re seeing in our prisons, in our jails, homeless and untreated, and in our graveyards—that’s much more carceral … than to be in a state facility that is meant to meet their needs." Larry Bootsma during his high school years, before he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. His parents remember him as a fiercely competitive honors student who loved to play his guitar. Photo by Christopher Lomahquahu | AZCIR Without secure residential facilities available, many of Arizona’s sickest mental health patients are trapped in a loop of emergency room visits, psychiatric hospitalizations and crisis care—a pattern that comes at a steep cost to the state. Last year alone, AHCCCS spent more than $1.2 billion on behavioral health services for members with serious mental illness: about $20,000 per member, on average. A 2024 paper authored by Mozell and other mental health experts said those who would qualify for secure treatment visit emergency rooms five times more often than the general population and, when hospitalized, stay four times as long. They said “it would be less costly, more therapeutic, and more humane for the person to spend this time in a secure, home-like setting.” Experts say secure residential facilities could also help relieve a longstanding bottleneck at the Arizona State Hospital, the state’s highest level of long-term psychiatric treatment. "There are people at … that highest, most secure level of treatment, that are ready for discharge if there was a place to put them,” said Will Humble, executive director of the Arizona Public Health Association. Patients at the Arizona State Hospital stay an average of more than four years. In just the first month of the current fiscal year, discharge delays kept beds occupied for a combined 482 days by patients who no longer needed to be there. Those delays are especially significant in Arizona, which had the lowest rate of state-operated psychiatric beds for civilly committed patients in the nation as of 2023. In April, seven years after Arizona authorized secure behavioral health facilities for people with serious mental illness, AHCCCS formally began its search for providers to build and operate them. But the agency still could not say when the facilities would open. AHCCCS told AZCIR that providers have to be selected and facilities must be developed, licensed and staffed before services can begin. The progress came too late for Larry. He died before Arizona established the kind of care his family believes could have helped him. His parents hold onto the memory of the son they knew—affectionate, fiercely competitive and always reaching for a guitar. Their “Larry Bear.” On June 26, what would have been Larry’s 48th birthday, Helen brushed aside blades of grass from his headstone before laying a single red rose across the top. She rested her hand there for a moment, then reached up to take her husband’s. "He's safe now," Elvern told her. "He's OK." _This article is published as part of the_ Mental Health Parity Collaborative_, a national partnership between AZCIR and The Carter Center’s Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism and other newsrooms throughout the U.S._ * * * This article first appeared on Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * *

By Kaleigh Yost, Penn State, The Conversation Published: September 10, 2026 **By Kaleigh Yost, Penn State** Pennsylvania has over 180 levees that span approximately 155 miles (255 kilometers) and keep its rivers from flooding. They protect about 158,000 people and US$26.2 billion in property across the state, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. However, those levees are aging, and funding to maintain and improve them is becoming scarcer. At the same time, extreme weather is becoming increasingly frequent and severe. As a geotechnical engineer and geohazards researcher, I study how levees respond to flooding. I also help develop solutions to evaluate, manage and improve aging levee infrastructure. These solutions are more important than ever as Pennsylvania continues to see record rainfall this season. ## How levees work Levees are earthen embankments positioned parallel to a river that effectively raise the height of the banks of the river to prevent overflow when the river swells. Typically, levees are designed to prevent flooding from a particular-size flood. Often, that’s a flood that has a 1% chance of occurring in any given year. Levees can be breached when water flows over the top during flooding. They can also fail due to erosion, water seeping through or under the embankment, and partial collapse of the embankment before floodwater reaches the top. In Pennsylvania, flooding is a frequent and damaging natural hazard. The state’s 86,000 miles (138,000 kilometers) of rivers and streams commonly surge under heavy rains and snowmelt. Major population centers Philadelphia and Pittsburgh both are flanked by rivers. And although Pennsylvania is not thought of as a coastal state, it can be significantly impacted by remnants of hurricanes and tropical storms. Pennsylvania’s 2023 State Hazard Mitigation Plan has recorded almost 5,000 flood events in the state since 1996. The National Flood Insurance Program has paid over $1 billion in claims to property owners in Pennsylvania over that same time period. ## Aging infrastructure and growing costs The Flood Control Act of 1936, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as part of his New Deal agenda, was partially motivated by devastating flooding in Pennsylvania that year. The legislation allocated funding for the construction of many of Pennsylvania’s levees. As a result, most levees in Pennsylvania were constructed by the state and federal government between 1950 and 1970. This means the majority of Pennsylvania’s levees were designed and constructed based on engineering standards and practices from six to eight decades ago, and they have exceeded their typical design life of 50 years. After construction of the levees, the federal government transferred responsibility for management and upkeep to local community sponsors. Over 90% of Pennsylvania’s levees are locally operated and maintained. For many rural Pennsylvania communities with aging populations, declining tax bases and labor shortages, these costs can be a challenge. Maintaining levee embankments isn’t cheap. It requires managing vegetation, controlling erosion, removing debris and repairing animal burrows. Other features of levees, like floodwalls, pump stations and pipes, also require periodic maintenance and upgrades. In other words, construction of a levee is not a one-time investment. It is an ongoing commitment that can be expensive as older levees require more repairs and upgrades, and inflation drives up costs. ## Levees not built for today’s flood risks Flood risk is understood as a combination of hazard, exposure and vulnerability. All three change over time. Evolving weather patterns are resulting in more severe flood hazards. As areas protected by levees become more developed, more people and infrastructure are exposed to the hazard. Aging infrastructure increases their vulnerability. Heavy rainfall across Pennsylvania is increasing. From 1958 to 2021, the amount of rainfall during the top 1% heaviest storms in the Northeast U.S. increased by 60%, according to the Fifth National Climate Assessment, published by the U.S. Global Change Research Program. The Federal Emergency Management Agency continually updates U.S. floodplain maps to better reflect current risk. These updates can trigger a review of a levee system’s performance. If a community cannot show that its levee meets the minimum design, operations and maintenance requirements outlined in the Code of Federal Regulations, areas behind the levee will be considered unprotected against the 1% annual chance flood. This will result in higher flood insurance premiums and development restrictions for homeowners and businesses located behind the “unaccredited” levee. Currently, only around 15% of Pennsylvania’s levees are accredited by FEMA. As FEMA proceeds with floodplain mapping updates in Pennsylvania, the need to pursue accreditation is becoming more pressing for many communities. But the accreditation process can be time-consuming and expensive. Levee sponsors are responsible for hiring a professional engineer to conduct the analyses needed to certify that the levee meets the minimum requirements. If the engineer identifies upgrades needed to meet minimum protection levels, like raising the levee height, the levee sponsors must find funding to make those upgrades. ## Scattered funding for levee repairs and upgrades Financial support for levees is lacking nationally. Although Congress reauthorized the National Levee Safety Program until 2028, appropriations have not been made to fully fund it. No single stream of funding supports levee maintenance and upgrades. Small communities often have to piece together funding from multiple sources in order to complete a needed project. Communities draw from local taxes or other fees to support their modest flood control budgets and supplement grant funding. Taxes or fees specifically to support levee operations, maintenance or upgrades are uncommon, though one notable exception is the levee fee collected by the Luzerne County Flood Protection Authority in northeastern Pennsylvania. This fee generates revenue used for maintenance and operations of the 16-mile-long (28-kilometer) levee system along the Susquehanna River that protects around 18,000 buildings and over 62,000 people. Despite the fee, the Luzerne County Flood Protection Authority still has to seek grant funding to support large projects. Some state funding for levee repairs and upgrades is available through the Pennsylvania capital budget, but these funds are limited and subject to bureaucratic delays. Some communities obtain grants up to $500,000 from the state’s Department of Community & Economic Development Flood Mitigation Program. The program requires the participating community to match 15% of the total project costs. The Pennsylvania Local Share Account can also support some levee projects of limited scope. Starting in 2020, FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, or BRIC, program provided an avenue for federal funding for hazard mitigation projects, including levee upgrades. But FEMA announced the elimination of the BRIC program in April 2025 and canceled around $182.5 million in grants already awarded to Pennsylvania. At least two of those grants were supporting Pennsylvania levee projects: the rehabilitation of the Duryea levee in Luzerne County, and construction plans for a new levee in nearby Exeter. Pennsylvania was one of over 20 states that sued the federal government in response to the termination of the BRIC funding. The program was reinstated in March 2026 after a judge ruled the termination unlawful. However, it is unclear how and when funds will be distributed, and whether those funds will cover planned project costs. ## Future outlook The bottom line is that levees built in the mid-1900s will not continue to provide the same level of flood protection forever. Communities across Pennsylvania will need innovative solutions to promote flood resilience despite limited financial capacity as their levees continue to age, severe weather worsens and funding remains uncertain. My colleagues at Penn State and I are working to develop and deploy new technologies to investigate levee conditions, improve engineering analyses and establish community-centered approaches to address this challenging issue. Geophysical technologies allow you to “see” inside a levee without disturbing the embankment and can be less expensive than traditional methods of levee investigation. These methods use seismic, electrical or magnetic waves to characterize soil layers and their properties. Drones can support collection of highly detailed imagery, topography and even information about internal erosion. Advances in these technologies will enable more rapid and robust assessments of levee conditions. Local leaders understand their community’s unique challenges when it comes to flood resilience – but they need technical support and financial resources to implement solutions. _Read more of our stories about_ Philadelphia and Pennsylvania_, or sign up for our Philadelphia_ newsletter on Substack_._ _This article is republished from_ The Conversation_, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by:_ Kaleigh Yost_,_ Penn State **Read more:** * Data center projects in Pennsylvania face stronger local scrutiny after Shapiro’s executive order * Microplastics are everywhere in Pennsylvania’s water – but the tide may be turning * West Coast levee failures show the rising risks from America’s aging flood defenses _Kaleigh Yost receives funding from the National Science Foundation. Kaleigh Yost is contributing to the American Society of Civil Engineers Pennsylvania Infrastructure Report Card 2026 update._

By Shannon Heckt (Virginia Mercury) Published: September 10, 2026 The State Corporation Commission has ordered additional chances for the public to officially testify in the case to approve or reject the proposed $67 billion NextEra-Dominion merger, Virginia regulators said Thursday. In addition to the three days for telephonic testimony already planned at the beginning of the case, the commissioners mandated three in-person hearings across Dominion’s Virginia coverage area. > Clock starts for state regulators to review proposed Dominion-NextEra merger This will allow additional opportunities for residents to weigh in on the merger that could create the largest regulated utility in the world, as the public and state lawmakers heighten their scrutiny of the deal. The first of the three in-person meetings will be held on the evening of Nov. 5 inside the SCC’s courtroom in Richmond. The dates and locations of the other two meetings have yet to be determined. “Over the last few years, the Commission has endeavored to increase accessibility to its proceedings,” Commissioner Samuel Towell wrote in the order. It is not unprecedented for the commission to host hearings outside of the Richmond courtrooms. Those typically happen for cases such as transmission lines or compressor stations, however, which would mostly impact one locality. But the magnitude of the merger and vigorous public engagement in the case has prompted the SCC to take this unusual step. “There is no identified remote locus most impacted by this proceeding; the entire Dominion service territory is affected. Further, the approval or denial of the application does not uniquely alter the physical character of any particular community,” Towell wrote. “This is not a case that, under normal circumstances, would warrant remote, in-person hearings. But this is not a normal case.” The three public testimony periods to be held via telephone are scheduled on the morning of Nov. 5 as well as Nov. 9 and 10. Due to time constraints, the public is encouraged to submit written testimony, by Nov. 9. Towell noted that commissioners weigh in-person testimony equally with telephone or written testimonies. “A statement made in person at a remote location is given no more (or less) weight than a statement provided telephonically or in writing.” The merger of the two major utility companies has garnered significant national attention and prompted action from state lawmakers. > Va. House speaker details ‘concerns’ about NextEra-Dominion merger in letter to state regulators Lt. Gov. Ghazala Hashmi launched a statewide listening tour about the proposed deal and House Speaker Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, sent a letter to SCC Chair Kelsey Bagot — a former NextEra attorney who has declined to recuse herself from the case — detailing his concerns and suggestions about the merger. Lawmakers also requested that Gov. Abigail Spanberger call a special session to allow the General Assembly a chance to pass legislation that would allow the merger case’s six-month review period to be extended. Spanberger said late last week she would not convene a special legislative session over the merger, pointing out that she has already taken an unprecedented step by filing to intervene in the case. A timeline of the schedule for the merger case can be found on the SCC website. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX.

**It's Friday September 11, 2026 and in this morning's issue we're covering:** Three North Carolina schools made big gains on chronic absenteeism, Fayetteville State seeing record enrollment, retention, Designed to help people with serious mental illness, Joliet Treatment Center repeatedly failed to prevent or respond to fires, despite two deaths, Receiver in charge of turning around Jackson’s water system now says city should sell it, It’s dangerously hot inside some New Orleans homes, even with air conditioning, study says, Despite eye-catching strikes and employer concessions, the percentage of unionized workers in the city remained flat in an annual report on the state of organized labor, One Woman’s Tormented Path to Prison, Regulators Knew This Marijuana Product Was Harming People. It Stayed on Shelves for More Than a Year. **Media outlets and others featured:** NC Newsline, Carolina Public Press, The Marshall Project, Mississippi Today, Verite News, The City Reporter, Prison Journalism Project, ProPublica. * * * ## Three North Carolina schools made big gains on chronic absenteeism. Here’s what they’re doing. By Ahmed Jallow (North Carolina Newsline) Published: September 8, 2026 At Washington County High School, Principal Torrey Hines learned that some students were spending part of the school day at a barbershop instead of attending an intervention period, a designated time for additional academic support. So Hines went to the barbershop one morning to find out why. A student told him they skipped because intervention was scheduled first thing in the morning. Hines said the school responded by moving that intervention block to “smack dab in the middle of the day.” The story was one of several examples shared by three principals at a recent State Board of Education meeting about how their schools have improved attendance. North Carolina’s chronic absenteeism rate remains well above pre-pandemic levels. About 400,000 students were chronically absent during the 2024-25 school year, meaning they missed at least 10% of school days. That was about one in four students. The statewide chronic absenteesim rate has fallen from a peak of 31.2% in 2021-22 to 24.3% in 2024-25. Still, students who are chronically absent miss about 30 days of school on average, according to the state Department of Public Instruction. DPI has identified more than 300 schools statewide as “Bright Spots” based on improvements in chronic absenteeism. The schools range from elementary to high school, and their approaches vary. At Northwest Elementary in Pitt County, Principal Taimak Willis said staff focus on understanding what is keeping students out of school. “We believe that people matter. So yes, we’re talking about students, but what about the parents? Once we find out that there are attendance issues, we deal with the students, but we go and make sure that the parents have all of the resources and things that they need,” Willis said. Teachers are asked to alert school staff when a student misses two or three consecutive days. A social worker then contacts the family, and the school’s attendance team discusses next steps. In one case, the school connected a mother who was struggling with her mental health to resources and helped connect the family with transportation and other resources so the students could get to school. Northwest also has a family resource center that has basic supplies such as toiletries and is equipped with a washer and dryer. Willis said the center can help students whose circumstances outside school are affecting their attendance. The school also has an interpreter that works closely with families, including by making home visits. Willis said some students who had struggled with attendance now come to the front office to eat with the interpreter because of the relationship she has built with them. Hertford County Middle School divides students into three groups based on attendance, said Principal Elenia Riddick. Those attending regularly, those trending toward chronic absenteeism, and those who are already chronically absent. The school assigns an adult to check in with students in the two higher-risk groups each morning. If a student is absent, that adult calls the family to find out what happened and whether the school can help. Building relationships with students and their families has been key to the school’s strategy, she told the board. “What we really focused on at Hertford County Middle School was those personal check-ins, making those connections with students,” said Principal Elenia Riddick, “and they’re excited about coming to school when they know somebody is there looking for them.” Principal Elenia Riddick, Hertford County Middle School (Courtesy photo) Riddick said the school also tries to recognize students whose attendance improves by at least 5% after the first nine weeks. For some students who do not typically receive awards at school, it’s a big deal. Principal Hines also talked about efforts to make school more engaging. The school uses a house system modeled after the Ron Clark Academy, with students divided into teams that compete for points and recognition. The school plans to use attendance in the competition, with incentives for the house with the best attendance. Hines says his students have quickly embraced the house system. “We’re noticing just within the first three weeks of school that kids are all in,” Hines said. “They want to come to school. They want to do well for their house.” The school has also tried to make activities more relevant to students. During a week focused on hip-hop, students learned about the music, attended pep rallies and dressed as their favorite artists. > Parents are being held responsible for their kids’ crimes under new laws Parents get daily calls showing whether their children attended school or arrived late. Social workers also make home visits. The school has partnered with outside providers to offer health and mental health services on campus. Hines said some students miss school because they have responsibilities outside of it. Some care for younger siblings while their parents work. Others work to help support their families. Many parents work second- or third-shift jobs, making it harder for them to be involved with the school. Shaun Kellogg, who leads DPI’s Office of Research and Promising Practices and the state’s AttendNC Counts initiative, said there was no single attendance program shared by the schools identified as “bright spots.” The state has been studying those schools to understand what is behind their improvements. This summer, Kellogg and a colleague interviewed principals, counselors, social workers, data managers and other staff at seven bright spot schools. “The numbers indicated that something special was happening,” Kellogg told the board, “but the numbers don’t tell us why.” * * * # Fayetteville State seeing record enrollment, retention by Kate Denning, Carolina Public Press September 9, 2026 Fayetteville State University may be among the smaller public institutions in North Carolina, but it’s punching above its weight. With the onset of the academic year, the university is celebrating historic benchmarks like 80.7% student retention and the enrollment of more than 7,700 students. Both are all-time records for the school, which bounced back from a retention rate of 63% and has grown by more than 1,000 students since 2021. Last year’s graduating class was its largest ever. Assistant Vice Chancellor for Student Success **Tavoria Freeman** , who has worked at Fayetteville State since 2006, told Carolina Public Press that, while there has been steady growth over time as the university aimed for new heights, it’s seemed to have soared in recent years. ##### **[** Subscribe for FREE to Carolina Public Press’ Daily, Weekend and Election 2026 newsletters.**]** “I've been here a long time, and these last five years, it feels like we’ve just pushed ahead really, really fast,” she said. “I can of course see how we have slowly grown over the years, but I feel like we’ve had a lot of accelerated growth in the last five years. It’s really exciting.” But none of these achievements come by surprise, and they certainly didn’t happen overnight, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Enrollment Management **Cierra Griffin** said. The growth has been a result of strategic and intentional partnerships and marketing efforts, including a heightened focus on transfer and military student populations. Griffin also credits the leadership of **Pam Baldwin** , the university’s inaugural vice chancellor for strategic enrollment and student success, who was appointed to the position in 2024 after serving as the associate dean of academic partnerships. Baldwin often tells fellow administrators to look at the data, consider what story it tells and what the strategy should be. The university’s partnership with a number of North Carolina community colleges, Bronco Benefit, was born out of Baldwin’s assessment that there needed to be a better strategy for attracting transfer students, for example. The university also uses the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association to its benefit, the athletic association Fayetteville State is a part of, which is made up entirely of historically Black colleges and universities. Fayetteville State recently became a Common Application partner, a standardized college application platform used by more than 1,000 universities. It’s also the university’s third cycle in the NC College Connect program, which offers direct admission to North Carolina high school students that meet admissions requirements. Executive Director of Admissions **LaToya Floyd** said they’ve also employed a digital marketing campaign, and frequently host virtual events for those who they can’t connect with in person. And sometimes, it’s as simple as a billboard. “We’re starting to tell our story,” Baldwin said. “All of those things together create an opportunity for us to meet our goals, whether that’s enrollment or retention, telling those stories and allowing this team to do the great work when they understand clearly what the mission is. “I don’t believe anything is a surprise or happens by accident. I think you put a plan in place. You work with your partners. You talk with strategic comms about how you want to push harder through the military space, or you want to work differently with the community colleges, and then those things happen, and then of course, the results come.” While recruiting, the university leads with the benefits of being an NC Promise institution. Through a partnership with the state, Fayetteville State and three other universities are able to offer in-state tuition for just $500 per semester. Affordability and access are at the forefront of the university’s mission, as it is for the NC Promise program as a whole, Floyd said. “We want to make sure that students who come here understand that the plan is to ensure they complete the degree that they began with as little debt as possible,” Floyd said. Not only is the university attracting more applicants — those applicants are more high-achieving than ever. The average GPA of this year’s freshman class is a 3.45 on the 4.0 scale, another historic high for the university. It’s through the efforts to increase the visibility of the university that they’ve been able to attract scholars with even bigger and better achievements, Floyd said. For keeping those high achievers on an upward trajectory, culture and climate matter, Baldwin said. Winners like to be around other winners, so when a standard is set, especially in a close-knit environment like Fayetteville State — which students and faculty have affectionately dubbed “Family State University” — people usually want to strive to meet it, she said. As for keeping those students coming back and achieving this year’s momentous retention rate, Griffin said it starts at the leadership level. When everyone agrees on the mission, supporting the student population from the top down gets a lot easier. “We don’t do any magic tricks — we do what makes sense,” Griffin said. “It’s the little things, low-hanging fruit that keep our students coming back. Putting advisors as instructors for the freshman seminar classes, collaborating with our campus partners like financial aid to address issues such as balances. Sometimes it’s just a matter of money. Little things like that and meeting our students where they are. One thing that I know truly works with our students is we understand that life happens.” The culture of support at Fayetteville State has transformed over the last 10 years from reactive to proactive, Freeman said. Utilizing data has helped the university understand how it can support students in the present moment, rather than after they’ve fallen behind. The student success team analyzes quantitative data on students’ grades, percentage of students who receive a D, F or withdraw from a course, who has yet to declare a major and percentage of completion toward a degree, as well as surveys that provide qualitative information. “We’re looking at this data every day, and we’re trying to see, ‘What students do we need to support today? Who do we need to connect with today,’” Freeman said. “Especially as it relates to things that might hinder them from persisting in the future. We can see what’s going on with their account profile, whether that be the grades, the early alerts, the balances, and we can start that outreach early so that we can prevent them from having those holes or having other barriers that come up that’ll stop them from getting to that graduation point in four years or less.” This summer, an anonymous trust gifted the university $6.5 million, the largest private contribution in Fayetteville State history. It’s from the same trust that donated $5.8 million in 2022. And with the passage of the North Carolina budget bill, the university will receive an annually recurring $2 million from the state. Rather than using the funds for new programs, it’ll be allocated toward the university’s free summer school program — an initiative that has already produced positive results. “We have been really fortunate, in not only our private donations, but also the work that we’re doing in partnership with the state to ensure that all of our funding is supporting our initiatives that are already in place that are very strategic,” Baldwin said. “Our 30-60-90 free summer school, for example, is one of our strategies, and so we’re not trying to create new stuff with new money. … Of course, there will be tweaks along the way. We’re increasing our nursing opportunities, as an example. We want to make sure that we utilize funding to take care of the initiatives that our data says is either working or we need to do to continue the progress.” Enrollment at HBCUs like Fayetteville State has been up around the country, a stark contrast to the trends across higher education overall, which some have gone as far to call an “enrollment crisis.” The times are undoubtedly changing, and it’s important for higher education leaders to pay attention, Baldwin said. “If we’re going to stand still and let the grass grow around us, we’re going to be in trouble,” she said. “Paying attention to what’s happening — that return on investment is important, that students want to graduate not only with a piece of paper but a job, and that includes internships and experiences while they’re here at Fayetteville State University — and knowing we are responsible for providing those opportunities. … “It’s extremely important that we are not just having students walk across a stage, but they are walking across a stage into life, and they are going to be successful because of their experiences at Fayetteville State University.” This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # A Prison on Fire ### Designed to help people with serious mental illness, Joliet Treatment Center repeatedly failed to prevent or respond to fires, despite two deaths. By Shannon Heffernan Illustrations by Joseph Rogers _This article was first published by_ The Marshall Project_, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their_ newsletters_, and follow them on_ Instagram_,_ TikTok_,_ Reddit_and_ Facebook. Around 10 p.m., a haze of gray smoke wafted down a hallway lined with prison cells at the Joliet Treatment Center. The window of cell A9 began to glow red as the fire within grew. Jason Stephens was locked inside. Minutes ticked by, and the smoke became so thick you could not see more than a few feet. No one came to let Stephens out. There have been more than 70 fires at the facility in the last three years, according to an investigation by The Marshall Project, WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times. That includes a dozen cases in which men incarcerated there set themselves on fire. This article was published in partnership with WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times. The Joliet Treatment Center opened in 2017 with the promise of being a new kind of prison in Illinois, designed to provide intensive mental health treatment. But in the years leading up to that night in the summer of 2024, incarcerated men and civil rights lawyers who visited the facility said the conditions declined. Men were kept locked in their cells for long stretches, with nothing to do. They complained about a lack of medical care and mental health treatment, which the prison system is legally obligated to provide. Men reported that guards used excessive force. As the men grew more despondent, some became willing to do anything to draw attention to their troubles and resorted to setting their cells — or themselves — on fire. One man needed surgery to graft new skin onto his charred calf. Another lost a leg. Two have died. Last year, the prison — with a population of about 200 people — recorded roughly three fires a month. Despite that, officials at the Joliet Treatment Center have repeatedly failed to meet their responsibilities to prevent or respond to the fires, government records show. Cellblocks lacked sprinklers, and fire alarms were turned off or inoperable. At an annual inspection, the prison would not provide a fire evacuation plan. Guards delayed ambulances responding to emergencies at the prison or trying to take men with serious injuries to the hospital. The Illinois Department of Corrections did not answer questions about the epidemic of fires at Joliet Treatment Center, but in an email a spokesperson wrote that it is “committed to ensuring the safety and security of staff, individuals in custody, and all persons who enter our facilities” and takes its responsibility to uphold requirements related to facility safety seriously. Craig Haney, a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz and an expert on mental health in prisons, said the frequency of fires at the Joliet Treatment Center is a sign of abject hopelessness. “These are the kinds of desperate acts that somebody takes when they feel they have no alternative,” Haney said. As the blaze in Stephens’ cell intensified, three correctional officers gathered around a desk in a nearby room. Security camera footage from that night on July 27, 2024, shows that they seemed to notice something was wrong on the wing and grabbed a fire extinguisher. A call for help went out over the prison radio, and more officers slowly trickled in and put on medical gloves and masks. About 10 minutes after smoke began to seep out of Stephens’ cell, officers entered the hallway. Guards sprayed a fire extinguisher and pepper spray into his cell through a slot in the door usually used to deliver food. Then, with Stephens still locked inside, they walked away. A prison worker called 911. The fire department arrived within minutes, but precious time had already been lost. And more was about to be wasted. Corrections officers told firefighters that the fire was out and that they needed help to clear out the smoke. According to a fire department incident report, it wasn’t until later, as the firefighters set up fans and officers meandered nearby, that prison employees mentioned that someone was still locked inside the burnt cell. A group of guards and firefighters opened Stephens’ door, stained black with soot. Firefighters found Stephens lying on the floor, unconscious but still breathing, after having spent a half hour in a smoke-filled cell. They looked into his airway and found it charred. Guards handcuffed his unconscious body, and he was loaded into an ambulance waiting outside. But at the prison’s exit, guards refused to open the gate for the ambulance to leave until prison employees filled out paperwork and guards were ready to follow in a van. An argument erupted, and a guard walked up to the ambulance, yanking open the driver’s door. A group of firefighters and guards rushed over to intervene. According to one guard, a firefighter said, “This man can die while y’all pussyfooting around.” As the guards and firefighters argued with each other, one guard pulled another away, attempting to defuse the tension. But the prison still would not allow the ambulance to depart. A firefighter called his dispatcher again and again to report that the ambulance was stuck, with Stephens in the back hooked up to a machine forcing air into his lungs. Guards made the ambulance wait for nearly 28 minutes before finally opening the gate, allowing it to drive to a nearby hospital. The next day, Stephens was moved to a Chicago-area hospital. Doctors performed a tracheotomy, cutting a hole in his throat so they could insert a breathing tube. But they could not save him. Two weeks later, at age 38, Jason Stephens died. The medical examiner listed his official cause of death as “complications of inhalational injuries due to mattress fire.” * * * Patrice Daniels sifted through a gray box of Stephens’ belongings. While incarcerated at the prison, Daniels’ job was to pack up the property of men who transferred out or died. For Daniels, the fires — and the hopelessness that led men to set them — felt especially tragic because the Joliet Treatment Center was supposed to be a model of a prison that prioritized mental health treatment and healing, instead of punishment. As a child, Daniels survived sexual abuse and would injure himself by banging his head on the wall. In his teens, he was in and out of mental hospitals and juvenile detention, where he put glass in his ears and eyes. At 18, he killed a woman in a park. He turned himself into police and confessed and was sentenced to life in prison for murder. He continued to mutilate himself. Instead of receiving therapy, he said, he was put in solitary confinement for stealing razor blades that he had cut himself with. Sometimes, he said officers tied down his limbs and injected him with psychotropic drugs. More than a decade after Daniels landed in prison, a lawyer asked him to join a lawsuit accusing the Illinois Department of Corrections of failing to treat the mental illnesses of people in the state’s prisons. After a yearslong battle, the Department of Corrections settled the case and committed to opening a facility dedicated to providing mental healthcare: the Joliet Treatment Center. Daniels called it the most gratifying day of his life. In 2017, Daniels was among the first people transferred to the new prison in what had been a juvenile detention center. The building smelled clean, nothing like the overwhelming scent of mold and feces he was used to in other prisons. The officers played cards and basketball with the men. Therapy and psychiatry were readily available. In the first two years of the Joliet Treatment Center, a court-appointed monitor reported that men there routinely had plenty of time outside their cells and received 15 hours of structured therapeutic activity a week, unlike in some other prisons. But then, the once-hopeful mood dimmed. A new warden took over in early 2020. According to Daniels, she had a more punitive approach. Daniels said the start of COVID-19 that year gave the prison an excuse to keep men isolated in their cells for long stretches with little treatment, and the facility never rebounded. Over the next few years, the prison began to cancel mental health groups and recreational time. Men complained about frequent use of pepper spray. Daniels said that in the early years of the Joliet Treatment Center he’d allowed himself to become emotionally vulnerable. He felt betrayed by the prison’s new harshness. A mental health worker at the prison said she noticed men hurting themselves more frequently when the coronavirus lockdowns began. Prison employees got numb to the routine self-harm. They “experienced something that the human brain was not meant to process,” said the worker, who asked not to be named because she still works in corrections and fears retaliation for talking about the conditions she saw at the Joliet Treatment Center. “In order to do our job every day, we had to expect it,” she said, “and we had to get used to it.” Around the same time, men began to set fires. The Marshall Project interviewed or corresponded with seven men and asked why they set their cells, or themselves, on fire at the Joliet Treatment Center. They described poor medical treatment, and loneliness while being locked in their cells. Many said that prison employees had grown inured to other forms of self-harm. But fires were impossible to ignore. “We try to talk and write to them, but they don’t respect that. But when we act like animals and set things on fire and ourselves on fire, they listen,” one man said. In the spring of 2020, Alexander Yracheta set himself on fire, after he said the prison repeatedly canceled his mental health groups, and he spent much of his time alone in his cell. He used the spark from an electrical outlet to light a cloth tied to his leg. According to prison investigations, guards pulled him from the cell and put cuffs on his legs while his shorts were still on fire. He later had to have skin graft surgeries to repair the damage to his leg. The pain had been excruciating, but he said it was worth it to go to the hospital and get a break from his cell. “I couldn’t really take it,” he said, adding, “I knew I had to do something extreme to get out.” * * * No one knows for sure what made Stephens start the fire in his cell. But examining his path to that day in 2024 offers some clues. Stephens had a difficult life, according to his family and court records. As a toddler, he was diagnosed with sickle cell disease, a genetic disorder that can cause blood cells to become misshapen, leading to episodes of extreme pain and organ damage. Sometimes, his muscles hurt so badly he couldn’t move and would just scream. Around age 7, he and his mother were living on the street and in shelters. By 14, he had dropped out of school and would pick up odd jobs in construction. Stephens’ medical records say he began struggling with mental illness as a child and was eventually diagnosed with major depressive disorder, with psychotic features and PTSD. When Stephens was 27 years old, he was arrested and charged with shooting a friend in a drug dispute a few years before. Stephens maintained his innocence. Court records note he had been hearing voices, but a judge found him mentally fit to stand trial. In 2015, a jury found him guilty of murder, and he was sentenced to 50 years in prison. Behind bars, Stephens routinely complained to guards, nurses and doctors about extreme pain from his sickle cell disease. Dr. William Weber, a physician and medical director at the Medical Justice Alliance, an organization dedicated to ensuring that people in prison get proper healthcare, reviewed Stephens’ medical records for The Marshall Project. Weber said the records show that when the prison took him to outside hospitals, doctors prescribed Stephens with medications for sickle cell pain, but the prison often failed to provide them to him. By early 2024, housed at a maximum-security prison, Stephens made more desperate pleas for attention. He staged a hunger strike that lasted for 34 days. When that failed to get him the medical help he wanted, he asked employees, “What do I need to do to get medical treatment or sent to the hospital? Cut myself or swallow a bunch of pills?” Later that day, he swallowed two razor blades and a nail clipper. The prison system refused to send him to the hospital because the facility was on lockdown due to a staffing shortage. His medical records note several hospital visits in the ensuing weeks, but it’s unclear when, or if, those objects were ever removed. Prison officials transferred Stephens to the Joliet Treatment Center in May 2024, presumably to give him additional mental health help. Stephen’s mental health records show some psychiatric visits, but rarely mention indivdual therapy and largely reflect brief mental health evaluations conducted to assess his risk of suicide. At the Joliet Treatment Center, Stephens continued to complain about the lack of medical treatment. He insisted he needed a specific kind of blood transfusion that had helped him in the past. A prison doctor acknowledged that he would have “been better off” with the transfusion but failed to make sure he got the treatment. In early July 2024, an officer at the Joliet Treatment Center wrote in a report that Stephens said he was going to do whatever he needed to do to get medical help, including hurting himself. “This has been an ongoing issue,” the officer wrote. One day, a few weeks later, several men on Stephens’ wing began to harm themselves. Two of the men were sent to a separate part of the prison, and guards tied down their arms and legs in what are called four-point restraints. A doctor sent a third man to the emergency room. The mental health worker, who was also on duty that day, said even with all the chaos, it was a normal day at the Joliet Treatment Center. “It’s just what we would call a really busy shift,” she said. By the end of the day, Stephens was one of only two men remaining on the wing. The other man said later that they both told officers they were also in crisis and wanted help. But no one from the mental health team responded. That night, Stephens set a fire in his cell. The Illinois Department of Corrections did not answer questions about the fire in Stephens’ cell or about his complaints about medical care, citing pending litigation. The department has refused to provide a full investigative report about the incident, and The Marshall Project has sued to obtain the record, along with those of other fires. The lawsuits remain ongoing. Still, there is evidence the Joliet Treatment Center was unprepared for the fire that killed Stephens, even after more than a dozen earlier blazes at the prison. In an interview with prison investigators, an electrician at the facility said that the wing where Stephens was housed didn’t have working alarms or sprinklers. The only safety plan, he said, was for “correctional staff to be vigilant to watch for fires.” He said the issue was raised in staff meetings prior to Stephens’ death, but the fire protection systems never got fixed. The Illinois State Fire Marshal’s Office, which inspects buildings to ensure that they meet fire codes, repeatedly documented problems at the prison. In 2023, a year before Stephens’ death, a fire marshal noted alarms in other parts of the prison were disconnected or inoperable and that prison employees said they said they didn’t know if the alarms worked on the wing where Stephens would later set the fire. The prison also couldn’t produce a written plan for how to evacuate the building. Days before Stephens set his fire, a marshal again noted similar violations. As far back as 2020, local fire officials had complained that guards delayed ambulances trying to enter and exit the prison grounds to respond to fires. Jeff Carey, chief of the Joliet Fire Department, said that his department reached out several times to the prison’s administrators before Stephens’ death to get the problem fixed, to no avail. * * * In the years since Stephens’ death, the fires have persisted unabated at the Joliet Treatment Center. There have been more than 60 since then, including at least eight cases of self-immolation, according to department records. In November 2024, officers saw flames coming from under the cell door of a man named Latrell Edwards. They evacuated other men housed on his wing before letting him out of his cell, according to prison reports. Edwards was taken to the hospital with labored breathing and soot coating his throat and died two months later. Since Stephens’ death, fire officials have continued to note delays at the gate and problems with alarms and evacuation plans. The mental health worker at the Joliet Treatment Center said that prison employees had grown used to the fires, even after two men had died. That made it easier to ignore problems. “It's almost like there’s nothing they can do that will shock us anymore,” she said, adding, “No matter what they do, it’s not enough.” As the prison environment became more focused on security and punishment, and opportunities to provide meaningful therapy declined, she decided to leave. Daniels said that for a long time he had hoped he could help the prison return it to its mission of healing. But the culture became so toxic that last year he asked the Illinois Department of Corrections to transfer him to another prison. As he rode away in a prison van, his legs and hands shackled, he saw the sign for the Joliet Treatment Center, and he thought, “That’s a sham. Treatment doesn’t happen there.” * * * _If you or someone you know is in crisis or considering suicide, help is available at the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988. For more information, visit_ https://988lifeline.org/_._ * * * # Receiver in charge of turning around Jackson’s water system now says city should sell it by Alex Rozier, Mississippi Today September 9, 2026 A recent financial plan from JXN Water, the court-appointed receiver in charge of rebuilding the capital city’s water and sewer infrastructure, is now proposing Jackson sell the systems altogether. The idea comes amid the utility’s call for yet another set of rate increases. In February, U.S. District Court Judge Henry Wingate, who is overseeing the receivership, greenlit a 12% rate increase after a drawn-out debate. Through court hearings that spanned nearly a year, JXN Water faced pushback from local advocates and city officials who blamed the utility for driving up costs to a point where rates would become unaffordable for residents. Pay your water bill kiosk at the JXN Water office building, located at 1054 Greymont St. in Jackson, Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026. JXN Water is now saying it needs to increase rates again in 2027 by 10%, followed by 9% and 8% hikes in 2028 and 2029, respectively. Those numbers are a stark jump from figures the utility mentioned in court hearings last year, where it said it would need 3% annual rate increases from 2027 to 2029. But Ted Henifin, the head of JXN Water, said the city could reduce the need for rate increases if it sold its water and sewer infrastructure. With the revenue it would get from selling those assets, the city could pay off significant debt that’s driving the need for rate increases, Henifin explained in the August financial plan. “What it does is create greater financial stability for the system, which lessens the need for larger rate increases in the future,” JXN Water told Mississippi Today. The idea comes as city and state officials, as well as Wingate, are deliberating what to do with Jackson’s water and sewer systems once JXN Water’s interim control is over, which the utility projects to be in 2027. The Mississippi Legislature approved a plan this past session to put the systems under a regional authority, but Wingate halted the state law in June. Under the judge’s orders, Henifin has to propose his own transition plan, which is due near the end of September. Jackson City Council members, who repeatedly have publicly criticized JXN Water over the last year, pushed back at the utility’s latest proposal. Ward 7 Councilman Kevin Parkinson said while he doesn’t think the city is ready to regain control of the water system, Henifin’s idea to sell it is a bridge too far. “ I think the city is not well positioned to take over that water system anytime soon, but I don't think that should mean the city has absolutely no say and should be forced to sell off its assets,” Parkinson said. ”I'm all for creative solutions, but I'm hoping that those can involve the city having a seat at the table.” Jackson City Council member Kevin Parkinson listens during a council meeting at City Hall in Jackson on Tuesday, April 21, 2026. Ward 2 Councilwoman Tina Clay went further, arguing the infrastructure should return to city control once JXN Water’s term has ended. “ I am totally against the concept saying that the city of Jackson can't run its own water department,” Clay said. “ When it left the city, it was run down, it was torn up, it was broken, the city had no money. But now that it's fixed, the city can run the water department. Anything that's broken and with no money, nobody can run effectively.” The councilwoman disagreed with recent comments from Mayor John Horhn, who said it was unlikely the systems would come back under city governance. “That should not be a thing of the past,” she said. “ Jackson State (University) has an engineering department. We have a lot of resources that we can reach out to. We don't have to give up and give away things.” Ward 2 City Councilwoman Tina Clay asks questions of City Attorney Drew Martin about a draft regarding data centers at a City Council meeting held Monday, July 6, 2026, at City Hall in Jackson. Under the proposal, whatever authority assumes control after JXN Water would take out a tax-exempt bond to give the city the $121 million needed to pay off its outstanding debt. Henifin said the tax benefit “hinges on the new authority not being connected to the city or under city control.” "(T)he Internal Revenue Code allows the bonds issued to finance the acquisition price to be issued on a tax-exempt basis, as long as JXN Water (or its successor) is not related to the City for federal tax purposes," according to the financial plan. Horhn’s office did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Mississippi Today asked to clarify whether JXN Water outright supported the idea of Jackson selling its infrastructure, to which the utility responded in an email, “Yes.” Other council members said they needed a chance to review JXN Water’s proposal, but most were skeptical about increasing water rates again. Ward 1 Councilman Ashby Foote said the collection rate — which the utility said has now climbed above 80% — needs to improve before charging more to those who already pay their bill. JXN Water offices, located at 1054 Greymont St. in Jackson, Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026. Ward 4 Councilman Brian Grizzell said the city should have increased rates earlier to avoid the huge jumps customers are seeing now. The increases Henifin proposed are too much for Jacksonians, he said. “At some point, we have to recognize that affordability matters just as much as financial sustainability,” Grizzell said. “Ratepayer input and city ownership of the assets are not mutually exclusive,” JXN Water said in response to concerns over the city losing its voice in governing its water and sewer systems. “This proposal does not mean ratepayers go unrepresented, and it does not mean the city loses its voice in how the system is run.” The utility told Mississippi Today it is still drafting its transition plan, and will “have more to share as it progresses.” This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # It’s dangerously hot inside some New Orleans homes, even with air conditioning, study says by Halle Parker, Verite News New Orleans September 8, 2026 Yana Sutton grew up between Hollygrove and Gert Town, and now, she spends nearly every day there to take care of her grandmother. But it was only in the past few years that Sutton realized how much the extreme heat in the neighborhood was taking a toll on her grandmother’s health. “The heat is heaviest in the bedroom,” which is in the back of the Gert Town house, Sutton said. The neighborhood has far more concrete and buildings than trees than other parts of the city. The imbalanced landscape amplifies the amount of heat and humidity that passes into her grandmother’s house from a back room. The house’s central air conditioning couldn’t keep up. Her grandmother thought she was resting, but her doctors said the high temperatures actually raised her blood pressure and exacerbated her pre-diabetes. Her grandmother also slept far longer than she intended. “She says she'd wake up soaking wet,” Sutton said. “(The doctor) said when you get up in age, if your blood pressure is fluctuating and you’re in this tremendous amount of heat, your brain and everything is not signaling you to wake up.” Sutton has since blocked the room to the limit the outside air seeping into the rest of the house, helping to keep her grandmother’s bedroom cool. “ We see the difference because her blood pressure now is stable,” Sutton said. As summer days and nights grow warmer, it’s harder for New Orleans residents like Sutton to keep their home cool with the cost of energy. That’s especially true when they live in the city’s concrete-laden hotspots like Gert Town, Hollygrove and areas in the Upper Ninth Ward. “ Hollygrove is like a dome in a sense, where it's trapping the heat,” she said. A study published in the Journal of Urban Health in June found that even when New Orleans residents had air conditioning units, they struggled to keep the temperature in their homes under 80 degrees overnight. Researchers from RAND and Johns Hopkins University collaborated with the team at iSeeChange, a crowd-sourced platform for reporting climate and weather observations, to track the temperature inside the bedrooms of 114 New Orleans residents during the summers of 2023 and 2024. The residents were recruited from five neighborhoods: Hollygrove, Dixon, Desire, Florida and Bunny Friend. Past research had indicated that the neighborhoods suffered from worse heat than other parts of the city, amplified by the urban heat island effect. Sutton said it affects everything from seniors’ health to the integrity of their houses. The Hollygrove-Dixon Neighborhood Association partnered with CAPA Strategies and the Center for Collaborative Heat Monitoring to map the how temperatures changed throughout the day on July 25, 2025 across New Orleans. This map shows the temperatures recorded in the afternoon between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. Other map layers show the temperatures recorded in the morning and evening. (Credit: CAPA Strategies and the Center for Collaborative Heat Monitoring) Hollygrove resident Deanna Simon helped map heat across the city on a single July day in 2025 during a study by the Hollygrove-Dixon Neighborhood Association. The temperature snapshot showed heat disparities across the city based on tree canopy, the concentration of impervious surfaces and proximity to the lake. It also recorded the hottest temperatures between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. “The heat kind of lingers for a long time. It has to be middle morning before you start feeling really cool,” Simon said, until the area reabsorbs the heat. Several peer-reviewed studies have linked higher temperatures to worse sleep, which can place more stress on the body. Warm nights can be especially dangerous for people with chronic conditions, people over 65, low-income communities, communities of color and women. The heat can increase the risk of various heart problems, such as strokes or heart disease, and even lead to death. By the end of the century, some researchers estimate that the risk of death from excessively hot nights will be six times more likely as a result of global warming, predominantly caused by humans burning fossil fuels. ## New Orleans’ “unique heat risk” RAND’s Lena Easton-Calabria, a co-author of the new study, said they chose to focus on New Orleans because it’s seeing some of the “most severe heat trends,” and high poverty rate. “These are things that … come together and create a very unique heat risk and make the population very vulnerable,” Easton-Calabria said. An analysis by the policy-neutral nonprofit Climate Central found that the average temperature in New Orleans, during the day and at night, has warmed by more than 4 degrees from June through August since 1970. The nonprofit also estimated that New Orleans residents lost an average of 61 hours of sleep per year from 2020 to 2025, in part due to climate change. https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/hFYNf/1/ Not surprisingly, the June indoor heat study found that the hotter it is outside, the hotter temperatures can be indoors. But in a state like Louisiana, which has some of the highest energy costs in the country, the use of air conditioning varied in response to the temperatures and affected how cool the study’s participants could keep their homes. Public health recommendations for sleeping temperatures can vary. One study in Boston found their participants slept best between 68 degrees and 77 degrees. Most cities that have passed cooling standards so far have required landlords to ensure their properties can remain under about 80 degrees, including New Orleans’ Healthy Homes Ordinance. But even cooling the bedroom to 80 degrees can be challenging, according to the recent study. Unless participants had central air conditioning and reported that they ran the system most or all of the time, temperatures in the bedroom were expected to exceed 80 degrees if it was hotter than 90 degrees during the day. During the study, at least one bedroom heated up to 101 degrees overnight, while others maxed out at 65 degrees. Most of the study’s participants were Black and made less than $50,000 a year, including the homeowners. Study co-author Jaime Madrigano, a public health professor at Johns Hopkins, said while most cooling standards attempt to protect renters, their findings suggest low-income homeowners also need help with staying cool. Homeowners made up most of the study and more than half made less than the city’s median household income. At least in the recent study, the homeowners were more likely to report using their air conditioner only half of the time or rarely. ## Air conditioning or medication? Dorethea Parker tends to her watermelon garden outside of her home in the Dixon neighborhood. The heat is more extreme in her neighborhood due to the amount of concrete and small tree canopy. The heat seeps into her poorly-insulated home. In Hollygrove, Dorethea Parker saw herself in the study’s findings. She’s owned her house for about 35 years. Parker said she blasts her window air conditioning unit in the bedroom, turning it to 72 degrees. Even still, cooling her bedroom at night is often a losing battle against the city’s steamy summer heat. “It’s extremely hot in my house,” she said. “I definitely wake up some nights because of the heat.” She typically keeps the rest of her window units off to save on her energy bill. Part of Parker’s problem is that her walls aren’t well-insulated. Plus, she believes the cool air escapes beneath the floorboards of her elevated home. Caroline Reed, another study co-author who worked with iSeeChange at the time, said while several studies, including this one, have shown that air conditioning is a life-saving tool during extreme heat, their study suggests that air conditioning alone won’t solve the problem. Reed focused on outreach to residents and placing the temperature sensors in their homes. She said she often heard residents, especially those with ongoing health problems, talk about how difficult and expensive it was to cool their homes. People who ran their air conditioning all the time, to keep up with the heat, typically reported spending at least $200 more on their energy bills than those who saved on energy but had hotter houses. Reed said some residents who limited their energy use or had window units that may have been less efficient at cooling couldn’t find relief from the heat outside when they came inside. Dealing with the persistent heat would add stress to their bodies and their finances. “I think that, unfortunately, air conditioning, while it’s incredibly essential, still will always not be able to compete with other essentials in terms of your water bill, your food, or your medications,” Reed said. The choice between running the air conditioning and affording medications can be deadly, Reed said. “We know that exposure to extreme heat over short or long amounts of time is just really dangerous for folks,” she said. “When people are hospitalized, or in the worst case scenario, … even die from extreme heat, a lot of times they're found in their homes.” ## Investing in cooling The researchers and iSeeChange team said they hope studies like this can help inform heat policies at all levels of government. In New Orleans, Easton-Calabria and Madrigano said setting a cooling standard for renters establishes the concept of cooling — or maintaining a healthy temperature — as a right. “It’s a good first step,” Madrigano said. But questions remain about how to implement and enforce the standard, and more would need to be done to ensure affordability doesn’t present a barrier. “I think it is evident, from our research and others, that the cost of running AC needs to be accounted for when policymakers are trying to protect their constituents during extreme weather,” Madrigano said. “Access, alone, should not be the only consideration, and energy assistance programs are going to be crucial to saving lives.” Currently, programs to help reduce the cost of energy bills, either as financial assistance or through energy efficiency, are limited. The federal Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program is the primary source for public assistance with energy bills, but can only serve a limited number of residents. From April to September 2024, about 80,000 Louisianians received $200 to $800 to offset cooling costs. The Trump administration and U.S. House of Representatives have proposed cutting the program entirely next year, though a similar proposal in 2025 wasn’t enacted by Congress as the program has bipartisan support. Housing advocacy groups in New Orleans have pushed for more funding toward programs to upgrade houses to seal them against the weather, also known as weatherizing. This can include sealing the cracks in a building with foam to prevent from air leaking inside. Material known as weather-stripping can similarly be used for gaps around windows and doors to block drafts. Contractors can also install more insulation or repair holes in a house’s heating and cooling system. But homeowners only have access to two programs: the federal Weatherization Assistance Program and Entergy New Orleans’ EnergySmart program. Dorethea Parker inside the living room of her home in the Dixon neighborhood. Parker, who lives in Hollygrove, said the EnergySmart program had its limits. While her free home assessment was helpful, the company only installs insulation in the attic, not the walls or the floors. Beau Tidwell, a spokesperson for Entergy New Orleans, said the company recommends for residents with needs beyond the scope of EntergySmart to apply for Weatherization Assistance Program. The federal program will install wall insulation, he said, and Quad Area Weatherization can help with applications. Though, the federal program often has a long waitlist and limited funding. The latest proposal for addressing housing needs in New Orleans — created through a process called HousingNOLA — called for the city to invest about $3 million to weatherize and equip homes with solar panels and batteries to reduce residents’ energy burden, on top of improving the housing stock. Reed said she believes dedicating more government resources to limiting extreme heat will be the main area for growth, as well as preventative care from healthcare providers. “ Extreme heat is still a relatively emerging area,” Reed said. “People are trying to better understand the ways that it presents risks to our communities and what solutions are actually offerable, and then within those solutions, what's actually affordable.” Volunteers with the Hollygrove-Dixon Neighborhood Association plan to advocate for more tree plantings and other ways to reduce the heat island effect, possibly making it easier for cooling systems to keep up. This study was the first in a series of publications looking at the effects of extreme heat in New Orleans. iSeeChange has also launched a new campaign inviting residents to share their experiences with heat.   Sutton said the neighborhood association also plans to present a proposal to the New Orleans City Council early next year using the research and community input to request more resources to address heat. This article first appeared on Verite News New Orleans and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # Does New York’s Labor Momentum Measure Up? ## Despite eye-catching strikes and employer concessions, the percentage of unionized workers in the city remained flat in an annual report on the state of organized labor. By Claudia Irizarry Aponte, The City Reporter Sep 4 9:00am EDT Organized labor in New York City has been mightily active so far this decade, and the first half of 2026 was no exception. Nurses, public defenders, hotel workers and college faculty all walked off the job this summer to historic effect, winning substantial contract improvements. But, while union advocates may have reason to pat themselves on the back, the momentum has not been enough to reverse New York’s decades-long decline in overall unionization rates, according to the latest annual report by the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies. The share of the unionized workforce in the city has remained flat despite an uptick in what researchers describe as “highly visible union activity,” such as the historic nurses strike this past winter. ##### MORE: On Labor Day, Mamdani Debuts ‘Worker Power’ Office to Support Union Organizing But there are some bright spots: New York ranks first in union density among the nation’s largest states; it is second overall only to Hawaii, which has a much smaller population. Between 2025 and 2026, public-sector union density in both New York City and State was roughly double the national average. In all, New York has more union members — 1.81 million — than any state other than California, the nation’s most populous. Bronx Defenders organized with the UAW walk the picket line outside the legal group’s offices on East 161st Street, July 28, 2026. Ruth Milkman, a co-author of the report and chair of CUNY’s graduate labor studies department, said in an interview that New York is still a stronghold of organized labor, and reiterated that recent organizing, successful strikes and strong public support for unions bode well for the city’s labor movement. But that activity has not reached the scale needed to reverse a longer-term decline in the share of workers who are union members, the report found, echoing its findings from recent years. The threats to workers across the nation and in New York are overwhelming, from artificial intelligence and the consolidation of large corporations, to the Trump administration’s gutting of the federal workforce and its culling of the National Labor Relations Board. “So the fact that New York’s numbers are staying flat, it’s actually an achievement,” said Milkman. Milkman’s research team completes its annual report using Census data from the U.S. Current Population Survey of New York City residents. The New York City Central Labor Council, the city federation of unions, has disagreed with the report’s methodology and conclusions in the past, claiming that it does not account for workers employed in the city who live in its suburbs and in neighboring states. Healthcare and education are two of the most unionized sectors in New York City, at 28% and 18.6% respectively, according to the report. And this year, workers in those sectors showed their might: A 39-day walkout this past winter resulted in raises and improved nurse-to-patient ratios for 15,000 nurses across three private hospital systems. That strike by the New York State Nurses Association was the largest and longest of its kind in New York City history. Meanwhile, non-tenure track faculty at New York University won their first-ever contract following a two-day strike in April, and more than two years after they unionized with the United Auto Workers. DC37 Local 3005 President Meghan Peterson speaks at a union contract rally at the World Trade Center about the role Department of Health workers play in preventing Legionnaires’ disease outbreaks, July 20, 2026. This year’s report also zeroes in on Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s unprecedented focus on boosting worker organizing in the private sector and his administration’s efforts to crack down on labor law violations. Last month, the city Department of Consumer and Worker Protection announced a new partnership with the Manhattan District Attorney’s office that will make it easier for both offices to investigate wage theft and other crimes. However, the researchers cautioned, Mamdani’s “biggest challenge will come later in 2026, when the municipal labor contracts expire and new ones will be negotiated, affecting hundreds of thousands of workers.” The city’s limited control over its budget resources “will make this an especially daunting task,” the report notes, adding that Mamdani’s success will depend on the strength of his relationships with Gov. Kathy Hochul and the state legislature. * * * # One Woman’s Tormented Path to Prison by Jamie Silvonek, Prison Journalism Project September 3, 2026 In the late 1980s, Caroline Guy held a cassette recorder to her head, trying to record the voices she was hearing. She had torn through her apartment, throwing away electronics and furniture, hoping to remove the source of the noise. Guy, a military veteran, had moved to Philadelphia in 1989. In a new city, at a new job, the voices she had heard for most of her life escalated. They encouraged her to harm herself and others. Soon, simple tasks grew impossible; she once abandoned a full cart in the middle of a grocery store because the voices overwhelmed her. Eventually, she retreated into her apartment, sitting in isolation and listening to the voices. Desperate for an explanation, she paid a surveillance store more than $700 for two “body scans,” as she called them, to ensure there was nothing implanted inside her. She saw multiple doctors and psychiatrists, simultaneously begging for help and imploring them not to report that anything was wrong. A diagnosis, she feared, would cost her her job at a container factory. When a psychiatrist gave her a prescription, Guy ripped it up. “At the time, I didn’t know I needed help to the extent that I did,” Guy said. “I was in denial.” Two weeks later, Guy shot and killed her coworker with a gun she had purchased a few weeks prior. She believed it was the only way to stop the voices. #### The path to prison Guy’s journey to prison is sadly commonplace, and psychiatric suffering is only one part of the story. When Guy was young, a family friend raped her while she was babysitting. More abuse occurred later in life, during her military service. It is rare to encounter women in prison who have not struggled with mental illness or been abused. While 15% of incarcerated men report symptoms of serious mental illness, that number jumps to over 32% for incarcerated women. And according to the Vera Institute of Justice, nearly 86% of women in jail report histories of sexual or physical violence. These twin traumas often go unaddressed until they reach a breaking point. The voices Guy tried to record in her apartment had dogged her since her childhood in Louisiana. As a child, she tried to tell her family about her distress. But her family was traditional and religious. They believed that children were to be seen, not heard. “Any time I mentioned hearing voices to my family, they just brushed me off,” she said. Because her family did not take her concerns seriously, Guy assumed that hearing voices was normal and tried to accept them. "When you're little and start to hear things like that, you start to think it's a normal part of life that everyone experiences," she said. "It's when you get older that you start to wonder if it's just you." When Guy was 17, she was sexually assaulted by a friend’s uncle. Three months later, she learned she was pregnant. As a result, she said she was forced to stand before her entire church congregation and say that the rape and pregnancy were her fault. She was humiliated and outraged. She remembers people in her church conflating her assault and her mental illness, saying things like, "Guy’s lost her mind ever since that guy raped her." Knowing she was in no position to care for a child, she signed away her parental rights as soon as her daughter was born. About a year after giving birth, Guy decided to get her high school diploma and enlist in the military. “I had an uncle who was a veteran, and when he would come to visit he would play war documentaries for us,” Guy said. “I saw people jumping out of planes and I knew it was something I wanted to do.” Throughout Guy service, she and other women were subjected to harassment and abuse from other soldiers. Once, a fellow soldier entered Guy’s room and attempted to grab her. When she fled, he chased and threatened her. “I was so angry,” she said, “It took me back to being raped — being completely powerless against someone who thinks they can do whatever they want to you.” In spite of the abuse, Guy completed jump school and entered the 82nd Airborne Division. She was one of only three Black women in that initial group of 110. But as her service drew to a close, her behavior became erratic. Her sergeant sent her to the mental health unit, where Guy remembers asking the specialist not to record anything that could result in her being kicked out. In July 1982, she was honorably discharged. Eventually, she settled in Philadelphia, where her undiagnosed mental illness continued to spiral. #### When the voices finally silenced Guy was diagnosed with severe paranoid schizophrenia while awaiting trial for murder in 1995. In the wake of her diagnosis, the jail psychiatrist experimented with different medications over a period of months. Finally, at 37 years old, Guy started taking perphenazine, an antipsychotic medication that silenced the voices. "I woke up one morning and I was just sitting on my bed when I realized that, for the first time, I couldn't hear the voices,” Guy said. “That was the beginning of my recovery." Guy is now 67 and has been incarcerated for 31 years. She takes her medication daily, attends group therapy, leans on her peers, keeps a healthy daily routine and meets consistently with a psychologist and psychiatrist. Guy believes that having access to more robust mental health treatment could have prevented her from killing someone. "Thirty-one years ago there wasn't a lot of support," she said. "When I would call the police and ask for help, they told me there was nothing they could do. They never even referred me to a psychologist.” Guy was recently reunited with her daughter. On May 20, 2024, after writing to adoption registries for over 20 years, Guy learned her daughter had contacted the prison. They began exchanging letters, and three months later, her daughter flew from Texas to Pennsylvania for their first visit. "My daughter says now that God brought us together," Guy said. Guy’s life sentence means she has almost no shot at freedom. But she said she has not given up. These days, Guy is fighting for clemency, an extraordinarily rare event in Pennsylvania. She was granted a merit review in 2023 but fell one vote short from the board of pardons, which serves as a gatekeeper for applicants seeking a public hearing. In her three decades inside, Guy has never demonstrated any kind of violence. I've lived on the same unit with her for years. When I look at her, I don't see a person who deserves perpetual punishment; I see a woman who works in the mental health unit because she knows what it's like to feel isolated. I see a woman whose gap-toothed smile crinkles her eyes when she talks about her daughter and their dreams for the future. This article first appeared on Prison Journalism Project and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # Regulators Knew This Marijuana Product Was Harming People. It Stayed on Shelves for More Than a Year. by Christopher Osher and Evan Wyloge, The Denver Gazette Co-published with The Denver Gazette September 4, 2026, 5:00 am _This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with_ The Denver Gazette_._ Sign up for Dispatches_to get our stories in your inbox every week._ ### Reporting Highlights * **Not an Anomaly:** In the cases we reviewed, Colorado marijuana regulators took over seven months, on average, to warn the public after receiving a complaint or starting an investigation. * **Open Loopholes:** Colorado lacks measures adopted in many other marijuana markets to improve testing procedures that prevent contaminated marijuana from going to stores. * **Multiple Chances:** Even when the state discovers problems with a product that’s in dispensaries, manufacturers say they often continue selling the product while challenging the findings. These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story. In March 2022, Colorado public health officials started getting startling reports of liver damage tied to a new marijuana-based sleep aid that had quickly become a top seller in the state. But it wasn’t until June 2023, nearly 15 months later, that the state’s Marijuana Enforcement Division would warn consumers that the danger had become so serious that the manufacturer had halted production of the sleep pills, called 1906 Midnight Drops, after more reports of “acute liver injury.” The delay highlights a slew of weaknesses in the system for protecting consumers from hazardous products in the nation’s first regulated recreational marijuana market. The health complaints had prompted the division to investigate, but the agency decided it didn’t have the power to pull the drops from the stores in this situation. If the agency had dug deeper, it might have found what the state attorney general’s office later discovered: The manufacturer, Sima Sciences, began receiving complaints of harm shortly after it launched 1906 Midnight Drops and two years before health officials ever did. Instead, the enforcement division took four months after the first report of liver damage to the state to post a notice on its website. But the agency didn’t call it a health and safety warning, which would have advised people not to consume the product. It released a more neutrally named “informational notification.” While there had been reports of “adverse health events,” the notice said, regulators didn’t find any violations. The manufacturer had reformulated the product, the notice added, and no additional issues had surfaced. Jenifer Chatting didn’t even see it. A surgical assistant at an oral surgeon’s office, Chatting wanted a safe, natural alternative to pharmaceuticals to treat her insomnia. So she was relieved when a local marijuana dispensary suggested a sugar-free option made of cannabis and herbal extracts that the manufacturer touted as the “the best sleep aid on the market.” She began taking the Midnight Drops nightly the same month that the state health department received its first complaint. Unaware of the enforcement division’s notification, she didn’t worry when she started having full-body cramps and became lactose intolerant in September 2022, about six months after she started taking the drops. She thought she just needed to drink more water. She continued taking the drops for nine more months until her dispensary stopped stocking them. Now, despite never having liver problems before, according to her medical records, she has liver damage at age 53; her doctor says she will ultimately need a transplant. Colorado’s failure to get Midnight Drops off the market or to warn consumers to stop taking it despite repeated reports of harm was not an anomaly, The Denver Gazette and ProPublica found. The division has limited authority to force companies to recall products. The agency instead relies on posting health and safety advisories on its website to warn the public, and on sending news releases to local media outlets. Yet, in the cases for which the news organizations were able to identify the date of a complaint or the start of an investigation, it took regulators an average of more than seven months to issue a warning. That’s an incomplete snapshot because the division refused to release data on when investigations began. Complaint dates were private, it said, because the probes were ongoing — even years after the warnings were issued and some companies had surrendered their licenses**.** Still, The Denver Gazette and ProPublica were able to identify initial complaint or investigative start dates for 23 of the 83 advisories the agency issued over the past five years by reviewing other licensing violation records. Seven months is a long time for products that are typically smoked or ingested within days of purchase, industry insiders and consumer safety experts said. In comparison, federal investigators have criticized the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for taking an average of two months after learning of a potential hazard to not just warn consumers but to get companies to recall contaminated food. Kimberly Anzarut, a former Denver marijuana regulator and now an industry consultant, said the delays mean Colorado consumers aren’t getting vital warnings while products are still on shelves. “When you take a really long time to get a bulletin out to tell people about these issues, a lot of time, people have already consumed the product,” she said. Lab directors said it generally takes only three days to return test results identifying contaminants, and if there’s an emergency, they can do so in a day. But MED spokesperson Heather Draper said in a statement that it’s more complicated than just getting test results and that it takes time to build a case that leads to a health and safety advisory. “This most often requires investigative resources to evaluate the scope of concerns, gather evidence of potential product safety concerns, and receive test results that indicate a contaminated product has been sold to consumers,” she said. Thuy Vu, Denver’s former head of marijuana inspections and enforcement, said regulators should act more quickly and that “time is of the essence,” because the safety problems reported to regulators are almost always a fraction of the harm a product is causing. “Seven months, eight months, that’s ridiculous,” she said. The delays mean contaminated marijuana products often remain on sale for a long time, with no public warning. In addition to complaint dates, The Denver Gazette and ProPublica were able to get sales start dates for nearly all the health and safety advisories and found that Colorado regulators also take, on average, more than seven months from the first sale of a contaminated marijuana product to warn the public. The news organizations found that warnings take a long time in part because Colorado lacks measures adopted in many other legalized marijuana markets to improve testing procedures and prevent contaminated marijuana from going to stores. And when the state does discover a problem in a product already on shelves, it gives manufacturers multiple chances to disprove the agency’s finding. Though the MED can require companies to stop distributing flagged products, industry lawyers and manufacturers said manufacturers often continue selling them while challenging the findings. Chatting’s husband, Luke, is now fearful of losing his wife and critical of what he calls insufficient warnings about Midnight Drops. The couple is suing the company, which has denied their claims. The lawsuit is pending. “Why weren’t there big banners in front of the dispensaries about these things?” he asked. “The state makes millions and millions and millions of dollars off of the taxes for the marijuana, but they don’t do any regulation at all.” ### “My Patients Were Swearing by These” The person behind Midnight Drops is Peter Barsoom, a wunderkind of Wall Street finance who left New York in 2014 to co-found a recreational marijuana company called Sima Sciences. Soon he was turning up in splashy magazine profiles. The 1906 product line was a nod to the year the U.S. government enacted the Pure Food and Drug Act, which he said led to the first federal regulation and eventual prohibition of cannabis. His initial focus was high-end marijuana-infused truffle chocolates. “Our competitors are chardonnay, Xanax and coffee, not other edibles,” he said during an interview in 2017. In 2019, he branched out into the sleep tablet line and also manufactured other “drops” meant to help with sex, anxiety, energy, focus and bliss. By 2023, his company, based in Henderson, Colorado, was manufacturing 81% of the pills sold in dispensaries in the state, according to the cannabis analytics firm BDSA. Vu, the former Denver regulator, worked for about a year as Barsoom’s head of regulatory compliance and said Barsoom wanted her to bend the rules on inventory reporting and product safety, though she stressed that she was unaware of the problems with the Midnight Drops, which were made after she left. They clashed, and he fired her in 2016, she said. Barsoom declined interview requests and did not respond to detailed questions. His company’s lawyers also did not respond to requests for comment. But in court filings in response to personal injury lawsuits, they stated that “injuries, damages and losses, if any, may have been caused by plaintiff’s own comparative negligence.” To promote the Midnight Drops, the 1906 website said the pills were infused with corydalis, an herbal extract, which, it said, “has been used for millennia.” It claimed the extract had sedative qualities and would help people stay asleep because it targeted body pain and tension. A relative of the poppy, corydalis also contains a compound that researchers have linked to severe and potentially fatal liver injury. Following reports about liver problems, the company reformulated Midnight Drops and added a warning label stating the product should be taken in consultation with a physician. But the new herbal supplement was also primarily composed of a compound with the same chemical makeup as the one in corydalis that had been tied to liver risks, regulators eventually concluded. One doctor reported to the enforcement division in December 2022 that he continued to “see an uptick in patients with elevated liver enzymes,” which he believed was caused by Midnight Drops. He warned the agency that he had seen four such patients in the past two months and knew of other doctors treating more, state records show. Dr. David Cristin, a gastroenterologist, said he was exasperated because patients kept using Midnight Drops despite his concerns. He said he registered a complaint through the company’s website, detailing the issues he had found, but was never contacted. “The thing that was frustrating was my patients were swearing by these,” he said. By May 2024, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment would receive 52 reports of harm involving Midnight Drops, at least 20 severe enough to require medical care. Of those reports, 25 occurred before the MED’s second notification. While the health department often does the initial review, records show it typically finished gathering information within days, which would trigger an automatic referral to the MED. Nearly a year after issuing its first “informational notification,” the MED and the health department issued the second one in June 2023, warning that Midnight Drops had continued generating reports of “acute liver injury.” At that time, Sima announced it was stopping production. But Barsoom and his companies continued marketing Midnight Drops for several more months and did not adequately warn dispensaries to stop selling them, according to a Colorado attorney general’s office investigation. Chatting didn’t see the second MED notification either. A couple of weeks after it was posted, she went into a dispensary but learned the drops were no longer in stock. She said a dispensary staffer told her they had been pulled because consumers had been abusing the product. She hadn’t been, so she didn’t worry. But that summer, bloodwork during a routine checkup revealed Chatting’s liver enzymes had soared to abnormal levels, indicating potential damage. The MED’s lawyers have refused to release any of the agency’s investigative files about Midnight Drops, making it difficult to assess why the agency didn’t act sooner. Draper, the spokesperson, said that when regulators were fielding complaints about Midnight Drops, their powers were limited: They could put a hold on products and require companies to issue recalls only for specific violations. She said because of a 2023 statute change, regulators can now place holds on products over safety concerns to prevent their sales, even without a violation. Still, even with that change, the time it takes to warn consumers after the first complaint as well as after the date when a product goes on sale have both gotten longer, according to the news organizations’ analysis. Draper said the agency “has improved its Health & Safety Advisory processes and this work continues.” She added that agency officials do not believe that the newsrooms’ analysis is “an accurate representation of our process and progress in these areas,” but she did not say why or provide any evidence disputing it. ### Loopholes in Safety Rules The continued time lag in public warnings from regulators is another blow to consumer safety for Colorado’s marijuana industry, which has loopholes in safety rules other states have closed to make it less likely that contaminated products end up in dispensaries. In one of the longest cases, it took regulators three years to warn consumers from the date of the first sales of marijuana products made by Pueblo County-based Boone Farms that were contaminated with yeast, mold and aspergillus, which can damage lungs and cause asthma, fungal infections and, in rare instances, death. Draper said she could neither confirm nor deny if there was any other investigation. The owner of the company declined to comment but previously said it was a small amount of product and that some of it sold before the state set standards for aspergillus. An MED investigator had similar suspicions about contamination in products made by Boulder-based Range Street, but “due to other priorities and bandwidth,” had to put the investigation on the “backburner,” according to the investigator’s synopsis obtained through a public records request. The MED eventually found yeast, mold and aspergillus. But it didn’t warn the public until 410 days after the first sales. Range Street, whose former owner declined to comment, has since surrendered its medical marijuana cultivation license. Unlike other states, Colorado operates largely on an honor code, with manufacturers free to choose the samples and the labs that conduct contaminant tests required before products can be sold. Colorado regulators in January said they were considering requiring lab personnel to collect samples, which would bring Colorado in line with 26 of the 42 state marijuana markets. But the agency backed away from the proposal after top manufacturers argued it would increase costs. Colorado also allows marijuana manufacturers to test their products far less frequently if they can show consistent compliance, something only one other state does. And the time frame for demonstrating that compliance can be as little as a few weeks. Colorado’s regulators acknowledged at a 2023 industry forum that the reduced testing program “potentially poses risks to public health and safety,” as problems with the program were “a common occurrence” in investigations. This January, the enforcement division noted in an industry bulletin that problems with that program persist, leading to recalls and advisories for unsafe levels of pesticides. The division told manufacturers in July that it is reviewing the reduced testing program as it considers a broader overhaul of testing rules. Colorado also has historically relied on complaints to identify tainted marijuana once it is actually in the marketplace, rather than randomly sampling products on shelves. The Cannabis Regulators Association recommends random sampling, and other states like Oklahoma have such programs. Colorado only this year launched a pilot program to randomly sample dispensary products, but the program has run into delays, and the state hasn’t identified a long-term funding source. Once a contaminated product gets to dispensaries, Colorado regulators face challenges in getting the product off the shelves. Colorado expects manufacturers to voluntarily recall products. Regulators in Colorado can only force products to be recalled in a public health emergency, but regulators can encounter hurdles to quickly establishing that one exists. Even when testing finds contaminants, manufacturers say marijuana that’s already in dispensaries often remains for sale. That’s because Colorado allows the manufacturer to retest the marijuana, and the rules don’t specify a time frame for when those tests have to be done. The rules state that the MED “may” require manufacturers to refrain from selling items during retesting. In contrast, Missouri immediately puts a hold on all marijuana products that fail mandatory contaminant testing. Manufacturers there can have the products reanalyzed, but dispensaries can’t sell those products until retesting shows the original analysis was incorrect. In an industry bulletin in January, Colorado regulators said the agency had seen “increased instances” of marijuana manufacturers taking advantage of the retesting rule to cover up the use of banned pesticides. ### “Health Isn’t Really Their Primary Concern” Tess Eidem, a research professor at the University of Colorado who has a federal grant to analyze the division’s health and safety bulletin process, said she worries the state prioritizes protecting the financial viability of the marijuana market over consumer safety. She pointed out that the MED isn’t part of the state’s health department but instead is in the state’s revenue department. “So health isn’t really their primary concern,” she said. Draper said that “consumer safety has been and remains a top priority for the Division.” In September 2024, a little over a year after Chatting stopped taking Midnight Drops, she and her husband went on a dream vacation to England, where they lived on a houseboat. The trip was such a success that they began planning to retire there, projecting that in about a decade they could downsize and spend their golden years traveling the canals through the English countryside where Luke was born. A month later, Jenifer got a call from a doctor. Because she’s a former smoker, she had gone in for a routine lung screening. Her lungs were fine, but the X-ray detected something suspicious with her liver. A follow-up ultrasound detected cirrhosis. Chatting’s gastroenterologist ruled out alcohol consumption, noting in her medical records that Chatting had always been a light drinker, and instead cited an herbal sleeping aid as a likely factor. After she stopped taking the drops, her liver enzymes came back into normal ranges, but the damage was already done, her medical records show. Two days before Thanksgiving, Luke couldn’t sleep and rose about 2 a.m. to Google information about cirrhosis. He said it was then that he finally discovered the MED’s notifications about Midnight Drops. He started slamming his fists on the armrests of his desk chair. One armrest broke, and his fist hit jagged plastic, fracturing his left hand. “Jen, they killed you,” he recalled shouting. She has few symptoms now, other than body cramps, but her gastroenterologist has warned that her condition will inevitably deteriorate and she will require a liver transplant in as little as five years. Struggling to come to terms with the diagnosis, Jenifer now stays mostly indoors, building elaborate Lego artwork and spending time with their rescue pug mixes. “It’s hard because you think you’re doing something good for yourself and healthy and all natural,” she said. “And then it ends up being, you know … .” She stopped and gathered herself. “Just because something’s all natural doesn’t mean that it’s good for you.” Last September, Barsoom and his companies settled with the attorney general’s office to resolve the office’s investigation. Barsoom and his companies denied that they had violated consumer protection laws. But they agreed to pay $400,000 in fines, and the settlement bars them from selling cannabis products in Colorado until at least 2027. Barsoom also agreed to issue an apology. “We’ve always believed that great products should improve people’s lives,” his statement read. “When we learned that Midnight Drops wasn’t meeting that standard for everyone, we realized we had let our customers down. We are sorry that we didn’t act faster and communicate better with both our customers and regulators.” The Chattings said Barsoom’s apology doesn’t amount to much for them, and they wish Colorado regulators had acted faster and communicated better with consumers. “How are people supposed to know this?” Luke asked. “The only way I found this stuff was by digging and digging and digging on the internet.” * * *

by Mackenzie Thomas, Carolina Public Press September 2, 2026 With four audits still missing, the town of Littleton faces its sales tax distributions being held back after a failed appeal to the North Carolina Local Government Commission at its latest meeting on Tuesday. The town previously told the LGC that it was aiming to finish the 2022 audit by this summer and the 2023 audit by the end of the year or early next year, Carolina Public Press reported earlier. **Beverly Stroud** , an accountant assisting the town, told commissioners on Tuesday that the 2022 audit is still in progress and they don’t currently have an estimate of when it will be finished. The 2023 audit is in progress as well, with a good portion of it finished already, Stroud said. ##### **[** Subscribe for FREE to Carolina Public Press’ Daily, Weekend and Election 2026 newsletters.**]** “We’re going to get backlogged until the first of the year with another audit because of the ‘26 audit coming up,” Stroud told commissioners. “But hopefully, in the spring, we’ll be able to turn around a couple back to back while he’s not busy with 26’s.” The town received a notice of noncompliance from the LGC a few months ago for failing to submit the most recent 2025 audit by April 1. With the 2025 audit remaining incomplete, LGC staff told CPP that the town now faces having some of its sales tax distributions withheld. The town attempted to appeal the decision, citing “auditor workload” and “delays in the preparation of the financial statements by the third-party bookkeeper,” but was denied on account of the other audits still missing. “LGC staff recommend denying appeals of units that are three or more years behind on their audits, unless the unit experienced a recent extraordinary event or circumstance that would explain the continued delay in audit submission,” the LGC resolution said. “The Town’s appeal does not identify or describe such an event or circumstance. Accordingly, the recommendation is to deny the appeal.” The withholding on the 2025 sales tax will be released in September 2027, while the current withholding on the town’s 2024 sales tax will be released this month. Those in attendance at Tuesday’s meeting included Mayor **Heidi Hogan** and **Stevelyn J. Riggan** , the town’s new finance officer and town clerk. ### Littleton water and sewer Beyond the sales tax and audit issues, the town also addressed the status of its water and sewer system, which they reported to the LGC in May would potentially be merging with Halifax County’s system. Hogan told commissioners that merger with the county will be moving forward, but will likely be completed in three to five years rather than in months. Currently, the town and the county are having monthly meetings to address logistical issues related to the merger and to come up with solutions. The issue being addressed at the next meeting will be related to meters, Hogan said. “Then the next month we’ll take another issue with the merger,” Hogan told commissioners. “It may sound like a simplistic way to all of you, but for us it’s working. “You can’t solve this problem till you’ve taken care of this one, and it avoids talking about everything and coming to no conclusion.” **Ophelia Gould-Faison** , the commissioner who oversees the town’s water and sewer system, also praised Riggan for the work she’s done in her role as finance officer since coming on board with the town. “She’s very meticulous on things that come across her desk and correcting us or informing us,” Gould-Faison said. While there’s certainly more work to be done, the town has continued to make progress since May, when it narrowly avoided a financial takeover by the LGC. After submitting its overdue 2021 audit that month and showing it was close to hiring its new finance director, the LGC granted the town more time to rectify its financial situation, CPP reported. Hogan told commission members in May that she credits more aggressive communication on the town’s part for the progress they made, as well as help from **Joe Durham** , a municipal operations consultant from the North Carolina League of Municipalities, in helping review their budget. Moving forward, the LGC told Littleton officials that they’d like to see an interlocal agreement between the town and Halifax County, another audit finished and a clearer understanding of the town’s leadership. They’d like to see these items completed by December, which is also when they’d like to see the town return to give another update. This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

By Lisa Sorg August 30, 2026 _This article originally appeared on_ Inside Climate News_, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter_ here_._ _**Feeding the Beast:** Second in a series about lax regulation, corporate influence and the heavily polluting, yet nearly untouchable American meat industry._ Thousands of dead and bloated pigs floated down country roads, buoyed by floodwaters. Tens of millions of gallons of feces and urine spilled over the brims of lagoons and contaminated everything in their path, including rivers, streams and private drinking water wells. It was September 1996, when Hurricane Fran pummeled eastern North Carolina and unleashed an environmental catastrophe, the first of several that would occur over the next two decades. The resulting disasters stemmed from a primitive lagoon and sprayfield system, in which millions of gallons of hog waste are stored in open, unlined cesspools the size of a football field, then sprayed as fertilizer on nearby farm fields. The hog industry has used this system for years on the state’s massive network of concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs. It made economic sense to Smithfield Foods, the behemoth hog producer. But the cheap and outdated method of managing waste has inflicted decades of misery on thousands of residents, mostly Black or low-income, who live near the CAFOs. Then-Attorney General Mike Easley, the state’s future governor, stepped into the fray. In 2000, he negotiated the Smithfield Agreement, a binding pact with the hog producer intended to permanently replace the lagoon and sprayfield system. “I am here today to tell you that we have found a solution that will take us one giant step forward,” Easley proclaimed in a July 2000 press release. “Industry leaders have agreed to fund the development of new technology to replace current lagoon systems. More importantly, they have agreed to implement this technology on their farms immediately.” Now, the Smithfield Agreement is winding down. As part of the deal, the company had to pay up to $2 million per year for 25 years towards environmental enhancement grants to nonprofits and local governments. It also paid $15 million for research toward the development of “environmentally superior technologies” (ESTs) to replace the lagoon and sprayfield system on corporate-owned farms. The company also pledged to assist its contract growers with their own conversion to ESTs if the technologies were economically feasible. Smithfield decided they weren’t. The result: The air near CAFOs still stinks. Every day a miasma of manure rises from the sprayfields. Thousands of lagoons teem with fetid waste. Communities near the CAFOs are at a higher risk of asthma, cardiovascular illness, infant mortality and overall death, multiple scientific studies have shown. As part of the agreement, five representatives from the hog industry, including Smithfield, sat on an 11-member economic subcommittee to analyze the financial feasibility of environmentally superior technologies. The majority, which included renowned economists, agreed that yes, Smithfield could afford it. In its dissenting report, issued in 2005, the industry representatives vehemently disagreed. “… Would any net increase in costs of a new technology be economically feasible? The short answer is no.” Smithfield never backed any environmentally superior technologies—even though one was developed. And it never helped contract growers adopt the technology, either. Michelle Nowlin, then an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, served on the agreement’s technical advisory committee. Now co-director of the Duke University Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, she sees the folly in hindsight. “We knew we’d been played.” ## **“You’re Going To Smell It”** The stench stuns like an uppercut. For six miles between Smith Chapel Church and the B&W Trailer Court on Veachs Mill Road, in Duplin County, North Carolina, as many as 44,280 hogs, plus an unknown number of chickens stuffed into poultry barns, live on eight farms. Duplin County ranks among the top hog-producing counties in the nation: 1.8 million hogs and 459 CAFOs, state records show. An untold number of poultry CAFOs add to the misery, residents say. “Duplin County introduces itself,” joked Leroy Mitchell, a local and member of the Rural Empowerment Association for Community Help (REACH), a nonprofit group that has long fought the swine industry. Mitchell, a middle-aged Black man with a commanding presence, had just delivered the invocation at a recent REACH meeting, held at its headquarters, a white modular home converted into an office and community meeting space a mile from Veachs Mill Road. About 20 people attended to discuss community health impacts, including an air monitoring project with Johns Hopkins University. “You’re going to smell it,” he said. “Or God forbid you get behind a dead truck”—which hauls hogs, often the weakest ones, that have been stomped or succumbed from other causes in the crowded barns. ## **Birthplace of the CAFO** With its broad floodplains, shallow water table and tendency to get hit by hurricanes, North Carolina’s Coastal Plain is, geographically speaking, an awful place to put a hog CAFO. For hundreds of years, the region’s sandy loam soils supported tobacco. But after economic factors and litigation gutted that industry, farmers needed a replacement. Even if the hydrology was sub-optimal, barns could easily be built on the low, flat land, then stuffed with hogs. Dig a hole in the ground, line it with clay, build a brim, and you have a lagoon. But when a hurricane hits, as happened in September 1996, the lagoons can unleash an environmental catastrophe. The storm lasted just one day, but the disaster started years before. Because of cheap grain, and changes in federal agricultural policy, in the late 1980s, the hog industry began consolidating the thousands of small farms into the hands of just a few corporations. The number of swine farms shrunk from 15,000 to 5,800. Thousands of small farmers went out of business. Meanwhile, the number of hogs in North Carolina outpaced the human population, state and federal records show, to 10 million. The American CAFO was born. By 2000, the need for a solution for controlling swine waste in North Carolina was dire. Lagoon spills, breaches and discharges were common. A year before Hurricane Fran, 25 million gallons of waste disgorged from a lagoon and into the New River, killing fish and coating farm fields in layers of feces. The farm owners, who lived out of state, attributed the breach to heavy rain, although they had also failed to maintain the lagoon. The string of disasters compelled the governor and legislature to assemble a Blue Ribbon Commission on Agricultural Waste to study the problem. The commission recommended several improvements for permitting and inspections, many of which became part of a 1997 law. That law, passed when Democrats held a majority in the state legislature, included a temporary moratorium—later made permanent—on new and expanded hog CAFOs that used a lagoon and sprayfield system. Just two years later, in 1999, Hurricane Floyd ripped through the state, leaving more dead hogs. More breached lagoons. More waste polluting the drinking water supplies. Community groups were considering filing a class-action lawsuit against Smithfield Foods, the dominant hog producer in the state. Easley, then the attorney general, threatened to sue Smithfield as well, Nowlin recalled. “He made it known that he was exploring some of these claims but wanted to bring people together to see if there was a way to avert legal action.” Easley could not be reached for an interview. Easley assembled scientists, economists, environmental engineers, lawyers, advocates and representatives from the hog industry to forge the Smithfield Agreement. There was a catch: secrecy. Committee members could not disclose their participation nor the existence of the negotiations until the agreement was announced, Nowlin said. “In a move that I regret very deeply, to have a seat at the table, we were prohibited from talking with community groups about the settlement conversations,” she said. “I had a lot of misgivings about that. Ethically it was the wrong call. I think the community groups deserve to have their own seat at the table and not have an environmental organization serving as a proxy, regardless of how well intentioned.” Before the Smithfield Agreement negotiations, Mike Williams was living a comparatively quiet academic life at N.C. State where he worked as a professor and the director of the university’s Animal and Poultry Waste Management Center. After Hurricane Floyd, Easley designated Williams to wrangle teams of professionals to analyze the technical and economic aspects of replacing the lagoon and sprayfield system with something better—what, in the parlance of the Smithfield Agreement, became known as “environmentally superior technologies.” “Everybody felt really comfortable having him as the designee,” Nowlin said. “He’s a person of not just tremendous intelligence, but tremendous integrity as well. He was very fair-minded and inclusive, and a no-drama kind of guy.” Although it was a stressful endeavor, said Viney Aneja, an N.C. State scientist and professor who evaluated the ESTs, “Williams did not buckle under the pressure of the agricultural interests.” Williams, who retired nearly 10 years ago, could not be reached for an interview. Ryke Longest helped craft the Smithfield Agreement when he was a special deputy attorney general at the N.C. Department of Justice’s Division of Environmental Protection. He now co-directs the Duke University Environmental Law and Policy Clinic with Nowlin. “The most impactful things were the environmental enhancement funds to put land into conservation and to close the abandoned lagoons,” Longest said. “And demonstrating there were environmentally superior technologies to the sprayfield and lagoon system. The lie had been that there was nothing better.” Under the agreement, an EST would curb water and air pollution originating at the CAFOs, based on criteria established by the state legislature. That included eliminating the discharge of hog waste to surface water and groundwater, and “substantially eliminating” emissions of ammonia and other air pollutants, pathogens and odors beyond the CAFO property boundary. The criteria also called for the substantial elimination of disease-carrying insects and airborne pathogens, as well as marked reductions in phosphorus, nitrogen and heavy metal contamination of soil and groundwater. Scientists and engineers developed two ESTs that curbed odors, pathogens and air pollution by 99 percent. One, Super Soils, emerged as the top contender. Aneja, now in his 70s, is a professor in the Department of Marine, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences at N.C. State. “We know that it’s possible to control these emissions,” said Aneja, who led the team that evaluated 18 potential ESTs. Ammonia is key, Aneja said. Nearly half of the state’s annual ammonia emissions comes from swine waste. It irritates the eyes, nose and respiratory tract, and has been linked to childhood asthma. Ammonia also forms very fine particulate matter, also known as PM 2.5, invisible particles that can enter the brain and burrow into the lungs and bloodstream. Chronic exposure to PM 2.5 can cause lung cancer and COPD, and increase the risk of dementia. Scientists deployed the ESTs on working test farms owned by Smithfield, then compared results with a farm of similar size that used a traditional lagoon and sprayfield system. After several iterations, Super Soils, later known as Terra Blue, was proven to be the most viable. Engineers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture invented the technology, which operates like a municipal wastewater treatment plant and separates the waste into solids and liquids. Liquids are diverted to a tank where nitrogen and phosphorus are removed by adding lime, calcium hydroxide and special bacteria. This process also disinfects the liquid waste, 80 percent of which can be used to flush out the barns and the remainder to irrigate crop fields. The solids are composted and can be sold as fertilizer. The first generation of Super Soils was installed at Goshen Ridge farm, a 4,360-head CAFO with six barns in Duplin County. The numbers were striking: ammonia was reduced by 94.7 to 99.9 percent, depending on the weather. Odors, pathogens, nitrogen, phosphorus, metals and greenhouse gases also fell by 90 to 99 percent. The technology cost $400 per 1,000 pounds of live hog each year, nearly five times more than the cost of a traditional lagoon and sprayfield system. Scientists tweaked it. By its third iteration, Super Soils was cheaper: $157 per 1,000 pounds of live hog, compared with $87 for a lagoon and sprayfield. “We’re moving the needle,” Williams told Duke University students at a 2016 Environmental Health Scholars program. “The research has moved the needle to get the cost down to where it’s affordable.” Smithfield never deployed it. In his final report on the Smithfield Agreement, Williams found that while Super Soils met the environmental performance standards of an EST, it didn’t meet the economic feasibility criteria. “Dr. Williams decided that it was too close to call,” Nowlin said. Smithfield wasn’t required to install Super Soils on existing farms. However, a state moratorium mandated new swine CAFOs to be outfitted with an EST. Instead, the company has opted not to build any new farms and stick with the lagoons and sprayfields. “We had two environmentally superior technologies,” Aneja said. “But there’s no appetite in the hog industry to make it go commercial.” Over the past quarter century, Smithfield has repeatedly asserted that the ESTs don’t meet the agreement’s criteria of “economic feasibility,” because compared to the existing lagoon and sprayfield system, the technologies are too expensive for the company to remain competitive. Since then, the economic landscape has radically changed. “We have much better models for figuring out actual costs to public health,” Nowlin said. “We have much more robust models for being able to measure ecosystem services and to be able to incorporate those into cost benefit analysis.” Smithfield has not only remained competitive since the agreement but also has cemented its market dominance in the global hog industry. The company bought its closest competitor, Premium Standard Farms, in 2007. It is now a subsidiary of a multi-billion dollar Chinese company, WH Group Limited, the world’s largest pork producer. Smithfield reported $15 billion in sales last year, as well as a record $1.3 billion in operating profit, according to the company’s investor report. A company spokesman declined to discuss the successes and failures of the agreement, but released a list of contributions since 2023, including 5 million servings of meat to hunger relief organizations in eastern North Carolina and $1 million for food assistance, education and public safety. Critics say those contributions disregard the plight of thousands of people who must endure the environmental and public health hazards of living near swine CAFOs. “There seemed to be a narrow focus on the economics of implementing the technology without much consideration of the benefits on public health,” said Blakely Hildebrand, who works on agricultural issues as a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center. “It’s mind-boggling that in 2026, when we can get internet from satellites, the main way the hog industry stores and disposes of waste is a pit in the ground. I mean, that is just unacceptable at this stage.” ## **“Environmentally Superior,” Not “Economically Feasible”** The Super Soils died under the Smithfield Agreement, but lawyers resurrected the technology’s potential in several federal court cases filed against the pork producer. In 2014, 540**** plaintiffs, all neighbors of hog CAFOs in North Carolina, sued Smithfield in federal court for nuisance. They alleged the company’s lagoon and sprayfield system had degraded their property values and quality of life. Because of the putrid smell, they couldn’t go outside or open their windows. Feces and urine misted from the sprayguns onto their homes, cars, even their skin. Smithfield could have phased out the method of waste disposal, the neighbors’ attorneys argued, and begun to install Super Soils on the farms. Instead, the company chose the cheaper way out: the lagoon and sprayfield system. That turned out to be a very expensive choice. The cases finally went to court in 2018. The company lost the first five, where jurors awarded the neighbors a total of $550 million in damages, later capped at $98 million under North Carolina law. After a federal judge at the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a scathing opinion against the company, Smithfield relented. In 2020, the company settled the remaining 21**** cases out of court, for an undisclosed amount. Based on initial construction and operational costs, for $98 million Smithfield could have upgraded the waste management systems with the first iteration of Super Soils, plus paid for the operations and maintenance of that EST for at least 17 corporate-owned farms—for 10 years. Yet under the terms of Smithfield Agreement, a technology could be deemed environmentally superior only if it were also “economically feasible”—a nebulous term that the economics subcommittee, composed of economists, environmental advocates and pork industry representatives, debated. To compare the cost difference, the majority of the committee advocated for evaluating any EST against what a farmer would pay to install new sprayfields and lagoons. The pork industry disagreed, arguing that the comparison should be based on the cost of the existing sprayfields and lagoons it had installed years earlier—which were much cheaper. The upshot was that maintaining the existing structures, some of them more than 10 years old, was cheap. The cost gap between that system and an alternative technology could be deemed economically infeasible. Missing from the economic equation was the value of the public health and environmental benefits, especially to neighbors of the CAFOs. “That ended up being the real test point,” Nowlin said. “Smithfield and the industry succeeded in truncating the scope of that analysis. When all the data was in and the costs were totalled, the economic benefits to the community in terms of reduced health burdens and reduced environmental pollution were not adequately factored in.” Richard Whisnant, then a distinguished professor of public law and government at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, served as chairman of the Smithfield Agreement’s economic subcommittee. His charge was to herd the members to a consensus on how to interpret the term “competitiveness,” a term in the agreement that proved hard to pin down. “I viewed my task as coming up with some way of explaining what competitiveness meant,” Whisnant said, “other than saying no net increase in cost, which was going to be the industry position.” The subcommittee agreed that an EST could be more expensive than a lagoon and sprayfield system, as long as it didn’t harm the competitiveness of the North Carolina hog industry compared with other states. But the subcommittee never accounted for Smithfield’s profitability in determining whether an EST was affordable; the calculation wasn’t required under the agreement. At a Duke University Environmental Health Scholars program in 2016, Williams criticized the sprayfield and lagoon system. He told students that he had hoped a robust carbon trading and renewable energy program would have incentivized the pork industry to install ESTs. “Had that occurred, some of these technologies would have met economic feasibility standards and we would be getting them onto farms,” he said. “This isn’t a technological issue, but an economic, community and policy issue.” The lagoon and sprayfield method is not a sustainable model, he said. “We need a solution that can last for generations.” ## **Grants on Hold Since 2023** On the grant-making side of the ledger, the Smithfield Agreement showed more promise, even if the $2 million paid annually by the company from 2002 to 2023 was, in the minds of environmental advocates, a pittance. That $43 million, paid first into an escrow fund overseen by the Attorney General’s Office, then later by the state treasury, supported 230 wide-ranging projects: stream and wetland restoration, forest preservation, floodplain buyouts, as well as agriculture-specific work. The Nature Conservancy received $300,000 to acquire 1,789 acres of land in Bladen County, another leading hog-producing area. The City of Lumberton used a $250,000 grant to buy land for the Lumber River State Park. The N.C. Soil and Water Conservation Foundation received $6 million for the closure of 250 abandoned hog lagoons, accounting for 290 million gallons of waste. Yet some projects were never completed. In 2022, East Carolina University was among 23 grant recipients that year. It was awarded $175,000 to collaborate with Waterkeepers Carolina and Butler Farms, an 8,000-head hog operation, to reduce nitrate in waterways in the Cape Fear River Basin. The team was preparing to do remediation work when they received a stop-work order from the N.C. Department of Justice, said Guy Iverson, an associate professor in ECU’s College of Health and Human Sciences, who participated in the project. “Unfortunately, we weren’t able to complete this grant work before the current lawsuit,” Iverson said in an email. As part of the stop-work order, “we could not spend any more money.” Funding for all grantees has been on hold since 2023, with nearly half of that year’s $2.2 million allocation in limbo, according to a spokesperson for Jeff Jackson, the current attorney general. The head of a conservative think tank and a private citizen have sued the attorney general’s office, under different administrations, over its disbursement of the grants. They have argued, so far unsuccessfully, that the money should instead go to public school districts, which under state law, are entitled to the proceeds from civil penalties. The Smithfield Agreement contained no financial penalties, Longest, the former special deputy attorney general, said, in part because the attorney general can’t levy environmental fines. That’s the Department of Environmental Quality’s job. “But they didn’t sign the agreement,” Longest said. “We were aware of the law. And we were careful.” Longest believes the lawsuits are politically motivated. De Luca, the first plaintiff who tried to halt the grants, was president of the Civitas Institute, a far-right organization funded by the Pope Foundation. Its board chairman, Art Pope, a multimillionaire heir to a chain of discount stores, served as deputy budget director under Republican Gov. Pat McCrory. “I’m not surprised that people filed the lawsuits,” Longest said. “They’re disgruntled operatives who seek to restrict the powers of the attorney general.” ## **Carrying On** In 2014, the Rural Empowerment Association for Community Help (REACH), the Duplin County nonprofit that has long fought the swine industry, joined forces with the Waterkeeper Alliance and the NC Environmental Justice Network to file a successful civil rights complaint with the Environmental Protection Agency. The complaint alleged that the state’s permitting process for swine CAFOS disproportionately burdened communities of color. Two years later, REACH filed a second complaint accusing the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality of coordinating with the pork industry to intimidate the groups during confidential mediation sessions. Under the leadership of then-DEQ Secretary Donald van der Vaart, another McCrory appointee, agency officials apparently tipped NC Pork Council representatives to a mediation session. Even though the Pork Council was not a party to the mediation, several representatives showed up, anyway. Given the tense history between the Pork Council, swine farmers and their neighbors, the complainants viewed the intrusion as an attempt to intimidate them. When Michael Regan became DEQ secretary under Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, the complainants, with EPA approval, engaged in alternative dispute resolution rather than pursue the retaliation complaint. But like the Smithfield Agreement, the civil rights victory was fleeting. The settlement, finalized in 2018, required DEQ to implement a violation point system that would have further penalized farms that were chronic offenders. DEQ completed a draft in 2020, but never presented it to the state Environmental Management Commission for consideration, according to meeting minutes. A DEQ spokesperson told Inside Climate News that because of agency turnover, “particular staff involved with that process and communicating with the EMC are no longer with the agency.” In June 2026, the legislature repealed it as part of the Farm Act. Under the settlement terms DEQ also had to conduct air and surface water monitoring for at least a year. That requirement has expired, as the Smithfield Agreement is about to do. The Smithfield Agreement did not repair the hog industry’s ongoing environmental damage, so communities will be left, as REACH and its allies have done, to attack the problem themselves. Now, REACH and Johns Hopkins University have launched their own air monitoring project. This study, and others co-led by communities and scientists in eastern North Carolina, could build a legal foundation for future lawsuits against the EPA, which has exempted CAFOs from reporting toxic air emissions under the Clean Air Act. A full generation has passed since the Smithfield Agreement. Yet it did not improve the lives of those living near the CAFOs, said Debbie Hall of REACH, as she greeted newcomers to the group’s meeting: “It failed miserably.”

**It's Friday September 4, 2026 and in this morning's issue we're covering:** NC announces $20 million to expand childcare in storm recovery areas**,** Rival Helene recovery narratives compete as Asheville hosts G20 summit, He spent 27 years on death row as a wrongfully convicted man. What comes next?, Kentucky writer, farmer and advocate Wendell Berry dies at 92, Forest Service declines public meeting on Wilson Creek ICE operation; Advocates call response ‘a shell game’, Redistricting hearing turns tense in US Rep. Bennie Thompson’s backyard, Women on parole face higher rates of mental health, housing challenges. **Media outlets and others featured:** NC Newsline, Carolina Public Press, Verite News, Kentucky Lantern, NC Local, Mississippi Today, Stateline. * * * ## NC announces $20 million to expand childcare in storm recovery areas Trevon Spencer (North Carolina Newsline) Published: September 3, 2026 North Carolina is making $20 million available to expand childcare on community college and university campuses in counties affected by Hurricane Helene and Tropical Storm Debby, Gov. Josh Stein announced. The funding is part of a $75 million federal grant awarded to the state for childcare recovery in disaster-affected areas. Applications for the $20 million program will open Sept. 14 and close Nov. 2. “Today marks a step forward in creating opportunity for children and restoring stability for families in areas hit the hardest by these devastating storms,” Stein said. More than 230 childcare centers were affected by Helene, and more than 100 in central and eastern parts of the state were affected by Tropical Storm Debby in 2024, according to state officials. The money can be used to build new centers and renovate older centers. The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services says projects must address community needs. State leaders see North Carolina’s higher education campuses as ideal locations to expand childcare options on public land. State officials from NCDHHS say only 16 of North Carolina’s 58 community colleges currently have childcare on campus. About 10 of the 17 UNC System campuses have some form of on-site childcare. “This investment to expand on-site child care to college campuses will reduce barriers for students, faculty, and the surrounding communities, allowing them to learn and work knowing their children are safe and receiving high-quality education and care,” said NCDHHS Secretary Dev Sangvai. > NC budget offers rural childcare businesses financial help they’ve sought for years Last year, NCDHHS said that as many as 55 childcare centers in western North Carolina damaged by Helene were expected to remain closed for the foreseeable future. By March 2025, at least 10 remained closed or were operating from temporary locations. The remaining $55 million in federal funding is expected to support recovery payments to eligible providers, salary supplements for early-childhood educators, disaster preparedness efforts and mental health resources. “Childcare is essential economic infrastructure,” said Matt Calabria, director of the Governor’s Recovery Office for Western North Carolina. “When a center closes, parents can’t get back to work, employers can’t staff up, and a community’s recovery slows.” * * * # Rival Helene recovery narratives compete as Asheville hosts G20 summit by Walker Livingston, Carolina Public Press September 1, 2026 Asheville is buzzing with finance officials, central bank governors and journalists from across the globe this week. The city is hosting a G20 summit — specifically the G20 Finance Track. G20 stands for the Group of 20, which is a conglomerate of 20 countries with the largest economies in the world, including 19 individual nations, the European Union and the African Union. The US Treasury Department says it chose Asheville because of the region’s recovery from Tropical Storm Helene, which occurred nearly two years ago. The Trump administration has framed the G20 in Asheville as a celebration of a supposedly completed recovery. **Kush Desai** , the president’s senior deputy press secretary, likened Asheville to a phoenix rising from the ashes in conversation with Carolina Public Press. US Treasury Secretary **Scott Bessent** recognized Asheville’s “comeback story” while delivering remarks at the summit. But Asheville is just one city in Western North Carolina’s span of 18 counties and the Qualla Boundary, and even parts of Asheville, like the River Arts District and Biltmore Village, have not been fully rebuilt. ##### **[** Subscribe for FREE to Carolina Public Press’ Daily, Weekend and Election 2026 newsletters.**]** Rural parts of the region that are still in the thick of recovery have seldom been a topic of discussion at the international event. Lagging federal funding for the $60 billion disaster hasn’t been either. “The selection of historic Asheville reflects the Trump Administration's commitment to the revitalization and resilience of western North Carolina, which continues to rebuild after the devastating impact of Helene,” Secretary Bessent said in an August press release. Bessent owns a home in Cashiers, in Jackson County, a wealthy rural mountain community about an hour southwest of Asheville. Damage from Helene in Cashiers was minimal. Other rural communities were both hit harder and facing a more difficult recovery. The Hickory Nut Gorge, which includes the communities of Lake Lure, Chimney Rock, Bat Cave and Gerton, in Rutherford, Henderson and Buncombe counties, is still experiencing repairs on the main road that connects them to one another and larger communities like Asheville and Hendersonville. US Sen. **Ted Budd** , R-Advance, attended the G20 on Tuesday, but told Carolina Public Press that after the event he would be traveling around Bat Cave and surveying lingering damage to the community. Secretary Bessent began his remarks on Monday by saying Asheville was chosen for its physical beauty and the community's resilience — before noting that economic growth and “America First” were the foremost priorities of the economic summit. The Treasury Department secured the entire property of the landmark Omni Grove Park Inn for the conference. Other G20 meetings are also occurring simultaneously in the Triangle this week. ### Is WNC really a beacon of recovery? When Tropical Storm Helene initially hit Western North Carolina nearly two years ago, Congress went home instead of authorizing federal funding for the disaster. It was an election year, which politicized the storm on a national level. Helene’s damages amount to roughly $60 billion. Only 16% of recovery has been funded thus far, according to the Governor’s Recovery Office from Western North Carolina. In June, NC Gov. **Josh Stein** , a Democrat, requested $10 billion more from Congress for Helene recovery, which has yet to be addressed. North Carolina has funded roughly $5.3 billion in recovery, while the federal government has supposedly funded $9.5 billion, with a large amount of those federal dollars yet to be disbursed. Budd told CPP that he will not support disaster relief packages that do not include Western North Carolina. Earlier this summer, he stated that he would vote against a supplemental relief request from the Office of Management and Budget that would provide aid to farmers in Florida, but not North Carolina. The senator also said he and Stein have continual conversations about Helene recovery and “what that number needs to be.” At the same time, Budd praised FEMA under Trump. Immediately after Helene initially hit Western North Carolina in September 2024, then-presidential candidate Trump claimed that FEMA was only distributing $750 to those affected by the disaster. The $750 was what is called Serious Needs Assistance, which was an initial direct payment for people affected by the storm for things like food, water and other basics. He also claimed that FEMA money was spent on undocumented migrants instead of disaster aid and that helicopters were not allowed into disaster zones after the storm. Each of those assertions was shown to be false prior to the November election in which Trump was elected, winning both North Carolina and most of its heavily Republican mountain counties where the impact of Helene was hardest. Trump canceled a $7.7 million grant this year for rural parts of the state that would fund broadband and veterans’ affairs as a way to shrink federal expenditures. His administration also denied the state’s request for cost sharing at the federal level that Biden had approved. At G20, Treasury officials remarked on the $5 billion that the Trump administration has secured for Helene in a call to the press before the G20. They brought up the billions of dollars that the whole state of North Carolina has seen since 2025, not just the western part of the state. FEMA and the delay for disbursements from the federal agency were not mentioned during the call. Budd called FEMA a “calcified” agency because of how long it takes for communities to get relief. The agency requires municipalities to pay for repairs before reimbursing them, which can take years. It also requires an extensive documentation process to be reimbursed for these costs — governments have to take pictures of trucks loading up debris and report where the debris ends up, and so on. US Sen. Ted Budd, R-Advance, sits for an interview with Elijah Skipper of WLOS outside the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, which is hosting the G20 Finance Summit, on Sept. 1, 2026. Walker Livingston / Carolina Public Press “The fastest response is from neighbors helping neighbors, communities helping communities, volunteers flying in doing the initial recovery,” Budd said. “You cannot have a calcified organization responding to urgent needs.” He also told CPP that the G20 pertains to Helene recovery because the war in Iran and increasing energy prices are making it more expensive for those in still-struggling communities. He did not comment on how climate change may cause future storms like Helene and instead said the region needs lower energy prices to make rebuilding affordable. ### ‘We’re not on our feet’ Banners reading, “Planet over Profits” and “Workers over Billionaires,” lined parts of Asheville this weekend. The city is the one Democratic bastion in otherwise conservative Western North Carolina, and messaging about Helene recovery displayed the $60 billion figure. Demonstrations lined downtown, as well as Merrimon Avenue in North Asheville. Folks sang and chanted, and in a very Asheville fashion, there was a puppet show. Community members, including organizers from the NC Poor People’s Campaign, held protests across Asheville the week before the G20. Some organizers were frustrated with the Trump administration’s claims about Helene recovery; others were displeased with the amount of wealth on display at the event. **Leslie** **Boyd** , a chair with the Poor People’s Campaign, said folks in Western North Carolina just want enough money to finish the job of recovery, and seeing government officials come into town and talk about billion-dollar investments abroad is frustrating. One of the hot-button topics at the G-20 is the war with Iran. “We’ve only struggled to our knees; we’re not on our feet,” she said of Western North Carolina. There was a community vigil in Pack Square Park on Sunday that was in part a protest against the summit and also in remembrance of the approaching two-year anniversary of Helene. Activists like Boyd echoed the sentiment that nonprofits and community groups acted as first responders after the initial disaster. Members of Asheville Food and Beverage United, the local union for service workers, tabled at the vigil, along with other local organizations like Sunrise Movement and Firestorm Books. **Bobby Skelton** , a member of the union, said that the bulk of Helene recovery has been community members looking out for each other. Western North Carolina nonprofits and disaster relief organizations received millions of donations after the storm but suffered extensive damage to their physical structures as well as staffing cuts from the federal level in 2025, according to a report authored by Dogwood Health Trust. Money is still coming in, but not at the rate that many locals would like. “The narrative right now from the G20 is that Asheville is so proud of its full recovery and the government helped,” Boyd said. “That’s all a lie.” ### G20 Hallmark Growth and WNC Though the event is largely self-contained to the Grove Park Inn, Explore Asheville CEO **Vic Isley** said she expects it to bring Asheville and greater Buncombe County $2 million in local spending. Treasury officials also said in a call to the press on Aug. 27 that the G20 will also bring additional millions in earned media coverage, which is the publicity that the city will receive from coverage. “In some cases, organizations seek us out, as Secretary Bessent did with bringing the G20 Finance Track to Asheville and being part of our economic comeback,” Isley said. Tourism in Asheville and the larger Buncombe County has been stronger this year than last. Prior to Helene, tourism accounted for about 20% of the county’s GDP, and Isley said spending is slowly returning to normal. She compared recovery to a continuum — different parts of Western North Carolina are recovering drastically differently, with places like the community of Swannanoa in Buncombe County that are still undergoing repairs on their infrastructure. Carolina Public Press previously reported on lasting food deserts in the region, after Helene flooded grocery stores. While minimal statistics are available about tourism’s rebound throughout the region, places that were hard-hit by Helene are facing unprecedented job losses, as well as unmet housing needs, according to the NC Budget and Tax Center. Boyd said she worries that the money brought to Asheville during the G20 won’t go to small businesses that still need disaster relief. Small businesses cannot receive aid from FEMA, but the Small Business Administration offers low-interest loans for businesses after natural disasters. Still, it’s been difficult for small businesses to bounce back after Helene. **Chris Pilkerton,** the assistant secretary for the Treasury and former acting administrator of the Small Business Administration, told CPP that the SBA usually comes in after FEMA and that folks can still take advantage of these loans after Helene. “These are very long-term loans with very low interest rates and the idea of these is to help small businesses build back up,” he said. ### Who attended G20? What did they discuss? Every year, a different member country hosts the G20 presidency, which means it hosts a series of summits for the G20, and this year, it’s the United States’ turn. Meetings are taking place across the country, with one in Miami that the president will attend. Its theme is growth, and hot topics of conversation include the war in Iran, financial regulation worldwide and bond markets, as well as the United States’ $40 trillion national debt. Asheville is hosting the yearly G20 Finance Track, which includes finance ministers, central bank governors and senior officials meeting together to coordinate economic and monetary policy among member countries. Chapel Hill is also hosting a G20 Innovation Ministerial, which will bring tech leaders like OpenAI’s **Sam Altman** to the Carolina Inn this week. **Elon Musk** will be joining the event virtually. President Trump specifically barred South Africa, which hosted last year’s G20 events, from attending the summit in Asheville because of the alleged persecution of White Afrikaners in the nation. Russia’s finance minister also joined this year's summit, which shocked other attending countries, according to reporting from national news outlets like Reuters and the New York Times. This is the first time a public-private partnership has been at this meeting, which has historically consisted only of government officials. Several Fortune 500 executives are in attendance at the finance track, including representatives from Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Chase and pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, according to reporting from Axios. Roughly 1,000 people were expected to attend, including 200 journalists from across the globe, according to Explore Asheville. Some journalists from the New York Times, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal were barred from attending the event. The Asheville Watchdog, a local investigative outlet, was also denied credentials for the event. While G20 is wrapping up, Helene recovery conversations will stay in the minds of communities in Western North Carolina and their leaders for the foreseeable future. In North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District, which encompasses a large amount of Western North Carolina, Democrat **Jamie Ager** and Republican State Rep. **Jennifer Balkcom** , R-Hendersonville, are running a race largely on who will better deliver recovery funds to the region. This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # He spent 27 years on death row as a wrongfully convicted man. What comes next? by Richard A. Webster and Kathleen Flynn for ProPublica, Verite News New Orleans August 31, 2026 _This article was produced for_ ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network_in partnership with_ _Verite News._ Sign up for Dispatches _to get stories like this one as soon as they are published._ Jimmie “Chris” Duncan wiped the sweat off his forehead as he assessed his temporary home from the parking lot of a rundown motel in central Louisiana. Sure, there’s drug dealing and prostitution, he said on a recent summer afternoon. And he suspected his neighbors were cooking meth on a floor below the room he paid $350 a week to rent. But, he said, “I feel safe here. I mean, I’ve been on death row. I feel safe anywhere.” Duncan had spent the last three decades trying to prove his innocence after a jury convicted him of killing his former girlfriend’s toddler. An investigation by Verite News and ProPublica last year showed that prosecutors had relied on key evidence that appeared to be fabricated by a pair of forensics experts whose use of bite mark analysis has since been widely discredited as junk science. Nevertheless, Louisiana prosecutors continued to argue that Duncan should be put to death. The threat became ever more real as Gov. Jeff Landry began expediting executions, despite the state’s track record of convicting and sentencing to death people later found to be innocent. It wasn’t until June that the Louisiana Supreme Court threw out Duncan’s murder conviction, ruling that the bite marks found on the child’s body, the only physical proof tying Duncan to the alleged crime, could not have been made by a human. Chief Justice John Weimer was so outraged by the prosecution of Duncan that he compared it to 17th-century witch trials. “We now look back at those practices as asinine and absurd” with “no basis whatsoever in logic,” he wrote. Some of the evidence against Duncan, he said, was “similarly specious.” The trauma that the state imposed on Duncan as a result of his wrongful conviction continues today. Although Louisiana’s top jurist tore apart the state’s case against Duncan, the 57-year-old West Monroe native still isn’t truly free. Steve Tew, district attorney for Ouachita Parish, where the crime allegedly took place, had warned the justices during an April hearing that he would retry Duncan if the court vacated his conviction. Tew, who did not respond to requests for comment, has said in court that he still believes that Duncan is not only guilty but deserves to be executed. Tew has until next June to decide on a retrial, though his term ends in January and he is not running for reelection. Until then, Duncan said, he is trapped in limbo, both mentally and financially. He came out of Angola with nothing in the bank and now makes $17 an hour working the night shift at Walmart unloading and stocking freight. While he enjoys the job — he was named employee of the month in June — Duncan said he is barely scraping by. There is a state restitution program designed to compensate exonerees up to $480,000 over a decade for wrongful convictions, but he is not eligible until either the district attorney decides not to retry him or he is acquitted in another trial, which can take years. And even then, there is no guarantee he will ever be awarded any money. Attorney General Liz Murrill has opposed nearly all applications for compensation, telling lawmakers last year that defending the state against such claims consumes an enormous amount of time and resources and that the fund should be abolished altogether. “The foreseeable future for me is the year between now and when they can’t prosecute me no more. That’s the only future I get to play with,” Duncan said. “I’m 100% factually innocent, but not 100% free from prosecution.” Duncan runs errands after finishing a night shift unloading freight at Walmart. ### Surviving his first decade in Angola Over the course of more than six hours of interviews with Verite News and ProPublica, Duncan described in harrowing detail the nightmare he lived since police arrested him on Dec. 18, 1993. By far the worst of it all, he said, was thinking that his neighbors, friends and even relatives could believe he had committed such an unspeakable crime against a child. It felt as if everything he was as a person was “being torn out of you, violently, in an emotionally painful way,” Duncan said. “Just having your identity eviscerated.” Duncan was babysitting Haley Oliveaux in the home he shared with the girl’s mother, Allison Layton Statham, in West Monroe when the 23-month-old died. Duncan told law enforcement he had put the child in the bath, then went to wash dishes. When he heard a noise coming from the bathroom, he rushed to check on her and found Haley floating face down in the water. She was pronounced dead a few hours later. Police initially arrested Duncan for negligent homicide, but prosecutors upped the charge to first-degree murder after pathologist Steven Hayne and dentist Michael West conducted Haley’s medical exam and claimed they discovered evidence, including the purported bite marks, that she had been sexually assaulted and intentionally drowned. Following two weeks of testimony during the trial in 1998, the jury found Duncan guilty; months later, the 30-year-old was sentenced to death. His first decade at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola was the hardest, Duncan said. Not only did he lose his initial appeal in 2002, and with it the dream he could convince the courts of his innocence, but he was forced to watch helplessly as his family gradually fell to pieces. His mother, Barbara Oren, used to visit him every Thursday, and then in 2004, she stopped coming without explanation. Duncan would stare out the window across the hall from his cell, “almost obsessing, like my mom’s gonna show up any time now,” he said. Three years later, Oren died of complications from excessive drinking, her sister, Elaine Whiteside, said. But in truth, Whiteside said, grief killed her. “She fought for Chris for so long, and she turned to alcohol,” Whiteside said. “It’s been very traumatizing for everybody. For the last 32 years, how do you tell someone your nephew’s on death row for the rape and murder of a baby?” Fourteen years after his mother passed, Duncan’s brother, David, died of an overdose. During the first several years of his incarceration, Duncan said he spoke with his brother often, but those calls grew less frequent as David’s addictions took hold. “My brother ended up going from being the region’s No. 1 car salesman to being addicted to drugs to eventually dying of overdose,” he said. “He just couldn’t take it. He couldn’t escape being my brother.” Duncan wasn’t allowed to attend either of their funerals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWN_WFDlGTE“There was nobody who was immune from it,” Duncan said. Credit: Kathleen Flynn for ProPublica Daily life on death row nearly robbed him of his sanity, Duncan said. Like all inmates awaiting execution, Duncan remained in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day. This lasted almost 20 years. And there was never a set schedule for that one hour he would be let out and allowed to use the phone. Some days, it would be 2 a.m. Who could he call at that hour? (Death row inmates were eventually allowed to spend at least four hours outside their cells following a 2017 class-action lawsuit.) The concept of time gradually disappeared. Duncan tried to keep a strict routine: wake up, drink coffee, watch the news, exercise and read books, mainly about other cultures and religions. He learned Hebrew so he could better understand the Bible. He became a tutor and helped other inmates earn their GEDs. But the years of confinement began to take their toll physically. After about four years, Duncan started experiencing severe heart pain caused by a bacterial infection. “By the time I was 34 years old, my health had went all the way downhill,” he said. “A lot of nights, I went to sleep, said my prayers and really didn’t think I was going to wake up the next day.” During the summer months, when the heat inside could rise to 115 degrees, Duncan said he experienced seizures. “I’m pretty sure I got brain damage as a result of it,” he said. “There were times when I got out of bed and I didn’t even know if I was left-handed or right-handed. There were a few times when I got up, I didn’t even know my name.” In 2013, three death row inmates sued the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections for “appalling and extreme conditions” as a result of the high temperatures. Their experiences described in the lawsuit closely matched Duncan’s. For 85 straight days in 2012, the heat index in one section of death row exceeded 126 degrees, according to the suit. A judge ordered the state to provide air conditioning throughout death row, but a federal appeals court overturned the order. The corrections department did not respond to questions about conditions within the prison. Instead of breaking him, Duncan said the brutal conditions hardened his resolve to keep fighting. But it didn’t seem as if anyone was listening. “Sometimes the louder you scream, the more people look at you and laugh, like, ‘There’s another one claiming he’s innocent,’” Duncan said. “I was suicidal at one point because I was hopeless.” Photographs kept by Duncan’s aunt show him during his time in prison. ### Signs of hope Duncan had been on death row for about a decade when he learned from his lawyers and the news that there were others like him — people convicted based on inaccurate evidence, including discredited bite mark science, presented by Hayne or West. Four of them had been exonerated by 2008, and five more would follow. In 2009 journalist Radley Balko wrote about Duncan’s case in Reason, a libertarian magazine, and how it was part of a larger pattern of “forensics fraud” perpetrated by Hayne and West. At the time, Duncan’s attorneys with a New Orleans nonprofit had filed a post-conviction appeal but did not have the resources to conduct a fuller investigation and uncover new evidence required to win. That left his case largely dormant. Then in 2016, Duncan’s attorneys contacted the American Bar Association, which put him in touch with an Atlanta firm that took Duncan on as a client pro bono. (The Innocence Project in New York signed on six years later.) They filed a series of discovery requests that unearthed a trove of evidence pointing to Duncan’s innocence. This included expert witnesses who said the child’s death was an accidental drowning brought on by a seizure and a jailhouse informant who recanted his trial testimony that Duncan had confessed to the crime. Most important was a recording of West’s 1993 examination of Haley. In that grainy black-and-white video, West can be seen taking a mold of Duncan’s teeth and grinding it into and across the girl’s body, seemingly creating bite marks where none previously existed — the marks later used to secure a death sentence against Duncan. The trial judge had not allowed the jury to see the video on the grounds that it was not an indication of Duncan’s innocence. West, who has not responded to multiple earlier requests for comment, had previously said he was simply using what he called a “direct comparison” technique — in which he presses a mold of a person’s teeth directly onto the location of suspected bite marks. He admitted in a 2011 deposition in another case that he no longer believed in bite mark analysis. Hayne died in 2020. Atlanta attorney Christian Bromley, who had joined the case, recalled the first time he was shown the recording in 2016 and being “horrified and surprised that the video had been available at that point for over 20 years and just essentially ignored and deemed not relevant.” The video would provide the foundation for Duncan’s latest bid for freedom. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWjJHwui8aUDuncan describes his feelings about how calls for the death penalty impacted his case. Credit: Kathleen Flynn for ProPublica Filmmaker Catherine Legge, who spent more than three years creating a documentary about his case, also played a pivotal role. Duncan said he’s indebted to her for tracking down Statham, Haley’s mother, and convincing her of his innocence. He knows it wasn’t easy. “Allison spent 30 years being accused of being a partner to her baby’s killer,” Duncan said. In April of last year, then-Ouachita Parish Judge Alvin Sharp overturned Duncan’s conviction, criticizing the “questionable” work of Hayne and West. Tew appealed, claiming that bite mark evidence was an accepted science at the time of Duncan’s trial and that some experts still consider it to be a useful forensic methodology. At Duncan’s bail hearing last July, Statham told the court that the district attorney’s office had lied about her daughter’s death to make it look like murder and continues to perpetuate the lie. She said Duncan deserved to be free. He wept as he listened to his former girlfriend come to his defense. “Just seeing her on the stand and hearing her voice engaged in the same struggle that I’ve been fighting for 30 years, knowing that what mattered to her was the truth,” he said, “That was the only thing that mattered to me.” Allison Layton Statham and her boyfriend, Mark Dillingham, outside the courthouse in Monroe, Louisiana, during a break in Duncan’s bail hearing in July 2025. Four months later, Sharp granted Duncan bail. He was released into the embrace of his family the day before Thanksgiving. Then, this June, the state Supreme Court rejected the district attorney’s appeal and threw out Duncan’s conviction. Of the four people sentenced to death based in part on the work of Hayne or West, Duncan was the last to be freed. ### Rebuilding a life from scratch Since his release from prison, Duncan has been trying to piece together some semblance of a normal existence. There were the everyday logistics of finding permanent housing and a job. And then the deeper work of addressing the decades of pain that he — and his family — experienced. At first, he slept on his aunt’s living room couch in Pineville in central Louisiana. But she broke her leg in June, which required twice-weekly visits from nurses and physical therapists, leaving little room for Duncan. That’s how Duncan ended up at the motel across the Red River in Alexandria, with half of his belongings packed into the back of a truck. In August, he moved into his own apartment, the first place he has ever lived by himself. “I never really had a place to just be comfortable and relax,” he said. Duncan moved into his new apartment in Pineville, Louisiana, in August. He is carrying cowboy boots that he ordered before going to prison; they didn’t arrive until after he was gone.Duncan’s Bible is one of his most cherished possessions. He taught himself to read Hebrew while in prison. Duncan’s main focus now is doing the best job he can at work. On most nights, he said he puts his earbuds in, listens to music, unloads the trucks and lets the world drift away. “Ain’t got to think about nothing else,” he said. But Duncan has his eye on the future and enrolled in a Walmart management training program that will bring additional responsibilities. One day soon, though, he knows that he will need to shift his attention back to the flawed criminal justice system in Monroe and the conditions in Angola prison. He wants to make sure the horrors he experienced don’t happen to anyone else, including the guys on death row, men who were convicted of terrible crimes but with whom he still formed true friendships. “I was under the same roof with those people twice as long as I was under the same roof with my own family,” he said. He’s also rekindled a relationship from long ago. Recently, he was going through Facebook friend requests and saw a familiar face, but one he couldn’t quite place. He accepted, and the woman texted him a photo of herself when she was just a kid. It was his childhood sweetheart. The last time he saw her was at a skating rink just after Christmas in the early 1980s. He had given her a pair of earrings. A short time later, her family moved out of town. “She just disappeared,” Duncan said. “She’s one of the only people I remember from my past. I still missed her just the same as I always did.” That part of his life seems at times to be more of a dream than reality, Duncan said. He lived a simple, country life. He hunted and fished. He drank beer, rode motorcycles and worked on hot rods. And he planned to become a firefighter like his dad. But then Haley died. “I can’t be a simple person anymore,” Duncan said. “I try to find ways to be happy, but nothing is simple anymore.” Duncan turns on a light in his new apartment. This article first appeared on Verite News New Orleans and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * ## Kentucky writer, farmer and advocate Wendell Berry dies at 92 Sarah Ladd (Kentucky Lantern) Published: September 1, 2026 Wendell Berry with two horses on his Henry County farm in 2010. Photo by Guy Mendes. Kentucky writer and conservationist Wendell Berry once wrote: “Beware the machinery of longevity. When a man’s life is over the decent thing is for him to die. The forest does not withhold itself from death.” A lover of forests, the farmer, author and former English professor died on Monday at his home in Port Royal, according to the New York Times and other media reports. He was 92. Born in 1934 to Virginia Erdman and attorney John Marshall Berry, Wendell Berry was a prolific writer of nonfiction, poetry and fiction from Henry County, Kentucky. In dozens of books he wrote of the need to protect — and ethically use — land, of God as a part of nature and of modernity as a force to be rebelled against. Berry was a member of a group of Kentucky writers called the “Fab Five,” which included Bobbie Ann Mason and the late Gurney Norman, James Baker Hall and Ed McClanahan. He leaves behind a sprawling legacy of advocacy, conservationism, literary pursuit and protest that inspired people from the hills of Kentucky to Hollywood and beyond. His death leaves a vacancy of voice that was not always without controversy throughout his life but was decisive and steady throughout a long career. ## Tobacco and love of land Berry came from a long line of tobacco producers. John M. Berry, Wendell Berry’s father, co-founded the Burley Tobacco Growers Co-Op in the 1920s, which stabilized the price of tobacco and helped farmers who’d been subject to the pricing impulses of the monopoly American Tobacco Company, according to a Bitter Southerner article. “The brilliance of the program was that it successfully matched supply and demand, preventing farmers from falling victim to overproduction,” the Bitter Southerner article says. “Within this equilibrium, farmers in the co-op were guaranteed parity prices, which meant a price that compensated them for all of their inputs.” That article also quoted Mary Berry, daughter of Wendell Berry, as saying the co-op “was the only farm program that I know of that served the people it was supposed to serve, and that was small farmers. It was never a subsidy, it was a price support. It cost the government nothing.” His family farmed in Henry County for generations. In a 1987 interview with the Kentucky Historical Society, Berry’s father said his great-grandfather bought 500 acres of land in the county after serving in the Army in the War of 1812. When Berry left New York City and returned home to Kentucky for good in the 1960s, he did so with “some fear and trembling, but also a sense of doing the right thing,” he told The New Yorker in 2019. When he started the trek home, with all his belongings in a Volkswagen Beetle, he told the New Yorker: “I felt a great, deep relief — as if I was following, at last, my true path.” ## ‘Cheerful in dissent.’ Berry was a man of many lanes. He protested the Vietnam War, saying in 1968 that “peace is more important than victory,” according to a Messenger Inquirer article from Feb. 11 of that year. Berry was arrested in 1979 for trespassing as he protested the Marble Hill Nuclear Power Plant in Madison, Indiana. In a 2010 CounterPunch conversation, he said of that day: “People asked if I wanted to be arrested and I said, ‘Hell No’ but I was willing to be.” In 2009, Berry joined thousands of people who marched in protest of the Capitol Power Plant in Washington, D.C., Inside Climate News reported at the time, in an effort to fight for cleaner emissions. He echoed the same trepidation and resolve about the prospect of arrest: “Somebody asked me if I wanted to get arrested. The answer is very brief: No. But I’m willing to get arrested. Nothing else is working.” The farmer fought to preserve a controversial piece of University of Kentucky art condemned as racist for many years and pushed back against mountaintop removal by joining a sit-in at former Gov. Steve Beshear’s office in 2011. The National Endowment for the Humanities described him in 2012 as “cheerful in dissent” and a person who “writes to document and defend what is being lost to the forces of modernization, and to explain how he lives and what he thinks.” The Berry Center was established in 2011 to put “Wendell Berry’s writings to work by advocating for farmers, land-conserving communities and healthy regional economies.” The nonprofit works to bring “focus, knowledge and cohesion to the work of changing our ruinous industrial agricultural system into a system and culture that uses nature as the standard, accepts no permanent damage to the ecosphere, and takes into consideration human health in local communities.” The center educates farmers “in agrarian thought and practice,” runs a bookstore, has a cooperative to help farmers sell to markets and more. The work is in line with Berry’s legacy of advocacy for land preservation and agrarian life. ## Berry and the University of Kentucky Berry had a complicated relationship with his alma mater, the University of Kentucky. He earned his bachelor and master’s degrees in English from UK, according to the Kentucky Historical Society. He then taught at the University of Kentucky from 1964-1977 and again from 1987-1993. (His teaching roster also includes Stanford University, Georgetown College, New York University, the University of Cincinnati and Bucknell University). In late 2009, Berry withdrew papers he’d loaned UK, a quiet protest against the university’s acceptance of $7 million from coal producer and philanthropist Joe Craft to rename a residence hall the “Wildcat Coal Lodge.” The Kentucky Kernel, the independent student newspaper at UK, reported that Berry could not abide what he considered an indignity as an advocate for the land and water polluted by mining. “I was taught that taking care of land was one of the primary human responsibilities,” the Kernel quoted Berry as saying. “In the long run, the top soil, the forests and the woodland of this state will be more valuable than the coal deposits.” Berry felt the university’s move was a split from his values and those held by other farmers. “When the university accepted the gift from (the) coal industry in return for naming the basketball dormitory ‘Wildcat Coal Lodge,’ the university had sold an advertisement,” Berry said, according to the Kernel. That wasn’t the only time Berry and UK clashed. In July 2020, Berry joined a lawsuit against the University of Kentucky seeking to preserve a controversial 1934 fresco mural many criticised for its depictions of slavery in America and of Indigenous people. Ann Rice O’Hanlon painted the fresco as part of the Public Works of Art Project and President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. It was a site for protests on campus and requests to have it removed for years. According to court documents, complaints began in the 1970s. University of Kentucky President Eli Capilouto agreed to cover the mural in 2019 following a sit-in protest on campus that included the Black Student Advisory Council and others. In June 2020, seemingly moved by the racial justice movement sweeping through the country, he announced the university would remove it. The next month, Berry stepped in and asked a court to halt the removal. In court documents from the time, Berry argued the art needed to be conserved because of its historical significance, difficulty to create and rarity, being one of around 42 frescos from the time. “The O’Hanlon Mural is a figurative representation of the history of Lexington and Central Kentucky,” Berry’s petition read. He wrote of her “artistic choices that abstract the essential truths of the art as opposed to mere representation,” which he said “is part of what makes the O’Hanlon Mural unique and a valuable piece of the cultural assets of Kentucky held in trust by the University.” The Lexington Herald-Leader reported in January 2026 that the mural remains in its place on campus. ## ‘Radical and eclectic’ The late bell hooks, a renowned Kentucky author known for her many writings on feminist theory, racism and love, among other topics, wrote fondly of Berry in “belonging: a culture of place,” one of some 40 books she published throughout her career. She praised him for the “wide range of issues in his essays that were fundamentally radical and eclectic.” She taught at Berea College from his book about race, “The Hidden Wound.” Berry also inspired actor and writer Nick Offerman of Parks and Recreation fame. Offerman, himself an outdoorsman, has narrated several of Berry’s books for audiobook format, including his magnum opus, “The Unsettling of America.” In a 2020 interview with Literary Hub, Offerman said in Berry he “unexpectedly found a chronicler of the nobility found in good, honest work, and thrift, and affection for one’s family and neighbors and animals and the land that supports and nourishes all of the above.” “I have often asserted that if my job were simply to broadcast the works of Wendell Berry to the world, I’d die a happy man,” Offerman said in that interview. ## Honors Former President Barack Obama awarded Berry with the 2010 National Humanities Medal for his work as a poet, novelist, farmer and conservationist. He also earned other notable honors, including the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Aiken Taylor Award for poetry, the John Hay Award of the Orion Society and the Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, according to the Poetry Foundation. In 1961, he traveled in France and Italy as part of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a prestigious honor for “exceptional individuals in pursuit of scholarship in any field of knowledge and creation in any art form under the freest possible conditions.” The Fellowship has gone to other notable writers including Ada Limón, Roxane Gay, Carmen Maria Machado and Sigrid Nunez. His slew of other honors include the Kentucky Libraries Award’ for Intellectual Excellence, the Thomas Merton Award, The Cleanth Brooks Medal for Lifetime Achievement from the Fellowship of Southern Writers, the Martin E. Marty Award for the Public Understanding of Religion from The American Academy of Religion, the Poets’ Prize and others. For a list of Berry’s books, visit this site. Funeral arrangements are incomplete at this time. The Berry Center has asked that in lieu of flowers people donate to The Berry Center “or a like-missioned organization doing the good work in your home place in Wendell’s memory.” SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX. * * * # Forest Service declines public meeting on Wilson Creek ICE operation; Advocates call response ‘a shell game’ by Lilly Knoepp, NCLocal September 3, 2026 The U.S. Forest Service declined a call for a public meeting following the June immigration operation where 13 people were arrested in the Pisgah National Forest, angering local environmental advocates. Advocacy groups, including the Southern Environmental Law Center, MountainTrue, American Whitewater, Friends of Big Ivy, Forest Keeper, Latinos Aventureros, the North Carolina Chapter of the Sierra Club, and the Southern Off-Road Bicycle Association condemned the June Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) action at Wilson Creek. In August, they sent a letter requesting a public meeting to North Carolina National Forest Supervisor James Melonas and Grandfather District Ranger Nicholas Larson. A USDA spokesperson told NC Local the Forest Service has no plans for a public meeting at this time. Instead, Melonas, who manages the national forests in the state, sent a letter in response to the call. SELC Senior Attorney Sam Evans said a public meeting would be a first step in rebuilding community trust. “It's about the community that the Forest Service betrayed here. And that's who they owe,” Evans said. In the letter, shared with NC Local by Evans, Melonas thanked the groups for their partnership. He explained that the resource management side of the Forest Service is separate from law enforcement. “As you are likely aware, Forest Service law enforcement is managed independently from local and regional leadership, including myself as the Forest Supervisor and the seven District Rangers,” Melonas wrote. “While this structure is necessary to protect the integrity of criminal investigations occurring on National Forest System lands, it also means local leaders are not always involved in law enforcement operations and planning. As such, neither District Ranger Larson nor I have any additional information regarding this incident to provide.” Evans called the response “a shell game.” “It's true that the Forest Service has two separate arms. There's law enforcement and then there's resource management and those are under different chains of command,” Evans said. “It is not possible that the resource management side of the Forest Service, the people that you would ordinarily be emailing with and getting responses from, didn't know about this [operation].” The Forest Service has a separate chain of command, but the Patrol captain in the region advises the Forest Supervisor on law enforcement matters occurring in a national forest, according to the USDA. The Forest Service law enforcement also works with federal, local and state partners. The Wilson Creek operation was the first time in recent memory that the Forest Service has worked with ICE in North Carolina. An ICE spokesperson told NC Local the operation was initially requested by the Forest Service. Melonas did not address the initial contact in his response, instead explaining federal agencies are required to collaborate. “Although Forest Service law enforcement officers and criminal investigators do not enforce immigration law, they are required to collaborate with agencies that do, as well as with state and local partners responsible for enforcing hunting and fishing regulations, drug laws, and other non-resource-related laws,” Melonas said. “The idea that you could compare this to sort of routine law enforcement, really, I thought that was fairly offensive,” Evans said. In the response, Melonas said the partnerships could involve criminal investigations and other safety measures, including checkpoints and patrols. In mid-August, Great Smoky Mountains National Park officials shared the location and date of a sobriety checkpoint ahead of time on social media. ### Questions about commitment to diverse communities The joint letter to the Forest Service asked Melonas and other officials about past commitments to diversity in the Nantahala-Pisgah Forest Plan, the strategic plan for the management of the over two million acres of national forest in WNC. The letter said the June operation was “inconsistent with the Forest Service’s mission and responsibilities to ensure equitable access to public lands.” While the Trump administration has changed diversity inclusion language across agencies, Evans said local leadership has a continued obligation to uphold their commitments. “The same people who are in charge of our forest now during the forest planning process said that this was really important to them. They said that making our forest representative of the local community and making the visitation representative of the people who live around our forests was really important to them. And that, they told us, were their values,” Evans said. “Now when those values are at stake and when it was time to stand up for them, they didn’t.” Quoting a 2023 Carolina Public Press article, the letter said this “operation appears to have been based on racial profiling, given that Wilson Creek is known for its popularity with Latino visitors.” “This betrayal does not merely undermine visitors’ sense of safety in one specific location, but rather it undermines the credibility of the Forest Service as willing and able to protect the safety of visitors from underrepresented communities across the forests,” the letter said. Melonas’ response did not address racial profiling, but Melonas said he shared the joint letter with regional and national leadership. Latinos Aventureros was one of the organizations that signed the letter. In a public letter, the organization recounted years of collaborative work with the Forest Service and non-profit, A Clean Wilson Creek, to clean up the river. “The same Brown Mountain Beach Road where our volunteers once walked in bright safety vests picking up trash is now also remembered as the road where law enforcement vehicles lined up and families were separated,” the letter said. Latinos Aventureros Co-Founder Sandra Salazar said complaints about trash at Wilson Creek since Hurricane Helene created friction in the area. “There was a debate of whose fault it was: The Anglo community kept blaming the Latino community, and the Latino community was more partial, stating that it was both not just them,” Salazar said. She said Latinos Aventureros has hosted a number of river cleanup events since Helene. Salazar said the group feels “used” following the ICE arrests. In Fall 2024, the Wilson Creek Action plan, created by a committee including Latinos Aventureros, American Whitewater, and Trout Unlimited released by the Forest Service offered several recommendations. The plan said public land boundaries should be better defined and the area needed more parking and signage for public safety. “I felt like we had a good relationship. But apparently we didn't. It was just, we felt used to be quite honest. Because once we cleaned the river, they ended up doing this,” Salazar said. The Forest Service declined NC Local's requests for interviews with Melonas and Larson, adding that Forest Service law enforcement also had no additional information to share regarding this incident. This article first appeared on NCLocal and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. * * * # Redistricting hearing turns tense in US Rep. Bennie Thompson’s backyard by Michael Goldberg, Mississippi Today September 2, 2026 CLEVELAND – Most Mississippi residents who spoke on Tuesday at the first public hearing on redistricting in the Delta criticized what they saw as a Republican push for power at the expense of Black representation, while some others said they support swift action to redraw electoral maps. Tuesday’s hearing was the third in a slate of public hearings intended for Mississippians to share their views on redistricting with a Republican-dominated joint House and Senate committee. It was the first hearing in the majority-Black district of Democratic U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson. Michael Carr, who previously ran for district attorney as a Democrat, said Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2026, in Cleveland that the U.S. Supreme Court's Callais decision only mandates redistricting for Louisiana, and that Republicans are falsely saying Mississippi must redraw its lines. Thompson is the state’s only Black member of Congress and only Democrat. Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the Louisiana v. Callais redistricting case in May, which weakened the Voting Rights Act, Thompson has been the target of calls from Republican Gov. Tate Reeves and some Republican state legislators and other leaders to redraw Mississippi’s electoral maps. Thompson did not appear to be in attendance on Tuesday evening in an auditorium at Delta State University in Cleveland, but several Democratic state lawmakers who represent the Delta but were not chosen to serve on the joint committee spoke at the hearing. The Democratic officials said partisan redistricting would split areas with shared cultural and economic interests, and cause “mass confusion” for voters Democratic Rep. Willie Bailey of Greenville, who is not on the joint committee, told audience members that the committee had already made up its mind, and that the hearings would not stop the Republican dominated and majority-white Legislature from dismantling majority-Black districts. “I’m glad to see all of you, but nothing you say tonight will become part of any plan. Nothing,” Bailey said. “There is no time for all the foolishness that we’re doing tonight. Now, they’re up here listening to you, but that’s as far as it’s going. It’s going no further than this room.” The Callais decision removed protection for majority minority districts and cleared the way for Republican-controlled state legislatures to redraw political lines in their favor. Michael Carr, an attorney who has previously run for Bolivar County district attorney as a Democrat, said the Callais decision does not create mandatory redistricting for any state other than Louisiana, and that Republicans are falsely making it seem as though Mississippi has to redraw its lines. “You’ve got the governor, you’ve got the House, you’ve got the Senate, you’ve got three out of four congressional districts. What else do you want?” Carr said. “What they’re doing with suggesting redrawing these lines is diluting our voice, disproportionately taking our power away.” Republican leaders believe that when the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in the Callais decision, it ended the practice of allowing race to be considered in drawing political maps. Susan Spiller, president of the Leflore County Republican Women, said lawmakers are right to redraw lines drawn before Callais, because considering race in drawing electoral maps harkens back to a Mississippi that no longer exists. Susan Spiller, president of the Leflore County Republican Women, said Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2026, in Cleveland that Mississippi lawmakers are right to redraw political districts because considering race in drawing electoral maps harkens back to a Mississippi that no longer exists. “I’m asking this committee to redraw Mississippi’s districts based on traditional, race-neutral criteria,” Spiller said. “It is not 1965. It is 2026. It’s time for one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all of us.” The legislative joint committee is holding public hearings across the state, and the full Legislature is expected to convene in a special session this fall to redraw at least state legislative maps. That wouldn’t impact this November’s federal election, but Mississippi lawmakers are likely to target Thompson’s seat with redistricting before he’s up for reelection again in 2028. Resident Nathan Duff said no elected official should take the Delta for granted, as the region faces unique challenges that require adequate representation. “The Delta is not simply another region in Mississippi. Our economy is different, our history different, our population trends are different,” Duff said. “The challenges confronting hospitals, schools, municipalities and agricultural communities are different than the rest of Mississippi.” Effie Burt said Republicans are engaged in a power grab aimed at diluting Black political power. “What you’re doing is wrong, unnecessary, biased and is racist,” Burt said. “You’re trying to take away our voting strength that was achieved decades ago.” Burt then broke out into song, singing "We Shall Overcome," a gospel song associated with the Civil Rights Movement. Tuesday's hearing came days after a hearing in Southaven where speakers skewed much more toward supporting efforts to redistrict in Republicans’ favor. DeSoto County has been the venue of an ongoing legal battle over redistricting and debate over race and representation. Rep. Rodney Hall represents Southaven and is the first Black Republican to serve in the Mississippi House since Reconstruction. Hall, who serves on the joint committee, told Mississippi Today after the hearing that the public’s participation in the redistricting process matters to lawmakers and would influence the outcome. “Emotions are understandably high because Mississippi has a history we cannot, and should not, ignore. But our future does not have to be bound by our past. The Mississippi of today is not returning to poll taxes, at-large legislative districts, or the tactics of another era,” Hall said. “This is our opportunity to face our history honestly, learn from it, and move forward together with fair, race-neutral maps that reflect our highest American ideals: equal citizenship, equal opportunity, and a government accountable to every voter.” The committee is encouraging the public to participate in future hearings. The public can offer comments at any of the seven remaining public hearings, or submit written comments to Ted Booth, the committee’s attorney, at ted.booth@peer.ms.gov. Below is the schedule of the future planned redistricting hearings. Each will start at 6 p.m. * Sept. 8 at Alcorn State University in Natchez. * Sept.10 at Meridian Community College in Meridian. * Sept. 17 at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg. * Sept. 22 at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College in Gulfport. * Oct. 1 at the state Capitol in Jackson. This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * Computers line the walls of a reentry center inside the Women’s Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Vandalia, Mo. Incarcerated women preparing for release can use the computers to search for employment and other resources while on parole. (Photo by Amanda Watford/Stateline) ## Women on parole face higher rates of mental health, housing challenges Amanda Watford (Stateline) Published: September 3, 2026 Women on parole report higher rates of housing instability, poor health and serious mental health and substance use disorders than men on parole and than women who weren’t on parole, according to a new analysis from the nonpartisan think tank Council on Criminal Justice. For people leaving prison, parole is a period of transition that can involve finding housing and work, reconnecting with family and accessing health care while also meeting the conditions of supervision. How well those pieces come together can shape whether someone successfully settles back into the community — a key part, some argue, of reducing future involvement with the criminal justice system and promoting public safety. The council’s latest report examined nationally representative 2021-2023 data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, comparing women who reported being on parole both with women who were not on parole and with men who were on parole. About 13% of women on parole reported moving three or more times in the previous year, compared with 2% of women who were not on parole and 6% of men on parole, according to the analysis. > Women’s prison population, correctional costs projected to grow through 2035 Women on parole also were more likely to report poor health. About 29% rated their overall health as fair or poor, compared with 16% of women not on parole and 17% of men on parole. About 24% of women on parole met the criteria for a severe mental health disorder, compared with 7% of women not on parole and 10% of men on parole, according to the council’s report. About 25% of women on parole also reported experiencing a major depressive episode during the previous year, compared with 10% of women not on parole and 12% of men on parole. The analysis found that substance use disorders were common among people on parole, but severe disorders were more prevalent among women. About 32% of women on parole met the criteria for a severe substance use disorder, compared with 24% of men on parole and 3% of women not on parole. The disparity was especially large for opioid use. About 18% of women on parole met the criteria for a severe opioid use disorder, compared with 5% of men on parole and 0.4% of women not on parole. Health and housing can make the demands of reentry harder to manage, including maintaining employment, attending treatment and supervision appointments, and managing family responsibilities, according to the report. Women on parole also were more likely than men on parole to report living in a household with minor children. About 29% of women on parole lived in a household with at least one child under 18, compared with 19% of men on parole and 30% of women who were not on parole. The survey, however, did not indicate whether respondents were parents, caregivers or financially responsible for the children, according to the report. Health insurance coverage also differed among the groups. About 11% of women on parole reported being uninsured, compared with 7% of women not on parole and 20% of men on parole, according to the analysis. The report’s authors wrote that the findings point to the need for reentry planning that goes beyond supervision requirements to address housing, health care, mental health and substance use treatment and family responsibilities. The authors could not determine whether the conditions preceded or resulted from criminal justice involvement, but the findings strongly suggest women on parole face distinct reentry challenges. _Stateline reporter Amanda Watford can be reached at_ _awatford@stateline.org_ _._ SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE * * *

By Maya Homan (Georgia Recorder) Published: August 26, 2026 A pair of influential Republican lawmakers are calling for greater oversight into the use of automatic license plate readers that critics say allow law enforcement officers to illegally surveil Georgia residents. Sen. John Albers, a Roswell Republican who chairs the Senate’s public safety committee, said he is working with the Georgia Sheriffs’ Association and the Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police on a new task force to examine how best to address misuse of the cameras, which are manufactured by companies like the Atlanta-based Flock Safety. “We have to be smart, we have to be balanced and we have to be thoughtful as we work together to both have both short and long-term solutions,” he said during a Tuesday press conference at the state Capitol. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX. In a letter to the state law enforcement groups, Senate President Pro Tempore Larry Walker, a Perry Republican, raised questions in response to “the rise in public concern.” Walker wrote that “recent allegations of improper use – resulting in stalking, misidentification, and unjustified arrests – have understandably heightened privacy and accountability concerns for our constituents.” > Flock Safety tightens safeguards as states, cities question surveillance network Automatic license plate readers, such as the ones made by Flock, work by capturing license plate data, along with other information like a car’s make and color, and storing that information in a searchable database. Law enforcement agencies that have contracts with Flock can use the database to track down stolen vehicles, locate missing people and solve other crimes. However, the technology is not without controversy. According to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, at least 14 people have been arrested and charged this year for misusing a state law that restricts use of the cameras to only official law enforcement purposes. Albers cited instances of misuse in an op-ed he wrote calling for greater oversight of the technology. While law enforcement deserves effective tools for fighting crime, he wrote that “backing the blue does not mean ‘writing a blank check’ for government surveillance.” He also wrote in the op-ed that he is working with the state law enforcement leaders to identify more ways to tighten up the system and left open the possibility of pursuing a legislative fix next year. Flock CEO Garrett Langley recently announced that the company would be bolstering its safety guardrails, including lowering the amount of time that license plate data can be stored in a database from 30 days to seven, automatically suspending users who appear to be misusing the system and requiring police officers to input case number or specify what type of crime they are screening for when searching through the database. But Christopher Bruce, the ACLU of Georgia’s deputy executive director, said he remains skeptical that the company’s new measures will go far enough to prevent misuse of the system. Adopting laws that require municipalities with Flock contracts to be more transparent with communities about how their data is used and disclose any instances of misuse, Bruce said, could be one way to ensure that there is public accountability. “You can have the right to privacy and the right to public safety. It doesn’t have to be compromised,” he said. “We can do this, but there has to be guardrails around surveillance.”

By Nathaniel Cline (Virginia Mercury) Published: August 27, 2026 Virginians can now carry their state-issued driver’s license or identification card on their iPhone or Apple Watch, the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles announced Wednesday in Richmond. The update comes as Virginians increasingly turn to smart devices for everyday activities, including shopping and entertainment events. In 2017, state lawmakers tasked the DMV with creating standards for issuing, reviewing, and displaying electronic credentials following an extensive pilot research program. Last November, the agency launched Virginia Mobile ID before the technology offer became available on Apple. > Virginia rolls out Mobile ID, plans to expand use of program across commonwealth Secretary of Transportation Nick Donohue said on Wednesday that he was excited about the launch as residents and customers weigh the benefits against privacy concerns. ID in Apple Wallet allows users to verify their identity and age with participating businesses by sharing only the requested information. “It is easy, it is simple, and really important for all of you folks that are concerned about privacy issues, it is very secure, and it is seamless. So don’t hesitate,” said Donohue. Virginians will be able to present a digital version of their license or ID at more than 250 Transportation Security Administration security checkpoints across the country, pilot Virginia ABC stores, and hundreds of businesses and entertainment venues around the commonwealth. State officials said the ID stored in Apple Wallet may also be used in select business apps, in person at all Virginia DMV locations and with the Virginia State Police. The DMV added that Virginia residents must continue to carry their physical ID as a backup, especially when driving. “This is a momentous day in Virginia as we continue to expand our offering of cutting-edge, highly secure forms of identification for our customers,” said DMV Commissioner Saundra Jack. “We know how important it is to make identification easier to carry and use, and Virginians have been asking for more ways to do that. So much of our everyday life is on our phone and now so is your Virginia ID in Apple Wallet.” The DMV said in a statement to The Mercury that the technology for “other digital wallets is coming soon,” including Google, but did not provide a timeline. To begin using the application, the agency said users should open Apple Wallet, tap the “plus button” at the top of the screen, select “Driver’s License and ID Cards” and follow the on-screen instructions to begin the setup and verification process. To present an ID in Apple Wallet, users hold their iPhone or Apple Watch near a reader. The device then displays the requested information, which is released only after the user reviews it and authorizes its release using Face ID or Touch ID. Because the information is shared digitally through Near Field Communication, or NFC, Virginia users do not need to hand over their iPhone or Apple Watch. Representatives from Apple, ABC, TSA and CBN Secure Technologies — which produces identification cards in Virginia and helped design the Virginia Mobile ID app — attended the announcement. Carter Langston, a TSA spokesman, told The Mercury that the agency has used the technology since the pandemic in several other states. “This is a very secure way of passing information as well, because what’s in the app only gives TSA officers the information they need to verify: Is the credential real, authentic? Does the photo match the person standing in front? Do they have boarding status? Do they have screening status?” Langston said. He added, ”We don’t need to know where they live. We don’t need to know their age or date of birth. That information isn’t passed to TSA in this app.” SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX.

**It's Friday August 28, 2026 and in this morning's issue we're covering:** Gov. Stein announces funding for housing in Western NC**,** An ICE facility could change this small town in Eastern North Carolina, Davie County ends water fluoridation after supply chain problems, Did Iowa’s largest beginning farmer tax credit create more farms?, Asheville terminates Flock contract in heated council meeting, Non-Profit Pharmaceutical Manufacturer Delivers Drug Access to Rural Hospitals, City Planning Commission defers data center recommendations again, citing new concerns with water, End of Rankin County schools desegregation order worries Black residents. **Media outlets and others featured:** NC Newsline, NC Local, North Carolina Health News, Investigate Midwest, Carolina Public Press, The Daily Yonder, Verite News, Mississippi Today. * * * ## Gov. Stein announces funding for housing in Western NC By Greg Childress (North Carolina Newsline) Published: August 26, 2026 This week, Gov. Josh Stein announced federal awards of more than $69 million to bring affordable rental housing to Western North Carolina. In 2024, the region lost thousands of rentals in the wake of Hurricane Helene. Stein also announced the availability of $53.4 million in competitive federal grants to develop workforce housing units for homeownership across Western North Carolina, bringing total housing investments announced this week to more than $120 million. The awards for rental units will go to 10 developers in 10 counties to provide more than 828 affordable units. The awards range from $1.7 million to $13.5 million. The money will help fund projects in Ashe, Buncombe, Burke, Caldwell, Cleveland, Haywood, Henderson, Rutherford, Transylvania, and Watauga counties. “Getting families back into safe housing that they can afford is critical to the recovery from Hurricane Helene,” Stein said in a press release. “This program will ensure these 828 apartments remain financially accessible to people living in the 828 area code for the next 30 years.” The money comes from more than $69 million in Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery funds administered and monitored by the state Department of Commerce and the N.C. Housing Finance Agency. Award recipients must comply with income limits, rent restrictions, and other program requirements for a minimum 30-year affordability period. The state Department of Commerce will monitor projects throughout the affordability period to ensure compliance with federal requirements and confirm that units serve eligible low- and moderate-income households. Margaret Fenton Lebeck, CEO of the Housing Assistance Corporation (HAC) in Hendersonville, told NC Newsline that the federal dollars will go a long way toward providing rentals in areas devastated by Hurricane Helene. Margaret Fenton Lebeck (Courtesy photo) “We had an immense housing crunch before in the counties that our organization works in,” Fenton Lebeck said. “We were at 99.3% occupancy before the hurricane, and so to lose any housing at all just made finding housing that people could afford so much harder.” Meanwhile, funding for the competitive workforce housing grants will come from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and be administered by the Renew NC Workforce Housing for Ownership (WHFO) Program to provide homeowner opportunities in areas most “impacted and distressed” by Hurricane Helene. Workforce housing refers to households earning up to 80% of the area median income. Eligible counties include Ashe, Avery, Buncombe, Burke, Caldwell, Cleveland, Haywood, Henderson, Madison, McDowell, Mitchell, Polk, Rutherford, Transylvania, Watauga, and Yancey counties. Eligible counties include Ashe, Avery, Buncombe, Burke, Caldwell, Cleveland, Haywood, Henderson, Madison, McDowell, Mitchell, Polk, Rutherford, Transylvania, Watauga, and Yancey counties. “This $53 million investment will expand access to affordable housing across western North Carolina as the region continues to recover from Hurricane Helene,” Gov. Josh Stein said in a statement. “It’s a critical step toward helping our neighbors rebuild in the places they call home.” Eligible applicants include for-profit housing developers, non-profit housing developers, Community Land Trusts (CLTs) and public housing authorities and counties and municipalities among others. Award amounts will range from $2 million to $5 million per project. “Retaining a strong workforce depends on access to affordable housing,” said N.C. Commerce Secretary Lee Lilley. “Through the Workforce Housing for Ownership Program, we will help increase the supply of housing available to working families and foster more resilient local economies as communities recover from Helene.” The application window opened Tuesday and closes at 5:00 p.m. on December 13, 2026. The eligibility criteria, scoring details, and application materials can be found at commercerecovery.nc.gov. * * * # An ICE facility could change this small town in Eastern North Carolina by Ryan Oehrli, NCLocal August 25, 2026 Winton, North Carolina, looks like many small towns in the eastern part of the state. Main Street is just a few businesses, some churches, a town hall and a post office. Already small, the town has shrunken even more over the last few decades. Main Street is mostly empty with a car, truck or golf cart breaking the silence with a slow roll down the road that leads to the Chowan River. About two miles from downtown, a huge, gray complex sits empty. A few construction workers mill about in front of the dormant Rivers Correctional Institution, a private prison with a history of problems before it closed in 2021. The 1,320-bed facility is set to open again soon, this time to house detainees for the White House’s mass deportation campaign. Rumors swirled for months that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would open a detention center in Winton, near the Virginia border. In late July, the New York Times confirmed those rumors. When it reopens, Rivers is expected to be one of the largest ICE facilities on the East Coast. Its owner, GEO Group, said in a news release that a contract with the federal government could “generate approximately $80 million in annual revenues in the first full year of operations.” The company declined to comment for this story. Some of Winton’s 600 or so residents, as well as others in rural Hertford County, doubt that economic prosperity will reach them, too. > “It’s a money thing. It ain’t about helping the area or people.” > > Hertford County resident Dwayne Jones “It’s a money thing. It ain’t about helping the area or people,” Hertford County resident Dwayne Jones said of the facility on a sweltering day outside the Winton Duck Thru, Main Street’s busiest spot, a gas station that also sells hot food. Jones said he would prefer something zeroed in on more systemic problems in the region — “something real _usable._ ” Many locals are worried that Hertford County will be overshadowed soon — in a bad way. ICE could distract from solving real problems in the area, some said. Winton Mayor Emy Winstead said residents have told her that they are afraid to go outside at night because, they believe, “ICE will be after them.” “We’ve heard all kind of things here,” Winstead said, adding that the mere mention of ICE frightens some. Supporters, meanwhile, hope the detention center will bring new jobs and spending to the area. ## **Region has long had economic troubles** Winstead described Winton as an “older, retired community” that would benefit from more young people moving in. Hertford County as a whole is struggling to keep people. The persistent population decline it has seen is a familiar story across the region, NC Rural Center Research and Data Manager Dalton Bailey said in an email. “Barring some unforeseen, big happening in Eastern North Carolina, I think it will probably always be one of our more economically challenged regions,” he said. With about 5,000 people, Ahoskie is Hertford County’s largest town. Downtown, business after business permanently closed: a candy store, a department store, a salon and more. So little is left that the few businesses remaining stand out. One reason for downtown's deserted state, some of the local shop owners and workers still there said, was simply that people died. Their children did not continue the family business. The social fabric has thinned since Rosa Sessoms grew up in the area decades ago, she explained in her downtown salon, Styles Unlimited. “Every spot on this strip, down this street, was taken when I was growing up,” she said. ## **Past as prologue** For about 20 years, Rivers held inmates from the Washington, D.C., area. With plans for ICE to take over the building, some are looking back to that time. Mayor Winstead said the prison was never particularly controversial in Winton. “In the very beginning, when they were building it, it was,” she said. “But once it got here, it was no problem whatsoever. They had more prisoners than they originally told us they would, and they sent sewage to our sewage plant. Prisoners flush weird things sometimes. We had some problems with that, but nothing we couldn’t deal with.” With the federal government, Rivers developed a more troubled reputation. An August 2016 report by the U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General found high rates of contraband, inmate assaults on staff, uses of force, inmate grievances, drug use, sexual misconduct and other problems. In 2021, the federal government stopped working with private prisons under then-President Joe Biden. An executive order he signed pointed to issues with “profit-based incentives.” When the prison closed its doors that March, more than 300 employees clocked out for the last time, the Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald reported. The loss of hundreds of jobs at once was felt, Winton Town Council Member Blake Blythe said. “There was a lot of jobs out there,” he said. “People had been there a long time, and it hurt. It hurt real bad. It hurt the county, and it hurt the town.” Another 300 or so jobs returning with the re-opening of Rivers would probably not be “transformative,” Bailey with the NC Rural Center said. But the impact would be noticeable, especially if the jobs offered relatively high pay, he said. “I imagine it would show up in the economic data as well as employment gains,” he said. It is unclear how many people will work in the facility or what all their jobs will entail, though some listings have started to appear on GEO Group’s website. The job postings call for applicants in nursing, dentistry, administration and maintenance. ICE spokesperson Lindsay Williams declined to answer questions from NC Local about the facility. Local officials have distanced themselves, saying they know little about what is planned and reminding the public that Rivers is privately owned. Speaking through County Manager William Shanahan, all five Hertford County commissioners declined to discuss with NC Local the facility or how their constituents felt about its return. “We respectfully ask that the public understand the distinction between federal actions and local government responsibilities,” a statement issued by the commissioners said. “While we value open communication and welcome constructive dialogue, it is important that misinformation does not lead to the misconception that the Hertford County Board of Commissioners is responsible for decisions that are beyond our legal jurisdiction.” While Winstead shared what she heard from residents, she also did not want to weigh in on the facility. ## **Some fear more enforcement, ‘drama’** Some locals are thinking about more than the economics of reopening Rivers. In August, nonprofit advocacy group Siembra NC met with Latinos and others living in Hertford County for a “Know Your Rights” workshop. Many were afraid that the facility will lead to more ICE presence in the county itself, not just at the facility, organizer Andreina Malki said. With so little information from the federal government, it’s hard to know exactly what it will mean for the county, Malki said. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Border Patrol agents have carried out major, large-scale operations in other parts of North Carolina during the second Trump administration. Their focus has largely been on Charlotte — the state’s biggest and most diverse city — and the Triangle. During a five-day operation in Charlotte last year and in other major operations, federal agents took detainees to Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia. Conditions there have drawn heavy scrutiny, including from federal lawmakers. Family members often struggle to locate detained loved ones. ICE refused to disclose basic information about the more than 400 people detained in the Charlotte operation, prompting a lawsuit by NC Local. Federal officials have not disclosed which detainees might be held at Rivers, which will reportedly open by the end of 2026. Records obtained by the ACLU and published earlier this year suggest that the facility could hold detainees from Virginia. “This location provides direct highway access and is within a two-hour surface commute of the ICE Richmond sub-office and approximately 60 miles from the Norfolk sub-office,” GEO Group told ICE in a pitch later published by the ACLU. “Its rural setting offers a secure operational environment with minimal community disruption while ensuring proximity to key transportation networks and regional support services.” In another recent document signed by ICE staff that NC Local reviewed, the agency said it needs “a turnkey facility within 150 miles of Richmond International Airport” as its Washington Field Office expands operations. “Rivers is an existing facility within the required geographical area with an efficient surface commute time in relation to Richmond International Airport,” according to the document. “It can be operational within three months of contract award date.” Hertford County resident Niecy Lynch did not welcome the idea of increased attention on the area, particularly if it is negative. “It’s just going to start more trouble,” she said of the facility, adding that there was no need for “drama” and “problems.” Politicians and activists in North Carolina have expressed concerns about the town becoming a focal point in Trump’s mass deportation efforts. Gov. Josh Stein, the North Carolina ACLU and immigrant rights group Carolina Migrant Network criticized the plans. People from places like Chapel Hill and Norfolk, Virginia, have shown up to local government meetings and warned against ICE “creating chaos” for the area and behaving like a “terrorist organization.” Protesters have marched outside GEO Group’s Charlotte office. Immigration is not front and center for local officials who are focused on more immediate, pragmatic issues that might affect community members. At an Aug. 3 town council meeting, Blythe brought up GEO Group’s sewage bill with the town. “I think we need to dive in on that, and let’s get some realistic figures so we can be prepared, because they’re definitely coming,” he said. This article first appeared on NCLocal and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. * * * # Davie County ends water fluoridation after supply chain problems by Anne Blythe, North Carolina Health News August 27, 2026 **Key Takeaways:** * Davie County is ending water supply fluoridation. * Middle East fluoride supply chain issues hamper counties and municipalities. * Traditional fluoride debate also factors into Davie County’s decision. On the first of September, Davie County will join the list of North Carolina community drinking water systems no longer adding fluoride to their supplies. Unlike the handful of other counties that considered ending system fluoridation, the decision in Davie County had a new twist. Pragmatic decisions about international supply chain problems played as large a role as the more typical fluoride debate — new concerns over potential health risks versus established dental science that shows the process to be a successful public health measure for preventing tooth decay. The board of commissioners of the rural-suburban central Piedmont county unanimously adopted a resolution Aug. 3 to suspend the use of fluoride additives after learning about Middle East supply chain issues that made it more difficult to safely get the chemicals. Brian Barnett, Davie county manager, told NC Health News in a phone interview this week that its chemical vendor relied heavily on Israel for inventory. Johnny Lambert, Davie public utilities director, shared a letter with NC Health News this week from Coyne Chemicals that went into greater detail about the supply challenges. Coyne’s supplier, ICL, or the Israel Chemicals Limited Group, told the company on Feb. 16 of its intent “to abruptly exit” the U.S. market. “As you may know, our supplier of this product is located in Israel,” the letter states. “They have advised us that they have been severely impacted by the war in the Middle East and have lost a large part of their workforce as a result of those individuals being called into active military service.” That resulted in production problems over the past year, according to the letter. The staffing problems resulted in a decision “to forego operations that allow them to provide us this product in the United States.” Thomas Coyne Sr., president and CEO of the chemical company headquartered in Croydon, Pennsylvania, said his organization had made “diligent attempts” but was unable to find other suppliers of hydrofluorosilicic acid, the liquid chemical added to municipal water supplies. The company declared a _force majeure_ , a legal safety net clause that excuses a business or party from liability issues due to extraordinary, unforeseen and uncontrollable circumstances such as a natural disaster or war. #### **Not unique to NC** Supply chain issues have affected other water systems across the country. In April, the City of Baltimore cut its fluoride levels nearly in half, according to NPR, after its supplier reduced deliveries. Several Louisiana cities recently halted their water fluoridation because of supply chain issues, according to local TV news reports. Milwaukee reported halving the amount of fluoride it added to its drinking water earlier this month. Many of these decisions across the country have called for temporarily altering fluoridation processes until the supply chain issues can be resolved. #### **Beyond the Middle East conflict** Davie County’s decision also takes into account public health concerns that prompted Union and Lincoln counties to ban fluoride in their public water systems. Fluoride skeptics — including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services — have relied on a study published in JAMA Pediatrics finding that fluoride exposure can have a detrimental impact on the cognitive function of children. Community fluoridation advocates point out, though, that the study looked at countries with much higher levels of fluoride than is used to treat water in the United States. Furthermore, research has shown that drinking fluoridated water reduces cavities by about 25 percent in children and adults, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an effect that benefits low-income residents in particular. Lambert, the public utilities director, said community members have expressed concerns about health effects. Also, he said, employees at the water treatment plant worried about the safety of handling fluoridation chemicals. The commissioners also considered the ability of county residents to make individual choices about fluoride consumption, since the additive is available in toothpaste, mouth rinses and professional treatments applied at dental offices. Lambert said his department heard a range of opinions. “I would say it was about 50/50, people for and against it,” Lambert said. Andrew Rivers, a dentist in Davie County for 14 years, urged commissioners at their Aug. 3 meeting to continue adding fluoride to the water system. Rivers has cared for patients, he said, that grew up without consistent access to preventable dental care and seen “children with severe tooth decay, adults who have lost teeth far too early, pain, and in some cases even hospital visits and life-threatening infections.” “This all can be prevented,” Rivers told the commissioners. “Community water fluoridation is one of the most thoroughly studied public health measures for our country. For decades, the overwhelming body of scientific evidence has supported its safety and effectiveness when used in recommended levels.” For many families, Rivers added, community water fluoridation is “a safe and affordable way to help protect oral health. In my experience, the greatest benefits are often seen in those who have the fewest resources.” Ultimately, the board decided “that discontinuing the addition of fluoride to the public water supply is in the best interests of Davie County and its residents,” according to the resolution forwarded to the state Department of Health and Human Services and the state Department of Environmental Quality. When asked whether the decision could be reversed at some point, Barnett, the county manager responded: “The beauty of county commissions is anything they do can be undone, but they have to do it with a vote. In all theory, a board could one day reverse it.” For now, though, Davie County is the third North Carolina county to officially eschew fluoridation of its community water system. This article first appeared on North Carolina Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # Did Iowa’s largest beginning farmer tax credit create more farms? by Mónica Cordero, Investigate Midwest, Investigate Midwest August 26, 2026 **Key takeaways** * Iowa’s Beginning Farmer Tax Credit increased farmland leasing, but researchers found little evidence that it created more farms or lowered the average age of emerging farmers. * Researchers found limits to what the tax credit has accomplished, while state officials say challenges, such as farm consolidation and an aging farm population, extend beyond any single program. * New farmers struggle to make a living from farming, often relying on off-farm jobs even when they have access to land. As a boy growing up in Spencer, Iowa, Trent Walker spent summers helping on his grandfather’s farm, picturing that he someday would follow in his grandfather’s footsteps and become a farmer himself. During harvest season, he trick-or-treated at his grandpa’s grain bin site as trucks came in from the fields. He was particularly drawn to the changing seasons and how no two days were quite the same. “I would never be able to work in a factory,” said Walker, 30. “I would just get so bored.” With the passing years, Walker learned that access to land is one of the biggest obstacles for aspiring farmers like him. Buying land was largely out of reach. At $15,000 an acre, he calculated, an 80-acre parcel could cost $1.2 million. Renting was more realistic so he waited for a window of opportunity. That window opened when a relative of his wife, Jessika, retired and offered them land to rent in Dickens, not far from where he grew up in northwest Iowa. Walker said beginning farmers often need an established farmer stepping aside and choosing to give someone younger a start. “The biggest bridge, I think, is the guy retiring willing to give the young guy the opportunity,” Walker said. Trent Walker, 30, and one of his sons pictured on April 30, 2026 near Dickens, Iowa. Walker and his wife, Jessika, farm two small fields of corn and soybeans. photo courtesy of Trent Walker For nearly two decades, Iowa has offered a financial incentive for farm owners to do just that. The state's Beginning Farmer Tax Credit rewards farm owners for leasing farmland and equipment to qualified beginning farmers. Created in 2007, the program places no limit on years of farming experience, unlike the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which defines a beginning farmer as someone who has operated a farm for 10 years or less. To qualify, applicants must reside in Iowa, be at least 18 years old, have knowledge of farm operations and have a net worth of $901,000 or less. Researchers, who studied the program, describe Iowa’s as the biggest beginning farmer tax credit program in the country, awarding thousands of lease contracts and spending more on the incentive than any other state with a similar program. But nearly two decades later, researchers found little evidence that leasing, as the program intended, helped create more farms or younger farmers into Iowa agriculture, raising questions about whether the program changes trends or simply subsidizes deals that were already likely to happen. Do Tax Incentives for Farmland Leases Increase Farm Supply Evidence From Iowa Researchers’ data analysis concluded that the tax credit increased the number of farm owners leasing land about 17% and the amount of farmland acres about 49%, compared with what likely would have happened without the program, according to researchers from Indiana University, Loyola University Chicago and American Farmland Trust, a nonprofit focused on farmland conservation and helping farmers thrive. In spite of the findings, researchers stop short of calling the program a failure. But they admitted that it is difficult to separate the tax program from other agricultural policies and their outcomes, if any. Julia Valliant, who co-authored the study published earlier this year in Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, a peer-reviewed journal, said one of the biggest takeaways from the study is that more investment in emerging farmers is needed. “Iowa gives the most money in the country to anything like this,” Valliant said. “ You know, $6 million per year, $9 million per year. And that's a very small amount of money in the big picture for agriculture.” ## **New farmers can’t make ends meet** To conduct the study, researchers used federal tax forms farmers file to report farm income and expenses. They found the program increased the number of Iowa farm operators reporting farm income by 0.7% compared with what would have been expected without the tax credit. Iowa spent $58.3 million during the study period. The program spent slightly more than $100,000 for each additional farm operator associated with the tax credit. The state's farm population remains considerably older, at 57 years old on average, than its beginning farmers at 44 on average, according to 2017 agriculture data used in the study. The study found little evidence that the tax credit lowered the average age of Iowa farm operators. Age was another measure researchers used to assess whether the program was changing demographic shifts among farmers in the state. Starting a farm, however, does not necessarily mean making a living from it. Nationally, nearly three-quarters of emerging farmers reported that something other than farming was their primary occupation in 2022, compared with 58% of all U.S. farm producers, according to the most recent data. Walker and Jessika, 29, followed a similar path. They started their own row-crop operation three years ago with two small fields, growing corn and soybeans. To avoid the cost of buying equipment, they help with her family's farming operation in exchange for using its machinery. Trent Walker, 30, his wife, Jessika, 29, and their four children, pictured on June 29, 2026. Trent and Jessika Walker are beginning farmers near Dickens, Iowa, with two small fields of corn and soybeans. Their off-farm income supports the couple and their four children, ages 9 to 2. Photo courtesy of Trent Walker Both still work off the farm. Walker serves in the Iowa National Guard and works 35 to 40 hours a week tending hogs in barns owned by his father-in-law and has a seed dealership on the side. Jessika works at a medical office as a clerk. Their off-farm income supports the couple and their four children, ages 9 to 2. Walker said it took about three years for the farm to reach the point where it no longer needed money from their other jobs to sustain itself. The Iowa Finance Authority, which administers the program, said the study findings reflect the limits of what any single policy can accomplish. In an email, Ashley Jared, communications director of the Iowa Finance Authority, said: “IFA appreciates research that helps inform policy and will continue evaluating the program and stakeholder feedback to ensure it is as effective as possible in supporting beginning farmers.” The agency added that they “recognize that broader trends such as farm consolidation and the aging farm population are complex, long-term challenges influenced by many factors beyond any single program, including farmland values, financing, succession planning and changing farm economics.” Even as researchers question the program's statewide impact, the tax credit remains one of several Iowa initiatives intended to support new farmers. ## **The limits of tax credits** Across the nation, states have introduced beginning farmer tax credits to make it easier for people to enter farming and for older landowners to transfer their operations to the next generation. Valliant has been studying such state and national policies for several years, describing them as “experimental, “pioneering,” and ‘innovative.” “We need them… it's so expensive and difficult to get into farming and to help farm owners pass along the farm to a young person,” she said. Between 2015 and 2025, Colorado, Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin offered tax credits or deductions intended to encourage landowners to lease farmland or other agricultural assets to beginning farmers. Martha McFarland, who works with beginning farmers at Practical Farmers of Iowa, said land access is “consistently identified as the number one barrier.” The challenge can be especially acute for smaller producers, she said, including vegetable growers who may need only five or 10 acres rather than hundreds. Because such leases generate relatively little income for landowners, she wishes the program did more to support smaller-acre operations. “All land access is local,” McFarland said. Walker knows these challenges too well. Around Dickens, farmland that is already rented tends to stay with the same operator until the landowner decides to make a change, often when someone retires. That leaves few openings for farmers trying to get started, making relationships with landowners especially important. “Farming is built on relationships and years of hard work,” Walker said. “It’s not something that you can just get into day one or year one or year two … It takes years of good relationships and financial preparedness.” Chris Anderson has something Walker and many other beginning farmers are trying to build: a family connection to farmland. After serving in the U.S. Army and working as a civilian police officer, Anderson began farming in northwest Iowa in 2019, becoming a fifth-generation farmer. He rents 95 acres from his 93-year-old grandmother. “It’s a blessing to have any farm ground,” he said. The family already has a succession plan. Anderson’s father plans to buy the farm from her estate, compensating his siblings, and Anderson would continue as a tenant, this time renting from his father. But even with access to family land, making a living from farming has been difficult. Anderson, 30, works as an agricultural insurance adjuster, and his wife is a teacher. Anderson and his wife have relied on off-farm income while getting the farm established and have not taken any income from the operation during their first four years of farming. “The farm has to be profitable before it can pay for anything,” he said. Though Anderson knows about Iowa’s Beginning Farmer Tax Credit, he has not spent much time learning about it or applying because his schedule keeps him busy. If his family decided to participate, the tax credit would go to his grandmother as she’s the landowner, not to Anderson. Existing relationships between farmers and landowners do not disqualify them from participating. Iowa allows family members to lease land to one another through the program and permits participants to have a higher net worth than some neighboring states. The survey, conducted by Indiana University in consultation with American Farmland Trust, found that 44% of participants had already been renting farmland to or from the person they later enrolled within the tax credit program. About half of the beginning farmers and landowners surveyed may have enrolled in the tax credit to do what they would have done anyway. iowa-state-summary-beginning-farmer-tax-credit-particpants “Policymakers can decide who literally collects the check, but they can’t determine who is actually going to benefit from the program,” said Justin Ross, a professor of economics and public finance at Indiana University’s Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs and one of the study’s authors. Justin Ross, public finance economist specializing in state and local tax policy at Indiana University. Photo provided. Ross said some of the subsidized arrangements may simply have formalized relationships that were already in place. “So many of these deals just might have been made anyway,” he said. “A question can be whether or not the tax credit is generous enough to actually induce people to do this more than they otherwise would.” The program’s broader eligibility rules may reinforce that pattern, Ross said. “The more relaxed [the eligibility rules] are, the less likely it truly is an actual new farmer who wouldn’t be doing this anyway,” he said. The result, according to Ross, is a program that appears to encourage more leasing without producing a corresponding increase in successful new farm operations statewide. Jared said the agency believes there are opportunities to strengthen the program as agriculture evolves. During the last legislative session, she explained in an email, legislation was introduced to enhance the program, including increasing the cash rent tax credit from 5% to 10%, providing additional incentives for below-market rental agreements and longer-term leases, and establishing a tax credit for qualifying sales to beginning farmers. While the legislation did not move forward, Jared said the proposed changes reflect the types of improvements that could encourage additional land-access opportunities while supporting longer-term farm transitions. ## **What comes next** The study evaluated Iowa's Beginning Farmer Tax Credit only through 2017. Since then, lawmakers have continued to modify the program, even as participation has dropped. The Iowa Finance Authority, which administers the tax credit, reported assisting 153 beginning farmers in fiscal year 2025, well below its annual target of 278. A separate 2025 evaluation by the Iowa Department of Revenue identified one reason participation may have slowed. Beginning in the 2023 tax year, Iowa's retirement tax changes created a new option for retired farmers, allowing them to either exclude eligible farm rental income or deduct certain capital gains from farm asset sales. Making that election means a retired farmer can no longer participate in the Beginning Farmer Tax Credit program. The evaluation said the lease-income exclusion often provides a larger tax benefit than the Beginning Farmer Tax Credit. Jared said participation in the program has declined since Iowa's tax code changed in 2023. Many retired landowners who choose the Farm Tenancy Income Exclusion can no longer benefit from the Beginning Farmer Tax Credit, which has reduced participation in the program, she explained. She also said the agency is reviewing its performance targets to better reflect the current policy environment. The evaluation also noted that several neighboring states have adopted different approaches to helping beginning farmers gain access to land. Minnesota, Ohio and Pennsylvania, for example, offer tax incentives for selling agricultural land and other assets — such as machinery, buildings and livestock — to beginning farmers. Nebraska offers qualified emerging farmers a one-time state income tax credit of up to $500 for participating in an approved financial management class. It also requires a written succession plan when farmland is rented between family members. Those differences raise a question the study poses — whether helping beginning farmers ultimately requires more than encouraging landowners to sign leases. Brooks Lamb, special adviser for strategic communications at American Farmland Trust, said the access-to-land challenge facing beginning farmers is really part of a larger national problem in how American farmland transitions from one generation to the next. Brooks Lamb, special advisor for strategic communications with the American Farmland Trust, is pictured here working on his farm in Tennessee on May 8, 2022. Photo courtesy of Brooks Lamb. “A tremendous amount of land owned by those aging and elder farmers is going to change hands in the next decade or two, simply because those older farmers are going to retire, or they are going to die,” he said. Lamb said no single policy is likely to fix land access for beginning farmers and urged policymakers to look at a variety of tools used in other states, from tax credits to conservation easements. The future of agriculture in the United States will be determined on how and to whom land transitions and that’s how our food systems and rural communities will take shape in the future, he said. This article first appeared on Investigate Midwest and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # Asheville terminates Flock contract in heated council meeting by Walker Livingston, Carolina Public Press August 25, 2026 After a long and tense meeting with more than an hour of heated public comment, the Asheville City Council voted 5-2 Tuesday night to terminate the city’s contract with Flock Safety. It’s a move that comes during a statewide reckoning with the technology company, which has come under fire for perceived potential Fourth Amendment violations. The resolution came after Asheville Mayor **Esther Manheimer** called on the City Council to end the area’s Flock contract in a video statement posted on social media last week. Prior to Tuesday’s vote, the city of Asheville was operating 11 Flock cameras. Eighty-six cameras are operated by other entities across Buncombe County, including homeowners associations and the public school system, inside the city limits. Those other cameras were not affected by the council vote. The votes against the resolution came from council members S. Anntanette Mosley and Sheneika Smith, however some other members expressed reservations before ultimately backing the measure. ##### **[** Subscribe for FREE to Carolina Public Press’ Daily, Weekend and Election 2026 newsletters.**]** The city manager will now review the Flock contract. Flock Safety manufactures ALPRs, or automatic license plate readers, which capture images of license plates at a singular point in time and enter them into a database where artificial intelligence catalogs vehicle characteristics, like a vehicle’s make, model and color. APD has had a contract with Flock since 2025, which was originally set to run through 2027. Atlanta-based Flock has a network of data on every car it has detected, which allows law enforcement agencies across the country to search for a specific vehicle’s location history across thousands of camera feeds. The council’s resolution made it a point to specify that Asheville has not been using facial recognition technology, nor has it shared its Flock data with any facial recognition database. Other communities in North Carolina, like the towns of Hillsborough and Pittsboro and Davidson County, have each ended their contract with Flock. Others are reviewing their policies as the company has become increasingly controversial. In Western North Carolina, Macon County also recently ended its contract with the technology company. ### Not the only license plate readers Flock’s ALPRs are the only such technology in Asheville right now, but other companies also provide the service — the city just doesn’t have it from them so far. Asheville does have a contract with one such company, Axon, but only for police department body cameras and ALPRs mounted on police vehicles, not the standstill ALPRs similar to the widely recognizable Flock devices. APD currently operates 137 Axon plate readers mounted to police vehicles, according to the transparency portal. City Council members approved the Axon contract in May, along with a Real-Time Intelligence Center, which will synchronize license plate readers, public and private surveillance cameras in the city and police dash cameras. Council member **Kim Roney** was the only dissenting vote at that time. “The question that we have to address is whether or not we want to allow Axon to do that, and whether or not it just feels like we're replacing the Flock system with something similar,” Manheimer told CPP earlier Tuesday. Council member **Kim Roney** , who is running for mayor against Manheimer, said in a social media post that the council’s resolution on the Flock contract adopted Tuesday night reads more like a pause than taking a stance on Flock. During the meeting, Roney introduced a motion to see a new moratorium on ALPRs, which failed. APD will now engage with a policy reviewer from the American Civil Liberties Union while continuing discussions about ALPRs and surveillance technology. Data from the Axon ALPRs is not shared with third-party networks, according to the company’s transparency portal for Asheville. These cameras retain data for 90 days. Flock cameras now retain data for seven days unless they are involved in an active criminal investigation. The resolution that the council passed Tuesday said information relating to immigration enforcement, reproductive healthcare and First Amendment-protected activity will be protected in regards to the contracts. In other states, law enforcement agencies have used Flock to track those who seek reproductive healthcare outside of state lines. Local law enforcement agencies across the country have also used ALPR data when cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Now that the Flock contract has been canceled, the council is at a fragmented pause, as members disagree about the need for license-plate reader technology. Meanwhile, there will still be Flock ALPRs in Asheville, they just won’t be operated by the city. It is also unclear whether Flock license plate readers will be covered before they are removed. Roney asked the city manager whether covering the cameras has been considered and was told that it had not yet been considered. ### Reaction to Flock contract debate Many Asheville community members spoke at the meeting against both Flock and Axon contracts. Some also brought up frustration with the lack of public comment at the earlier meeting where the council voted on the 24-hour Real-Time Intelligence Center and Axon. Some also expressed frustration that Manheimer brought up such an issue that she previously had a different opinion on before a contentious mayoral race. “This is something that the majority of Asheville from across the political spectrum wants,” **Sean Snyder,** an Asheville resident who spoke during the meeting’s public comment period, said. He, like tens of others like him, urged the council to consider ending its contract with Axon, not just the Flock contract. Toward the end of the meeting, council members went back and forth about the city’s future with Axon, and whether they would pursue fixed ALPR infrastructure from Axon to replace the Flock cameras. This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # Non-Profit Pharmaceutical Manufacturer Delivers Drug Access to Rural Hospitals by Liz Carey, The Daily Yonder August 20, 2026 A new program from the nation’s only non-profit pharmaceutical company aims to help rural hospitals keep some drugs in stock. A collaboration between Civica Rx, a non-profit generic pharmaceutical company, and the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, wants to ensure rural hospitals can have access to generic drugs during shortages and to access those drugs at a fair price. One under-appreciated challenge rural hospitals face is access to generic drugs, leaders with Civica said. Small hospitals are often on the bottom rung when it comes to getting drugs, and they are sometimes left out of the loop when generic drugs are in short supply. Drug shortages impact nearly 90% of primary care physicians nationwide, according to the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists. At any given time, the organization reported, there are typically between 200 and 300 active drug shortages in the country. Those disruptions to the drug supply chain can impact the healthcare system, causing treatment delays, medication rationing and extra labor, the organization claimed. A broad array of medications often are in short supply. The most common drug shortage is sterile injectable medications and widely prescribed generics, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Those include medications to treat ADHD, essential antibiotics like amoxicillin and penicillin, chemotherapy drugs, sterile saline, electrolyte injectables, and injectable pain medications and endocrine therapies. In rural communities, the effects of drug shortages are felt a little more acutely, said Mike Laffin, vice president of member accounts for Civica RX. A drug shortage may mean the hospital’s one pharmacy technician has to figure out another source for the medication, or a substitute medication. That’s time spent on the phone tracking down a drug that could be spent on other tasks. “Civica as a group was initially created to tackle essential generic drug shortages,” Laffin said. “We work with hospitals to ensure that they have the inexpensive generics that they need every day.” To address that need, Civica RX recently launched the Civica Rural Hospital program to ensure those facilities have reliable access to critical generic drugs that are often in short supply or subject to supply chain issues. Funded by a $3.2 million grant from the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, the program is live in nine states — Hawaii, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming. It will allow eligible hospitals to have access to the company’s drug access program. As an organization, Civica provides hospitals with a membership. Those member hospitals guarantee that they will purchase a certain amount of the medications, and should a shortage occur, they have access to Civica’s supply. The Helmsley Foundation grant covers each rural hospital’s membership fees, and Civica provides them with access to their stocks if a shortage occurs, without requiring them to guarantee they’ll purchase a minimum drug quantity. “Since Memorial Day, I've had 24 meetings, mostly with individual rural hospitals, as well as rural state health associations or rural hospital networks,” Laffin said. “Nobody has said no. We already have six new members… I almost feel like we haven't begun to scratch the surface on creating awareness.” The goal of the pilot program is giving rural hospitals more access at consistent prices, said Wayne Booze, program director for the Helmsley Charitable Trust's Rural Healthcare Program. “There's approximately 330-plus hospitals in our catchment area that could qualify for this program,” Booze said in an interview with the Daily Yonder. “The goal of the pilot project is to try to target about two thirds of them to enter in, and that'll give enough volume of generic drug need and demand for Civica to figure out how to de-risk across that population of smaller hospitals. … This pilot allows for getting access to a consistent supply of drugs without a cost spike and without also being held at risk for not using all the drugs that they think they're going to need.” That means about 225 rural hospitals and 6,750 beds across the nine states in the program will have access to drugs if a shortage occurs. And that means a cost savings for the hospital, said Walter Panzirer, a trustee with the Helmsley Charitable Trust who directs philanthropic investments in rural healthcare, telehealth, and other charitable initiatives. “We hope that the rural hospitals that are choosing to participate in this project will actually see their costs go down, and that's a big thing,” Panzirer said in an interview with the Daily Yonder. “If we can see their costs go down, that’s saying this program is a success, because we're saving money on those line items, so that the hospital can deploy their savings somewhere else.” “These are life-saving drugs that should be available at every hospital, not just the large ones, not just the ones that have access to large buying groups,” he said. The program will also reduce labor costs by preventing pharmacy technicians from having to spend time looking for medications, the organizations said. Right now, the program is only in states the Helmsley Foundation works in — ones they’ve identified as needing more philanthropy than others. But the intention is to roll it out nationwide. “If this works in nine states, I don't see any reason why it can't work in 50,” Civica’s Laffin said. “Is there a possibility the grant ends? Sure, it's a three-year grant. But we're all working towards getting to a place where that gets extended and expanded.” * * * This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # City Planning Commission defers data center recommendations again, citing new concerns with water by Diego Perdomo, Verite News New Orleans August 26, 2026 After a rally opposing the construction of new data centers and a spirited public comment period, the New Orleans City Planning Commission voted again at a Tuesday (Aug. 25) meeting to defer adopting zoning recommendations in favor of more regulation. Before the commission met, the local branch for the Party of Socialism and Liberation (PSL) organized a rally outside of City Hall to protest increased energy costs and burdens as a result of large-scale projects such as the Hyperion facility being built in Richland. PSL organizer Devorah Lea said the construction of data centers like the one in Richland has brought up utility rates across the board amidst an affordability crisis. “Under this current system, we do not have real democratic control over the resources we need to survive, over what is good for our environment,’ Lea told Verite News. “We should have democratic people's control determining how our grid is used. A basic utility, like our electricity, should be a human right.” At the meeting, the commission shared their updated recommendations — like spacing data centers 500 feet away from residential zones, limiting one data center per building and specifying criteria to divide data centers into three categories: small, medium and large/hyperscale. Public commenters fill seats at a City Planning Commission Meeting at City Hall in New Orleans on Aug. 25, 2026. Credit: Diego Perdomo/Verite News During public comment, the commission heard nearly two dozen commenters share a wide array of opinions against the creation of new data centers in New Orleans. Some speakers supported current recommendations for city policy, while others shared their concerns with the centers and existing recommendations. “The Sewerage and Water Board is not in a state to support data centers at any scale. ... It'd be very important to actually include a definition for water usage in that [previous] definition so that we don't overextend ourselves,” said Eian Bailey, a student researcher at Louisiana State University New Orleans. “At the end of the day, water is the most vital thing that we're given from the earth.” Before voting to defer their recommendations, commissioners pointed to their interest in banning larger data centers, implementing specific water use thresholds for facilities by size and initial interests to defer adopting the recommendations. In January, the New Orleans City Commission installed a yearlong ban, or moratorium, on the approval of data center construction following community backlash to a proposal to build a data center in New Orleans East. While the planning committee has met to discuss recommendations for the implementation of these centers, they have been deferred since March. Other public commenters, such as representatives from organizations in New Orleans East and the Louisiana branch of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, stated their concerns that historically Black areas of the city, like parts of New Orleans East, would be targeted by data centers while other sites across the city weren’t considered. “A majority of the East is all highlighted, " said public commenter Tay Giarnellla in reference to a recommended zoning map. “Everybody showed up in January and February to shut down that request for a data center in the east for a reason.” A map showing areas of New Orleans that New Orleans City Planning staff conditionally recommended for consideration for data center construction. Staff recommended that small and medium data centers could be built in the purple and grey areas and small data centers in the blue and red areas. Alliance for Energy New Orleans Policy Director Jesse George, who was in support of the recommendations proposed by the city planning committee, later said he was not opposed to deferring recommendations to factor in new considerations like water. “They've come up with a pretty good solution to the issue, which is a complete prohibition on hyperscale data centers, which is really the big threat in terms of energy and water usage and environmental effects … leaving open the possibility of economic development for smaller data centers that are used for routine computational and telecommunications purposes.” George told Verite News before the meeting. New Orleans’ actions contrast with state interest in data centers. In July, Gov. Jeff Landry announced further investment from Meta into a $50 billion proposed hyperscale data center in Richland Parish. The Meta project later drew scrutiny due to non-disclosure agreements signed by the Landry and many of his staffers, as well as a state senator's legislative support that saved the technology giant billions in taxes. Once built, it is expected to consume seven times the amount of electricity as New Orleans consumes every day. “If you know the wrong with the data center, why are we even considering it?,” said Ronald Marshall, senior policy strategist for the Voice of the Experienced. “People will be harmed, families will be destroyed. It's an attack on Black communities around this country. None of these billionaires will ever consider a data center in their own neighborhood. Never.” This article first appeared on Verite News New Orleans and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # ‘We paid the price’: End of Rankin County schools desegregation order worries Black residents by Leonardo Bevilacqua, Mississippi Today August 24, 2026 BRANDON — Before her kids’ first day of second grade in the mid-1980s, Janie McLaurin sat them down in the living room to tell them about hers. She recalled what her history teacher called her: “negress.” She recounted her classmates’ welcome on the morning bus: slaps and shoves. She shared these memories, not because they’d face the same obstacles, but to impress upon them what she fought against to ensure they could attend Rankin County schools. McLaurin said it was why she joined a suit in 1967 to ensure Black students and teachers were treated fairly. The lawsuit led to federal oversight and called for regular check ups by a judge. The desegregation order lasted from 1970 until last month, when U.S. District Judge Kristi Johnson ended court oversight when she found school leaders were fair enough to Black students and staff. In a statement, the school district leadership said the judge's decision reflects years of work — an effort that won't end with the desegregation order. "The district will continue building on the progress it has made with all stakeholders," the statement said, "not because it is required by a court, but because providing every student with an excellent education and every employee with a fair and supportive workplace is at the heart of its mission." McLaurin, along with six Black Rankin County schools alumni who spoke to Mississippi Today, believe the decision was premature. “Rankin County schools just took a step backwards,” she said. Johnson acknowledged that racial disparities exist in the school district’s hiring, enrollment, student discipline and course selection, but found those issues result from socioeconomics, where people chose to live and other race-neutral factors. Community members attend a Rankin County NAACP meeting focused on education issues at Mt. Sinai Missionary Baptist Church in Richland on Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026. The district isn’t held to a standard of perfect racial balance, Johnson said. The legal standard is whether the district policy is a holdover of segregation. And other school districts that are less racially integrated have been released from desegregation orders, she found. In September, attorney Katrina Feldkamp, counsel with the Legal Defense Fund, argued against letting the district out from its consent decree. Black Rankin County schools students and staff still encounter discriminatory school policies, particularly related to discipline, she argued. She also contended that district leaders have exacerbated resegregation through intradistrict transfers and staff assignments. “My sisters and I were some of the trailblazers in desegregating Rankin County schools. So what I've seen is almost post-traumatic shock,” Angela English, branch president of the Rankin County NAACP, said of the decision to clear the district of discriminatory practices. “It's very personal for me. And I don't intend to see any child have to suffer wrongdoing.” ### **Are Rankin County schools resegregating?** Rankin County schools have resegregated since court ordered integration in 1970, and they’re not alone. More U.S. schools are either majority white or majority minority than in the past decade. In Rankin County, white families are moving their students from schools where Black enrollment has increased, such as Brandon and Flowood. During the September hearing to determine if Rankin County should be free from its consent decree, the plaintiff’s attorneys held up Pisgah-area schools as a prime example of such resegregation. In the 2022-23 school year, 24 white students transferred to Pisgah High School. Three of the students came from Brandon and Flowood, where Black enrollment has increased, according to an analysis by education equity researcher Erica Frankenberg, who was an expert witness for the plaintiffs. Sen. Sollie B. Norwood attends a Rankin County NAACP meeting focused on education issues at Mt. Sinai Missionary Baptist Church in Richland on Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026. Johnson also flagged Pisgah schools for being disproportionately whiter than the district. Complaints from within Pisgah schools weren’t limited to resegregation or hiring. Ma’Kesha Adams, a former Rankin County School District employee and daughter of Kenneth Adams, lead plaintiff of the lawsuit, said she was put on an improvement plan after a white student accused her of racism. Despite being the highest rated English teacher in the school, she said, her principal denied her request to see the complaint or other documentation. The move was disappointing because her tenure at the school was mostly positive, she said. She feels conflicted because her tenure as assistant principal at Brandon Middle School was positive, too. Because of her past experiences, and those of her parents and grandparents, Adams said she believes continued oversight is important. She got into education because she believed in its power to provide opportunity to students regardless of background. “Now that the case goes away, how likely are we to stay on top of ensuring that things like what I just mentioned at Pisgah get rectified,” she said. “You have to commit to fostering diversity for the benefit of students and staff.” ### 'It was a very traumatic experience' Jeuan Brown, who attended McLaurin Elementary in the early 2000s, said he felt the brunt of policies that attorneys say disproportionately impacted Black students. “I would get punished and I didn’t do it, and nobody believed me,” he recalled of his time at McLaurin Elementary. **Read more:** Rankin County schools released from desegregation order Black students, who comprised 25.7% of the enrollment in 2023-24 in Rankin County schools, were suspended twice as much as white students. Brown said school leadership ignored racist bullying when he was a student. He remembers when white classmates who taunted him with racial epithets faced no consequences. Instead, he said, school leaders transferred him to the alternative school, without due process, for defending himself in a fight. “Since you’re in alternative school, you’re stigmatized because everybody thinks you're a bad child,” he said. “It was a very traumatic experience,” Brown said of his time in Rankin County schools. “The depression that I have today as a young adult stems directly from those events that occurred starting in elementary school.” NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund’s Katrina Feldkamp, assistant counsel, speaks as Ray Li, policy counsel, listens during a Rankin County NAACP community meeting focused on education issues at Mt. Sinai Missionary Baptist Church in Richland on Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026. Expert testimony at the September hearing backs up Brown’s observations on discriminatory discipline practices. District data showed “a clear pattern of racial bias,” according to behavioral health researcher Jamilia Blake, who analyzed district discipline data in preparation for the hearing. She found Black students were most likely to be suspended multiple times, and school policies did not reduce that occurrence. However, Johnson, the judge, was persuaded by district leadership testimony that referred to new behavior intervention plans despite the absence of proof of their implementation or of their success in reducing punishments. Adams, who oversaw discipline at Brandon Middle School when she was the assistant principal, said she was surprised to see racial disparities in data for other district schools. “We always made an effort to ensure that what we were doing was consistent and fair,” she recalled of her time in Brandon. “As an administrator, you have to make a conscious effort.” Johnson also found that Black students didn’t face discrimination when participating in extracurriculars. But some Rankin County alumni and parents disagree. At least 10% of student clubs and activities lacked any Black participation, Adams’ family attorneys noted at the September hearing. For Tagira Bush, being Black on the cheer squad at Northwest Rankin High School was isolating, she testified at the September hearing. NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund’s Hamida Labi, senior policy counsel, speaks during a Rankin County NAACP community meeting focused on education issues at Mt. Sinai Missionary Baptist Church in Richland on Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026. The squad’s participation fees were too steep for her mother, and district staff would not grant a waiver. Bush said she felt they didn’t care. She later joined a cheer group outside of school and no longer felt the same distress, she told the court at the September hearing. “I don't want any other Black children to have to go through what I had to go through,” she said in September. “I was so discouraged that I just wanted to give up on everything.” District leadership alluded to implementing “supportive measures” to make some clubs more inclusive. The court found that Bush’s testimony and related data weren’t evidence of systemic harm on account of race. ### **The steps forward** Black parents in the county schools said they worry now that the court isn’t watching out for their children. Deidra Moore said she was concerned by the way a district expert witness in the September desegregation hearing explained away high suspension rates for Black students as a socioeconomic fact. She learned new details about the case at a forum hosted Thursday by Mt. Sinai MB Church in Richland. She worries her son could be denied the high quality education she envisioned for him. “Some of their rationale doesn’t make sense,” Moore said of the expert witness’s testimony. Rankin County NAACP president Angela English speaks during a community meeting focused on education issues at Mt. Sinai Missionary Baptist Church in Richland on Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026. Moore was also alarmed to hear from organizers that Black students are underrepresented in the district’s gifted and talented program. Moore and her husband moved to Richland for a small-town feel with bigger-city comforts and because they heard Rankin County had top-rated schools. She said she hopes district leaders continue to see her son the way she does: capable of success and of greatness. “We don’t have any major issues right now,” Moore told Mississippi Today. “It’s just scary what the possibility can be now for all kids.” English, the Rankin County NAACP leader, recalled the discrimination she faced integrating Florence Elementary in the late 1960s. Students put frogs and snakes under her desk to spook her. White boys tried to run her off the road in their pickup trucks while she walked to school. Those childhood experiences at the tail end of the Jim Crow Era motivate her to fight for other marginalized groups. Her organization has fielded several complaints in the last year about Hispanic children experiencing discrimination because of their parents’ immigration status. Although court oversight of Rankin County schools has ended, English plans to continue asking for district data and records as well as monitoring attendance-zone redistricting. “And we're not going to let up,” she said. “We don't intend for our children or anybody else's children or grandchildren to have to suffer the way we did. We paid the price so that they wouldn't have to.” _Updated 8/27/26: This story was updated to include a statement from Rankin County School District about the end of the desegregation order._ This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * *

**By Ariel Hart (Georgia Recorder) Published:** August 20, 2026 Patient advocates reacted with alarm this week at the suggestion by the administration of Gov. Brian Kemp that it could end Georgia Pathways to Coverage, his signature Medicaid program that gives health coverage to about 18,500 poor Georgians. Precious Andrews, an advocate who works for mothers’ and children’s health, said she was in shock when she saw the news. “I was like, this is totally insane,” she said in an interview with the Georgia Recorder. The state Department of Community Health said in documents filed last week that unless the federal government increases its financial support of Georgia’s partial Medicaid expansion, the program is “unsustainable.” The feds currently provide two-thirds of the cost to cover those 18,500 low-income people, the same amount it provides for the state’s general 2 million-plus Medicaid population, old and young. But Georgia wants a special increase to 90% federal support. Washington has previously said Georgia doesn’t qualify. Georgia officials say that quirks in a new federal law change things. They say the law will increase the Pathways program’s patient load not just with more patients, but with patients who are more expensive to care for – too expensive, they argue, for the state’s budget. “The financial burden of this federally-mandated coverage expansion is simply not sustainable for Georgia in the long run,” the state wrote in its application. A spokesman for Kemp, Carter Chapman, said Wednesday that the governor still “fully supports DCH’s efforts to ensure Georgia Pathways remains a national model for other states while maintaining the integrity of the first-of-its-kind program.” “While we cannot speculate on potential outcomes at this time with discussions ongoing” with the feds, Chapman said, “the governor is committed, as he always has been, to ensuring Georgians have access to quality healthcare while maintaining fiscal discipline for the state.” SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX. ## Federal changes would grow Georgia’s partial expansion program The uproar is a result of the passage last year of President Donald Trump’s One Big, Beautiful Bill Act. That law made massive cuts to Medicaid nationwide and in Georgia. One nationwide cut was made by adding new eligibility requirements for Medicaid enrollment for the 40 states that expanded Medicaid to all their poor. Anyone who doesn’t work or perform certain activities will be kicked off. However, for Georgia, which already did a partial expansion with its own requirements, those new requirements are more lenient. That specific rule is not a cut for Georgia, but a loosening of the rules. In one example, as a partial Medicaid expansion to the poor, Georgia now will be required to offer coverage to low-income parents who care for children as old as 13. Currently, Pathways covers those parents for kids up to age six. The Kemp administration calculated that enrollment for the partial expansion group would increase by about 100,000, to a total of nearly 120,000 over 18 months. That’s not much more than the Kemp administration forecasted when it first launched the program. But Kemp aides say they’ll cost more per patient. A spokeswoman for the department said the patients mandated for inclusion in the new federal law include more patients in expensive programs like active addiction recovery and the medically frail. ## Is Pathways legally eligible for more federal funding? Allowing Pathways to expire on schedule at the end of the year would be a major development politically, putting an end to the foremost initiative of Kemp’s first year as governor and his policy response to the singular issue in his campaign to beat Stacey Abrams: dealing with Georgia’s uninsured poor. Kemp created Pathways in a new law in 2019, the Patients First Act. Among other initiatives, it lifted the state’s ban on partial Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, and created work and activity requirements for newly eligible Medicaid members. Such requirements had previously been banned in other states, but they were not banned under the new ideas of President Donald Trump and recent court decisions. The first Trump administration partnered closely with Kemp to develop the programs and make them work. Trump’s administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Seema Verma, in 2020 flew down to Atlanta to announce her approval in a celebratory ceremony beside Kemp at the Georgia Capitol. She said no one had done more to make use of the administration’s new flexibilities, and shook the governor’s hand as cameras flashed. Under the ACA, if Georgia had expanded Medicaid to all of its poor, it would already get that 90% from the feds for those patients. But federal law says that states that only do partial expansion don’t get the special rate. However, Georgia is making the case that Trump’s tax cut and spending law makes Georgia more like those other states even though it didn’t fully expand Medicaid. And they claim the federal law has created a dire situation for the state budget. Joan Alker, executive director of Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families, said that giving Georgia the extra federal money that goes to full expansion states when Georgia has not done full expansion simply wouldn’t comply with the law. Full expansion under the law means giving Medicaid to everyone under 138% of the federal poverty level, or about $22,025 for a single adult. Georgia only gives it to those under 100% of the federal poverty level. But, she says, maybe the Trump administration could surprise everyone with its take on the law. “From a legal perspective, waiving the match like this would be a bridge really, really far … The lawyers know that,” Alker said. “I expect them to turn it down. But who knows?” State Senate Appropriations Chairman Blake Tillery, a Vidalia Republican who introduced the Patients First Act for Kemp in 2019, said he’s not surprised at the situation. “I think that’s consistent (with) what you’ve been hearing from the Governor and Legislature since Nathan Deal,” Tillery said in a text message. Deal as governor rejected full Medicaid expansion when it was first created as an option by President Barack Obama under the Affordable Care Act. “Our two biggest expenses are education and Medicaid,” said Tillery, who was a floor leader for Kemp. “Our two largest annual increases are also generally education and Medicaid. Georgians have been clear how they feel about the government – state and local – taking more of their money. The trend on these increases is unsustainable, much less with a change dictating more state funds.” ## ‘So what happens to those 18,000?’ Advocates for patients who raised the alarm about the Pathways announcement made clear that they still would prefer the state to do a full Medicaid expansion as laid out under the original Obamacare law. Andrews, who is director of special projects and innovations at Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition of Georgia, spoke at a public hearing on the issue Wednesday. Speaking later with a reporter from her personal perspective, she said, “So what happens to those 18,000? Are we now living in a society where – you have to basically sacrifice a certain number in order for a certain number to survive?” Georgians for a Healthy Future has advocated for full Medicaid expansion and released a written statement. “More than 18,000 Georgians could lose the only health coverage available to them, not because of anything they did, but because state leaders are using their coverage as leverage in a funding dispute with Washington,” Laura Colbert, the group’s executive director, said in the statement. “Whatever happens with this request, Georgia should not be threatening to take health coverage away from the people who depend on it.” Before new restrictions in the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act, fully expanding Medicaid under the ACA would have given every low-income Georgian Medicaid. Estimates have varied over the years but it might have provided insurance to 200,000 uninsured Georgians. The new federal law passed last summer will lessen that number and experts aren’t sure yet by how much. The 18,500 current Pathways enrollment figure comes from state records obtained by the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute. The Georgia Hospital Association, which represents powerhouse health systems as well as teetering rural hospitals, didn’t comment on the claims that the state’s Pathways program is no longer sustainable. It supports the request for more federal money, though. “GHA supports affordable coverage options for Georgians and continues to support efforts by DCH and the state to expand those coverage opportunities in a cost-effective manner,” Anna Adams, the association’s chief government relations officer, said in an email. Laurisa Barthen, executive director of the Georgia Council for Recovery, said people grappling with addiction recovery and mental health problems need health insurance to climb out. “Ending Pathways is not a feasible solution if the 90% match is denied,” Barthen said during Wednesday’s public hearing. “More than 18,000 Georgians currently rely on this coverage, and many more could potentially gain coverage under the new eligibility framework. So Georgia should be working towards reducing the need for preventable crisis services by expanding healthcare coverage, not creating the possibility that thousands of our friends and neighbors will lose it.” Alker said that if the request is denied, it would mark the end of Kemp’s signature Medicaid program, which has carried huge administrative costs compared to its low enrollment. (Kemp has long argued that Pathways has been a major success because it left hundreds of thousands of Georgians free to choose not Medicaid but private Affordable Care Act plans.) Legally, canceling the program would not be hard. It’s officially a pilot program set to expire at the end of 2026 unless Georgia and Washington agree to renew it. “He very well understands the twists and turns behind this, and that this has been turned down before,” Alker said. “So, is this a face-saving way out? They get turned down, and then they can say, ‘Oh, we couldn’t do it,’ – rather than having to admit failure? “That’s one possibility,” she said. “We’ll just have to see.”

**By Ivis García, Texas A &M University, The Conversation** Published: August 20, 2026 Imagine turning on your kitchen faucet and nothing comes out. Not for an hour, but for two full days. Then the water returns, only to stop again two days later. That is what more than 180,000 customers in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and six nearby municipalities have been dealing with since Aug. 7, 2026, and officials expect 48-hour rotating outages to continue at least through August. The official explanation is drought that has depleted the island’s reservoirs. July was the driest month San Juan has recorded in more than 120 years. The Superaqueduct, a large, aging pipe system that carries water to the metro area, also ruptured in June, severely reducing water supplies. “This situation is out of our hands,” Gov. Jenniffer González said in early August as water rationing began. But as a professor of urban planning who has spent years studying water in Puerto Rico, I know that a great deal of the problem Puerto Rico is facing has been in someone’s hands. And for many households I’ve spoken with, the announcement changed less for their daily lives than you might expect. ## People were already living without water Puerto Ricans have dealt with water-rationing before, including during a drought in 2015 that left 400,000 customers receiving water service every third day, and again in 2020. After Hurricane Maria in 2017, parts of the island went nearly five months without dependable service. The water interruptions never really stopped for many Puerto Ricans after that. Residents of one San Juan neighborhood counted 123 days of water outages over the 13 months before the latest rolling outages began. Some brought their unwashed laundry to a protest in the capital in August 2026. A community leader in another town told The Associated Press the rolling outages schedule did not mean much, because her neighborhood had been experiencing water outages for several months. Filling buckets, keeping jugs by the door, checking the faucet each morning – for many Puerto Ricans, that routine was in place long before now. The government-owned water company, Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority, or PRASA, is responsible for the water system. But no agency publishes how often households lose service, and Puerto Rico has no independent water regulator. Past engineers’ reports for PRASA have counted reported leaks and overflows, but not how many homes were affected. Much of the information about the latest outages has come instead from residents and investigations by the Puerto Rico House and Senate into repeated water interruptions. ## Losing half its water to leaks Part of Puerto Rico’s water problem is the large amount of water lost between water treatment facilities and customers. Two aging systems are failing at once: large transmission mains like the Superaqueduct, where a break can cut off an entire city, and roughly 15,000 miles of distribution lines that leak continuously. This is not a new problem. PRASA lost 267 million of the 513 million gallons it produced each day, close to half, to leaks from pipes before it reached anyone in fiscal year 2024, according to Puerto Rico’s federally appointed Financial Oversight and Management Board, which certifies the utility’s budget. The utility’s fiscal plan includes investing in leak detection, but shows only a 6% reduction in water losses since 2019. Overall, the costs have been estimated at nearly US$100 million annually in wasted water production and over $200 million in lost revenue. The island, which has been battered by severe storms and earthquakes in recent years, relies heavily on disaster recovery funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and funding from other federal and state agencies for its water system repair work. To secure those funds, it prioritizes projects that FEMA will reimburse – treatment plants, meters and hurricane reconstruction – rather than the thousands of miles of small pipes where most of the water is lost. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has put Puerto Rico’s need for distribution and transmission pipe work at $2.2 billion, far more than the funding it receives for water systems or the amount it gets from customers. ## Mistrust of the system In addition to the outages, water quality problems over the years have created widespread mistrust of Puerto Rico’s water system. An analysis of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data found that in 2015, water systems serving the island had more health and other violations than in any other U.S. state or territory. In 2021, researchers analyzing EPA compliance data found that 17 of Puerto Rico’s 78 municipalities had systems the agency classifies as serious violators. However, that label does not tell a household whether the problem is contamination or paperwork, which is part of why people stop trusting what comes out of the tap. I worked on a research team led by engineers at Iowa State University that studied how Puerto Rican households get their drinking water. In 2022, we surveyed and interviewed 154 residents in the Loíza, Comerío and Aguas Buenas regions. Sixty-four percent said they mistrusted their tap water. They talked about taste, color and smell, and their own history with the utility. One said the water tasted like the ocean. Another said that, after Hurricane Maria, the pipes smelled of dead animals. A third boiled the water as recommended, got sick anyway, and didn’t go back to using tap water. Some residents said they rely on bottled water when they can, even when the taps are running. One told us she uses municipal water when her bottled water runs out because she has no car and will not keep asking her children to bring more. A few said relatives shamed them if they used water from the faucet. These households are paying for water whether it arrives or not. The published residential rate starts near $30 a month on top of the cost of the water actually used. But buying bottled water is more expensive than tap water, and the median household income in Puerto Rico is $26,297, compared to roughly $82,000 nationally. The poverty rate is 37.3%. A separate survey our team ran with 208 older adults in Loíza found 86% using bottled water and 71% also drinking tap water. ## Paying for repairs A utility that cannot hold its customers will have an even harder time financing its repairs. The system’s $1.1 billion in annual revenue can’t cover the roughly $1.3 billion in operating costs and $240 to $270 million a year in debt service on about $3.8 billion in long-term debt. That is why the capital program is mostly federally funded. But that federal funding is paid as reimbursements, and the work has been slow. Puerto Rico’s most recent congressional status report found it slowed even more after FEMA added new procedural requirements in 2025. In Puerto Rico, the money for repairs mostly exists on paper. Some is obligated but not disbursed, some is committed to court-ordered wastewater work instead, and almost none of it is aimed at the small pipes losing the water. A utility that has spent two decades under federal consent decrees for breaking Clean Water Act rules and releasing raw sewage into waterways still cannot cover the island’s water system’s actual needs. _This article is republished from_ The Conversation_, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by:_ Ivis García_,_ Texas A&M University **Read more:** * Wildfires can contaminate nearby homes and water systems – here’s what Spokane’s returning residents need to know * The South’s aging water infrastructure is getting pounded by climate change – fixing it is also a struggle * Puerto Rico has a plan to recover from bankruptcy — but the deal won’t ease people’s daily struggles _Ivis García received funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Assistance Agreement No. 84004001, and the National Science Foundation, Award 2302205. The research was conducted with colleagues at Iowa State University and Bradley University, with local field research assistants in Puerto Rico. The views are the author's and have not been reviewed by the EPA, NSF or the rest of the team at ISU._

**It's Friday August 21, 2026 and in this morning's issue we're covering:** Global finance leaders to descend on Asheville for G20 summit**,** A Three-Year-Old Tries to Cope Without his Beloved Papi, The race to power AI could reshape North Carolina’s grid — and its communities, University Medical Center firing violated city ‘ban the box’ law, attorneys say, At first redistricting hearing, Mississippians call push for new maps a ‘power grab’, Wisconsin to hold commutations hearing Friday, Alaska on course to approve new campaign donation limits in Ballot Measure 1 **Media outlets and others featured:** Asheville Watchdog, MindSite News, North Carolina Health News, Verite News, Mississippi Today, Wisconsin Watch, Alaska Beacon * * * Global finance leaders to descend on Asheville for G20 summit • Asheville WatchdogFinance ministers and central bank governors from the world’s 20 largest economies are set to converge on Asheville this month for a pair of high-level meetings that U.S. officials say will help shape global economic policy for the coming year — and put the recovery of post-Helene Asheville in the international spotlight. Asheville is the […]Asheville WatchdogPETER H. LEWIS # Global finance leaders to descend on Asheville for G20 summit Officials say city was chosen to highlight President Trump’s commitment to Helene recovery in Western North Carolina by PETER H. LEWIS August 18, 2026 Finance ministers and central bank governors from the world’s 20 largest economies are set to converge on Asheville this month for a pair of high-level meetings that U.S. officials say will help shape global economic policy for the coming year — and put the recovery of post-Helene Asheville in the international spotlight. Asheville is the first ministerial-level finance meeting held outside a national capital or major financial center in recent years. The Trump administration said it chose Asheville deliberately to showcase the effectiveness of the government’s response to disaster recovery, and also to tout the broader economic successes of the administration’s policies. > It’s an honor the state, regional, and local officials say is welcome, but complicated. > “I live out in Swannanoa, and we moved here one year before the storm,” Kit Cramer, president and CEO of the Asheville Chamber of Commerce, told _The Watchdog_. “We’re still driving past areas that were devastated by the storm every day. And yet you can drive through portions of this county and not be aware that anything ever happened.” “So it’s a tale of two cities,” Cramer said. “Parts have bounced back beautifully, and parts are still in need.” Elected officials, including North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, and Republican Senators Ted Budd and Thom Tillis have expressed frustration with both the overall amount of federal aid to the region and the need for frequent appeals, and even a lawsuit, to get the administration to release funds already approved. Officially known as the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Ministerial, the gathering — the exact location in Asheville is for now a closely held secret, although the Omni Grove Park Inn is listed as completely booked throughout the summit dates — is part of the G20 Finance Track, the series of meetings that runs alongside the broader G20 process and brings together the finance ministers and central bank governors of the group’s 19 member countries, along with representatives of the European Union and African Union. Asheville will host two back-to-back meetings: * **August 29–30:** A meeting of G20 finance and central bank deputies, who handle much of the technical groundwork ahead of the ministerial session. * **August 31–September 1:** The main event — a meeting of the finance ministers and central bank governors themselves. As many as 21 finance ministers and 21 central bank governors could attend — one of each from the 19 G20 member countries plus the European Union and the African Union (42 people at full strength). In practice, attendance among the principals fluctuates. Beyond the G20 members, these meetings also typically include heads of major international financial institutions (International Monetary Fund, World Bank, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Financial Stability Board) and representatives from invited guest countries. In all, counting deputies, staffers and support teams, as many as 500 international delegates are expected to show up in Asheville, generating $1.5 million to $2 million in direct spending to local businesses, said Ashley S. Greenstein, public information officer for Explore Asheville. The selection of Asheville in itself supports the recovery. Assuming all goes off without a hitch, it will demonstrate that the region’s tourism infrastructure can once again support large corporate and international gatherings. But, critics note, there will be implications for traffic, hotels, restaurants, security, and other disruptions of daily life for residents. It’s unlikely Trump himself will attend but given the popularity of his administration in Asheville, there is a high likelihood of protests. In previous Trump visits to the area, the police have established cordoned-off “free speech zones” to keep protesters at a safe distance from the event venue. Typically, security is planned in close coordination between the Department of the Treasury, the Department of State, and the Secret Service, with the likely participation of the North Carolina National Guard (specifically the 105th Military Police Battalion, which is headquartered at Asheville Armory), and local law enforcement. City and state officials have cast the selection as both an economic and symbolic win. North Carolina Treasurer Brad Briner called the G20 the preeminent gathering of world economic leaders, adding that the state considered it an honor to be chosen. ### **Touted as a showcase for Trump’s successes** Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced Asheville as the host city in February. “The selection of historic Asheville reflects the Trump Administration’s commitment to the revitalization and resilience of western North Carolina, which continues to rebuild after the devastating impact of Hurricane Helene,” Bessent said. But nearly two years after Tropical Storm Helene tore through western North Carolina in late September 2024, the federal recovery effort remains a contested issue. Administration officials say the federal government accelerated aid to the region. State and local officials, courts, and advocacy groups argue that the federal response has fallen short of promises made. Bessent also said hosting the event in Asheville would highlight for the foreign leaders the success of President Trump’s economic policies. “Thanks to President Trump’s pro-growth economic policies, the United States’ economy is reaching historic heights,” Bessent said. That may be true for the stock market; the Dow Jones Industrial Average is closed at a record high earlier this month. But it is also true for the U.S. national debt, which has grown an average of $7.9 billion a day over the past 12 months and is projected to reach a jaw-dropping $40 trillion while the G20 delegates are in town. As for holding up Asheville as an exemplar of the overall success of the Trump Administration’s economic policies, local business leaders say their experiences suggest much room for improvement. As of this month, multiple polls indicate that only 28% to 32% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, while 63% to 70% disapprove. _The Economist_ ’s tracker of YouGov polling in mid-August found that Trump has a net approval rating among North Carolinians of minus 26. Trump’s net approval rating for his handling of inflation and prices reached minus 44 in August, the lowest it has been this term. Local business owners and realtors describe uncertainty in the economy tied to high interest rates and rising costs linked to inflation, on top of a broader slowdown since the pandemic and Helene. Affordability continues to shape spending habits for both newcomers and longtime residents, making it harder for people to get established given the higher cost of living. At the city level, residents are frustrated over a projected $8.9 million budget shortfall for the 2026-27 fiscal year, with staff warning that recurring expenses are outpacing revenues, potentially requiring spending cuts and property tax hikes. “I think it’s important for the public to understand that there’s a gap in our budget, not because there’s money missing, but because of inflation, because growth hasn’t been as large as we thought it was,” City Councilmember Bo Hess said in May. ### **Nearly $60 billion in damages statewide** The Trump administration’s stated commitment to western North Carolina’s recovery from Helene gets mixed reviews. Helene hit on Sept. 27, killing more than 100 people in North Carolina, including 43 in Buncombe County, erasing entire communities, washing out roads and bridges, closing schools, damaging or destroying more than 9,000 homes in the county, and leaving thousands without shelter. The storm destroyed sections of Interstate 26 and Interstate 40, isolating the city, and damaged water treatment pipes, leaving residents without potable water for 53 days until Nov. 18. Helene caused an estimated $53 billion to $60 billion in damage and recovery needs, depending on the source, making it the most destructive storm in state history. Gov. Roy Cooper’s administration formally requested $25.6 billion in federal assistance, a figure state officials have said would put North Carolina’s federal cost-share roughly in line with the 48 percent average other major disasters have historically received. Then-President Biden agreed to North Carolina’s request for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to cover 90 percent of Public Assistance. The federal government typically covers 75 percent of the cost. The increased federal reimbursement share decreased the financial cost to the State of North Carolina for eligible programs and projects. But Helene was followed in quick succession by Hurricane Milton, in October, and in January by raging wildfires in southern California, both of which took dozens of lives and left tens of billions of dollars in damages. So, demand for emergency funds soared just as the Small Business Association was forced to pause new loan offers. The lapse continued until outgoing President Biden signed the American Relief Act of 2025, which provided $2.25 billion to replenish the SBA’s disaster loan account on Jan. 1, 2025 — three months after Helene. FEMA, too, was under duress. During the final months of his 2024 campaign and in his first weeks in office, President Trump made Helene recovery a priority, visiting western North Carolina in January 2025. During a visit to Swannanoa, he toured storm damage, sharply criticized FEMA’s handling of the disaster — “FEMA’s turned out to be a disaster,” he said — and argued states should be empowered to manage recovery directly rather than working primarily through the federal agency. He signed an executive order aimed at speeding up debris removal and road rebuilding, and cleanup work in areas like Swannanoa ramped up in the weeks following his visit. But Trump also told reporters during an Asheville visit that he thought the country should “recommend that FEMA go away” and rely more heavily on state-level disaster response. Cameron Hamilton, the acting head of FEMA, visited Asheville in January 2025 with Trump and Kristi Noem, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA. Soon after, Hamilton testified to Congress that “I do not believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency.” A day later, Noem fired Hamilton. Then came the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). By February, the Elon Musk-led task force, with Trump’s imprimatur, had tried to dismantle FEMA along with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — including the climate research center in Asheville — the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Department of Education, and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). DOGE abruptly slashed funding for the AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps, which had sent 52 young adults to work with the United Way of Asheville Buncombe County, Asheville Area Habitat for Humanity, and other organizations in cleanup efforts. All were withdrawn from western North Carolina. Although presented to the G20 delegates as a Trump Administration success story, the extent of Asheville’s recovery from Helene is still an open question. The core of the ongoing debate is how much federal money has actually reached western North Carolina since Helene, and how quickly. Despite 18 months of pressure from state and local officials, as of March 31, 2026, federal disaster aid to North Carolina totalled $7.8 billion, according to state recovery dashboards and advocacy groups tracking the funding — far less than the $25.6 billion requested by Democratic Gov. Cooper. The federal aid amounts to just 13 percent of North Carolina’s estimated damage costs — a far lower share than the 50 percent to 70 percent reimbursement rate the federal government has typically provided after other major disasters like Katrina, Maria, and Sandy. While the administration facilitated a $1.4 billion housing recovery grant and accelerated debris removal, it simultaneously reduced federal cost-sharing for debris to 90 percent of costs from 100 percent, at a cost to North Carolina taxpayers of at least $200 million, according to Stein. Harder to calculate, but undeniable, Trump’s tariffs also raised the cost of much of the equipment and materials needed to rebuild houses and infrastructure. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development also initially blocked Asheville’s plan to spend $225 million in Community Development Block Grant–Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) funds because the plan contained Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) language, a decision that local leaders contended postponed the arrival of essential recovery assets. Earlier this year Noem’s successor, Markwayne Mullin, rescinded Noem’s policy of personally reviewing all FEMA expenditures of $100,000 or more. Since then, federal officials have periodically announced incremental new funding tranches throughout 2025 and 2026 — including $103 million in April 2026, $116 million in January 2026, and nearly $300 million in June 2026 for public assistance and mitigation projects — which by mid-2026 had pushed cumulative FEMA Public Assistance funding to North Carolina past $2 billion. Stein has taken a more urgent tone, traveling to Washington in June 2026 with the state’s congressional delegation to request more than $10 billion in additional funding for housing, water and wastewater systems, roads, dams, and small businesses — an indication that, from the state’s perspective, existing federal commitments remain well short of what’s needed. Administration officials have framed the pace of disbursement differently than critics. Congressional Republicans representing the region, including Rep. Chuck Edwards, who represents Asheville and western North Carolina, have credited the administration for delivering reimbursements, thanking Trump and Mullin for what they’ve called continued partnership on debris removal, road repairs, and school reopenings. ### Legal fights over disaster mitigation funding A significant and recurring flashpoint has been the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program, a pre-disaster mitigation fund. FEMA canceled BRIC nationally in 2025, freezing more than $200 million earmarked for over 60 North Carolina infrastructure projects. North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson sued, and a federal court ruled in December 2025 that FEMA’s cancellation was unlawful and ordered the money reinstated. FEMA did not immediately comply. Jackson’s office said that as of February 2026, the agency had not restarted the program or funded pipeline projects, prompting a motion to enforce the court’s order. FEMA ultimately conceded in March 2026, agreeing to submit a plan to restart BRIC and make roughly $1 billion in new mitigation grants available nationally. A separate, still-unfolding dispute emerged in July 2026, when Jackson joined a 22-state coalition suing FEMA and DHS over new conditions attached to more than $1 billion in Homeland Security and disaster-response grants. The lawsuit alleges the agencies are conditioning funding — including money North Carolina uses for storm and flood response — on states adopting Trump’s policies on election audits, voter-citizenship verification, and cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. The plaintiffs argue that those terms exceed FEMA’s authority. ### Where things stand Taken together, the picture reflects two frequently competing narratives. Administration officials and regional Republican lawmakers point to a steady drumbeat of funding announcements, an accelerated debris-removal push early in Trump’s term, and a stated intent to streamline a historically slow-moving federal bureaucracy. State officials, some independent organizations, and advocacy groups counter that despite those announcements, the overall share of promised federal aid actually delivered has lagged well behind the pace set after comparable disasters, while legal fights over programs like BRIC and homeland security grants suggest an unusually contentious federal-state relationship over money local governments say they were already promised. On the one-year anniversary of Helene, Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer told the _Asheville Citizen Times_ “the thing that is frustrating me the most right now is trying to get the help we need from Washington that has already been approved by Congress.” “We know on our side of the equation, we’re doing everything right. We’re filing all the correct paperwork, we’re accounting for money in all the ways we’re required to, we’re checking all the boxes, we have a team of professionals here that just do disaster management and they are here helping us navigate all of this. But,” Manheimer said, “we’re still finding that we’re having a disconnect with this administration.” With Gov. Stein’s June 2026 request for an additional $10 billion still pending in Congress, and litigation over grant conditions ongoing, the full federal response to Helene — and how future disasters get funded during Trump’s second term — remains an open question nearly two years after the storm. ### What officials hope to accomplish As the country hosting the G20 presidency this year, the United States — through the Treasury Department, working alongside the State Department — is setting the agenda for the Finance Track. Treasury has outlined a set of priorities for its host year, including pushing pro-growth economic policies through modernized financial regulation, building a better understanding of large global economic imbalances, improving transparency around sovereign debt and easing debt restructuring processes, backing growth in the digital asset sector, upgrading cross-border payment systems while cracking down on payment-related fraud and scams, and boosting financial literacy worldwide. Those topics are expected to dominate the closed-door discussions in Asheville, where deputies will hammer out technical details in the first meeting before ministers and governors weigh in and, potentially, issue a joint statement or communiqué during the second. The Asheville sessions are just two stops on a longer 2026 circuit for the Finance Track, which began with an April meeting in Washington, D.C., and will continue with an October gathering in Bangkok before the broader G20 process wraps up in December with a leaders’ summit — the marquee event of the U.S. host year — at Trump National Doral in Miami. The Asheville meetings will bring together officials from some of the world’s most consequential economies — including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States, plus the EU and African Union — at a moment when global debt levels, cross-border payment fraud, tariffs, and the rapid growth of digital assets are all high on the international economic agenda. In a speech earlier this month in Las Vegas — like Asheville, a town heavily reliant on tourism — Trump touted his “no tax on tips” policies and said “I saw polls today on television that say Donald’s Trump polls on the economy aren’t good. The economy’s the greatest economy we’ve ever had by far.” If true, the greatness is distributed unevenly in Asheville. The stock market and asset gains in the second Trump Administration have disproportionately benefited wealthier Americans, while lower-income households face higher prices and reduced benefits — sometimes called a “K-shaped” economy. When the G20 delegates arrive in Asheville, what they’ll see is a recovery partly enabled by federal aid, but “mainly because of the local response, the state, regional, Asheville,” said Matt Raker, executive director of the nonprofit Mountain BizWorks, which facilitated more than $60 million in loans to small businesses. “I think it’s really about how the local community came together to support small businesses, and really individual contributors across the country, more so than the federal response, because there was no SBA money, and then they cut FEMA. Then, when SBA got turned back on, it got DOGEd.” It could have been worse. “FEMA has a stat that after disasters of this kind of scale, you lose about 40 percent of businesses that had to close for some period of time due to the disaster, and then another 15, 20 percent often go out of business within the year after that because they can’t sustain themselves,” Raker told _The Watchdog_. “We are doing way better than that” in the Asheville region,” he said. Cramer, the chamber leader, said the disparate nature of the recovery has led her to ponder: How do you continue to advocate for the things that remain to be done, when parts of the community no longer show outward signs of the devastation? “While we’re grateful for every dollar we’ve received, we still need to receive more, because there are just tremendous needs out there, whether it’s community-wide infrastructure, or it’s support for small business, and everything in between, including housing.” “So I welcome them to take a look at it,” she said of the G20 delegates, “and hope they can see both sides, to see the two cities that exist, and the two realities that exist.” Raker said additional, significant federal investment is required to make sure that the region continues to recover. _The Watchdog_ asked Raker, are we talking billions of dollars of additional needed federal aid? “Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah,” Raker said. “I’d say this is a 10-year recovery. And we’ll be two years this September.” Asked if he had a message for the G20 Finance Track delegates coming to Asheville this month, Raker said: “While folks are struggling, on the positive side, 80 percent of people are confident that they’ll make a full recovery. So, the outlook is good. I do think that shows if there was the right-sized kind of federal recovery investment into the region, people know exactly where to put that to get to recovery. So it would make a big difference.” “And people want to recover,” Raker said. * * * _Asheville Watchdog welcomes thoughtful reader comments on this story, which has been republished on our_ Facebook_,_ Instagram_,_ TikTok_, and_ YouTube_pages. Please submit your comments there._ * * * Asheville Watchdog_is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. Peter Lewis is a former New York Times senior reporter, columnist and editor. The Watchdog’s local reporting is made possible by donations from the community. To show your support for this vital public service go to_ avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/_._ * * * # A Three-Year-Old Tries to Cope Without his Beloved Papi by Cora Cervantes, MindSite News August 19, 2026 Jazmin Carino rocks her son, Carlos, at a park in Los Angeles. Her husband self-deported to Mexico City after five months in an ICE detention center in California's Central Valley. **Text by Cora Cervantes. Photos by Julie Leopo for MindSite News/CatchLight** _This story was reported by MindSite News and was produced in partnership with_ CatchLight_as part of its three-year_ Mental Health Visual Reporting Initiative_._ When the father of pre-schooler Carlos Carino* was taken into custody in Los Angeles last September by ICE agents and brought to a detention center in California's Central Valley, the changes in Carlos were immediately evident. He refused to participate in circle time at preschool. He cried frequently in school and at home. And he started calling everyone ‘Papi,’ – Daddy in English, but also a term of endearment for children in Latin American countries. _Names in this story indicated by * have been changed to protect the identities of the people described. A fact-checker and an editor have worked with the reporter on this story to verify the information about each person whose identity was withheld._ For six months, the family navigated the separation as they fought in court for the release of Carlos's father, Miguel Carino*. They had reason for hope – or so they believed. Carlos is like one of every five children in California – they live in mixed-status families in which at least one member is undocumented; across the country, there are some 4.7 million mixed-status households. As these families cope with aggressive immigration enforcement, a parent's detention can launch them into multiple layers of trauma, buffeted by events they can't control. The consequences are severe: A report by six psychiatrists in Psychiatric News noted that prolonged separation between children and their immigrant parents "can undermine attachment security and increase children’s vulnerability to anxiety, depression, and behavioral problems." Carlos' father had been living in Los Angeles for nearly 25 years, owned a small construction business in his neighborhood of East Los Angeles and employed other workers. Jazmin, his wife of five years, is a U.S. citizen, and Miguel had applied for an "adjustment of status" based on his marriage. Then he was detained during what his attorneys assumed would be a routine check-in with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Enforcement (USCIS). Jazmin Carino has taken on additional housekeeping work to support her family since her husband's detention and subsequent self-deportation. Jazmin, 24, tried to keep the family connected while taking on extra house-cleaning shifts. She and Carlos started making the five-hour round-trip to the Central Valley twice a month. But the visits were painful, and they distressed Carlitos. “We couldn’t hold hands, we couldn’t get up from our seats,” Jazmin recalled. “When it was time to say good-bye, my son didn’t want to let go of him.” But after a while, even these constrained visits seemed to help Carlos. One morning, he arrived at his pre-school wearing a hand-knit beanie that his father had made for him. “He kept it on all day and was happier than he had been,” recalled Ana Soto*, an early education assistant at the preschool. He wore the beanie daily, as if he were wearing a piece of his father. “One day, I called for him: ‘Papi, come over here,'" Soto said. "He looked at me and said, ‘I am not Papi, I am Carlos.’" To Soto, that signaled a greater sense of security. But in March, faced with the prospect of his likely deportation and exhausted by the brutal conditions at the detention center, Miguel decided to self-deport to Tijuana, Mexico. Jazmin tried to cope, taking Carlos to visit him in Tijuana. Then, in April, Miguel moved further south to Mexico City so he could seek work to support himself. Mexico City is far away, and the family does not have the resources to fly there. Carlos hasn't seen his father in person for three months and it's unclear when he will see him again. Now the family must try to stay connected through video and phone calls, and Carlo's confidence and ease are fading again. When a parent is taken away, a child’s world collapses. Being forcibly separated from family members can cause emotional deregulation and ratchet up their insecurities, says Tatiana Londoño, an assistant professor of social welfare at UCLA's Luskin School of Public Affairs. Her work explores the ways that Latino immigrants navigate and adapt to detention, deportation and family separation. > **_Separation is not merely stressful for young children — it is toxic._** > > –Clinician commentary, New England Journal of Medicine "Even a small separation from parents, no matter how short, can have a rupture on that child's developmental well-being,” Londoño says. "We are leaving a long-term, potentially multi-generational impact on these families." Children learn that a parent – the person they most rely on – "is no longer my secure base," Londoño says. "They learn that no one is safe for them. They might have issues in future relationships, or they might not be able to discern a healthy relationship from an unhealthy relationship.” Studies show that exposure to harsh immigration enforcement and separation from a primary caregiver is a form of "toxic stress“ that increases future risks of physical and mental illness. Such risks are heightened when they occur on top of "prior exposure to violence, poverty, and family loss in countries of origin," according to the Psychiatric News report. Jazmin touches her son's hand-knit beanie — a gift his father made for him while in immigration detention. His preschool teacher noticed Carlos was "happier than he had been" on the days he wore it. A 2022 study in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management looked at the ways that the children of immigrants living near Morristown, Tennessee, were affected over the year following a massive immigration raid in that community. The researchers found "a substantial spike in absences from school in the month of the raid and significant increases in exclusionary disciplinary actions and in diagnoses of substance use disorder, depression, self-harm, suicide attempts or ideation, and sexual abuse." Another study, published in 2020 in the Journal of Traumatic Stress, looked at 458 migrant children and adolescents who were seen in mental health clinics and found that 43% of them were diagnosed with PTSD and 24% with depression. Of those, almost half of the children — 49% — said they were experiencing three or more problematic behaviors ranging from academic problems and skipping or acting out in school to substance use, having suicidal thoughts or attempts, or being physically aggressive towards others. In a commentary published in March in the New England Journal of Medicine, a team of clinicians and researchers made this point: "For physicians, mental health clinicians, and public health professionals, the evidence is unequivocal: separating parents and caregivers from young children causes preventable, policy-driven trauma with long-term consequences for child health and development. Separation is not merely stressful for young children — it is toxic." Compounding the problem is that at the very moment ICE raids are creating trauma, the Trump administration is also cutting food assistance and other services that help support families in distress. Londoño and other advocates are urging the state of California to help fill the gap by increasing funding to organizations working to meet immigrant families' basic needs so parents can be "emotionally available to their children." Jazmin walks Carlos home from his early childhood education program in Los Angeles. Since her husband's departure, she relies on family and community for support in caring for their son. She also knows her family is far from alone. She has seen families from as far away as Florida waiting to visit their spouses in the lobby of Central Valley Annex, the massive detention center run for ICE by GEO Group, the private prison company. > ** _We are leaving a long-term, potentially multi-generational impact on these families._** > > –Tatiana Londoño, assistant professor at UCLA's Luskin School of Public Affairs “I recall a woman with six children, including one child with autism and a newborn," Jazmin said. "I saw newborns from out of state visiting and being held by their fathers for the very first time.” Carino hopes she may one day be able to bring her husband back to the United States and reunite her family. For now, though, she is focused on economic survival – and easing the emotional impact on Carlos, who turned 3 in May. His preschool threw a party for him and the family celebrated via a video call with Miguel in Mexico City. To his mother, it was bittersweet: It was Carlitos' first birthday without his Papi. This article first appeared on MindSite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # The race to power AI could reshape North Carolina’s grid — and its communities by Will Atwater, North Carolina Health News August 18, 2026 > **Takeaways:** > **Data centers could raise electricity costs for North Carolina customers.** > **Amazon’s Richmond County data center project faces scrutiny over 645 proposed diesel generators.** > **Flexible data-center power use could delay costly grid upgrades.** On July 24, nurses and environmental advocates gathered outside the General Assembly in Raleigh to protest the North Carolina AI Leadership Council’s new strategic road map for the state’s adoption and use of artificial intelligence. Protesters raised concerns, among other topics, about electricity costs and new energy infrastructure required to power proposed data centers across the state. “Duke Energy has received tax breaks for three data centers that it owns, and the utility is proposing a 15 percent rate hike on its North Carolina customers,” Ajamu Dillahunt-Holloway, an N.C. State University assistant professor of African American History and Public History and a North Carolina Environmental Justice Network board member, told the crowd in front of the legislature. A week after the General Assembly protest, Richmond County residents and allies gathered outside the Old Richmond County Courthouse in Rockingham before a public hearing held by the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality. The hearing concerned separate air-permit applications from Amazon and Duke Energy tied to Amazon’s proposed data-center campus. Ajamu Dillahunt-Holloway, an N.C. State University assistant professor and North Carolina Environmental Justice Network board member, speaks at a July 24 rally outside the General Assembly in Raleigh. Protesters opposed the use of AI in patient care and raised concerns about the electricity demand and community impacts of data-center expansion. “We were sold a story about investment, jobs and progress,” Shaun Ingram said during a press conference at the Rockingham event. ”But now we are looking at air permits, generators, turbines, emissions, noise, water demand and risks to communities that are already overburdened.” The concerns about electricity’s costs extend beyond data-center opponents. Attorney General Jeff Jackson said last month that Duke Energy Progress understated the impact of a proposed settlement reached with the state over energy rates. Duke told regulators that residential rates would rise 6.8 percent over two years, but Jackson’s office argued that residential customers would instead pay about 9.3 percent more. “The details matter here, and Duke got it wrong under oath,” Jackson said in a news release from his office. The protests and permit fight point to a broader question for North Carolina: How should the state meet the enormous electricity demand expected from hyperscale data centers? Critics fear the answer will be new power plants and the pollution that comes with it, new transmission lines, higher customer bills and additional pollution in rural communities. #### **Who pays for growth?** The North Carolina Energy Policy Task Force reported that data centers make up 30 percent of economic-development projects in Duke Energy’s pipeline in North and South Carolina but account for 80 percent of their projected energy demand through 2030. All that extra need calls for more capacity to power it. Aside from the rate settlement, Duke Energy Carolinas has asked state regulators to approve a rate increase that, if approved as filed, would raise the average residential bill from about $143 a month to about $168 by 2028 — an increase of about $25 a month, or 17 percent over two years — according to the N.C. Department of Justice. That’s all as Duke Energy Corp. is booming, reporting $4.9 billion in profits in 2025. Amazon has said it will invest $10 billion in the Richmond County AI and cloud-computing campus and create at least 500 jobs. Richmond County is a state-designated Tier 1 county, placing it among North Carolina’s 40 most economically distressed counties. Richmond County residents and advocates pose for a photo outside the Old Richmond County Courthouse in Rockingham on July 30, 2026, after a press conference ahead of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s public hearing on air permits tied to Amazon’s proposed data-center campus and Duke Energy’s temporary diesel generators. Duke Energy’s applications cover 645 diesel-fired generators: 588 emergency backup generators proposed by Amazon and 57 temporary generators Duke Energy would operate to provide “bridge power” until the site can connect to the grid, according to an N.C. Department of Environmental Quality release. The agency’s Division of Air Quality said air-dispersion modeling found that emissions from each facility were not expected to violate health-based air-quality standards. But diesel engines emit fine particulate matter, often called soot, and nitrogen oxides. Exposure to these pollutants can worsen asthma and other respiratory illnesses, especially for children, older adults and people with existing heart or lung conditions. “This is an area that has a disproportionately high amount of people with disabilities,” said Jasmine Crockett, a staff attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center. “There is a high population of children under the age of five. There’s a high population of elderly people here, and those are the exact people who are expressly impacted by pollution that comes from diesel-powered generators.” #### **Buying time** Some argue there are ways to have both data centers and less demand on the grid. A 2025 analysis by Duke University researchers offers one way to buy time before the capacity and the grid need to grow. The report co-authored by Tim Profeta of Duke’s Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability, found that data centers and other large electricity users could help delay the need for some new power plants and transmission lines by agreeing to briefly reduce their electricity demand during the handful of hours each year when demand on the grid is highest. On an average day, the U.S. grid uses 53 percent of the capacity it has,” Profeta said. “The other 47 percent is unused because we don’t build the grid for an average day. We build it for the hottest day in the summer or the coldest day in the winter, when everything is running and we need to make sure the power doesn’t go out.” Profeta and his colleagues argue that there’s flexibility built into the system that would allow utilities to connect large new customers sooner while giving utilities and data-center developers more time to determine what long-term generation and grid upgrades are actually needed. They estimated that this approach could defer some grid-expansion needs by about five years. The analysis found that the existing U.S. power system could potentially accommodate 76 gigawatts of additional demand if new large electricity customers agreed to reduce their use during periods of peak demand by only an average of a quarter of one percent of their annual operating time. That’s roughly equivalent to the annual electricity use of 63 million average U.S. homes. The amount of additional demand the grid could accommodate would increase if new large customers committed to greater flexibility. Lori Bennear, the Stanback Dean of Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment and a professor of energy economics and policy, compared the approach to using the middle seat in a car rather than buying a larger vehicle for an occasional extra passenger. “You have two kids, and you’re driving them to soccer practice all year long,” Bennear said. “Every once in a while, you’ve got to have a third kid in the car. You don’t go buy a bigger car; you just use the middle seat. We get the middle seat open a lot on our grid. But the challenge is how do you shift the load so that you’re using that middle seat more often rather than going out and buying all new cars?” #### **What’s at stake** In addition to finding ways to use the existing grid more efficiently, Profeta said there are two additional ways data centers could reduce the pressure they place on the grid in the short term. One option would be for companies to build dedicated on-site power systems, such as gas turbines or generators that serve only the data center rather than connecting to the broader grid. That could ease near-term demand on the system. The problem, though, is that this approach could also extend reliance on fossil fuels, depending on the technology used. A second option would direct investment toward homes and businesses through rooftop solar, batteries and efficiency upgrades. When coordinated through software as a “virtual power plant,” those distributed resources can act together as a grid resource, potentially reducing peak demand while lowering homeowners’ bills and improving resilience for participating households and businesses, Profeta said. “The appeal of this moment is that the federal policy incentives are not really needed to build these [virtual power plants] if the data center companies invest in what is needed (in order to free capacity and speed their path to power),” Profeta said in an email. The N.C. Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Air Quality is considering whether to issue the Amazon and Duke Energy air permits after the public hearing and comment period, which ended on July 31. This article first appeared on North Carolina Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # University Medical Center firing violated city ‘ban the box’ law, attorneys say by Robert Stewart, Verite News New Orleans August 19, 2026 A group of civil rights attorneys is accusing University Medical Center New Orleans (UMC) of violating the city of New Orleans’ “ban the box” law — which prohibits public employers from discriminating against job applicants and current employees because of past arrests or convictions — when it fired employee Devon Jones in April, allegedly due to his criminal background. The attorneys also requested that the city conduct a full investigation of the employee’s termination. The nearly eight-year-old ban the box law restricts both city agencies and city contractors from making adverse personnel decisions based solely on past convictions. While the law allows those employers to conduct criminal background checks, they have to show that a past conviction would directly interfere with an applicant or employee’s job duties. City contractors such as UMC, which administers a publicly funded violence prevention program for the city, must now sign a sworn statement pledging to comply with the ban the box policy. But in an Aug. 12 letter addressed to the city’s Chief Administrative Officer Joe Giarrusso and circulated to New Orleans City Council members, attorneys representing Jones allege that he was fired from his position as a violence interrupter based solely on his conviction for a 2009 armed robbery. Violence interrupters, whose jobs are funded through the city prevention program, work closely with victims of violent crime to help them address trauma and prevent retaliatory violence. The city and various partners have operated some version of the violence interruption program for more than a decade. For the past several years, it has been based out of UMC. The hospital’s CEO signed a contract earlier this year agreeing to comply with the ban the box policy, prior to Jones’ firing. Jones’ “conviction bears no relationship to his job duties — his lived experience was, by the program’s own account, a basis for his hiring — and he has an extensive, documented record of rehabilitation,” the Aug. 12 letter reads. The letter was signed by four attorneys representing Jones: Ilona Prieto of criminal justice reform advocacy group Voice of the Experienced (VOTE), civil rights attorney and Loyola Professor William Quigley, civil rights attorney Ronald Wilson and Emily Early of the Center for Constitutional Rights. LCMC Health, the nonprofit health care network that manages UMC, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. According to the letter from Jones’ legal team, LCMC relied on a provision of state law that prohibits hospitals from hiring people with certain serious convictions. But Jones’ attorneys say the nonprofit is misinterpreting the law. New Orleans passed its first ban the box ordinance in 2018, which went into effect the following year, after the federal government and cities and states across the country had taken up similar measures to find ways to ensure formerly incarcerated people had access to work opportunities. The original version of the law prohibited hiring managers from requiring applicants to disclose past convictions on job applications and allowed them to conduct background checks only after conducting an interview with an applicant. In 2025 those protections for the formerly incarcerated expanded. The New Orleans City Council voted unanimously that spring to enhance the ban the box ordinance, by adding language that requires the city and its contractors to consider the relationship between the conviction and the nature of the job and to explain in writing how the employer came to their employment decision. According to the letter, Jones was notified that he was fired on April 22, 2026, and a day later a member of the program's staff informed him that his termination was based on his criminal history. “You cannot discriminate against a person because of a mistake they made in their life 10-15 years ago,” said Ronald Marshall, the chief policy analyst for VOTE. “You have to give people an opportunity to prove themselves, otherwise, you’re abandoning an enormous population of people from mainstream society.” Marshall, who had served 25 years in prison, was a major advocate for strengthening ban the box laws and championing the Fair Chance Amendment — a 2025 ballot initiative that amended the city’s charter to recognize the formerly incarcerated as a protected class. Prieto, who sent out the letter to city officials, said that having passed the strengthened ban the box measures more than a year ago, and approaching the year anniversary of New Orleanians voting overwhelmingly for the Fair Chance Amendment means that city officials now have an opportunity to show their commitment to ensuring formerly incarcerated individuals get a fair shake. University Medical Center New Orleans The mayor and the city’s Chief Administrative Officer, Joe Giarrusso, who both voted in favor of the enhancements to ban the box as members of City Council, did not respond to requests for comment. New Orleans City Councilmember Eugene Green declined to comment on Jones’ firing, citing potential litigation. Councilmember Aimee McCarron’s office said the council received VOTE’s letter and has requested a legal review. Other City Council members did not respond to requests for comment. Jones, who sent his own letter to the city as well, said that the termination from a career he grew to love in the two-and-a-half years he worked as a violence interrupter came as a blow. “I'm beyond traumatized,” Jones said in an interview. According to Jones, he received an email saying he was no longer working with the organization, and that after requesting a reason for his firing, a member of the program’s outreach staff sent a text message saying that background check law mandated immediate termination. ### ‘If I didn’t pivot, then I’d be like my peers’ In 2009, when Jones was 16, he was arrested for an armed robbery, and he was tried as an adult in 2010. In October of that year, he was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor with the Department of Corrections, but he only ended up spending about 12 years in total in the system. He was released in 2021. Jones said that it was while in detention that he acquired some of the very knowledge that he would need to apply working in violence interruption such as understanding one's emotions and recognizing one's own ability to overcome traumatizing experiences. He said he needed to learn to overcome that past in an environment not conducive to emotional recovery. “If I didn’t pivot, then I’d be like my peers who I have seen, [who] lost themselves in the prison system because they feel like the system failed them, and they have to prove a point, right?” Jones said. “So, I took a different path, and in prison, that’s not easy to do because the abnormal is normal and the normal is abnormal, right? Evil is perceived as good, right, and good is perceived as weakness." Jones said that on the morning when he received the termination notification he felt like he was taken back to the moment he was sentenced at the age of 16. He hoped that instead of seeing him as a criminal, the organization would see him as the 33-year-old man who entered a workforce development program, enrolled in college and developed into a capable professional. In an interview, Jones said his past experiences made him more qualified to work for the violence intervention program. Jones said that his past made him more qualified to work as a violence interrupter. For Jones it was through overcoming the experiences of his youth and learning how to understand his own emotional needs that he developed some of the insight to provide trauma-informed care, a therapeutic approach Jones said he was trained in that helps people process traumatic experiences and develop coping strategies to deal with that trauma. For him overcoming the past was a qualification for the job. It’s a qualification for UMC too. According to a current job posting for the violence interrupter role, the organization lists personal experiences overcoming violence and incarceration as part of qualifications it considers for a violence interrupter. The same posting says that according to Louisiana law, some convictions, including any conviction for armed robbery, make an applicant ineligible to work in health care. In the letter to the city, Jones’ attorneys point out this state law and argue that it is not applicable to Jones because it applies to health care workers. His legal team argued that they believe Jones’ position as a violence interrupter did not qualify him to be considered a health care worker under that law. “He's not providing health care services. He's a community liaison,” Prieto said in an interview. Prieto also added that some language in the job description has only recently been added. According to Prieto, the job posting previously said background history is not a deterrent to applying for the position. A search in Orleans Parish’s court database showed that outside of Jones’ 2010 conviction, he has a pending court case stemming from an August 2025 domestic incident with a former girlfriend, who he said also worked at UMC. The Orleans Parish District Attorney’s office said it is pursuing charges of unauthorized entry and theft of an electronic device. The former girlfriend could not be reached for comment. Jones’ legal team said that his current case holds no bearing on their allegations that he was wrongfully terminated from a city contractor. "It's important to note that the legal system presumes that all persons are innocent until proven guilty, and that applies with Devon as well, regardless of a mistake he made more than a decade ago,” the legal team said in an emailed statement. Jones said he hopes that his search for accountability for his employment termination will ultimately ensure that organizations who are subject to the city’s ban the box requirement will adhere to the law. Jones said he hopes his firing "is highlighted and looked at as a serious matter, to hold people accountable to adhere to these laws that [are] in place to help people like myself.” This article first appeared on Verite News New Orleans and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # At first redistricting hearing, Mississippians call push for new maps a ‘power grab’ by Michael Goldberg, Mississippi Today August 18, 2026 TUPELO _–_ Mississippi residents who spoke on Tuesday at the first of several public hearings on redistricting around the state urged lawmakers to not redraw electoral maps, calling the effort a needless power grab aimed at diluting Black political power in a state with a sordid racial history. The Republican-dominated joint House and Senate committee on redistricting kicked off its slate of public hearings in a nearly packed room at Itawamba Community College in Tupelo. Leaders of the committee say the hearings will allow lawmakers to solicit feedback before making recommendations on new voting maps to the full Legislature in a likely special session this fall. The push to redraw maps comes after the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision in the Louisiana Callais case in May. The ruling gutted part of the Voting Rights Act and, by removing protections for minority districts, cleared the way for Republican-controlled state legislatures to redraw political lines in their favor. A crowd of residents attended a legislative redistricting public hearing in Tupelo on Aug. 18, 2026. President Donald Trump, who is working to protect a slim GOP majority in Congress in this November’s midterm elections, has pressured states his party controls to redraw maps, and many have already complied. In Mississippi, the joint House and Senate committee is expected to do the bulk of the work of redrawing Mississippi’s legislative, judicial and congressional voting lines. But with Mississippi having had its federal midterm primaries months ago, it appears unlikely congressional maps would be redrawn for November's federal election. Only 10 of the 20 members on the state joint committee were in attendance on Tuesday. The room was dominated by Mississippi residents who oppose redistricting. Many of those who spoke said the Callais decision doesn’t require Mississippi to redraw its maps, and that doing so would create confusion for voters and impose a financial cost on localities. They also said hard-won progress to increase Black representation in Mississippi since the Jim Crow era would be eradicated. The Reverend Jeffrey Gladney, pastor of a Church in Shannon, said redrawn maps would “eliminate Black districts” and attack “Black voices that represent the Black community." “If maps are redrawn, they will split neighborhoods, divide communities, take away resources from already weakened communities,” Gladney said. Resident Jim Newman speaks at redistricting public hearing in Tupelo. on Aug. 18, 2026. Jim Newman, chairman of the Lee County Democratic Party, said the Legislature should redistrict after the next U.S. Census in 2030 rather than rushing to redraw maps at President Trump’s urging as states such as Texas have done. “Y’all are looking for a power grab, plain and simple,” Newman said. “It didn’t have to happen. But the president asked for it, and by God, everybody bends over to take care of the president. And it’s not any different here in Mississippi.” Teresa Roberts said redistricting would impact the social and economic well-being of “marginalized people.” “These are people who need us, who need you, and you are going to take away what little strength they already have,” Roberts said. “Shame on you.” Katie Gilbert said she came straight from work to attend Tuesday’s hearing. She was raised in Tupelo and went to Tupelo High School. She said redistricting would contribute to the "brain drain" flight of young people out of Mississippi. “We wonder a lot of times why we have a brain drain in Mississippi, why a lot of educated young folks leave this state. It’s because of decisions like this that are leaving us in the past,” Gilbert said. “Mississippi has a very dark history, but we do not need to continue on with a dark future. Equitable maps lead to a stronger Mississippi.” Walter Jones said his family lived down the street in Chicago from the family of Emmett Till, a Black youth whose murder in Mississippi helped spark the Civil Rights Movement. He said he moved to Mississippi because of the progress the state had made in overcoming its history of racial discrimination, but he now wonders whether he made the wrong move. “I came down here because things have changed. Mississippi was becoming a great place to stay. People was people. Everybody like everybody,” Jones said. “If this is what y’all want to do to Mississippi after all the hurt and struggles y’all went through to get to where we’re at today, I made a bad decision.” Only one person in attendance, Mike Walker, appeared to speak in favor of redistricting. “All I’ve heard up here today is bashing these elected representatives for what they’re trying to do,” Walker said. “So let me ask you, what color is your soul? It’s a soul thing people. It ain’t Black or white. It’s a soul thing.” Many civil rights leaders, Black lawmakers and voting rights advocates believe the hearings are a pretext for the Legislature moving to dismantle majority-Black districts and weakening Black political power in the state. Democratic Rep. Rickey Thompson of Shannon, who is not on the joint committee but attended the hearing, said he doubted his Republican colleagues would take community feedback into account. “They already have their plans together,” Thompson told Mississippi Today. “They’re just going through the motions.” Republican leaders believe that when the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in the Callais decision, it ended an improper practice of allowing for the consideration of race in drawing political maps. Since the Callais decision, some GOP leaders in Mississippi and Washington, D.C., have called for heavy partisan gerrymandering, including redrawing of incumbent U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson’s district to help oust him, the state’s only Black member of Congress and only Democrat. Cliff Johnson, a University of Mississippi law school professor who is the Democratic nominee challenging Republican U.S. Rep. Trent Kelly in this year's midterms, attended the hearing and mingled with attendees. He said the hearing showed Mississippians didn't want a redistricting process that inflamed racial and partisan divides. “I thought it was very powerful to see people stand in front of a bunch of legislators and ask to have a say. My sense as a lifelong Mississippian is that our diversity is such a strength,” Johnson said. “The notion of having representatives chosen by a cross-section of our population is something that makes us stronger.” The committee is encouraging the public to participate in future hearings. The public can offer comments at any of the seven remaining public hearings, or submit written comments to Ted Booth, the committee’s attorney, at ted.booth@peer.ms.gov. Below is the schedule of the future planned redistricting hearings. Each will start at 6 p.m. * Aug. 27 at Northwest Mississippi Community College in Southaven * Sept. 1 at Delta State University in Cleveland * Sept. 8 at Alcorn State University in Natchez * Sept.10 at Meridian Community College in Meridian * Sept. 17 at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg * Sept. 22 at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College in Gulfport * Oct. 1 at the state Capitol in Jackson This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # Wisconsin to hold commutations hearing Friday by Natalie Yahr / Wisconsin Watch August 18, 2026 * Gov. Tony Evers reopened the commutations process in April – the first time in 25 years Wisconsin prisoners had the opportunity to request shorter sentences. * The Commutation Advisory Board will meet from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Friday. The virtual meeting is open to the public with no registration required. * It will stream at www.youtube.com/@GovCommutations and/or wiseye.org/live. * Natalie Murphy, one of 12 people who will speak at the hearing, told Wisconsin Watch she spent two weeks reading through her application before submitting it. * The ACLU of Wisconsin also released new polling this week that shows a majority of Wisconsinities favor some form of clemency for some individuals. A dozen incarcerated Wisconsinites will publicly make their case for clemency on Friday. Those individuals represent a fraction of the people who’ve applied for commutations since Gov. Tony Evers reopened the process in April, marking the first opportunity in 25 years for Wisconsin prisoners to request their sentences be shortened. The Commutation Advisory Board, appointed by the governor, will recommend which applicants’ sentences Evers should commute. Initial announcements said the board would hold its first meeting in June, but it’s now scheduled for Friday, Aug. 21, from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. The meeting, which is virtual, is open to the public with no registration required. It will stream at www.youtube.com/@GovCommutations and/or wiseye.org/live, according to the governor’s office. Among those addressing the committee Friday is Natalie Murphy, who was sentenced in 2016 to 20 years in prison and six and a half years of extended supervision for first-degree reckless homicide and second-degree recklessly endangering safety. Incarcerated at Taycheedah Correctional Institution, she’s spent the last seven years working full time as a certified peer specialist, sharing her own experience and offering a listening ear to fellow prisoners for $1 an hour. “Being able to take the things that I have made mistakes in, or the pain that I have … and show people that there’s hope to get through that, is crucial to who I am at this point in my life,” Murphy said. When she heard the governor’s commutations announcement, she filled out the 17-page application. For two weeks, she read through it every day. “I’d start in the morning, like, ‘OK, does this reflect who I am as a person?’ And then I would tweak it,” Murphy said. When she was ready, she got it notarized and mailed it. At the end of July, she got a letter saying she’d been selected for a hearing. “I was shaking quite a bit,” Murphy said. “I just wasn’t expecting it.” Murphy acknowledges that one purpose of the legal system is to punish people for their crimes by removing them from the rest of society. But she thinks the commutation process shows people that rehabilitation matters too. “If we do not emphasize rehabilitation and second chances and putting faith back into people, it can create a really dangerous and toxic environment,” Murphy said. ## **Poll shows Wisconsinites favor clemency** The majority of Wisconsinites favor some form of clemency for at least some individuals, according to a new poll commissioned by the ACLU of Wisconsin. The poll, conducted in March by public opinion research firm GBAO, surveyed 800 registered voters in Wisconsin. Of those voters, 51% support ending or shortening the sentences of prisoners “who meet certain selected criteria” if courts determine they can “successfully and safely re-enter their communities.” Thirty-seven percent opposed the idea. The poll found voters were more likely to support early release for incarcerated individuals who are on hospice or need extensive care in their old age, as well as for female prisoners who killed or attacked an alleged abuser, and for prisoners who have served 20 years or more for a crime they committed as a minor. Respondents also support pardons for a variety of Wisconsinites who’ve served their sentences. Pardons, which Gov. Evers has issued throughout his tenure, officially forgive an offense and restore the person’s civil rights. In Wisconsin, pardons are currently available only to individuals who completed their full sentences, including any extended supervision, at least five years ago. Though these pardons don’t shorten sentences, they can make it easier to get a job, housing or a professional license. Eighty percent of ACLU survey respondents said they support pardons for individuals convicted of nonviolent crimes, and 50% said they support pardons for those convicted of violent crimes. Wisconsin’s next governor will determine whether Wisconsinites will continue to receive commutations after Evers leaves office in January. In April, Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany’s gubernatorial campaign told Wisconsin Watch he would rescind Evers’ executive orders on commutations because they allow people convicted of murder to apply. Under Evers’ executive order only those previously convicted of sexual assault, physical abuse or sexual exploitation of a child, trafficking of a child, incest or soliciting a child for prostitution are ineligible for commutations. Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who won the Democratic gubernatorial primary, told Wisconsin Watch in April he would work with the Legislature to “institutionalize” Evers’ commutations process but that he “would not allow commutations of murderers.” For now, many Wisconsin prisoners are holding out hope that their applications will be granted before any potential changes to the process. On Friday, Murphy will read from the personal statement she was told to prepare, explaining why she’s in prison, what rehabilitation she’s done, what she’d do if she got out and why she thinks she deserves a commutation. Beyond that, she’s not sure what to expect. She doesn’t know when or how she’ll learn what the board and the governor decide. If she doesn’t receive a commutation, she’ll remain incarcerated until her scheduled release date in 2036. Meanwhile, Wisconsin’s prison population is nearing a record high. As of Friday, Aug. 14, the system held 23,789 prisoners, just 37 shy of the record set in 2019. That’s nearly 6,000 people more than the system was designed for, according to the Department of Corrections. _Wisconsin Watch reporter Brittany Carloni contributed to this report._ This article first appeared on Wisconsin Watch and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * Voters line up on Aug. 17, 2026, at the early voting station set up in Anchorage's Midtown Mall. Voters reported waiting about an hour to cast their primary election ballots. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon) ## Alaska on course to approve new campaign donation limits in Ballot Measure 1 By James Brooks (Alaska Beacon) Published: August 19, 2026 Early tallies from Tuesday’s statewide primary election showed overwhelming support for a ballot measure that will restrict the amount of money that political candidates can accept from groups and individuals. With 377 of 402 precincts reporting by 2 a.m. Wednesday morning, Ballot Measure 1 had the support of 71.5% of participating voters. That’s only slightly less than the 73% margin that a similar ballot measure received in 2006. The limits imposed by that 2006 measure remained in place until 2021, when a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Alaska’s limits on campaign contributions were so tight that they violated the First Amendment. Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration declined to appeal that decision, and the state’s 2022, 2024 and 2026 elections have taken place without limits on the amount of money that candidates may accept. A poorly funded group called Citizens Against Money in Politics gathered thousands of signatures to put a measure on the ballot. The Alaska Legislature passed a substantially similar bill this year, but Dunleavy vetoed it, clearing the way for the measure to appear on the August primary ballot. Vote-counting is expected to continue through Aug. 28, the deadline for mailed absentee ballots to reach the Alaska Division of Elections. Barring legal challenge, the measure would take effect after this year’s elections. When enacted, the new law would prohibit political donors from giving a candidate more than $2,000 per election. Groups would be allowed to give no more than $4,000 per candidate per election. Both limits would be adjusted for inflation every 10 years, and they will only apply to state-level elections — for governor, state House and state Senate. Candidates themselves would still be allowed to spend as much of their own money as they want on their own campaign. Federal elections — those for President, U.S. Senate and U.S. House — operate under different limits in federal law. The measure does not affect the amount of money that can be spent by groups operating independently of candidates’ campaigns. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2010 that limiting those groups amounts to restricting their free speech. Also this year, the Supreme Court ruled that political parties may spend unlimited amounts of money in conjunction with candidates for federal office. That decision does not directly affect state candidates but could implicate them in the future. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE * * * -30-

By Anna Barrett (Alabama Reflector) Published: August 13, 2026 ## Key points * The contest between U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures, D-Mobile and Republican nominee Rhett Marques for Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District is likely to draw national attention. * The district was redrawn to favor Republicans after the U.S. Supreme Court weakened a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, and the electorate is expected to have a GOP lean. * However, Democrats say defending Figures’ seat will be a priority and hope resources and a favorable national environment will assist the congressman. Tuesday’s primaries set the contest for Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District, a nationally-watched race that could help determine control of Congress next year. Voters in the district in southeastern Alabama — redrawn by the Alabama Legislature after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the state to use a map that it previously ruled racially discriminatory — will choose between Republican Rhett Marques, a Trump-endorsed state legislator from Enterprise, and incumbent Democratic U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures of Mobile. Senate Minority Leader Bobby Singleton, D-Greensboro, who was elected chair of the Alabama Democratic Party on Saturday, said in an interview Wednesday morning that maintaining Figures’ seat is a priority for him and the party. “We’re going to be very aggressive in this district. I think that this is a very volatile district for us and we’re going to take a lot of resources over here in CD2,” Singleton said. “Not only in money, but in manpower, boots on the ground. We feel like we can win it.” In his victory speech Tuesday night, Marques said it is important to flip the seat in order to prevent the progressive wing of the Democratic party – like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York City – from taking over. “My opponent, who will be coming up in the fall, he will not only prop them up, he will caucus with them, and he’s going to vote with them,” he said. “Make no mistake about it. The Democrats stay together, and that is scary.” > Rhett Marques wins Republican nomination in Alabama 2nd Congressional District Figures said in an interview Wednesday evening that there is no basis for that statement of characterization of him or his fellow Democrats. “I consider myself to be the type of member that’s representing the state of Alabama, that’s representing District 2. What we do every single day is put the people and interests and needs of this district first and foremost,” he said. “Whether they are from our rural areas or whether they’re from our city centers, whether it’s issues to help our farmers or issues to help people who need to keep the hospital in their communities open, that’s what we do. That’s what we focus on, and that’s what we prioritize.” Rep. Scott Stadthagen, R-Hartselle, chair of the Alabama Republican Party, echoed the anti-progressive sentiment of Marques in a statement Tuesday night. “The [Democratic] candidates running for congressional seats and their gubernatorial nominee, Doug Jones, embrace the values of liberal extremist states like Massachusetts, California, and New York, while our entire Republican slate stands tall for commonsense, conservative Alabama values,” he said. “The Alabama Republican Party grassroots team stands ready to knock on every door, put a sign in every yard, and put in the hard work required to elect the ALGOP ticket from top to bottom in November.” > For 1st time in history, Alabama will have two Black U.S. House members serving together Figures was elected to the district in 2024 under a court-ordered map that spanned from Mobile to Montgomery to the Georgia state line. The map, aimed at giving Black Alabamians a chance to elect their preferred leaders, set the Black Voting Age Population at 48.7%. Figures’ 2024 win was the first time Alabama elected two Black representatives. The 2023 Legislature-passed map that was put in place in May covers the Wiregrass, Montgomery and the eastern part of the Black Belt, and reduced the BVAP to 39.9%. The Cook Political Report rates the district R+7. However, Democrats – who are projected to have a good environment in November — have signaled support for Figures. In a press release Tuesday night, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee touted Figures’ voter-centered approach to lawmaking, his efforts to pass legislation for rural hospitals and his ability to secure funding for counties throughout the district. “Shomari Figures is the fighter that the people of Alabama need in Congress. He’s laser-focused on the issues that matter most: lowering costs, expanding access to health care, and creating economic opportunity,” Suzan DelBene, chair of the DCCC, said. ## Wiregrass turnout boost Tuesday’s turnout numbers across the five special primary elections were extremely low. According to the Alabama Secretary of State’s Office, just 5.24% of eligible voters cast ballots on Tuesday, about 113,000 voters out of a total electorate of 2.1 million. Turnout in the 2nd District was slightly better, with 8.16% of registered voters casting a ballot on Tuesday, but that remained below the 23% statewide turnout in the May 19 primaries and the 11% turnout in the June 16 runoffs. Candidates in the 2nd District expressed concern throughout the race of low turnout and predicted roughly 30,000 Alabamians would vote. In the end, about 42,600 in the district cast a ballot. Turnout in Wiregrass counties was significantly higher than other areas of the district. Three of the candidates were native to the region: Marques of Coffee County, David Matthews of Dale County and James Richardson of Henry County. “Y’all showed out … Coffee County, the Wiregrass, the River Region, everybody came together tonight,” Marques said Tuesday night. > Democratic voting turnout surges, Republican turnout falls during May 19 primary Coffee County had the highest turnout at 10.56%. Marques won his home county with more than 60% of votes, and about 2,000 votes ahead of the candidate with the second most votes. About 9.25% of voters cast a ballot in Dale County, which Matthews won with about 600 votes over Marques. About 8.24% of voters cast a ballot in Henry County, which Marques won. Richardson attended Marques’ watch party Tuesday night in full support of the state representative. With no contested races, Democratic-leaning counties had much lower turnout. Bullock, Russell and Macon counties had the lowest turnout in the district at 3.08%, 2.11% and 1.68%, respectively. Marques won all three counties. ## Map change impact on November With racially polarized voting in the state, Republicans see the new district as more favorable to them because the 2023 map has a decreased Black Voting Age Population than the court-ordered map that Figures won under in 2024. A panel of federal judges ruled that the 2023 map denied Black Alabamians the opportunity to elect a representative of their choosing under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In April, the U.S. Supreme Court significantly weakened that section of the VRA in a case known as Louisiana v. Callais, and now requires any challengers to prove intent to racially discriminate. The 2023 map was reinstated shortly after Callais. A special session of the Alabama Legislature paved the way for the special primary election, which voided election results from the May 19 primary under the 2024 map. Marques was a candidate in the 1st Congressional District under that map and switched to the 2nd district due to his residency. Figures maintained through the special session that he was not worried about his job, but would continue fighting for his constituents. “The opponent doesn’t change the focus,” Figures said Wednesday. “The focus has always been and will always be the people of this district, and showing them that we have a record of delivering, a record of providing resources to this district, a record of you know seeking out solutions for the pain that they’re feeling.” > Alabama lawmakers advance primary bills as protests erupt in committees An internal Democratic poll published in July showed that Marques and Figures are in a “statistical tie” among 400 likely voters. Figures raised $1.35 million through July 22 to Marques $1.32 million, according to the Federal Election Commission. Figures has spent about half of his cash and Marques spent $1.13 million. Although Marques has Trump’s endorsement, Singleton is confident Figures has a chance. According to polling conducted by YouGov and analyzed by The Economist, Trump is broadly unpopular with Alabama residents, though he maintains a positive rating among 2024 voters. “President Trump is not going to have to run this race. Rep. Marques is going to have to run this race,” Singleton said. “To have President Trump on his side, it’s a good thing for us.” _The Key Points box was written by Editor Brian Lyman._ * This story was updated at 9:44 a.m. to include comments from U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures.

By Andrew Jones Jul 31, 2026 Angie Lowery, a citizen of the Lumbee Tribe, stands outside her home in Robeson County, North Carolina. (Andrew Jones/KFF Health News) LUMBERTON, N.C. — Soybean fields surround Angie Lowery’s home in Robeson County, on a plot of rural land in southeastern North Carolina. Dozens of antique gas station signs, 20 feet tall, dominate her front yard. A framed re-creation of _The Last Supper_ , Lone Ranger posters, and a 3-foot-wide tobacco harvesting basket adorn the walls of her home. A collector, Lowery over the years has amassed remnants of her region’s past. But behind the house, the 44-year-old’s backyard garden showcases her goals for the future, one that involves a long, healthy life with her kids: collard greens, bell peppers, onions, tomatoes, red and white potatoes, kale. Like Lowery, many in the small towns of Lumberton and nearby Pembroke are citizens of the Lumbee Tribe who have dealt with heart conditions. The mother of four struggled with obesity and had to take insulin pills and shots daily. By when her first grandchild was born, in 2024, Lowery imagined her own life ending the way her biological father’s did: Daily insulin shots for diabetes. Kidney dialysis treatments at home. Dead of a heart attack at 63. She wanted her grandkids to remember her. “If I don’t get this weight off me, if I don’t change my eating habits, it’s going to take me over,” she recalled thinking. So, she expanded her garden. She cut fatty foods and sugary drinks out of her diet, stopped eating fried and fast food, and started moving more. She lost 120 pounds in two years and weaned herself off the daily insulin pills. The Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina late last year became the 575th tribe to secure federal recognition as a sovereign nation, a milestone that leaders and citizens celebrated in tears. The designation provides federal funding for an array of services, including for healthcare. John Lowery, chairman of the tribe and a state representative, declared that “the biggest benefit” would be access to the Indian Health Service — its clinics and hospitals, as well as funding that it could provide for the tribe to create its own health system. But Lumbee researchers and healthcare providers say that money won’t be enough. For decades, IHS has been chronically underfunded, with the agency’s budget workgroup estimating that it’s nearly $55 billion short of what it needs this year. And that was before the Trump administration’s cuts to other federal agencies further pinched IHS. Slashes to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year initially included laying off nearly 1,000 IHS employees, and President Donald Trump’s proposed 2027 budget cuts more than $150 million for a program to address diabetes in Native American tribes. The nearest IHS facility is more than a two-hour drive to another state for most of the 55,000 Lumbee citizens in Robeson County. The county is one of the poorest in the U.S. and has some of the worst health outcomes. Robeson County is mostly rural, agricultural land. Most of the members of the Lumbee Tribe live in the small towns of Lumberton and Pembroke, both about a half-hour drive from the South Carolina border. (Andrew Jones/KFF Health News) The Congressional Budget Office in 2022 estimated that the tribe could increase IHS spending by $247 million over four years. The tribe will have to rely on other revenue sources that are now allowed through recognition, such as a casino, to reverse the health disparities their people have faced for decades, Lumbee researchers said. “None of us can depend on IHS alone, because we just don't have the resources within that system,” said Donald Warne, a physician, a researcher at the Johns Hopkins Center for Indigenous Health, and a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe. “But it’s a great starting point.” The IHS did not respond to questions about plans for the tribe’s health system. John Lowery did not respond to requests for an interview or a list of questions, but he said on a June podcast that he expected healthcare to be the largest portion of the tribe’s budget. Lowery makes beaded earrings, teaches culture classes, owns a gravestone business, and makes engravings in her Pembroke, North Carolina, shop. (Andrew Jones/KFF Health News)Antiques hang on Lowery’s walls at her home. She and her husband, Grant Hunt, are avid collectors. (Andrew Jones/KFF Health News) **‘Not Just Statistics’** Eighteen years ago, Andrea Blackburn, a doctor in Lumberton and a citizen of the tribe, was working at a nearby medical center. There, she said, she was taught that patients with certain last names “are often referred directly to cardiac catheterization,” a procedure to diagnose heart conditions. Blackburn said she realized that common Lumbee surnames carried an expectation of disease. “Nearly two decades later, I can tell you that reality has not changed,” she told assembled tribal leadership and citizens at a public hearing. Robeson County’s rates of heart disease, diabetes, and risky substance use continue to rank among the highest in the state, Blackburn noted. In 2025, more than half of the county’s residents were Medicaid enrollees, the highest percentage of all counties in the state. “But these are not just statistics to me,” she said. “These are my patients. These are our families.” Andrea Blackburn, a citizen of the Lumbee Tribe, is a physician in Robeson County. (Andrew Jones/KFF Health News) For Angie Lowery, breaking free from those statistics meant taking her health into her own hands. She hopes a healthy diet is the answer to breaking her family’s cycle and living long enough to form relationships with her grandkids. And she brought the rest of the family with her. Her teenage daughter lost about 35 pounds. Two of her other children are now “health fanatics,” Lowery said. Her granddaughter will be 2 in November. One Sunday morning in March, Lowery served up macaroni, cauliflower, and chickpeas for her as they spent the day together. Lowery had supported building a casino, believing it would provide better education, infrastructure, and healthcare for her family. “That vote, I’m thinking of my children’s future,” she said. Lowery grows squash, onions, potatoes, and other produce in her backyard garden. Later this year, she’ll can some of the harvest for her family. (Andrew Jones/KFF Health News) **Casino Dreams in Limbo** Tribal citizens are deeply divided over how to reverse decades of economic decline that have led to poor living conditions, unaffordable health services, and chronic disease. Four months after Trump signed the Lumbee Fairness Act — declaring “I love the Lumbee Tribe” — tribal leaders gathered at a business meeting to take the first steps toward building a casino and establishing gaming as a new revenue source. Hundreds of federally recognized tribes across 29 states have used gaming as a source of revenue, bringing in $43.9 billion in fiscal 2024, according to the latest report from the National Indian Gaming Commission. The approach has been popular among tribal nations looking for more dollars to build up healthcare. The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma in 1999 became the first tribe to build its own hospital, using roughly $25 million in gaming money, and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in western North Carolina funded its own hospital in 2015 mostly with $82 million in gaming funds. But the Lumbee Tribe’s effort to establish a casino collapsed in June. More than 60% of voters rejected a Lumbee constitutional amendment that would have allowed tribal leaders to create infrastructure needed for a gaming business. John Lowery said on Facebook that he doesn’t plan on bringing back the initiative now that it was rejected “by the majority of Lumbee voters.” His term as chairman ends in two years. A portrait of Lumbee Tribe Chairman John Lowery hangs beside a rendering of a proposed casino and resort meant to help bring in revenue for the newly federally recognized tribe. Citizens voted against the project. (Andrew Jones/KFF Health News) Other funding sources to provide health services for the tribe could include gas stations or hotels, he said in a call with citizens before the vote. Lumbee and other Native health researchers said they believe a twofold system — using IHS money and additional revenue — is necessary. Funds from gaming could compensate for what IHS can’t support. Casinos’ impact on tribal health has been debated in research for decades. Studies show that the money from gaming helps tribes build more facilities, hire more doctors, and improve social services, but unhealthy substance use and smoking increase. “There’s going to be negative impacts,” Brittany Locklear, a social work professor at the University of North Carolina and citizen of the Lumbee Tribe, said at a June panel discussion on gaming. Ronny Bell, 62, a Lumbee citizen and a researcher studying Native health at UNC, said the community has felt ripple effects from systemic racism, having not been acknowledged as a tribal nation for so long, and the economic downturn following the loss of Robeson County’s manufacturing and tobacco jobs. That history plays a part in the health statistics in Robeson today, Bell said. But with federal recognition, he said, the Lumbee people have achieved a victory they’ve fought for since 1888. “I think about the resilience of the Lumbee people and how they've gone through this 100-plus-year fight for federal recognition,” Bell said. “I sort of see that as a continuation of this resilience, and how now we have this opportunity with federal recognition to bring in resources to help address those issues.” The Lumbee Tribe government offices and citizen housing in Pembroke, North Carolina, stand amid long stretches of agricultural countryside. (Andrew Jones/KFF Health News) **Resolution and Uncertainty** Jada Brooks, a Lumbee citizen and UNC researcher who studies Indigenous health and lives in Robeson County, is conducting a study about heart health among Lumbee women. The initiative includes classes in which Lumbee women ages 18 to 50 signed up to discuss their health. That’s where she met Angie Lowery, who talked about her lifestyle changes with the group. “I was just floored by, like, just the extent to which she went,” Brooks said. She and other Lumbee researchers said federal recognition allows Lumbee citizens to be set apart in census data, paving a way to get clear information on heart health, cancer rates, diabetes diagnoses, and mental health risks. “There’s challenges in even understanding the nuances of these complex health disparities, because a lot of data isn’t out there,” said Ryan Dial, a public health researcher at UNC and a member of the Lumbee Tribe. But access and confidence may be the biggest barriers Lumbee people will have to overcome, Brooks said. “I think what really matters is people feeling like they can trust the healthcare system.” Brooks said she worried that a casino would encourage bad health habits, such as smoking and drinking. “Let’s not create more problems for ourselves than we already have,” she said. She voted against the casino. Like others in the tribe, Angie Lowery believes in her people’s power to help themselves, regardless of whether government steps in to help. “Just because we're federally recognized don't mean that the doors are going to open up and money’s going to fall through the door like dirt,” she said. Angie Lowery sits in her Ford F-250 reading the Lumbee Constitution on a hot June day. The tribe secured federal recognition in December 2025. (Andrew Jones/KFF Health News) KFF Health News_is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about_ KFF_._ This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

By Larry Griffin (Tennessee Lookout) Published: July 30, 2026 Data centers, which store and facilitate data for computer applications, have become more ubiquitous in public discourse over the past few years as artificial intelligence, AI, tools have risen in prominence. In areas where the data centers have located, residents have reported constant low humming noises that disrupt everyday life. They’ve seen higher energy costs and in some cases companies plan to cut off whole regions’ power supply to better service AI data centers. And people worry about the environmental cost of the data centers as emissions continue to pollute the air the longer the centers operate. Crypto or bitcoin mines, meaning facilities used to manufacture digital currency, are also a worry. While they’re separate entities from data centers, they are often grouped together by those opposing them. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX. The City of Johnson City, in its efforts to regulate such facilities, classifies both as buildings “primarily designed or used for the storage, management, processing, validation, or transmission of digital information” while using “specialized mechanical, electrical, cooling, and standby power systems intended to support continuous or large-scale digital operations.” Data centers are proliferating in Tennessee, with several planned in Virginia and Kentucky, all less than 200 miles from the Tri-Cities area. In East Tennessee’s backyard, crypto company ExoticRidge sued Hawkins County in March, after the county banned crypto mines. The case has become a cautionary tale for others in the region as it makes its way through the courts. The company claimed that the ban was unjust, saying it wouldn’t be causing harm. “Our on-grid projects are designed to maximize energy efficiency and uptime, while our field deployments are focused on utilizing unconventional energy sources to provide sustainable, low-cost power. Leveraging our founders’ experience, we are committed to delivering high-quality results from our projects,” the company’s website states. Libertarian think tank The Beacon Center, which defends public property rights and companies which it views as unfairly maligned by government action, has taken up the case to fight in court. Attorney Ben Stormes with the Beacon Center told Tennessee Lookout that he thought it was mostly a misunderstanding on the county’s part. > Visual: Mapping Tennessee’s current and proposed data centers “It’s an unpopular business, and the government reacted without thinking too much,” he said, calling the idea of banning entire businesses “anti-American.” In its response document filed with the court, Hawkins County states it is trying to do right by its citizens, who “made clear to their elected representatives that they do not want to live alongside a gas-burning computer farm that pumps out dirty air and noise pollution at all hours of the night and day.” ## Being proactive Even where no data centers have filed applications for permits, cities in the region are trying to cut them off at the knees before they even start a plan. Bristol passed a two-year moratorium on the centers, while Kingsport has passed regulations stating that the centers can only come to heavy industrial zones 500 feet from homes, with a noise cap of 60 decibels. Jonesborough ruled that data centers couldn’t come within 1,500 feet of residential structures. Washington County approved a moratorium on data centers through June 30, 2027. In Monroe County, resident Amber Bright leads a Facebook group titled NO DATA CENTERS TENNESSEEE – MONROE COUNTY CHAPTER.of Members have been petitioning municipalities to ban or regulate the data centers before any take root in the area. Bright told Lookout that while no data centers have attempted to come to the area, she wants to get ahead of the issue: “I do not want Monroe County — or any rural community — to suffer lasting local damage for the benefit of corporations that will not have to live with the consequences.” > Local Tennessee officials are putting data center plans on ice to consider regulations Johnson City ruled in 2025 that data centers could only apply to locate in the I-2 Heavy Industrial zone. ## Public concern In a recent survey by the City of Johnson City, over 5,000 of the 6,000 respondents said they were “extremely concerned” by the prospect of a data center coming to the city. Several residents spoke at a June 9 meeting of the Johnson City Regional Planning Commission in which the city’s regulations against data centers were discussed. Rebecca Tolley worried about how little AI has been regulated so far, including the way it steals peoples’ art and writing and how it can generate explicit images. “There are several minors who have become victims of child sexual assault material generated by AI,” she said. “I’d like to encourage you all, to continue to very heavily scrutinize these industries as they come in and propose to come in.” “We have no need for a data center,” said fellow resident Brad Parker. “We do have a need for clear water running, nice air above Buffalo Mountain and good ground that will grow our fruits and vegetables.” A third resident, Rachel Holly, worried that if a data center came to town, residents would lose any recourse: “We’re not gonna matter, we’re just going to be rerouted until we’re not heard.” ## A years-long effort The Johnson City Commission has extended a moratorium on data centers until December, while a special board including city personnel and concerned residents is trying to hammer out the details. Johnson City Planning Manager Whitney Hodges said the project to craft regulations against data centers has been going on for the last couple of years, and spans a massive endeavor to tweak the noise and zoning rules in the city to evolve them for more modern technology. At a city commission work session on July 16, Hodges said the proposal so far states data centers would have to remain an as-yet undetermined distance away from residential properties and will have to cap their noise levels .The city is looking into what are acceptable noise levels for industrial-size businesses. Hodges said it’s been tricky because they have to make sure proposed rules wouldn’t infringe on other businesses’ work or create other, new problems. Quotation We have no need for a data center. We do have a need for clear water running, nice air above Buffalo Mountain and good ground that will grow our fruits and vegetables. **– Brad Parker, Johnson City resident** Data centers would have to conduct environmental impact studies and have contingency plans for what would happen to the massive buildings if the data center companies end up abandoning the projects and leaving town. They will also have to make public websites detailing their actions. Finally, any data centers coming to town would have to undergo annual reviews to make sure they’re compliant with all the rules, with the city reserving the right to reject them for shortcomings. The ordinances and rules are still in draft form and Hodges said they likely won’t become official until October or November this year. Hodges wants to correct the perception that Johnson City was or is getting ready to welcome a data center to the area. Every city is “trying to walk a line” with data centers, she said, regulating them while not outright banning them, as cities can’t legally ban legal businesses from operating. She called data centers a “moving target” and said it was important to keep abreast of any new developments so they could make regulations. Johnson City resident Sylvain Bruni has been a vocal critic of data centers and has spoken up against them at local government meetings for years now. He has been working with city officials on their plans. While he knows some of his neighbors want a total ban on data centers, Bruni frames his goals as practical and said the idea was to have enough regulations to protect the community. “A lot of people want to go very fast and very strong,” he said. “I’m trying to be in the middle of what the community wants with what the city can do.” SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE

**It's Friday August 7, 2026 and in this morning's issue we're covering:** Memphis advocates call on private airport to stop servicing ICE detention flights, Two more face federal charges with making threats in Nolan Wells’ death investigation, ICE says Forest Service requested cooperation in Wilson Creek operation, NC lawmakers send two big election bills to governor, Why truckers always seem to be on the phone while they drive on the highway, From shelters to medical care, three young West Virginians want the state to change how it confronts homelessness, Nearly 15 years after student discipline reform, school suspensions in Mass. are falling. Are emergency removals taking their place? **Media outlets and others featured:** Tennessee Lookout, Mississippi Today, NC Local, Carolina Public Press, CalMatters, Mountain State Spotlight, CommonWealth Beacon. * * * ## Memphis advocates call on private airport to stop servicing ICE detention flights By Anita Wadhwani (Tennessee Lookout) Published: August 5, 2026 Memphis advocates on Tuesday called on a privately-run aviation company to stop servicing flights that transport detained immigrants out of the state. Volunteers with Vecindarios 901, a Memphis mutual aid organization that coordinates a “rapid response” network to help immigrants impacted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said they have tracked 51 flights since March transporting detainees from Wilson Air Center. Using publicly available flight tracking data, the group has traced most of these flight destinations to Alexandria, Louisiana, where ICE has established a large detention facility. Maria Oceja, Vecindarios 901 co-founder, urged owners of the Wilson Air Center, located on the site of the Memphis International Airport, to “reconsider your role” in the Trump administration’s mass immigrant detention and deportation operations. “The Trump administration has separated parents from their children, wives from their husbands and families from their communities,” said Oceja, citing increased detentions as a result of ICE’s participation in the Memphis Safe Task Force and an uptick in detentions statewide that have brought hundreds of immigrants to a detention center in the city of Mason, located about 40 miles from the airport. “Before they can even contact an attorney to fight their case in court they’re immediately flown out of this airport to a detention center in Louisiana, Alabama or another detention center in another part of the United States.” she said. “By flying them out they are losing the opportunity to fight their case in Tennessee so they can stay with their families,” she said. Advocates on Tuesday also raised safety concerns over the use of restraints during flights that could place individuals at risk during air emergencies. Wilson Air Center did not respond Tuesday to a request for comment. ICE Air Operations, a division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, coordinates the majority of flights via contracts with airline companies to transport detained immigrants to detention centers within the U.S. and on deportation flights outside the country. In a statement received after publication, a spokesperson for ICE noted that ICE Air Operations provides “a network of air transportation to Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) 25 field offices to facilitate the movement of illegal aliens within the United States and their removal to destinations worldwide via air charter and commercial charter services.” The transportation of detainees between facilities is routine, for reasons that include “capacity, security or logistical needs,” the spokesperson said. Individuals are fully restrained during the flights per ICE policy, the spokesperson said. “Detainees transported by ICE Air aircraft will be fully restrained using handcuffs, waist chains, and leg irons” during the flights, the spokesperson said. They are also provided meals and drinks. “ICE is committed to the safety and welfare of those in custody throughout the entire transfer and removal process. Allegations of inhumane treatment or attempts to hide information is categorically false,” the spokesperson said. In June, there were a total of 1,889 immigration enforcement flights — a 59% increase from June 2025, according to ICE Flight Monitor, which tracks flights using publicly available data. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX. * 8:44 am This story was updated with a response from ICE received after publication. * * * # Two more face federal charges with making threats in Nolan Wells’ death investigation by Mina Corpuz, Mississippi Today August 4, 2026 Federal investigators have charged at least two more out-of-state people with allegedly threatening a witness and state court employees authorities believe are connected to the Nolan Xavier Wells’ death investigation. Ohio resident Michelle Edwards and Illinois resident Edward Porter each face a federal charge of transmitting threatening communication to kill or injure. Court records do not state what the maximum penalty would be if convicted, but the portions of federal law under which they are both charged carry sentences between five and 20 years. The court unsealed their charges Friday, the same day a California man was arrested for allegedly sending a bomb and death threat to a Mississippi Gulf Coast chancery judge who is the stepmother of a friend who went to Horn Island with Wells and others on July 4. A park ranger discovered Wells’ body on the island on July 6, after his friends had already returned home. Investigators from an FBI task force said Edwards called in bomb threats to the George County Chancery Clerk’s Office and the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department the afternoon of July 23. The Jackson County Sheriff’s Department is leading the death investigation, and George and Jackson counties are both in the chancery judge’s district. Edwards allegedly used a blocked phone number when she called the clerk’s office 21 times between 1:34 and 1:42 p.m., according to the criminal complaint. During the calls, she said, “Do not go outside,” “the clock is ticking,” and “die.” She also allegedly called the sheriff’s office twice using the *67 function, which makes the caller ID appear as private, unknown or blocked. Those calls led law enforcement to place the building on lockdown and use a bomb detection dog to sweep the area. Investigators submitted disclosure requests to telephone companies, which identified an Ohio number. A Cash App account and law enforcement records listed the phone number under Edwards’ name. Cell site information from July 23 included an area in Cincinnati where Edwards had two listed addresses. The complaint accuses Porter of threatening to kill a witness in the Wells death investigation and another person in Mississippi on Friday morning; in both cases, Porter threatened to kill the person’s family members. He allegedly told the witness, who is identified in court records as “W-1,” that he knew where they live and provided proof by texting the witness their address. Porter told the other person, identified as “W-2,” that he would cut them up and put them into a suitcase. Then, investigators say Porter called the witness back to say he was outside their home to kill them. The threats came from a Gulfport-area text free number, which allows people to make calls and send texts over the internet. Agents requested information from a company called Pinger about the number, and the company provided two IP addresses tied to Porter, which included a Chicago-area number and a Maywood, Illinois, address. Agents found that the Pinger account used to make the threats was created the same day the threats were sent. Cell site information placed an iPhone under Porter’s name at his residence in Berwyn, Illinois. Wells’ disappearance and death have captured national attention, which has included the spread of theories and misinformation on social media and threats made against people believed to be involved. The FBI is investigating threats received by friends of Wells, their families, Wells’ parents and local and state public officials working on the case. So far, none of the threats against Wells’ family has resulted in an arrest. Wells, 18, traveled by boat with a group of friends to Horn Island off the Mississippi Gulf Coast to celebrate the Fourth of July. He did not return to Ocean Springs and was reported missing. His death remains under investigation and a cause of death has not been released. The case is expected to be presented to a grand jury once the investigation is complete. This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # ICE says Forest Service requested cooperation in Wilson Creek operation. Here’s how law enforcement in national forests works. by Lilly Knoepp, NCLocal August 6, 2026 A popular swimming hole in the Pisgah National Forest became the site of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operation late last month, raising questions about when and how law enforcement partners with federal immigration enforcement officers in North Carolina. This is the first time ICE has partnered with the U.S. Forest Service in the state in recent years, ICE spokesperson Lindsay Williams told NC Local. The initial request for the operation came from Forest Service Law Enforcement, not ICE, he said. “I believe in this case they reached out to us along with the Caldwell County Sheriff's Office and they asked us to assist them and we set up this operation,” Williams told NC Local. The Forest Service declined to confirm who initiated the action. The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said it arrested 13 people who were illegally in the United States during the operation in partnership with the Caldwell County Sheriff’s Office and the Forest Service. Conservation groups and local advocates questioned why Forest Service officials worked with federal immigration authorities. Following the incident, Siembra, a Latino advocacy organization, hosted a vigil near the spot of the raid. Organizer Andreina Malki asked why this immigration operation happened in the Pisgah National Forest. “A question that you know that I have, as someone that loves and appreciates the national forests, is, ‘Why is that a place of immigration enforcement?' That is a place where families go to rest, where families go to enjoy a perfect summer day,” Malki said. “That is not a place where one would expect this to happen.” But the cooperation between federal law enforcement agencies is not unusual. “This cooperation is part of how we keep recreation areas safe and sustain the health of the forests,” a Forest Service spokesperson said in an email. The Forest Service pointed to a 2025 law enforcement operation when officers seized 425lbs of illegally harvested ramps in the Nantahala National Forest as an example of law enforcement's regular operations in the national forest. The Forest Service, which covers 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands, confirmed that its Law Enforcement & Investigation division “routinely partners with Federal, State, Tribal and local police—daily in most places.” This typically includes joint work on resource‑protection patrols, traffic safety on forest roads, search‑and‑rescue support, wildfire‑cause investigations, arson, drug violations, or theft of forest products. “Forest Service law enforcement is dedicated to keeping the national forests safe and secure for the American people. While our law enforcement officers have no authority to enforce immigration law, they collaborate with other federal and local law enforcement agencies,” a Forest Service spokesperson said in an email. Forest Service law enforcement officers are independently managed and fall outside the direct supervision of local Forest Service units. Officers report to the local Patrol Captain, who in turn reports to the regional Special Agent in Charge and regional Patrol Commander. Each of the Forest System’s 10 regions is divided into zones where special agents and uniformed officers are “stationed by workload and supported by patrol command and administrative staff.” The regional law enforcement officers do not report to the forest supervisors who oversee all the other forest service activities. The Patrol captain in the region will advise forest supervisors on law enforcement matters occurring in a national forest. The Forest Service also has criminal investigators assigned to each region who conduct criminal investigations into violations of federal law involving National Forest System lands. The Forest Service declined an interview request and declined to confirm how many Forest Service law enforcement and investigation officers are employed in North Carolina, citing “officer safety.” While Forest Service law enforcement has long functioned in the state, the Wilson Creek immigration operation marked a unique partnership. Williams said it’s the first time in his almost eight year tenure with ICE that he remembers the agency working with the Forest Service in North Carolina. Williams said ICE has recently worked with the Forest Service in South Carolina and Georgia, though NC Local found no public references to these operations. In 2025, it was reported that ICE questioned people about their immigration status at a swimming hole in Arkansas. Williams did not specify the reason for the Wilson Creek operation but underscored the authority of ICE to detain people without documentation. “Obviously they encountered aliens, and we're the only agency for the most part that has the authority and the information to determine alienage, so that's why they called us,” he told NC Local. ICE declined to share the names of the 13 people they say were arrested on July 26. NC Local spoke with one family member who said her nephew was detained. ### **Increasing cooperation with ICE** While ICE has always had relationships with other local, state and federal law enforcement, the volume of cooperation has “skyrocketed” under the Trump Administration, an NBC analysis earlier this year showed. “There are 1,168 agencies with officers signed up to help ICE, up from 135 during the Biden administration and 150 at the end of Trump’s first term,” the report stated. “I would categorize it as a whole of government approach,” Williams said. Increased funding for ICE also enabled the expansion. In January, ICE’s budget increased from $10 million to $85 million, NPR reported. Local and state law enforcement agencies may enter into agreements, called 287(g) agreements, with the federal government to collaborate on immigration enforcement. Some local governments in Colorado, California and Illinois have pushed back against cooperation with ICE, according to the Migration Policy Institute. In North Carolina, state leaders embraced expansion of federal cooperation, citing the re-election of President Trump as a clear communication from North Carolina voters of “their strong desire to create a safer country through increased border security and stronger immigration policies" in a new law requiring state law enforcement agencies to cooperate with ICE. Governor Josh Stein vetoed the measure, called the North Carolina Border Protection Act. In June, Republican lawmakers overrode the veto. The new measure requires state law enforcement agencies, such as the State Bureau of Investigation and Highway Patrol, to enter 287(g) agreements with ICE. At the end of last year,  25 law enforcement agencies in NC had 287(g) agreements. The Caldwell County Sheriff’s Department, which collaborated on the Wilson Creek operation, entered an agreement with federal authorities in 2020. The ACLU reports there are currently 28 active agreements in NC. The Sierra Club, a national environmental group, condemned the Wilson Creek incident and framed it as part of a pattern of increased immigration action. “Bringing immigration enforcement into public recreation areas undermines the sense of safety and belonging that these spaces provide and could discourage people from visiting national forests and other outdoor spaces altogether,” the organization said in a press release following the Wilson Creek operation. The Sierra Club warned that the expansion of 287(g) agreements across the country and increased ICE funding could “bring similar operations to more communities and public recreation areas.” This article first appeared on NCLocal and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. * * * # NC lawmakers send two big election bills to governor by Sarah Michels, Carolina Public Press August 4, 2026 After a year of work, North Carolina lawmakers agreed on a pair of wide-ranging election bills Tuesday evening that would shorten the primary early voting period, allow challenges of early voted ballots after Election Day and extend some ballot counting and curing deadlines, among other policy changes. Now, the power is in Gov. **Josh Stein** ’s hands. He can sign the election bills into law, veto them or allow them to become law without his signature. Stein indicated late Tuesday that he would indeed veto the more controversial of the bills. The first of the two election bills, House Bill 834, passed with some Democratic support in a vote of 74-35. The second, House Bill 958, fell along party lines, in a 62-46 vote. ##### **[** Subscribe for FREE to Carolina Public Press’ Daily, Weekend and Election 2026 newsletters.**]** Consequently, Republicans would likely have enough votes to override a veto of HB834. However, Stein has not indicated he would veto that one. The closer margins on HB958, which Stein has said he would veto, suggest it would be difficult for Republican legislators to override the governor's veto of that bill. House Speaker **Destin Hall** , R-Caldwell, told reporters he doubts lawmakers will come back to override any vetoes before the November election. They’ll have to wait until the planned post-election session. “Hopefully we don’t have to worry about that, and the governor just signs it and doesn’t veto it,” he said Tuesday prior to Stein's indication of his plans. Hall added that the pair of bills make elections more transparent and clarify who can and cannot vote in North Carolina. “Folks who are legally authorized to vote should be able to vote,” he said. “And the reality is, nobody has a difficult time voting in this state who’s eligible to vote.” ### Controversial election bill House Bill 958 One of the election bills was more controversial: HB958. All Democrats and unaffiliated lawmakers voted against the bill, including some frequent swing voters. **Early voting period** : While a provision to shorten the primary early voting period from 17 to 10 days is new to House Bill 958, it’s not a novel idea. This session, several lawmakers proposed cutting early voting days to some degree. County election directors told Carolina Public Press that they were prepared for any outcome, but preferred that the general election early voting period stay intact. Some said lower turnout during primary elections would make a 10-day early voting period manageable. Meanwhile, voting advocates argued that a longer early voting period gave people more time to decide how they wanted to vote and more opportunities to cast a ballot, while keeping lines shorter. Rep. **Pricey Harrison** , D-Guilford, noted that a “significant portion” of elections in North Carolina are decided in the primary. “Most of us in this chamber are here because we won a primary,” she said. “I think cutting back on primary days, you need to think about that piece of the calculus, and I think that's a bad move.” Hall said two weeks of primary early voting is “plenty of time,” considering the lower turnout. **Challenging early voted ballots** : If House Bill 958 becomes law, anyone could challenge an early voted ballot up to three days after Election Day. Under current law, challenges must happen at the time ballots are cast, with the exception of absentee ballots. Rep. **Phil Rubin** , D-Wake, called the provision “the Griffin,” referring to 2024 failed state Supreme Court candidate **Jefferson Griffin** , who challenged tens of thousands of ballots in an attempt to overturn his loss. Rubin said it was dangerous to allow candidates to wait to see election results before deciding whether to pursue ballot challenges. “You don't want candidates strategically filing challenges just to try and win an election,” Rubin said. “We should win elections at the ballot box, not in the courtroom.” After bipartisan negotiations, the final House version of the bill only allowed challenges up to the close of the polls, but the Senate brought the extension back. Other Democrats took issue with the Senate undoing some of the bipartisan work that led to the final House bill. Rep. **Amber Baker** , D-Forsyth, encouraged lawmakers to vote against the bill, and send a message as a House chamber that “we stand united on the work that we’ve done.” **Due process for dead voters** : This spring, the State Board of Elections announced that it found about 34,000 potentially dead voters on the state’s voter rolls using the federal Systemic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system. That would be about 0.46% of North Carolina’s registered voters. State election officials have been using the SAVE system to crosscheck the state’s voter rolls with several federal databases to root out ineligible voters. That could include noncitizens, voters who have moved from one jurisdiction to another or dead voters. Every week, the state Department of Health and Human Services sends the election board a list of people who have died so that they can be removed from the voter rolls. So, it’s likely that many of the 34,000 voters identified by SAVE did not notify North Carolina election officials before moving, and subsequently, dying. HB958 requires the State Board executive director to distribute the names of dead voters identified by the SAVE system to county boards within a week of getting the information. Then, county boards must remove those voters from the rolls. However, there is no process to confirm whether the identified dead voters are actually deceased. There’s no notice or challenge hearing before the voter is removed. Rubin said lawmakers should include due process, especially considering the databases that SAVE uses are known to be incomplete and imperfect. “It will lead to lawsuits,” he said. “It violates constitutional protections, and this bill could have guaranteed them.” Late Tuesday, Gov. Stein posted to X that he would indeed veto this bill. "Your vote is how you make sure that your government actually works for you and your family," Stein wrote. "I will always defend your right to vote. I will veto House Bill 958 because it makes it harder for you to vote, introduces unnecessary chaos into our elections, and invites sore losers to overturn an election they lost. "The bill passed with only Republican votes. Thank you to every single Democratic and Unaffiliated house member for standing against this bad bill. Now, I ask you to call your legislators and urge them to uphold the veto. Because in this democracy, the power rests with you — the people. Let’s keep it that way." ### More bipartisan support for House Bill 834 The other of the two election bills received bipartisan support. It includes extended deadlines for counting provisional and absentee ballots, and fixing certain ballot issues, from three days after Election Day to five business days. The bill outlines the process for securing ballots and electronic vote records between the end of the early voting period and Election Day. It clarifies that if a voter dies between casting their ballot and 11:59 p.m. on the day before the election, their vote does not count. There’s also a provision extending the time certain expired Class C driver’s licenses can count as valid voter IDs to the end of 2027. Finally, HB834 allows people who want to challenge State Board decisions in court to either choose Wake County Superior Court, where all challenges occur now, or the superior court in their home county. While Harrison said she appreciates the deadline changes, she doesn’t like the ability to sue outside of Wake County. It will lead to “judge shopping,” a process where plaintiffs try to file lawsuits wherever they think they’ll find the most sympathetic judge. “That's going to prove to be a real problem for fair judicial treatment of election issues,” she said. _Editor's note: This article was revised to reflect news developments after it was initially posted._ This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # Why truckers always seem to be on the phone while they drive on the highway By Gagandeep Singh, CalMatters Gurinderjit Singh at a truck yard in Fresno where he parks his semi-truck on June 8, 2026. Photo by Adam Perez for CalMatters This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters. The calls started rolling in nonstop to Fresno trucker Gurinderjit Singh as he prepared for an out-of-state delivery earlier this summer. Some congratulated him on his son’s recent engagement while others were fellow drivers inviting him to join a conference call. He climbed into his Peterbilt, clipped his headset, joined the call, and settled into an hourslong conversation with friends around the world. Singh, an Indian origin trucker who is something of a social media influencer, spends at least eight hours a day on the phone while hauling freight, Monday to Saturday. He described the custom as a “call of empathy” — a ritual that gives him a jolt of positive energy and keeps him awake while behind the wheel. It’s a habit that he and many other truckers share as they plug into conversations that cross continents and time zones, building a kind of rolling community that travels with them down the highway. They say it helps them take care of their mental health in a career marked by long hours sitting alone in vehicles without access to exercise. “There is a lot of stress on truck drivers in the United States,” Singh said. “I think the long call is a meaningful method that can reduce this level of stress, social isolation or loneliness in the truck by sharing feelings with others.” Of course it’s illegal to drive while handling a cellphone and drivers make a point to keep one ear free on their headsets to comply with state laws. They are also aware that distracted driving can be deadly, and several of them told CalMatters they end their calls when they hit heavy traffic. There is something at stake every time a driver picks up that call: control of an 80,000-pound machine, highway safety, and a commercial driving license that doesn’t come back easily if something goes wrong. The California Department of Motor Vehicles evaluates drivers’ physical and mental health during license renewals, and they can be suspended. Yet, California has neither conducted a statewide study on truck drivers’ mental health, nor offered a program to support rehabilitation if a trucker faces mental health issues. They’re on their own to get an attorney and fight for a license renewal if an issue gets the state’s attention. Gurinderjit Singh sits in his semi-truck in Fresno, on June 8, 2026. Photo by Adam Perez for CalMatters Lindsey Bryan is the health & wellness manager at Project 61, a nonprofit focused on truck drivers’ health. “We see that drivers face social isolation daily,” Bryan said. “They’re away from their loved ones, and also lacking many of the things that you and I might do on a day-to-day basis that help us reduce our stress.” Academic researchers have found the solitude truckers experience makes them unlike other workers when it comes to social media and online communication. A 2016 paper, titled “Work Strain, Social Isolation and Mental Health of Long-Haul Truckers,” noted social media has been linked to feelings of isolation for online adults. But not for truckers. Social media, such as WhatsApp and FaceTime, has the opposite effect for them while on the road, giving them a sense of community. “These (social media) opportunities would provide truck drivers much-needed social connections during layovers, while waiting to load/unload their trucks, any other non-driving periods, or during emergencies,” the authors wrote. ## 'Until she starts snoring' The calls may sound like a distraction, but truckers say they often help drivers stay focused. “The reason, even in my car today, I talk on my cell phone, via hands-free or bluetooth and it keeps you alert,” said Joseph Rajkovacz, a retired executive for Western States Trucking Association. “It's no different than turning on your radio and singing along to a song you like. Even though nobody wants to hear your singing. So it does help keep you alert, too.” That’s why Gerald Bailey, 53, says he spends 27 hours on the phone every week with his wife and brothers, chatting at all times of the day and night. It's become a routine for him once he’s behind the wheel. He was talking on the phone with his wife at a truckstop in Lodi earlier this summer while he waited for a mechanic to fix his truck’s air conditioning. “I stay on the phone with my wife until she starts snoring,” Bailey said while smiling. “Then I let her have a well-deserved sleep and I don’t want to disturb her.” Gerald Bailey of Redding sits in his semi-trailer truck at the Pilot Flying J travel center in Lodi on June 8, 2026. Bailey said he combats the loneliness of life on the road by talking with his wife on the phone. Photo by Miguel Gutierrez Jr., CalMatters Some truckers, however, are prohibited by their employers from talking while driving. They’re monitored with cameras in the cabs, too. “It’s against company policy,” said driver Peter Andrews, 62, of Texas as he walked through a truck stop near Sacramento. “I have to pull over the truck to call someone. They’ve put camera equipment with artificial intelligence right on my face, so I can’t use my phone.” ## Health risks on the road According to Project 61 data, 70% of truck drivers in the United States are obese — twice the rate of U.S. adult workers. They also experience heart disease and depression at twice the rate of the average U.S. worker, and diabetes at twice the rate of the general population. Raman Dhillon, chief executive officer of the North American Punjabi Trucking Association, knows the toll personally. When he was driving the truck, he put on weight then learned he had diabetes and high blood pressure. ****First:**** Semi-trailer trucks at a Pilot Flying J travel center in Lodi on June 8, 2026. ****Last**** : Gurinderjit Singh’s headset hangs inside his semi-truck in Fresno, on June 8, 2026. Photos by Miguel Gutierrez Jr. and Adam Perez for CalMatters Truckers are “on the road. They are quarantining in that 10-by-10 cab, and loneliness at that time is intense,” Dhillon said. “You have 11 hours of driving, three hours of break, and 10 hours of sleep, and it’s constantly going on. I think a lot of drivers cope with this through phone calls.” Singh, the Fresno driver, views those physical health risks as connected to mental health isolation. He notes that drivers feel more isolated when they eat poorly. That’s why his wife, Harjinder Kaur, a nurse, packs two or three delicious Indian curries, along with wheat breads, for his deliveries. Truckers say they also endure what they describe as a kind of discrimination that weighs on them as they travel, including businesses denying them access to restrooms. The complaint reached Congress last year when a Republican lawmaker introduced legislation that would require retailers and warehouses to allow truckers access to bathrooms. The bill has not moved forward. “They don’t allow us to use restrooms,” said Brenda Johnson, 58, who drives a truck out of Oregon along with her husband. “There’s no structure. And these companies where we deliver treat us as less than human.” Brenda Johnson in her semi-truck at the Sacramento 49er Plaza in Sacramento on June 7, 2026. Johnson has been a long-haul trucker since 2005. Photo by Gagandeep Singh for CalMatters Exercise is its own obstacle. “We don’t really have any safe place to exercise,” Johnson said at a truckstop near Interstate 80 in Sacramento. Do you want to walk around a parking lot with trucks going in and out? You’re dodging all kinds of things. There’s no real safe place for exercise.” ## Fighting loneliness The constant companionship of her husband hasn’t solved Johnson’s loneliness. “Even though my husband rides with me and is constantly with me, I can still be alone and not be alone,” Johnson said, who has been driving since 2005. “Because we’re together all the time, we don’t really have anything to talk about.” Johnson instead leans on her two girlfriends in the trucking industry, and some immediate family members. On a typical day, she may spend about an hour on the phone outside of company-related calls though that figure can swing sharply. “My five hours would jump close to 25 hours in a week when I am in a good mood,” Johnson said. “When I’m depressed, though, I isolate myself. I don’t want to talk to anybody. I just don’t want to deal with anything.” Long-haul trucker Jose Martinez, 50, was resting at a truck stop near Stockton when he described a similar rhythm. He has struggled with the guilt he feels for missing time with his family while he’s working. Now he calls family or friends whenever he feels lonely during a 10-hour shift. "It's basically the whole time, and it's a positive thing to talk to people," Martinez said. ## Talking through emergencies For immigrant drivers, the cellphone calls offer an immediate connection to their home country that wasn’t possible in the Citizens Band (CB) radio era. The U.S. trucking industry has long benefited from immigrant labor. Between 2000 and 2021, the number of foreign-born truckers more than doubled, rising from 316,000 to over 720,000 drivers. Today, about 18% of U.S. truck drivers are foreign-born. According to North America Punjabi Trucking Association, nearly 35% of Punjabi truckers of Indian origin contribute to the California trucking industry. Semi-trailer trucks at a Pilot Flying J travel center in Lodi on June 8, 2026. Photo by Miguel Gutierrez Jr., CalMatters Singh, the Fresno driver, has a side hustle hosting a weekly TV show on Punjab politics. He’s publishing a book called “Ameriki Trucknama,” which translates to “American Truck Saga.” He also has 19,000 followers on Facebook, where people come for his political insights. As he drove to Kansas City earlier this summer, his fellow Punjabi drivers asked his thoughts about who’d win in upcoming legislative assembly elections in Punjab, the northern Indian state that most of them call home. Back on the highway, Singh points to more concrete benefits of the calls. They have helped drivers manage roadside emergencies. Two years ago, he was on the phone with a friend when his friend’s truck’s fuel line burst somewhere in rural Texas. Panicked, Singh stayed on the call while his friend tracked down a local mechanic. “Eventually, if he had not been on the call, we don't know what (would have) happened,” Singh said. _This story was produced jointly by CalMatters & CatchLight as part of our _mental health initiative_._ This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. * * * # From shelters to medical care, three young West Virginians want the state to change how it confronts homelessness by Eva Altizer, Mountain State Spotlight August 2, 2026 On one winter night at the beginning of 2025, more than 1,900 people in West Virginia were staying the night in shelters or on the streets. That number comes from the federally mandated Point in Time count, an annual census conducted near the beginning of the year by volunteers. It does not include unhoused people who are “couch surfing” or living with friends or family. And some of the people affected by homelessness are kids. More than 15,000 students in the state experienced homelessness at some point during the 2024-2025 school year according to the state’s Department of Education. Confronted with unsheltered people, some of the state’s municipalities, including Morgantown, Clarksburg, Parkersburg and Wheeling, have implemented bans on camping in public places. And though critics have roundly condemned those policies, arguing that they criminalize homelessness, legislators have introduced state-wide bans in the last two legislative sessions. Mental illness and substance abuse are among the key causes of homelessness according to a study of the state’s homeless population completed by the Department of Health Services in 2024. But other challenges that people face include the lack of affordable housing and employment. Homeless advocates and some who have experienced homelessness themselves say those with few housing options need more shelter, more information about resources and expanded public health strategies that reduce the harm of addiction. ## **Spending time with people** Niamh Coomey, 26, was a journalist-turned-bartender from the Twin Cities area in Minnesota when her cousin offered her a vacant bedroom in her new Wheeling apartment. She took the opportunity, and began working again as a reporter at The Wheeling Intelligencer, where she was later assigned to cover the city’s camping ban. Writing about unhoused peoples’ displacement made her realize how much she cared about it. As Coomey began volunteering with the unhoused population, she realized she wanted to do more for the disenfranchised people in her community. So she switched jobs and became the editor-in-chief of the Mustard Seed Mountain Street Paper. The street paper is based in The Mother Jones Center for Resilient Community, or the “MoJo House” in Wheeling and describes itself as “biased for the poor, working, and misunderstood.” Some of its recent stories include first person accounts from victims of the Triadelphia flood in 2025, convicted felons, and people who have achieved sobriety. The goal of the paper is to create understanding for the underprivileged, and help unhoused people find work and dignity while they’re at it. Niamh Coomey works as the editor-in-chief of The Mustard Seed Mountain Street Paper in Wheeling. Courtesy photo. The paper works with a system of unhoused vendors who buy each paper for a quarter and sell them for a dollar or more, keeping the profits to support themselves. One of the vendors is a woman who has struggled with mental illness and is writing her autobiography. Coomey said the paper is a “little spot of hope” for her. Coomey herself sometimes struggles with making ends meet. “Rent is expensive. Groceries are expensive. Having a car is expensive. I don't have a car right now. I can't afford a car,” she said. She has taken financial assistance from Ohio Valley Mutual Aid, a nonprofit. But she considers herself privileged because she can rely on her family for help, unlike many of the vendors and people she works with for the paper. Living in Wheeling for only two years, Coomey does not want to speak for the community, but she considers the treatment of homeless people by the city, and how they’re perceived by the public, to be dehumanizing. On a snowy December morning last year, she was helping campers pack up their belongings as the last safe camping spot for homeless people closed. She said the experience was traumatizing for the campers, and there weren’t really places for them to go. Coomey believes there should be more. “They can't get into public housing. A lot of times they can't get into shelters. At that point, there's really no option for them,” she said. Coomey said spending time with the people themselves makes a difference. She said the comments she has heard from city officials demonstrate a real lack of understanding of the causes of the problem and how the community got here. “I don't think a lot of them are actually trying to have conversations with these people that they want to discuss so much and talk so poorly of,” she said. ## **Someone in their corner** When Skylar Sams was in seventh grade, life with her parents became chaotic. Eviction notices came in the mail, the bills weren’t being paid and she was only eating when she went to school. So she took it upon herself to move in with her grandma. Things started to go well after that — she graduated from high school and started college at WVU Parkersburg studying elementary education. But Sams lost the Pell Grant and her financial aid when she didn’t perform well her first semester. She dropped out of college and got jobs working in restaurants, but things went downhill again when her grandma passed away. Without housing, Sams was living in her boyfriend’s car. A friend named Jack Comeau, known locally by the stage name Moon King, was involved in many nonprofit programs in the Parkersburg area. He told her about a transitional living program with the Children’s Home Society of West Virginia. Sams got involved with the program immediately, and three weeks later, she had an apartment. Skylar Sams lives in Parkersburg and believes information about programs and resources to help people with housing need to be advertised better, particularly to struggling youth. Courtesy photo. “When I was stressing out about if I was either gonna have to crash at my mom's house or live in my boyfriend's car with him, I felt like I had nobody,” Sams said. “It was nice knowing that I had a group of people, who I had only met once, willing to help me find an apartment — help me get set up, so that I'm not a young adult just being thrown into the waters and being told ‘swim.’” Now 22, Sams said making ends meet is still a struggle. She has a fulltime job at a local daycare and a paid weekend job taking care of her mom. Her boyfriend works 40 hours a week, but they both still rely on food stamps, medicaid, and the ongoing assistance given to them by the transitional living program to make it. “I have to sit there, budget my paychecks and be like, ‘okay, well, this one can go towards rent. This one can go towards the electric bill. Oh — phone bill’s due — gotta pay that.’ After everything's paid, I got like 20 bucks for food,” Sams said. Coming from a family that lived paycheck to paycheck, Sams thinks that it is very difficult to be a successful young adult without coming from a middle or upper class family. Sams had friends in high school who were homeless but didn’t know about the youth programs that could have helped them. Many of them feared talking to school officials because they could be put back into foster care or their bad home lives. The resources need to be more advertised, to struggling youth in particular she said. “(They need) someone to just be in their corner. To have a support system and know that they can go to someone. And feeling like they aren't throwaways — basically knowing that they are wanted,” she said. ## **‘You deserve so much more than this’** Now in her fourth year as a medical student, Abby Mitchell, 29, has been volunteering in street medicine, taking basic medical care and consultation to shelters and people living on the street, since her second year. First, she worked with the student organization, MUSHROOM, the Multidisciplinary UnSheltered Homeless Relief Outreach Of Morgantown. Now on the WVU School of Medicine’s Charleston Campus, she volunteers for CHASM, the Charleston Homelessness and Street Medicine Mission. Alongside her medical school rotations, it adds up to a lot of time with people down on their luck. “They have people who love them. They have family members. They have dreams,” Mitchell said. “These folk are just so overly appreciative of the smallest things. And sometimes that's heartbreaking because I'm like, ‘you deserve so much more than this.’” The student organizations she has worked with have had varying abilities to provide care that reduces the harm of drug addiction, and it frustrates Mitchell. She would like to provide more consistent harm reduction care, such as handing out testing strips for fentanyl and xylazine, exchanging needles, and providing doses of naloxone. Abby Mitchell said she would like to provide more consistent harm reduction care, such as handing out testing strips for fentanyl and xylazine, exchanging needles, and providing doses of naloxone. “There's a lot of conversation about not understanding why we do harm reduction. But a lot of times when you treat people who are facing substance abuse disorders with kindness and nonjudgment, that helps them have self-motivation and also helps them build trust with the medical community,” she said. She said that can eventually lead to less drug use and sobriety. “The issue is systemic and the root is that these people need resources and support,” Mitchell said. Once, while doing a street round in Morgantown, Mitchell and other student volunteers had to perform wound care in the dark, pouring rain, with their headlights on, to treat a man with xylazine burns. The patient clearly felt shame about his situation — at first, he told the volunteers that he had been pushed into a fire. Mitchell wants street medicine to break down the barriers to care and reduce shame. “This patient was in excruciating amounts of pain,” she said. “And I think that was a really visceral moment where I’m like, this community is really sick and they need a lot of help, and there's no access to it.” _**Correction Aug. 3, 2026:** This story has been updated to correctly identify the college where Skylar Sams studied elementary education._ This article first appeared on Mountain State Spotlight and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # Nearly 15 years after student discipline reform, school suspensions in Mass. are falling. Are emergency removals taking their place? by Hallie Claflin, CommonWealth Beacon August 4, 2026 **IN 2012** , after child advocates spent years trying to reduce punitive suspensions in schools, Massachusetts passed sweeping education reforms under Chapter 222, kickstarting a longstanding policy shift away from exclusionary discipline methods. The law came as the nation moved away from the Zero-Tolerance policies of the 1990s and toward efforts to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline. Chapter 222 established new due process and data reporting requirements for school districts regarding the discipline and exclusion of students. The underlying principle was to make exclusionary methods like suspension a last resort and require those who are removed from the classroom to continue receiving access to learning materials. Around the time the law was passed, many out-of-school suspensions were for non-criminal, non-violent, non-drug-related offenses, and that broad, discretionary, catch-all category was where some of the greatest racial disparities existed. Students of color were removed from school for minor offenses at disproportionately higher rates than white students, as were students with disabilities compared to their peers. In 2022, the state took it a step further by passing Chapter 177, requiring school districts to attempt alternative methods like restorative justice, counseling, and mediation before resorting to exclusionary discipline. Nearly 15 years after that initial policy shift, out-of-school suspensions are falling. From 2018 to 2025, they dropped from nearly 28,500 statewide to less than 22,000, according to data reported by school districts and collected by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE). In that same timeframe, the number of students receiving any form of disciplinary action in Massachusetts schools decreased by nearly 24 percent. In-school suspensions declined as well. Yet, while only impacting a small percentage of students, emergency removals — a mechanism allowing school administrators to immediately remove a student from school due to severe behavior for up to two days before the child receives a legally-mandated hearing — have substantially increased, from nearly 1,500 in 2018 to more than 3,900 in 2025. The number of emergency removals dipped during the 2020-2021 school year but has increased every year since 2022. The state’s 26 Gateway City school districts — which are responsible for educating some of the most disadvantaged student populations in Massachusetts — reported more than half of all emergency removals in 2025, despite making up just 28 percent of the state’s total public school population. In those districts alone, emergency removals collectively grew by 78 percent while suspensions decreased by 23 percent. What’s behind the increase? The answer isn’t simple. The trend has racial justice and education advocates sounding the alarm, suggesting that school districts may be circumventing suspensions (and the alternative discipline methods they are legally required to employ) and instead opting for emergency removals as a quick fix to behavioral issues. Those removals are amounting to lost learning that advocates say is ultimately contributing to the state’s staggering racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps. “We’ve had all of these changes, but there's not a lot of teeth,” said Jenny Chou, executive director of the Children’s Law Center of Massachusetts, a legal services and advocacy group representing families and children. “The more you're not in school, the worse off you are, and now we have this whole system where it's seemingly justified to put you out.” Teacher advocates and school officials say they haven’t been provided with the necessary level of resources or training to deploy alternative discipline methods, calling Chapter 177 an “unfunded mandate" amid a chronic shortage of special education professionals. Others say the increase can be at least partly attributed to an uptick in more violent, volatile classroom behavior due to youth mental health struggles brought about by the pandemic. “The sad outcome of that is that schools are overusing emergency removals so they don't have to comply with our harder out-of-school suspension laws, and also so they don't have to use the alternatives that our state isn't providing them funding or training for,” said Matthew Cregor, an education attorney at the Mental Health Legal Advisors Committee, which offers legal representation to people with mental health challenges. Research has long shown that exclusion from school is linked to poorer academic outcomes, higher risk of dropout, and increased contact with the criminal justice system. A 2018 study found that suspended youth were 40 percent more likely to be arrested within five years and 94 percent more likely to have been arrested as a minor. More recent studies have shown that these disciplinary practices negatively affect young people’s emotional and mental well-being. The modest decline in out-of-school suspensions in Massachusetts has been celebrated by education advocates on all sides. But even though suspension rates have decreased for students of color and students with disabilities, both groups continue to be suspended at higher rates than their peers. In 2025, those with disabilities were suspended out of school at 2.5 times the rate of those without disabilities, according to data collected by DESE. Hispanic students were suspended 2.5 times as often as white students, while Black students were suspended nearly three times as much as white students. The disparities persist when it comes to the use of emergency removals. Those with disabilities were removed at more than three times the rate of those without disabilities in 2025. Hispanic students experienced emergency removals nearly three times as much as white students, while Black students were removed more than four times as much as white students. “If districts were meaningfully deploying approaches like restorative justice, mediation, and conflict resolution, they'd be able to act in a proactive manner to address student conflict and student misbehavior,” said Leon Smith, executive director of Citizens for Juvenile Justice, a nonprofit advocacy organization.**“** They'd be able to get to the root of some of these behaviors, and they’d be able to de-escalate conflicts before they result in fights and things of that nature. In the absence of that, you have continuing behavior that, unfortunately, is still falling into exclusion.” Jay Blitzman, a former juvenile court judge and former director of Massachusetts Advocates for Children (MAC), said any kind of disciplinary exclusion contributes to the school-to-prison pipeline. “This adversely affects public safety, quite candidly,” he said. “Educational continuity is essential. Doing everything we can to keep youth in school is obviously good for them, but it’s also part of being smart on crime.” “It's easy to react and blame kids, but we as adults have to assume some systemic accountability,” he added. “These problems are historic, and they aren’t going away.” Chapter 222 required districts to provide students and families with notice and a hearing prior to an out-of-school suspension, except during emergency circumstances, in which the child can receive their hearing after being removed. Emergency removals were established as an official disciplinary category in 2014. Districts may finally be reporting them with some accuracy, Cregor said, which could help explain the spike in removals. But some advocates, including Jennifer White, an education attorney at MAC, suspect that school officials are utilizing informal removals that are not being officially reported as emergency removals to the state. She told _CommonWealth Beacon_ she has worked with parents that have received mid-day calls from school officials requesting that their child be picked up after one or more behavioral incidents. Yet some are allowed to return to school the next day without ever receiving the mandated hearing that is supposed to accompany an emergency removal. Chou said she has seen similar cases. “As if that's some time-out that they're allowed to do,” she said. Beccah Griffith**,** president of the Malden Education Association and a special education teacher, said many districts are reluctant to use formal discipline measures for students on Individualized Education Program (IEP) plans out of fear of invoking a manifestation determination — a legal meeting required by the ⁠Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to decide if a student's misbehavior was caused by their disability or a failure to follow their education plan. It is triggered when a school plans to suspend a student with a disability. This could account for the uptick in the use of emergency removals, as well as the disproportionate use of removals against students with disabilities, Griffith said. A 2025 Stanford research study published by a journal of the American Educational Research Association found evidence that schools in California, after being sanctioned for disproportionately suspending Black students, began using informal ways to remove students from learning, such as sending children home early or isolating them in hallways, often without recording the action as a form of discipline. Researchers found more broadly that these practices occur when mandates to reduce formal suspensions “are not paired with adequate resources for alternative restorative behavior management approaches.” Because of the budget crunches around hiring ancillary service providers like social workers, behavior analysts, and speech therapists, many districts have only been able to hire staff for legally mandated services, like math and science teachers, rather than additional supports, Griffith said. “There is resentment and dislike towards these alternative discipline strategies because they're not being resourced properly,” she added “If we have the requisite, expertly trained staff and the time, space, and resources, it works. But I don't know any educator in Massachusetts that has all of those things.” In addition to staff and funding, advocates say implementing alternative discipline practices requires long-term training, programming, oversight, and technical assistance. DESE’s Rethinking Discipline Initiative, for example, coaches school districts on data reporting and assists in the reduction of disparate rates of suspension for students with disabilities and students of color. “The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education continues to work with districts to develop the supports and practices that educators need to reduce the inappropriate or excessive use of emergency removal and other types of suspension,” a DESE spokesperson said in a statement provided to _CommonWealth Beacon_. In 2025, there were 3,915 reported emergency removals in Massachusetts schools. Much like suspensions, 42 percent of those removals were for offenses labeled as non-drug, non-violent, and non-criminal — something advocates say is inherently contradictory. Some say the problem lies in the language of the law, which allows an emergency removal when a student’s continued presence poses a danger to other people or property, “or materially and substantially disrupts the order of the school.” A principal may immediately remove a student if “there is no alternative available to alleviate the danger or disruption,” according to statute. Advocates have questioned what constitutes a "disruption," and whether there are circumstances in which a disruption warrants an emergency removal rather than a formal suspension process or another type of discipline. Since 2022, districts have increasingly cited the non-drug, non-violent, non-criminal offense category for emergency removals, rising from 37 percent of all emergency removals in 2022 to 42 percent in 2025. Because the behavior in this category is undefined, it is difficult to determine what students are doing to be removed from school on this basis. “The pandemic and the tremendous toll it took on student mental health resulted in more disruption and dysregulation in schools, and as a result, we are seeing a swing back toward removing students from school,” Cregor said. “But I think there's some reasonable fear that districts are calling things emergency removals that are not emergencies.” Since the pandemic, teachers and administrators in Massachusetts and beyond have spoken out about an uptick in violent, explosive behavior in the classroom. Gerald Koocher, former president of the American Psychological Association, said this behavior can be linked to feelings of loneliness and disconnectedness that arose during the pandemic, which did not go away when students returned to school. “It put them in social isolation, it put them under stress, and it weakened their connection with school,” Dr. Koocher said of the pandemic. “There has been a broader pattern of youth violence, which includes firearms, especially among teenagers, and particularly in urban areas.” But the state's disciplinary data shows that some of the most common violent offenses occurring in schools, including physical attack (battery), threat of physical attack, and physical fights, have either returned to their pre-covid levels or slightly decreased. But, when it comes to emergency removals, these categories have been increasingly cited as the offense type. For instance, the number of reported emergency removals administered for offenses labeled “physical attack” increased from 387 instances in 2018 to 1,133 instances in 2025. Yet, the total number of reported physical attacks in schools across the state decreased slightly from 8,136 in 2018 to 7,991 in 2025. Chelsea Public Schools superintendent Almi Abeyta said six years after the pandemic hit, educators and administrators are still grappling with students’ social and emotional issues. “At the end of the day, we don't want children to be out of school,” she said. “But we're seeing more dysregulation with our younger children — pre-K through grade 5 — than what we've noticed in the past. We have little kids that will just destroy an entire classroom.” In 2024, legislation that would have prohibited the use of suspensions and expulsions on pre-K through Grade 3 students advanced out of the education committee. While the move was celebrated by child and student advocates, the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents opposed the bill, arguing that school administrators require flexibility when making disciplinary decisions. The bill ultimately died in the House, though there is a current version that is again awaiting legislative action after passing out of the Joint Committee on Education. Abeyta said school staff do everything they can to intervene before suspending or removing a child. She said educators recognize the critical role that counselors, clinicians, and other behavioral support staff play. Yet budget cuts last year forced the district to reduce staff by more than 50 full-time employees. “I left it up to the principals to decide, and none of them cut social workers or counselors,” Abeyta said. Abeyta said emergency removals are mostly reserved for safety issues, though in 2025, nearly 44 percent of Chelsea’s emergency removals were for non-drug, non-violent, non-criminal offenses. In 2025, the district had the third highest emergency removal rate of the 26 Gateway City school districts, after Fitchburg and Holyoke. The number of removals in Chelsea grew from 20 in 2022 to 151 in 2025. Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) president Matt Bach said the trend in emergency removals is a symptom of “deeper issues” regarding districts’ ability to provide the best services to students, adding that schools are facing both a funding and staffing crisis. “Is [the trend] paralleling the reduction in education professionals across the board? Is it paralleling a reduction in public education investment? Is it paralleling substandard curriculum products, which are choking school budgets and intensifying student disengagement?” Bach said. “The ratio between professionals and students in these districts is what's going to matter most for student outcomes and behaviors.” He said the MTA has encouraged restorative practices like increased recess time and reduced screen time, which have been shown to benefit dysregulated students. The association has also pushed for Gov. Maura Healey’s recent proposal to direct an additional $100 million to public school districts across the state. The funding would help communities manage growing financial challenges ahead of the new school year. The proposal, which must be approved by the Legislature, would add to the more than $7 billion already appropriated for K-12 education in the fiscal 2027 state budget. The hope, Bach said, is that some of that funding could be used by districts to rehire staff that might have been laid off in the spring due to budget shortfalls around the state. Educators like Griffith say that without an adequate number of behavioral support staff, districts won’t be able to reduce their exclusionary discipline rates. “When there is one social worker for 75 to 100 students with complex emotional needs, you're not able to be proactive in supporting them,” she said. “Educators want to be proactive to try to prevent a crisis that could result in emergency removal. That's the way we're trained, but it's often not what we're able to do.” This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

by Walker Livingston, Carolina Public Press July 27, 2026 Every Wednesday afternoon in the heart of Swannanoa, volunteers hand out seasonal produce while community members flow through the produce market in an old church building that nonprofit Bounty and Soul hosts. Last week, it was summer squash, fresh tomatoes and watermelon for the summer season. Swannanoa is an unincorporated rural community in eastern Buncombe County between Asheville and Black Mountain. Ingles, the area’s only grocery store, was destroyed during Tropical Storm Helene, leaving residents with a 10-mile commute either east or west to get to access groceries. That makes the community one of the region's food deserts. **Ali Casparian** is the executive director of Bounty and Soul. She founded the organization after experiencing food insecurity when she moved to the area after a traumatic situation. When she would give back by volunteering at local food banks, she was disappointed that people usually received processed, canned food. One day, she went to MANNA, a food bank that serves 16 counties and the Qualla Boundary. The organization is a central point for regional food banks in Western North Carolina to pick up food, especially crops that farmers give away. Casparian saw walls of produce that were going to waste because no one had picked it up yet. She took some of the produce home and with other community volunteers, they had a small, free farmers market. ##### **[** Subscribe for FREE to Carolina Public Press’ Daily, Weekend and Election 2026 newsletters.**]** From there, Bounty and Soul was born. They now have a community market each weekday across different parts of Buncombe County. But the Wednesday market inside Beacon Community Center in Swannanoa is their ground-zero. “If you ask people what they want instead of what they need, it looks different,” she said. “People need food, but if you ask them, ‘What kind of food do you want to eat?’ It's fresh food.” About 50 miles north in Mitchell County, TRACTOR Food and Farms is addressing the food crises in another one of the region's food deserts in a different way. It’s a community supported agriculture hub, where a group buys a direct share of produce from local farmers and sells produce to community members or gives it to other markets. They also have a small grocery store attached to their warehouse. They’re looking to hit the ground running with it in the fall. **“** We're looking around; … there's no grocery store,” said **Dru Zucchino** , TRACTOR’s executive director. “We're gonna do that, and we're gonna do it the way that we feel the community needs it done.” The nonprofit’s mission simply has been to fill the gaps in the local food system, he said. Since Helene hit, there have been many gaps. Spruce Pine, where TRACTOR is headquartered, also lost its Ingles Market during Helene. ### 'Emergency button you press all the time' Both Spruce Pine and Swannanoa have become food deserts since Tropical Storm Helene hit the area with flooding and destruction. Both local organizations, and more across the region, have had to find new ways to step in and provide for residents who are in need of healthy food. Food deserts are defined by the US Department of Agriculture as rural areas where a significant share of residents live more that 10 miles away from a large supermarket. In urban areas, residents of food deserts live more than a mile away from a supermarket. North Carolina has one of the highest populations of people living in rural areas in the country — second only to Texas. COVID-19 made food access particularly hard for rural communities. People who were elderly or had disabilities had difficulty leaving the house to accessing food in ways that they had before. According to a study from the NIH, individuals in rural Appalachia had to oftentimes choose between medication, food and utilities. In some areas in Western North Carolina, Helene compounded the long-term effects of this. “You have this emergency button and you press it all the time,” Zucchino said. CSAs and food organizations in the region often work directly with farmers, and Zucchino said it’s like TRACTOR sometimes does customer service for farms. They work with 70 local farmers to get a variety of produce. Farmers in rural Western North Carolina were also devastated by Helene. Many have land that is unusable because of damage that was weathered during the storm, some have expensive equipment that is still under repair and others just had to move elsewhere so their business could survive after the storm. There’s no figure for how much donated food was lost during Helene, but a report from the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project said that 86% of small farms in Western North Carolina sustained damage during Helene. Very few farms in Western North Carolina have scaled corporate buyers, Zucchino said. CSAs often act as a bridge between small farmers and consumers, so he said TRACTOR created a farmer’s task force for farmers that needed work after Helene. They repaired farmland in ways that most volunteers could not. “Maybe in small rural communities, socialist agriculture makes sense, but like capitalist mining also makes sense, and those two can coexist, and they can adapt to each other, and they can adapt their models and live peacefully,” Zucchino said. ### Future of Ingles Both Spruce Pine and Swannanoa previously relied for groceries on Ingles Markets that were destroyed during the storm and have yet to reopen, nearly two years later. Another Ingles store in Morganton in Burke County has also not been rebuilt since the storm, but the town has other national options. Ingles is a regional grocery chain that operates throughout Southern Appalachia. In North Carolina, about 11% of residents experience food insecurity according to the state Department of Health and Human Services. And, about 16% of census tracts across the western part of the state are considered food deserts, a data set from Feeding America, a nationwide food security organization which MANNA Food Bank is a regional partner with. In Swannanoa, food insecurity was a problem long before Helene, and it has worsened because many residents just can’t afford to drive to the closest grocery stores, and because many families depend on just one car and at the end of long work days, driving a half hour just isn’t on the table, Casparian said. After the storm, both Bounty and Soul became ground zero for Swannanoa residents seeking food and a little bit down the line, they consolidated their markets in town to twice a week to provide for more residents who are food insecure. Many Spruce Pine residents grocery shop at the Walmart Supercenter in town, or travel to Marion in McDowell County or to Johnston City in Tennessee, according to**Bill Slagle** , the executive director for the Mitchell County Chamber of Commerce. “It’s also had an impact on local sales tax in Spruce Pine, which has had impacts outside of just the lack of an available option for people to shop,” he said. Ingles recently told the local government in Spruce Pine that they closed on a new location for a store, and will presumably demolish their old one. The Mitchell News-Journal recently reported that Food Lion has broken ground on bringing its store in Spruce Pine back in the next 18 months. Last October, the Buncombe County Adjustment Board approved an expansive rebuild of the dilapidated Ingles in Swannanoa, but it has not yet broken ground on the project. The parking lot remains bare and the sign says the store in Black Mountain, which is about 10 miles away, is open. Bounty and Soul operates a farmer’s market truck out of the Black Mountain store, which they were grandfathered into because they worked with the previous property owner. Ingles does not donate to the market. Ingles did not respond to inquiries for this article prior to publication. ### Food deserts face D-SNAP cuts One of the short-term solutions to food insecurity is SNAP, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which has lost 4 million enrolled members following the passage of the national One Big Beautiful Bill last July. After Helene, D-SNAP, or Disaster SNAP, was administered in the region briefly. **Francisco Chavez,** who is the community engagement manager for Bounty and Soul, said he’s seen an increase in produce market attendees since the news of SNAP cuts hit. Last fall, during the government shutdown, the state government released partial payments to SNAP recipients, while people who received SNAP waited to hear about the future of the program. But since, in the budget that passed earlier this month, about $52 million in SNAP funds are left to counties to administrate. According to the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners, this budget requires counties to cumulatively pay that amount this fiscal year for the federally required administrative cost shift from last year’s national bill, which will rise to $69 million in the 2027 budget. “Paired with separate legislation that will limit counties’ ability to grow property tax revenue, these additional expenses will strain counties’ ability to adequately fund their workforces responsible for SNAP timeliness and payment error rates,” NCCACC wrote in an email statement to Carolina Public Press. ### Finding creative solutions to food deserts Access to nutritious food is just one of the social determinants of health, which are nonmedical factors that can determine someone’s health outcome. Some of the other determinants are economic stability, education and housing. Many individuals living below the poverty line, regardless of natural disasters, are unable to consider health at the grocery store. Kari Brayman, the communications director for TRACTOR, said that sometimes food that sits on shelves in grocery stores can be about three months old. During the last two years, nonprofits in Western North Carolina have risen to the occasion to address gaps in food access and community health. Some of these organizations also address other determinants of health. TRACTOR has a program called Food is Medicine, where they “fill” prescriptions for healthy food, which has been a bridge for some community members in the interim of SNAP access. Bounty and Soul provides health and wellness education as well. “Nonprofits, churches, other you know neighborhood organizations, they've carried the weight of recovery in this area,” Casparian said. “I’ve seen the best of humanity express itself throughout the whole recovery.” This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

**It's Friday July 31, 2026 and in this morning's issue we're covering:** Vast produce supply chain complicates tracking cyclospora in Missouri and Kansas, Affordable housing often costs more to build than market-rate housing – Colorado is closing the gap, Homeless New Orleanians swelter amid scorching heat wave, Socorro Catholic churches unite residents over ICE detention center, water concerns, How one man’s Olympic moment brought new life to Jackson rugby, A Tale of Two Behavioral Health Systems, or How the State Border Determines Who Gets Access to Mental Healthcare. **Media outlets and others featured:** Missouri Independent, The Conversation, Verite News, El Paso Matters, Mississippi Today, The Daily Yonder. * * * ## Vast produce supply chain complicates tracking cyclospora in Missouri and Kansas By Meg Cunningham (Missouri Independent) Published: July 30, 2026 The same food supply chain that lets restaurants serve nearly identical produce in Missouri, Michigan or California can also make it remarkably difficult to figure out where contamination began when Americans get sick. As cyclospora cases climb across Missouri and Kansas, public health investigators are working backward through a supply chain that can stretch thousands of miles and cross international borders before fresh produce ever reaches our table. Every confirmed case of cyclospora, which is famously afflicting patients with “explosive diarrhea,” triggers an interview that can last up to an hour as public health investigators and epidemiologists ask patients to recall meals from days, or even weeks, earlier. The summer months typically bring a small uptick in cyclospora, which is considered a parasitic infection that spreads through food or the use of contaminated water. But the scope seen across the country this year stands out as the country’s largest outbreak in recent history, sending local, state and federal investigators searching for a common source. And the painstaking process of finding the source of the illness in just one person in Kansas or Missouri highlights a larger challenge: Produce can move through the hands of dozens of farms, packing facilities, grocery stores or restaurants in days. When contamination occurs, tracing it back through that system can take weeks. Source: Centers for Disease Control ## **How investigators track cyclospora cases in Missouri and Kansas** Missouri has reported nearly 600 cyclospora cases as of July 27, while Kansas has reported 289. In a typical year, officials in Jackson County see between three and seven cases, which can often be connected to international travel. Nationwide, at least 41 states have reported cases. More than 4,000 cases have been confirmed by testing, with another 7,400 cases that were not confirmed by lab testing. Overall, the country has seen 308 hospitalizations related to the infection so far. In 2025, the country recorded about 2,700 cases total. ## Cyclospora Cases The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it factors in a six-week reporting lag between the onset of an illness and when cases are actually reported to the CDC, and it anticipates cases continuing to rise. This summer, officials say emergency departments across the region have also seen an uptick in patients arriving at the hospital with diarrhea and other gastrointestinal symptoms. In Boone County, Missouri, where health officials are investigating cases in dozens of patients, each interview can take up to an hour. “It is becoming quite a time-consuming endeavor to single in on a common theme,” said Austin Krohn, the public information specialist for Columbia and Boone County Public Health. And the process is made longer by conflicting information from federal officials and major distributors as to the cause of the outbreak. Federal officials initially pointed to Taylor Farms, a major lettuce farmer and distributor, as the cause of much of the contaminated lettuce moving throughout the country. Major food retailers like Taco Bell voluntarily pulled shredded lettuce from their menus, but the Food and Drug Administration later backtracked, saying testing resulted in a false positive result. For health officials trying to find the cause of illness, the uncertainty at the federal level made the process all the more difficult. “The false positive thing that’s been going on with the FDA maybe lengthened the process here,” Krohn said. Investigators must ask where people ate, where they shopped and what symptoms they experienced. Plus, the infection can take up to two weeks to show symptoms, making tracking even more complex. “It’s incredibly complicated with this one because there is a gestation period that can potentially last up to two weeks,” Krohn said. “You have to recall all these things because symptoms can potentially start appearing much later.” Because many people can recover at home without ever going to the doctor, the number of cases is almost certainly higher than what is being reported, Krohn said. “Numbers are most assuredly going to go up in an official capacity and in a nonofficial capacity,” he said. ## **Local cyclospora cases feed the national picture** Investigations don’t stop at the county level. They get elevated to state officials, who then compile data and share it with the federal government. Officials in Jackson County are working diligently to identify potential sources of contamination. “The distribution network as it pertains to our food is very, very complex in this country,” said Ray Dlugolecki, the assistant health director at Jackson County Public Health. “Without a centralized entity looking at the data from a large, 70,000-foot perspective, it can take some time to identify sources.” Missouri’s Department of Health and Senior Services is participating in weekly calls with all 50 states and the CDC to coordinate with public health officials across the country, said Nathan Koffarnus, a Missouri state epidemiologist. “When we get enough really good data from all the questionnaires and the interviews,” Koffarnus said, “the CDC compiles that and does a big data study on it. That’s when they can really identify these clusters of illness that maybe all come from a common source.” The complexity of tracking cases is a byproduct of a nationwide food system tailored to convenience and consistency, regardless of season or geography. ## **How market consolidation can lead to a lack of transparency in the food supply chain** Restaurants and grocery chains depend on consistency, said Darin Detwiler, a food safety and supply chain expert at Northeastern University. Customers expect the same quality whether they’re eating in Missouri and Kansas or on the coasts. Demand from large restaurant chains and grocery retailers prioritizes consistency year-round, Detwiler said, despite the fact that most produce is limited to certain seasons in the majority of North America. That can lead to consolidation and large distributors owning major parts of the market. Detwiler pointed to changes in enforcement rules for the Food Safety Modernization Act, which was passed by Congress in 2010. One part of the law asked producers to test water and water treatment beginning in 2016, but industry lobbyists pushed back on the rule, arguing it was too expensive to do. “All of the sudden, boom, we are hit in 2017, 2018, 2019 with all of these leafy green, romaine lettuce outbreaks and recalls,” Detwiler said. And as the cyclospora outbreak continues across the country, changes in federal rules are a topic of conversation. The FDA’s new food traceability rule was set to take effect in January of this year, with the goal of requiring more standard recordkeeping for certain high-risk foods. But enforcement of the rule was delayed until July 2028. The CDC has also reduced the number of pathogens it tracks — including cyclospora — in its FoodNet program, the primary foodborne illness disease surveillance effort. Although illnesses are still reportable through other systems, the changes no longer require producers to collect the same level of data. “Here we are, and this past weekend has been quite eye-opening for the American consumer,” Detwiler said. “It’s not about access and sustainability as much as it is also that trust and confidence in the safety of the product,” Detwiler said. Even with some digitization improving traceability efforts across the supply chain, a lack of transparency in how food reaches the American consumer is creating uncertainty, Detwiler said. “It’s the transparency that is causing what I’ll classify as a certainty gap — you have to understand whether to trust them or not,” he added. ## **The case for shorter supply chains** Some advocates for more regionalized food systems say outbreaks like this expose another consequence of market consolidation. Katie Nixon is a Missouri farmer and the food systems director at Nevada, Missouri-based nonprofit New Growth, which is in part working to strengthen local and regional food systems. Nixon said shorter supply chains aren’t immune to foodborne illness or contamination problems, but she argues problems are often easier to trace and the system provides more transparency to consumers. “Over the years, we’ve lost many of our medium-sized farms. Small farms are kind of stuck in small-farmness, and medium farms get bought up by the big guys. Then the big guys get bought up by the mega guys,” Nixon said. “It seems like in this system, it’s just so massive that it’s kind of been lost track of,” she said. Regional food systems can create greater accountability and trust, Nixon said, because produce moves through fewer hands before reaching customers. “When you have regional food systems, it can only go so far,” Nixon said. “You can’t make the entire country sick from one packing facility because that packing facility wouldn’t have the capacity to service the entire country.” In shorter food supply chains, growers, distributors and buyers are more likely to know one another and their customers, Nixon said. “A lot of times accountability is a lot stronger because the people know each other,” Nixon said. Still, she acknowledged that regional food systems are often too small and seasonally dependent to serve the needs of many consumers. For investigators, every outbreak begins with the same questions. What did you eat, and when? But for Nixon and others, this summer’s cyclospora outbreak poses a question of what sort of food supply people want. “We’re the backstop,” Nixon said. “You want those customers to be steady customers, not just emergency customers.” _This_ article_first appeared on_ Beacon: Kansas City_and is republished here under a_ Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License_._ * * * ## Affordable housing often costs more to build than market-rate housing – Colorado is closing the gap Lower land costs and new statewide housing reforms have made Colorado an outlier. By Solomon Greene, University of Denver, The Conversation Published: July 28, 2026 Reducing the administrative and regulatory costs associated with building affordable housing can increase the housing supply in Colorado. Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post via Getty Images **By Solomon Greene, University of Denver** In much of the United States, developers spend more to build an affordable apartment for a low-income family than a market-rate one just down the street – sometimes far more. It is one of the central paradoxes of the nation’s housing crisis: The affordable homes that lower-income renters need most tend to be the costliest to build. Colorado is an exception. In a recent study of more than 140 housing developments in California, Colorado and Texas, researchers at RAND, a nonpartisan research organization, found that affordable apartments in Colorado cost about $50 less per square foot to build than market-rate units. Colorado was the only one of the three states where affordable developments cost less to build than market-rate ones. I’ve spent nearly three decades trying to understand why affordable housing costs so much to build – and how to bring those costs down. I now direct the Center for Housing Research and Innovative Solutions at the University of Denver, where we study how to expand housing supply and affordability in Colorado and across the Rocky Mountain West. Earlier, I led the research office at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that studies housing markets, affordability and federal housing programs. Throughout my career, I keep running into the same paradox: The tools designed to make housing affordable are also a big part of what makes it expensive to build. ## When rent can’t cover the bill At the core of the housing paradox, the numbers just don’t add up. Affordable housing programs typically serve households earning well below their area’s median income, the midpoint where half of local households earn more and half earn less. Their capped rents fall below what it costs to build a new apartment, especially where land, labor and materials are expensive. To close that gap, developers assemble multiple layers of public and private subsidies. The cornerstone is the federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, which gives investors a tax break in return for financing apartments that must stay affordable for decades. Typically, those units are rented only to households earning at or below 60% of area median income, at capped rents, for at least 30 years. Because the credit rarely covers the whole gap, developers usually combine it with other sources of public money: state credits such as Colorado’s own affordable housing tax credit, local housing funds and federal grants. Each funding source has its own application, deadlines and income rules, and assembling this financing takes lawyers, accountants, consultants and staff time – the so-called soft costs that sit on top of the hard costs, such as concrete, steel and labor. Studies that compare affordable and market-rate buildings find that soft costs are where a large share of the cost difference originates. Affordable projects tend to have significantly higher soft costs, even when the buildings themselves are similar. In other words, much of what makes an affordable apartment expensive isn’t the building – it’s the financial and regulatory machinery wrapped around it. Affordable housing is built largely with public dollars, yet the full cost picture is surprisingly hard to see. A 2023 Government Accountability Office report found that no federal agency has clear authority to collect and compare development-cost data nationwide. The HUD office I led was also responsible for maintaining the government’s data on federally assisted housing, and my team routinely struggled with inconsistent and incomplete cost information. Policymakers are making billion-dollar decisions with only a partial view of where the money actually goes. ## How Colorado breaks the pattern So why does affordable housing cost less to build in Colorado? The RAND study points to where and how it gets built. Unlike their counterparts in California and Texas, Colorado’s affordable developers built for less, per square foot, than the state’s own market-rate builders. In Colorado, a key distinguishing factor is land: Developers paid just $1.50 per square foot, against about $23 for market‑rate builders, often on public land offered at little or no cost. That cheaper land, along with lower-cost building sites, more than offsets the higher soft costs that affordable projects still carry everywhere, Colorado included. ## What actually lowers costs In recent years, Colorado has passed a series of laws aimed at easing the frictions that inflate housing costs, especially for subsidized projects, making the state a real-time test of what works. Research already points to several promising levers, none of which requires weakening the protections that keep homes affordable. The most powerful lever is land. Cities and states across the country are increasingly offering public land at little or no cost, reducing one of development’s biggest expenses. Colorado’s 2026 HOME Act authorizes school districts, universities, transit agencies, housing authorities and qualifying nonprofits to build homes on land they already own, through a streamlined approval process that limits how restrictive local zoning can be. It lowers two costs at once: the price of the land and the months spent winning approval. Colorado is also reducing the paperwork that inflates soft costs. In 2022, voters approved Proposition 123, which requires communities that want state housing dollars to act on affordable-housing applications within 90 days. More than 100 jurisdictions, Denver among them, have adopted such fast-track reviews. The state has also launched a common application that lets developers apply once for money from the state, its housing finance agency and the city of Denver, instead of submitting separately to each. In a recent state survey, developers called this their top priority for reducing soft costs. Parking rules are another hidden driver. Requiring builders to include parking forces them to construct expensive structures – sometimes $50,000 per space – and give up land that could hold homes. A study by two of my University of Denver colleagues estimated that ending Denver’s parking mandates would boost housing construction by about 12.5%, or roughly 460 additional homes a year. Denver dropped its parking minimums in 2025, following a 2024 state law that lifted them near transit. On construction, Colorado is easing its building and inspection rules to make factory-built housing simpler to permit. Affordable developers are using modular and panelized construction to narrow the gap with market-rate building. These homes, which are assembled in a factory, can cost less and get built faster. While leading research at HUD, I toured affordable developments built this way, including one in Detroit that cost roughly 30% less than comparable homes nearby. The savings matter most in rural and mountain areas, where labor is scarce and the building season is short. The country still struggles to measure what actually drives housing costs. Building stronger regional data, and the partnerships among agencies, lenders, universities and developers to use it, can show where rules add value and where they instead add delay and cost. ## Affordable housing’s impact Stable, affordable housing is linked to better health, stronger school performance and higher lifetime earnings for children. In one national study, each additional year that a child spent living in assisted housing as a teenager raised their adult earnings by 3% to 6%. So every dollar lost to unnecessary cost – the delay and duplication that make housing no better – is a home that never gets built for a family who needs one. Affordable housing will always require some subsidies: When the rents that low-income households can pay fall short of what building costs, public or philanthropic dollars must close the gap. But those costs are not fixed. Colorado’s experiment is a reminder that the gap between affordable and market-rate housing can be narrowed, but only by treating the financial plumbing as seriously as the bricks and mortar. _Read more of our stories about_ Colorado_._ _This article is republished from_ The Conversation_, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by:_ Solomon Greene_,_ University of Denver **Read more:** * A rare bipartisan housing bill just became law – but Americans will still struggle with affordability * ‘Affordable’ Pittsburgh doesn’t have enough affordable housing – here’s why * A successful USDA program that has supported more than 533,000 affordable rental homes in rural America is getting phased out _Solomon Greene is affiliated with the National Housing Law Project (Vice President of Board of Directors)._ * * * # Homeless New Orleanians swelter amid scorching heat wave by Diego Perdomo, Verite News New Orleans July 27, 2026 For people experiencing unsheltered homelessness like Victor Tate, shade is sometimes the only available relief from summer heat. Living in a makeshift shelter under the Pontchartrain Expressway, Tate told Verite News that he lost his shelter during 2025 Super Bowl sweeps, had his phone stolen and felt disrespected often by people passing by during the last 10 years that he’s been unsheltered on and off. With the heat index expected to reach as high as 115 degrees Fahrenheit (46 degrees Celsius) this week, full shelters and worsening climate conditions, Tate is bracing for the additional stress brought on by rising temperatures. “If it gets hot, you’ve got to stay up under here or go to the shelter at night,” he said. ”The cars going back and forth — that’s what makes it cool. Then when it rains, the wind blows.” About 1,563 people experience homelessness across Orleans and Jefferson parishes, according to recent data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. While the point-in-time counts estimate just over a quarter of unhoused people are unsheltered, people can often fall in and out of the gaps of New Orleans’ safety net. A man on Gravier St. carries an umbrella to shade himself from the afternoon sun during a heat advisory on July 21, 2026. Credit: Christiana Botic/Verite News and Catchlight Local/Report for America Like the rest of the nation, Orleans Parish has seen warmer maximum morning temperatures — meaning those who remain outside have less recovery time from the heat, according to research from the Southern Climate Impacts Planning Program (SCIPP), a partnership between Louisiana State University and University of Oklahoma. Barry Keim, an environmental health professor at LSU who is a former state climatologist, called humidity a “killer” as it interrupts people’s natural ability to cool off. “When you perspire, you're still not getting a whole lot of evaporation off of your skin because the air is so humid to begin with,” Keim said. “It limits the amount of evaporation that can take place. And as a result, your body just continues to get hotter and hotter.” According to research from the Louisiana Department of Health, parishes in southeast Louisiana experienced 98 heat-related deaths since 2023, which is just over half of the statewide total. This year, people from those same parishes made up over a third of all statewide hospitalizations for heat-related injury. Seniors and people with disabilities are particularly vulnerable to heat, according to Joe Heeren-Mueller, a coordinator for the Louisiana Advocacy Coalition on Homelessness. Over the past six years, seniors — aged 65 and older — are the fastest growing unhoused population with a 78% uptick in homelessness, according to a recent study from Unity of Greater New Orleans. Elainna Williams of the Office of Homeless Services and Strategy distributes water to Robert Harrison during a heat advisory in New Orleans on July 20, 2026. Credit: Christiana Botic/Verite News and Catchlight Local/Report for America According to the National Weather Service’s Baton Rouge/New Orleans office in Slidell, this year is currently the 16th hottest summer season since 1946. NWS meteorologist Danielle Manning recommends people outdoors stay in shaded areas, avoid physical activity and hydrate with water instead of coffee, soda or alcohol. While unhoused New Orleanians are supported by shelters and heat relief initiatives in Orleans and Jefferson parishes, shelters are just one step in eliminating homelessness, according to Heeren-Mueller. He added that because demand for shelters is higher than their capacity, specialized solutions are needed to help people find relief. “That doesn't simply mean that we need to just build more shelters because...what works is creating flow,” Heeren-Mueller said. “You need sufficient shelters, and those who go into shelters need somewhere to go afterwards where they can maintain stable housing.” At the start of next year, public sleeping will be illegal statewide because of a new law, Act 788. The law doesn’t explicitly mention the termination of services and programs that help people who are unhoused, but housing advocates are concerned at its potential to weaken trust with unhoused people and push them away from lifesaving services. **“** Over 350 cities have passed anti-camping bills in the past two years,” said Jesse Rabinowitz, the communications director for the National Homelessness Law Center. “None of them have solved homelessness because laws that make it a crime to be homeless will never actually solve homelessness. They'll only make homelessness worse.” People cool off at the main branch of the New Orleans Public Library on July 21, 2026. Due to its central location, this branch serves a large number of unhoused people and acts as a cooling center for the public during heat advisories. Credit: Christiana Botic/Verite News and Catchlight Local/Report for America During extreme hot and cold weather, New Orleans activates cooling and warming centers in its libraries and recreation facilities. When overnight shelters for unsheltered people are at capacity, cooling centers can house about 100 people at each center. City outreach teams from the Office of Homeless Services & Strategy and the Public Health Emergencies & Environmental Health Unit also coordinate bottled water distribution near the Claiborne Corridor and French Quarter. During colder weather, the same outreach teams will attempt to get unsheltered people into warming centers and shelters. Elainna Williams, an Office of Homeless Services’ team member, said she learned how important rapport was the first time she did winter street outreach. “They would not come off the street, and it was mind blowing. But then I went to the warming center the next day, and [saw] some of the same people that told me ‘no’ the night before,” Williams said. “Sometimes it takes time, and sometimes it could be a level of trust.” To reduce the citywide heat index, the Office of Sustainability is planning to plant 40,000 trees by 2030 as part of the New Orleans forestation plan. After Katrina, New Orleans lost 200,000 trees, decreasing available shade and its tree canopy coverage to half of the shade of other southern cities. The Heat Action Plan is currently being drafted and is expected to be adopted by the city later this year, outlining different cooling strategies. As the public sleeping ban goes into effect before winter’s coldest days, some advocates worry criminalization could perpetuate homelessness. A city spokesperson said warming and cooling efforts would not be affected by the public sleeping ban. Outside of municipal operations, local grassroots efforts aid those living outside of shelters. During summer months, Below Sea Level Aid dispatches street teams to hand out cold drinks, ice packs, battery-powered fans and other cooling supplies. The weekly trips are part of the nonprofit’s harm reduction and public health mission. “New Orleans is not built to handle extreme heat. Our infrastructure actually makes it even worse,” said Below Sea Level Aid founder Jack Waguespack-Slooijer. “I really try and focus on our people who are under the overpasses and directly on concrete or the street, [as] opposed to being in a park or somewhere green.” _Christiana Botic contributed to this report._ This article first appeared on Verite News New Orleans and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # Socorro Catholic churches unite residents over ICE detention center, water concerns by Robert Moore, El Paso Matters July 27, 2026 SOCORRO, Texas – In the 1980s, Maria Estella Padilla went door to door after Mass, organizing house meetings to bring running water and sewerage services to hundreds of thousands of homes along the Texas-Mexico border. Today, at 82, she’s back to organizing her neighbors and fellow parishioners at La Purisima Catholic Church in an effort aimed both at stopping a planned immigrant detention center and protecting the access to water that she and others fought so hard to win decades ago. “We did it back then when we didn't have the internet, when we didn't have social media, but now they communicate quickly. It would be easier in a way to do it now than it was back then when we had to go door to door and take signups after Mass,” she said of her latest fight. Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, then headed by Secretary Kristi Noem, announced a $38 billion plan to buy and retrofit 11 warehouses across the country to convert them into sprawling detention facilities to serve the administration’s mass deportation program for undocumented immigrants. That included three warehouses on the edge of Socorro, about 15 miles southeast of the El Paso city limits, that had been built to hold nuts harvested from nearby pecan groves. The property, sold to DHS for $123 million by a Kansas City area developer, included three reinforced concrete warehouses of about 296,000 square feet each, with an adjacent plot of land available for expansion. DHS initially said the Socorro facility would hold up to 8,500 immigrants awaiting deportation, which would have made it one of the largest immigrant detention centers in the country. After Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin replaced Noem in March, DHS said it was canceling plans to convert at least seven of the 11 warehouses – though not the Socorro site. In June, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement told El Paso leaders that the privately run detention facility would be smaller than previously announced, but didn’t provide details. But local leaders and residents, many organized by local parishes, remain outspoken about their concerns, citing environmental, as well as moral reasons. Socorro has transformed over the past 50 years from a mostly agricultural area with no running water or sewer service into an El Paso suburb of almost 40,000 people. Pecans, cotton and other crops are still produced in the area, but much of the historic farmland has been sold for housing developments. Socorro opposition to the detention center began to grow in April, when the El Paso Interreligious Sponsoring Organization began meetings with parish leaders in the town's three Catholic churches to discuss what the planned detention center might mean. EPISO is part of the Industrial Areas Foundation, a national network that works with local religious congregations around the country – primarily but not exclusively Catholic – to organize communities around issues that local residents identify as most important. In El Paso and throughout Texas, the most consistent issue for IAF affiliates over the past 50 years has been water. In El Paso County alone in the 1980s, more than 80,000 residents lived in homes without water or sewerage services. Hundreds of thousands of other residents along the Texas-Mexico border lived in so-called _colonias_ , illegal subdivisions built without basic infrastructure. Organizing by IAF organizations led to hundreds of millions of dollars in state investments starting in the late 1980s that brought basic water and sewerage infrastructure to most – but not all – of the state’s colonias. El Paso Interreligious Sponsoring Organization members, from left, Alicia Mossman, Maria Estela Padilla and Gerardo Cruz at a statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe at San Felipe de Jesus Catholic Church in Socorro, Texas. (Robert Moore / El Paso Matters) EPISO began focusing on the proposed Socorro immigrant detention center in April, based largely on Catholic social teaching on the treatment of immigrants. Organizers put together what they call “house meetings” at each of the town’s three Catholic churches. “And when people learned what was happening, then the water issues started to surface,” said Surya Kalra, EPISO’s lead organizer. Officials with El Paso Water and the Lower Valley Water District said hundreds of thousands of gallons of water a day would be needed for a large detention facility. House meeting participants started talking about water issues they were seeing at their own homes, especially with water pressure. “People started to realize that they weren't isolated in their own issues on water pressure and water backup and all that stuff,” Kalra said. “That's what house meetings do when you have people get together and they start to share their stories, they realize that what they thought might be their own personal failing is actually a systemwide difficulty.” On May 28, more than 40 people organized by EPISO went to a meeting of the Lower Valley Water District board. The agenda didn’t include any items about the detention center or water pressure issues, but several residents addressed the board in English and Spanish during the public comment portion of the meeting. “I’m completely opposed to detention centers on so many levels, on a human level, ethical, moral, our faith, we just don't believe in that. The way we're treating them, it's just abhorrent,” Padilla said at the meeting. “But on a practical level, we don't have water, and we have several issues at our house. The most common one is the pressure.” Grace Herrera, center, was flanked by her daughter, Gracie Ortiz, left, and granddaughter Eleina Gibbs, at a May 28 board meeting of the Lower Valley Water District. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters) “We are many generations of families, and I would hate for us to be known as the city that is holding this many people that don't deserve to be treated the way they're going to be treated,” said Grace Herrera, who attended the meeting with her daughter and granddaughter. Several residents focused on a disruption of service on May 18, when the area’s water pressure dropped dramatically. Lower Valley Water District officials didn’t respond to El Paso Matters’ questions on the water pressure issues raised by residents. A Socorro dialysis center had to shut down for the day, said Alicia Mossman, whose nephew works at the facility. “They were trying to disperse these people to other dialysis centers. Many of the people that show up for dialysis are dropped off and have no way to get them elsewhere, so they had to do without dialysis that day,” she told the water board. Herrera’s granddaughter, Eleina Gibbs, started to tell the water board about what happened at her middle school the day the water pressure dropped, but she was too soft-spoken for the board and audience to hear. So her mother, Gracie Ortiz, read her letter for her. “No one could go to the restroom or drink water. This continued from 8:30 in the morning to the end of the day,” Gibbs’ statement said. Her letter said that by the end of the school day at 3:30 p.m., she rushed home to use the restroom, only to find it occupied by her grandmother. “I desperately waited for her to get out. When she was done, I rushed to get in.” Gracie Ortiz holds a statement her daughter, Eleina Gibbs, prepared for a meeting of the Lower Valley Water District board on May 28, 2026. (Robert Moore/El Paso Matters) The girl’s statement said her parents weren’t told that students didn’t have access that day to the restroom or drinking water, a claim disputed by the Socorro Independent School District. “Parent messages were sent by the campus, and water was made available for restrooms and consumption,” district spokesperson Daniel Escobar said. “The campus did consolidate to use specific restrooms on campus. Drinking water also was offered for students and staff.” Rosalinda Vigil, the water district board chair, was clearly moved by Gibbs’ statement. “I'm a resident, and I, too, have complained about pressure and certain issues, and I pray and promise that we hopefully won't have to go through this again,” Vigil said. “We're going to address these issues, and we're going to talk about them, so that no one should ever have to go through this again.” EPISO and the parishes continue efforts to inform residents about the detention center and ongoing water concerns, and meet regularly with local government officials. Democratic U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar of El Paso met with EPISO representatives shortly after a June 12 meeting where Acting ICE Director David Venturella told her the administration had adjusted its plans for the Socorro warehouse facility. “The Department of Homeland Security is going to proceed with using those warehouses, but there will not be 8,500 people held there,” Escobar said during a news conference after her meeting with Venturella. “They said that they’ve changed the plans a little bit. It will be a training facility. It will be a campus, essentially, for ICE, with offices and conference rooms, but yes, there will be privately run detention.” The Department of Homeland Security purchased a three-building warehouse complex in Socorro for the purpose of creating a new migrant detention facility. Photo was taken March 20, 2026. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters) Escobar and other El Paso area officials said even a scaled-down detention facility would stress water and public safety infrastructure in the Socorro area. DHS officials didn’t respond to a request for comment from El Paso Matters about its plans for the Socorro warehouses. Kalra said EPISO will remain vigilant in its efforts to stop the detention center, and to advocate for improved water services for Socorro’s residents. She said the Catholic parishes will play a key role in those efforts because they serve as a place of trust for many residents. “If you're doing this outside of the structure of an institution or a church, it's catch as catch can. But churches have deep networks of relationships of trust that help people understand and interpret what's going on and start to get organized quickly,” Kalra said. Padilla, who was part of the fight to bring water to the colonias in the 1980s, said she believes that it's possible to organize the community again around the detention center and water issues. “I believe we can, but it does take involvement by organizations that are already organized, like churches, and that's why I am so happy to see that our church is behind this effort, and that San Felipe (another Socorro Catholic church) is behind it, and others. But that's what it takes, and I do believe we can do it,” she said. _This article was produced as a collaboration between El Paso Matters and Religion News Service as part of the_ Atlas of American Belonging_project, supported by the Henry Luce Foundation._ This article first appeared on El Paso Matters and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # How one man’s Olympic moment brought new life to Jackson rugby by Aaron Lampley, Mississippi Today July 27, 2026 Mitchell McGinnis owns two music academies and teaches vocal lessons in his spare time. He goes regularly to the gym, but that was as far as his athletic prowess and interest in sports went – until he found himself in Paris, at Stade de France during the 2024 Olympics, watching a sport he knew almost nothing about. The game looked vaguely familiar: players chasing an oval-shaped ball and piling atop one another. But this was not American football. This was rugby. While still in the stands, he picked up his cell phone and began searching for anything he could learn about the sport. McGinnis did not know it yet, but his curiosity would help revive one of Mississippi’s oldest rugby clubs, attracting new players to an organization that nearly died out during the COVID-19 pandemic. “I remember sitting there Googling rules and trying to understand what was happening on the field,” he said. “It happened so fast.” His introduction to rugby came by chance. A friend who won a lottery to attend the Olympics invited McGinnis to Paris. Mitchell McGinnis poses for a photo prior to the Men's Rugby game at Stade de France on Wednesday, July 24 2024. He started searching for local rugby leagues near his Jackson home. Facebook led McGinnis to the Jackson Rugby Football Club. He began sending messages to the club back home. Within minutes, a practice was scheduled for that August. Excitement built. But that initial practice fell through. So did another. That’s when McGinnis decided to grab the ball himself and run with it. He began recruiting players and scouting a field to play on. He would eventually get Jackson Public Schools’ permission to use Murrah High School’s practice field. Nearly three months after McGinnis first reached out to Jackson Rugby, they were finally going to meet. He showed up at the high school dressed in a T-shirt and shorts. He kept slipping on the wet grass in his tennis shoes. “My friends joke a lot of times that a toxic trait of mine is thinking that I can do anything,” McGinnis said. While rugby continues to grow in popularity in the U.S., it is hardly a staple of televised sports – dominated by football, basketball and baseball. Nevertheless, rugby has found homes in some American communities. One of the early Mississippi adopters was Jackson Rugby. In rugby, two teams compete to advance an elongated ball to score a try — or a goal — by kicking, running and passing the ball backward. Its origins extend to the early 19th century in England and spread to the United States, mostly on college campuses. USA Rugby, the country's governing body for the sport, counts 11,000 active players.  ### **An English sport makes it way to America** In a state dominated by college football, the English sport found its footing in Mississippi’s capital city in 1974. Back in 2010, team members even purchased and created their own makeshift facility with practice fields near Highway 49. “We get to have a good time. We get to run around together, laugh at each other, make a joke, have something to look forward to at the end of the week,” said Chris Mendonca, the team’s coach. “This is what I live for.” Jackson Rugby Club coach Chris Mendonca catches a pitch during practice at the Murrah High School practice field, Sunday, April 26, 2026, in Jackson. Mendonca’s rugby journey started in 1999 during his Air Force deployment to Trier, Germany. Fresh from military training, Mendonca felt he was lacking a community and outlet outside of work. He would run across a local rugby league and instantly fell in love with the sport. Rugby became an outlet for Mendonca during his deployments in South Korea, Florida and Japan. Wherever he went, the sport gave him an anchor. “I don’t know where I would be if I didn’t have this,” Mendonca said. When he returned to civilian life, Mendonca went to work for Raytheon, a defense and aerospace company, that transferred him to Brandon in 2018. He already knew he would join Jackson Rugby prior to his move. He had played against the team in 2005 when he played for a club in Okaloosa, Florida. But it was not the same Jackson rugby team he remembered. The team was not nearly as active as it once was. Players left as they began families and started new careers. The last few active members attempted to host practices amid busy schedules. There were talks of merging the Jackson team with the one in Biloxi, but those discussions stalled when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Things continued to fizzle until McGinnis gave the team the push it needed. ### **The goal: ‘play, have fun, challenge ourselves’** Mendonca was one of the two experienced players available when McGinnis organized the resurgent team’s first practice in October. Mendonca arrived early and walked around the school parking lot filling a garbage bag with trash as he waited for other players to show up. McGinnis arrived next. He approached Mendonca, wondering if he was a worker with the school. Mendonca said picking up trash was just something he could do while waiting. The team now makes a habit to clean the parking lot after every practice. Nearly two years have passed since the team’s revival on that muggy evening. Now Jackson Rugby regularly has over a dozen players at practice, with new people showing up to try the sport. Jackson Rugby Club practice at the Murrah High School practice field, Sunday, April 26, 2026, in Jackson. On most Sundays at 3 p.m., you can find the team at Murrah High School preparing for its next game. They sprint up and down the field, practice passing the ball and slam into foam pads to perfect their tackles. In between drills, they gather under a bright blue tent that gleams in the sun as they cool off with fresh watermelon and a misting fan. “If you’re interested in playing, just come out and try for a practice or two,” McGinnis said. “We like to have a good time. It doesn't matter if you're a guy or girl. Come out and learn the game with us and have a good time.” Caroline Swindool joined the group in early February after coming across a yard sign with the team’s information. At first she was intimidated by the predominantly male team. Her love for fitness and trying new things pushed her to join, and Swindool was welcomed with open arms. “It’s really just a hodgepodge of a bunch of different people that you wouldn't put together in a group normally, but everybody comes out and has the same common goal,” Swindool said. “We just want to play, have fun, challenge ourselves and get better.” The club’s newfound popularity hasn’t gone unnoticed. McGinnis said several people approached the team’s tent at the Mobile Battleship Rugby Tournament earlier this month. Some asked about hosting games in Jackson later this year. James Lawson has been a team member for two decades and has seen the team through hard times. He said the team is exactly where it needs to be. “I think we got the right combination of people on the team right now,” he said, “and a lot of younger people on the team now to help grow rugby in this area.” Jackson Rugby Club coach Chris Mendonca, left, and team members during practice at the Murrah High School practice field, Sunday, April 26, 2026, in Jackson.Joo Reynolds, left, and Jackson Rugby Club coach Chris Mendonca at practice, Sunday, April 26, 2026, in Jackson.Joo Reynolds, center, and Jackson Rugby Club teammates at practice, Sunday, April 26, 2026, in Jackson.Jackson Rugby Club practice scrum at the Murrah High School practice field, Sunday, April 26, 2026, in Jackson.Rugby balls used by the Jackson Rugby Club during practice at the Murrah High School practice field, Sunday, April 26, 2026, in Jackson.Jackson Rugby Club practice at the Murrah High School practice field, Sunday, April 26, 2026, in Jackson.Jackson Rugby Club coach Chris Mendonca catches a pitch during practice at the Murrah High School practice field, Sunday, April 26, 2026, in Jackson.Jackson Rugby Club practice at the Murrah High School practice field, Sunday, April 26, 2026, in Jackson. This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # A Tale of Two Behavioral Health Systems, or How the State Border Determines Who Gets Access to Mental Healthcare by Astra Lincoln, The Daily Yonder July 22, 2026 In July 2025, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) mandated significant health care funding cuts and policy changes related to low-income health insurance programs like Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) administration. As of April 2026, 1.59 million Americans had lost their Medicaid insurance because of OBBBA-related cuts. Because of the bill, an estimated 13 million more people will lose their insurance over the next three years. Between direct funding cuts and a massive loss of clients, health care providers around the country were understandably left on edge. And then the no-cause termination letters started to arrive. Becky Wolery, the founder of the Oregon/Idaho-based mental health clinic, Insight Matters, first got the news in December 2025: her clinic was losing its Oregon Medicaid eligibility. Going forward, Wolery’s Ontario, Oregon-based clinic could no longer accept any new Medicaid patients. “It was basically a close-down notice,” Wolery said. At the Ontario office, 90% of patients are insured through Medicaid. Even existing patients need to renew their prior authorization every six months. Once their existing authorizations had expired, these patients’ coverage would be denied. Wolery panicked. Ontario, population 11,645 — the largest of any in eastern Oregon’s expansive Malheur County — was already in a health care desert, despite having the highest rate of Medicaid enrollment of any county in the state. For years, Wolery had only practiced in Idaho, where she lives. When her clinic had outgrown its first building in Payette, she decided to analyze her patients' demographic data so she could find a new space that best fit her clientele, only to realize that a huge portion of the patients were paying with Oregon Medicaid, crossing the border from Ontario or elsewhere in Malheur County in order to seek out counseling or substance use treatment. She decided to open a second location in Ontario. In less than a year, they had outgrown the first building and had to relocate into a new, larger space. Since then, her practice has been booming. Now, a total closure was on the horizon. All this, before Medicaid enrollment had really begun to unwind. The Snake River near Annex, Oregon. (Photo by Astra Lincoln) ### **Which Side Are You On?** One year after its passage, the implementation of the many fiscal changes mandated by OBBBA — which have been largely managed by individual states — has had vastly different impacts for communities depending on which side of a state border they find themselves on. For residents of the Oregon-Idaho boundary area, access to care largely depends on which side of the Snake River a person happens to live on. On the eastern, Idahoan side of the border, 4% of state residents were cut from Medicaid in September 2025. Some behavioral health programs — including some that provide funding for peer support and crisis response teams — were cut, but subsequently refunded. Otherwise, business has continued more or less as usual. Although behavioral health providers are anticipating new restrictions to arrive this July, Idaho has yet to experience any seismic shifts to its health care landscape. This is largely because Idaho had such limited state-sponsored health care services to begin with; the state’s 19% enrollment rate is well below the national average. And in the rural communities along the Idaho-Oregon border, behavioral health care access has always been limited. In Weiser, Idaho, across the water from Ontario, there were no mental health care providers practicing in town until the town’s hospital opened a small clinic three years ago. Since then, more clinics have followed — but mostly have sprung up to serve the population being sentenced to court-mandated rehabilitation following drug and alcohol charges. For everyone else, the closest in-patient facility is over an hour away. “For a small city like us, we have nowhere to take our people that need help,” said Weiser City Clerk Natasha McDaniel. “We just put them in jail. And when they come out, they have a criminal record, and it’s harder to get a job. It’s just a vicious cycle.” So business may be carrying on in Idaho — but it’s bad business to begin with. For Oregonians living on the other side of the Snake River, it’s a different story. In recent years, the Oregon Health Plan, which administers Medicaid for state residents, has significantly expanded Medicaid eligibility. Whereas most states only allow coverage for able-bodied adults below the Federal Poverty Line (FPL) — which is $15,960 for a single person — Oregon enrolls anyone earning less than double the FPL. There have been additional expansions for pregnant people and immigrants. Because of this, Oregon stands to have the most significant drop in Medicaid enrollment of any state in the nation. In Oregon’s rural areas alone, OBBBA will lead to a $4 billion reduction in Medicaid funding through direct cuts and cuts to Medicaid-covered health care services — though most of these changes won’t begin to be implemented until late 2027, and some won’t take full effect until 2034. In June 2026, the Oregon Health Authority announced new Medicaid eligibility rules. Beginning in 2027, Medicaid participants will need to renew their coverage every six months (currently, the renewal period is two years). And, beginning in October 2028, copays will be required for many health care services, though emergency care, mental health care, prenatal care, and substance use treatments will be excluded — which will likely reduce access to care even among people who retain Medicaid eligibility. Already, 20% of rural Oregonians delay or skip necessary care due to cost. And in Malheur County — Oregon’s second largest, and one of its most rural — Medicaid enrollment is disproportionately high, relative to other parts of the state: 50% of residents are currently enrolled in Medicaid or Medicare. Among those enrolled in Medicaid (which provides free insurance to low-income people), the vast majority (almost 80%) are children. Nearly 25% have a disability, nearly 50% are Hispanic or Latino, and more than 25% speak Spanish as their primary language. And for residents living outside of Ontario, where all of Malheur County’s behavioral health clinics are located, patients may have to drive more than three hours to access a clinic. Agricultural lands surround the confluence of Idaho's Weiser River with the Snake River, which marks the border with Oregon. (Photo by Astra Lincoln) ### **Inadequate Response** The federal government has taken some steps to offset these impacts — though economists and health care researchers suggest that the measures made to date will almost certainly be inadequate. In addition to sweeping Medicaid cuts, the OBBBA established the Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP), which sought to distribute special funding to rural areas, like Malheur County, to offset the disproportionately high impacts that other portions of the bill would cause in regions already facing worse health outcomes. Oregon's rural residents have been shown to “experience higher rates of chronic disease, including heart disease, diabetes and cancer,” said Clare Pierce-Wrobel, Oregon Health Authority (OHA) Director of Health Policy and Analytics, in an interview for KEZI earlier this year. The state was awarded $200 million in RHTP funding. Across the country, the RHTP has allocated $50 billion to rural hospitals over five years — though the Kaiser Family Foundation, a national nonprofit focused on health policy, wrote in a study published in July 2025 that “Federal Medicaid spending in rural areas is estimated to decline by $137 billion, more than the $50 billion appropriated for the rural health fund.” Because of this, an estimated 338 rural hospitals are expected to close, including three in Idaho and four in Oregon — as well as additional closures among private and specialty clinics located outside of hospitals. By the end of 2025, Oregon had already lost an acute care hospital, an inpatient care center, a birth center, six occupational health centers, and four occupational medicine clinics. In April, the first $21.7 million in RHTP funds was awarded to 12 Oregon-based programs — but none went to projects located in Malheur County. Because so many clinics — like Insight Matters — are funded almost entirely through Medicaid payments, it has been predicted that many rural hospitals and clinics will close despite the patchwork funding provided by the RHTP. ### **Bad News** In Malheur County, four of the five behavioral health clinics, including Insight Matters, received no-cause termination notices in December. For now, the Insight Matters’ Ontario clinic has been able to stay open — in part because of the additional programming they offer, via a grant-funded contract with the Department of Health and Welfare, in schools, domestic violence shelters, and nursing homes. The grant will fund these programs through next year, at which point the viability of the Ontario location will depend on fickle grant funding. Whether or not the clinic closes entirely will depend on whether such grants are renewed. In the meantime, the clinic's 350 patients, 90% of whom rely on Medicaid, are faced with a choice: terminate care, or cross the river to receive out-of-pocket treatment in Idaho. "People in these rural areas are used to driving into main areas for services," said April Browne, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker at Family Services Treatment in Weiser, Idaho — a community that got its first mental health care provider just three years ago. "They're getting on the freeway anyway to go to work. So maybe they're going to attend a group or see a counselor at that time [after work]." Even before the clinics in Ontario began to close, Browne already had several Oregon-based, self-pay clients. But a health care landscape that only offers substantive options to people who can afford to pay out-of-pocket will mean that already stark poverty-related health outcomes will continue to intensify. This is bad news for a state that has historically had the highest rates of mental health challenges in America. Despite hundreds of millions of dollars in state investments, Oregon has been ranked the worst state in the nation for mental health for several years — more than 30% of the state’s adults live with some form of mental illness. With new funding, the state’s ability to provide care has improved — in 2025, Oregon was ranked seventh in the country for mental health care access — but wellbeing indexes have yet to follow. Part of the problem is that health care is managed at the county level, and so standards and implementation can be inconsistent at best. Only one behavioral health clinic in Malheur County, Lifeways, remains to serve the entire population of a county that has a larger area than the state of Maryland — and will need to find a way to provide care to the 800 patients who had previously received treatment at the newly out-of-network clinics. Lifeways did not respond to multiple requests for comments. But several clinicians working in the region reported that many patients pursuing behavioral health care are hesitant to pursue care there. The clinic has developed a bad reputation because of huge staff turnovers (among its leadership and clinicians), as well as long wait times, and bad personality fits — which research has shown is one of the largest determinants in the success of behavioral health treatment. For patients who don’t find a good fit at Lifeways, no other options exist. ### **Cooked Books?** Which clinics are in-network in Oregon is determined by the different regional coordinated care organizations, or CCOs, that administer the state's health care plans. In the more densely populated parts of the state, several CCOs are available for Medicaid clients to enrol in, based on which providers they want access to. But for the entire eastern half of the state, only one CCO exists. All mental health dollars distributed through the Eastern Oregon Coordinated Care Organization are managed through Greater Oregon Behavioral Health Inc. (GOBHI). When the OBBBA was passed, OHA directed the state's CCOs to implement cost-cutting measures, prompting GOBHI to terminate Medicaid eligibility for the three Malheur County-based clinics, according to the termination letters GOBHI distributed. (GOBHI also terminated contracts with several clinics in Harney and Baker counties, also in Eastern Oregon.) Wolery requested a meeting with the GOBHI CEO to ask why Lifeways was selected to maintain its contract, while other clinics were not. At the meeting, the CEO explained that they had analyzed “network capacity,” and found that Lifeways had adequate capacity to meet behavioral health needs, according to Wolery. But when Wolery reviewed the numbers, she found that they were only using Lifeways existing patients in their calculations — and not the 800 patients receiving care at the other clinics. “I think they’re doing false reporting,” Wolery said. Earlier this year, Wolery joined four other local agencies to file for an investigation against GOBHI with the CMS, citing multiple NQTL violations of the Mental Health Parity Act. GOBHI did not respond to interview requests from the _Daily Yonder_. Wolery also suspects that the need for these cuts might have more to do with general fiscal mismanagement than any immediate OBBBA-related funding gaps. In recent months, GOBHI has been faced with fines and repayment requests related to financial and administrative errors. It might also have something to do with the who’s-who of Eastern Oregon health care. The current Lifeways CEO is the treasurer for the GOBHI board tasked with GOBHI’s fiscal decision-making, including how to implement the coming Medicaid funding cuts. ### **Oregon’s Radical Plan Years in the Making** What are residents of these rural regions of Idaho and Oregon to do, in the face of dwindling insurance options and closing clinics and hospitals? In Idaho, social worker April Browne said, “There will just be people that fall through the gaps. We all have community connection. But that’s the only thing here that can close those gaps.” In Oregon, there might be another option: the state is currently considering a universal health care plan. Since 2023, a governance board has been developing a policy proposal that could fully fund and implement a single-payer health care option that would cover every resident in the state. It’s the first serious effort to establish a single-payer health care system since 2002, when voters overwhelmingly rejected a plan proposed via ballot measure. For Oregon’s rural clinics, which have historically been less likely to withstand unstable funding environments, the plan could have a “stabilizing effect,” said the advocacy nonprofit Health Care for All Oregon (HCAO) President Valdez Bravo, who works in health care administration. “The Baker City Birthing Center closed a few years ago, right on the eastern edge of the state. That wouldn’t have happened if we had a universal health care system providing stability and predictability to funding,” Bravo thinks. One of the Universal Health Plan Governance Board’s (UHPGB) nine members, Chunhuei Chi, helped design Taiwan’s first universal health plan in 1995. He’s been working on health care finance ever since, and has been involved in Oregon’s efforts to implement a universal health plan ever since the last ballot initiative in 2002. In an interview for _Willamette Week_ in May 2026, Chi said the current UHPGB effort is “the closest [to success]. This is probably the closest ever.” If enacted, the plan put forward by the UHPGB could resolve many of the health care funding gaps created by OBBBA. While the draft plan is not set to be released until September 2026, early summary documents released by the UHPGB suggest that the final version will include provisions to provide full insurance coverage to every resident, regardless of income, for all medically necessary services. There would be no premiums, no co-pays, no out-of-network providers, and no Coordinated Care Organizations. According to a 19-page summary of preliminary recommendations released in April 2026, the plan would cover all necessary physical and behavioral health services, as well as routine vision and dental care and some fertility services, with minimal to zero cost-sharing for patients at the point of service. For patients, there would be no insurance premiums, no deductibles, and no co-pays. And insurance would no longer be tied to a person’s job — which could have a huge impact for the 40% of Oregonians who currently do not have coverage through their employer. The plan would be funded through a combination of federal funding, business contributions, and a progressive income tax. (The income tax would only be on income over 200% of the FPL, or $31,500,) Preliminary analysis shows most Oregon residents would pay less for their care under the proposed plan, and most businesses would pay less in health care costs for their employees. The UHPGB is due to submit its final recommendations to the state legislature in September of 2026. But whether or not the legislature acts on the plan depends on whether or not it is written into a bill that is then introduced to the 2027 legislative session. In July, a petition circulated by HCAO and the Portland chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America encouraging legislatures to do so had collected more than 4,000 signatures. If the UHPGB’s plan is brought to the session, the legislature could then either vote to pass the recommendations into law as-is — though the HCAO leadership team does not expect that it will — or refer the plan to a ballot measure, which could go before voters in 2028. If a bill or ballot measure is eventually passed, the new plan would not fully cure Oregon’s health care landscape overnight. “There will still be challenges for rural communities that lack services,” said Colin Stackhouse, who serves as HCAO’s Communications Coordinator and also volunteers on the UHPGB Community Engagement and Communications Committee. “Rural clinics are closing. This plan won’t directly address that,” Stackhouse said. “But it will solve the problem for the people in these rural communities who can’t see available providers because their local providers don’t take coverage. It would solve the insurance coverage access question.” Bravo is optimistic about the plan’s potential trickle-down effects. “Right now, we’re heading in a direction where there’s just not going to be any care offered [to rural residents]. We’re going to be like five hours away from what you need.” But if more robust insurance infrastructure existed, Bravo is confident that “it will promulgate more care being offered out there in Eastern Oregon.” * * * This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

By Robbie Sequeira (Stateline) Published: July 23, 2026 After school cellphone bans passed many statehouses with bipartisan support in recent legislative sessions, state lawmakers are turning to legislation governing how long students should spend looking at screens. This year, four states passed laws restricting or regulating screen time for students from childcare through fifth grade. Iowa capped digital instruction at 60 minutes per day for students in kindergarten through fifth grade, with exceptions for special education, assessments and computer science. Utah lawmakers this year directed the state education board to develop grade-specific technology rules, including restrictions on screen time in kindergarten through third grade and prohibiting one-device-per-student ratios in elementary school. A new Tennessee law requires every district and charter school serving K-5 students to adopt an age-appropriate digital device policy to minimize unnecessary screen time. And Alabama this year adopted a law requiring the establishment of screen time standards and teacher training for childcare facilities, prekindergarten and kindergarten. But a Missouri bill to require school districts and charter schools to adopt screen time policies for kindergarten through fifth grade and an Oklahoma proposal to cap screen time at 60 minutes per day for students in prekindergarten through fifth grade both failed. The Missouri bill easily cleared the House but stalled in the Senate. Despite passing the Oklahoma House unanimously, that bill stalled in the Senate and faced pushback from a technology industry trade group. The Software and Information Industry Association referred to the bill as an “unfunded mandate” and said it would increase administrative burdens and undermine workforce readiness. Some school districts also are adopting screen time policies for the upcoming school year. The Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second-largest school district, is the one of the first to impose systemwide, grade-by-grade instructional screen limits. > As school cellphone bans gain in popularity, lawmakers say it’s time to go bell-to-bell Los Angeles has barred instructional screen time before second grade. The district also set limits that increase incrementally to 60 minutes per subject each week for middle school students and 90 minutes per subject each week for high school students. Inanna Balkin, a rising high school senior at Amherst Regional High School in Massachusetts, told Stateline that “it’s really important for students to learn how to manage their screen time,” and that schools should help students develop habits for managing screen time rather than simply removing access to technology.“Automatically not having access to your phone or a screen during the day kind of doesn’t allow for students to be responsible for their own management when school is over,” said Balkin, who uses an app called Opal to block distractions while doing homework. There are no clear national statistics measuring how many minutes students spend using screens for classroom instruction, yet screen time has become a focus of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., including a warning from the surgeon general’s office. Tracy Weeks, senior director of education policy and strategy at education technology company Instructure, told Stateline that states should consider metrics other than minutes when proposing screen time policies. “The policy focus has been on minutes, and that’s the wrong conversation to be having, because not all minutes are created equal,” Weeks said. “Scrolling for 10 minutes is not the same as actually interacting with a tool for learning.” Virginia now requires public schools to provide instruction about time spent using electronic devices and their addictive potential. Maine is directing the Maine Education Policy Research Institute to study classroom technology use, including average instructional time on school-issued devices and existing safeguards. _Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at_ _rsequeira@stateline.org_ _._ SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE

By Yiqing Wang/WHRO (Virginia Mercury) Published: July 23, 2026 Howard Weinberg keeps his Parkinson’s medication in a small container attached to his keychain, so he always has it wherever he goes. The retired doctor from Virginia Beach has to take the medication every six hours, at 1 o’clock and 7 o’clock, day and night. For him, that schedule is not optional. “It should be within 15 minutes of when it’s due. And if you don’t, then you lose mobility, you get so many complications,” Weinberg said. Those complications can include falls, swallowing problems and urinary tract infections. But Weinberg said maintaining that routine to prevent those complications can be tough when Parkinson’s patients end up in the hospital – something that’s not uncommon. National data shows about 1.1 million Americans are living with Parkinson’s disease. One in three are hospitalized each year, and one in six have avoidable complications during the stay because they do not receive their medications on time. During the day, he said, hospital medication rounds often happen every four hours at standard times, which often doesn’t line up with a Parkinson’s patient regimen. Weinberg has seen Parkinson’s disease from several sides. He spent decades as a physician. His mother was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in the early 90’s. His sister was diagnosed with the disease eight years ago. Then, after his wife died in 2024, Weinberg was diagnosed with Parkinson’s himself. “I’ve known about Parkinson’s for 55 years, but it’s only in the last year when I become worse that I’m understanding what it’s like to be patient with Parkinson’s,” Weinberg said. “It’s a whole new world until you experience it yourself.” Weinberg now volunteers as an ambassador for the Parkinson’s Foundation, a national organization that supports people living with the disease and advocates for better care. He gives presentations on hospital safety and encourages patients to prepare medication lists before a hospital stay. Because hospital medication rounds often do not match patients’ individual dosing schedules, Weinberg is pushing hospitals to establish clearer protocols to make sure Parkinson’s patients receive their medication on time. “I would love them to [have] at least a partnership, so maybe the nurse knows they’re in the room and in a place, and it was 1am and the nurse hasn’t come in to give you, you take the pills that are in the room, and then they see that you took them,” Weinberg said. Annie Brooks, who works on hospital care for the foundation, said Parkinson’s medications should ideally be given within 15 minutes before or after a patient’s specific scheduled time. “The time sensitivity of Parkinson’s medications is similar to the time sensitivity of diabetes medications for people with diabetes,” Brooks said. Brooks said federal rules allow hospitals to let some patients or caregivers administer their own medication, as long as the hospital has a written policy and confirms they can do it safely. But she said many hospitals are still hesitant. “It means you have to have some processes set, some expectations set,” Brooks said. “It’s not something that a lot of hospitals do, but it is absolutely something that we hear from the Parkinson’s community is a desired protocol.” The Parkinson’s Foundation is working with about 50 health systems nationwide through its Hospital Care Learning Collaborative. The effort focuses on medication timing, avoiding drugs that can worsen Parkinson’s symptoms, helping patients move during hospital stays and screening for swallowing problems. Virginia Commonwealth University Health is one of the participating systems. Leslie Cloud is a professor of neurology in the VCU School of Medicine and the medical director of the Parkinson’s Foundation Center of Excellence at VCU. She said the collaboration’s priorities start with making sure hospitalized Parkinson’s patients get the exact medications they take at home, without substitutions, and get them on time. “No substitutions, like the exact same ones, and exactly on time — not plus or minus two hours, but on time, plus or minus 15 minutes,” Cloud said. Cloud said getting medication within that 15-minute window is one of the biggest challenges for hospitals because medication delivery depends on staffing and nursing workflow. She said VCU is looking at a 30-minute medication window as a more realistic first step toward the 15-minute goal. The health system is also working on changes to its electronic medical record system to flag Parkinson’s patients and warn providers about drugs that can worsen their symptoms. Cloud said allowing some patients to use their own medication can help, especially because newer Parkinson’s drugs are not always available in hospital pharmacies. “Our patients are really good about taking their medications on time because they know what happens when they don’t,” Cloud said. “They’re more likely to get the medicine in that plus or minus 15-minute window if they have control over it themselves.” But Cloud said self-administration is not possible for every patient, including people with dementia or those who do not have a caregiver who can help manage medication safely. For Weinberg, the goal is to make those steps part of routine hospital care before a Parkinson’s patient arrives. He said he has been advocating for local health care systems in Hampton Roads to adopt similar protocols, but he says he’s gotten nowhere. Sentara, one of Virginia’s largest health systems, declined an interview request for this story. Riverside Health, which operates a Parkinson’s Disease & Movement Disorders Program, had not responded to an interview request by publication time. Weinberg said hospitals already have protocols for conditions such as chest pain or stroke symptoms. He wants Parkinson’s care to be treated with the same urgency. “I’d like to see every hospital in the United States and the world put in a patient’s protocol for Parkinson’s,” Weinberg said. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX.

**It's Friday July 24, 2026 and in this morning's issue we're covering:** Louisiana communities are left in the dark on toxic air — and industry helped keep it that way, Mark Sanford joins crowded race for US Senate with familiar warning on government overspending, State audit clears up one Rocky Mount utility headache, draws attention to another problem, How South Carolina Prisons Are Limiting Access to Books, OPINION: Rising health insurance exchange costs are bad news for Mississippi’s working poor, As college graduates fret over finding jobs, a record shortage of workers is projected, This Dane County community helped pioneer a national movement for aging together, WVU Health leadership failed to address painkiller thefts for years as opioids devastated West Virginia; Orleans DA’s office withholding critical case records from law firm reviewing wrongful convictions. **Media outlets and others featured:** Floodlight, South Carolina Daily Gazette, Carolina Public Press, Prison Journalism Project, Mississippi Today, The Hechinger Report, Wisconsin Watch, Mountain State Spotlight, Verite News. * * * ### **_Lawmakers weakened community air monitoring as industry pushed back against greater scrutiny._ ** ### **By Ames Alexander/Floodlight** This story_is from_ Floodlight_, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action, in partnership with The Guardian and with contributions from The Louisiana Illuminator. Sign up for Floodlight’s newsletter_ here_._ Kimbrelle Kyereh lives just a few hundred feet from the massive chemical storage tanks in St. Rose, in southeastern Louisiana. Oily fumes sometimes drift into her home, bringing headaches, nausea and insomnia. On one such night, she grabbed her son at 3 a.m. and fled to an all-night IHOP. In 2023, after years of coping with the noxious odors, Kyereh began collecting air samples in her yard for a local environmental justice group. But soon after, Louisiana passed an industry-backed law that sharply restricted how that kind of data could be used. So she stopped. “I shut my mouth like they wanted me to,” Kyereh said. Along the 85-mile corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans — where cancer rates from toxic air pollution are among the nation’s highest — many residents live in the shadows of heavy industry with no idea what they’re breathing. Turns out, that’s by design. A Floodlight analysis found that Louisiana’s public air monitors are often located miles from major industrial polluters and fail to test for some of the most dangerous chemicals. The analysis identified the state’s top 25 industrial air polluters using emissions data that companies self-report to the EPA. Then we used state data to calculate each plant's distance to the nearest public air monitoring station — and to determine which pollutants those monitors actually test for. We found: * Ten of Louisiana’s heaviest air-polluting facilities operate without a single public air monitor within five miles. * Dow Chemical’s plastics factory in Plaquemine is one of Louisiana’s biggest air polluters, releasing an array of toxic pollutants including ethylene oxide, a known carcinogen. The nearest air monitoring station is about eight miles away and measures only ozone. * No public monitors measure ammonia — despite CF Industries’ Donaldsonville plant emitting more than 7 million pounds of it in 2024, making it one of the nation’s top toxic polluters, according to EPA data. * The three chemicals that researchers have concluded “together account for the large majority of total cancer risk” in the area — ethylene oxide, chloroprene and formaldehyde — aren't monitored by the state at all. Industry groups have spent years fighting proposals that would require better monitoring around manufacturing plants. They also helped draft a 2024 law that sharply restricted how community air monitoring could be used in enforcement. Lawmakers later introduced similar legislation in Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia, suggesting Louisiana is one front in a broader fight over who gets to measure toxic air. **What the monitors missed** On Aug. 24, 2023, a leak at Marathon’s southeast Louisiana refinery exposed the limits of the state’s air monitoring system At 6:50 p.m., the Coast Guard fielded a report that naphtha — a highly flammable liquid — was leaking at the Garyville facility. More than six hours passed before the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality began monitoring the air. Around 7 a.m., the leak ignited a massive fire, sending a plume of black smoke into the air. Two nearby schools opened anyway. Residents within two miles weren’t ordered to evacuate until 10:15 a.m. — more than 15 hours after the leak began. Naphtha exposure can cause dizziness, headaches and nausea, and a Guardian investigation found at least 29 residents were later treated at area hospitals. The nearest state air monitor measures ozone — but not the toluene and other toxic pollutants released in the fire — and the plant’s own monitors track just one chemical at its fenceline: benzene. The company’s Los Angeles refinery, by contrast, continuously monitors more than 15 pollutants — as California regulations require. Wilma Subra, a decorated environmental chemist from Louisiana who examined the fire’s emissions, said better air monitoring likely would have prompted faster school closures and evacuations. The state’s monitoring network, she said, is “not adequate to protect the health of the community living in close proximity to these industrial facilities.” **‘Emergency waiting to occur’** Community advocates and environmental researchers have spent years pressing for expanded monitoring — especially in predominantly Black communities near industrial facilities. Adrienne Katner, an associate professor at Louisiana State University and a former state environmental health scientist, concluded in 2022 that roughly 400 high-emission facilities in Louisiana had no public air monitoring. Communities only learn about toxic releases when there’s a shelter-in-place order or an evacuation, she said. She called the situation “a public health emergency waiting to occur.” Today, Katner says the lack of air monitoring data serves as a shield for polluters. “The theme is, if you don’t look for it, you won’t find it,” she told Floodlight. Families living near polluting facilities bear the burden of that uncertainty, Katner said: “It’s taking years off their lives.” The following year, researchers from Johns Hopkins University drove a mobile laboratory through Louisiana's industrial corridor to measure pollution firsthand. In 14 of the 15 locations they studied, cancer risks from toxic emissions exceeded EPA figures — in some areas by more than 11 times. Peter DeCarlo, an atmospheric scientist at Johns Hopkins who co-authored the study, said regulators miss much of the region's pollution because too few air monitors measure too few chemicals. “If large emissions from these facilities are happening far away from the air monitors, they're often going to go unnoticed,” DeCarlo said. “But that doesn't mean they're not gonna have an effect on the people who live there.” Even the EPA has raised concerns. In 2023, the federal agency urged state regulators to create a permanent monitoring station in New Orleans’ Irish Channel neighborhood. The area sits just across the Mississippi River from BWC Harvey, a 48-acre storage terminal that handles hot asphalt and other toxic chemicals and has drawn hundreds of resident complaints about noxious fumes. A temporary state monitor there had previously recorded elevated levels of harmful particulate matter. But in 2022, Louisiana regulators shut it down. The Irish Channel wasn’t the only community where the state retreated from monitoring. Louisiana’s 2022 monitoring plan included a section titled “Environmental Justice Considerations,” describing monitors in communities such as St. Rose and the Irish Channel. A year later, the section was gone, as was the St. Rose monitor. ****The Irish Channel neighborhood sits directly across the Mississippi River from three bulk liquid storage terminals in Harvey — two operated by BWC Terminals and one by Kinder Morgan — which handle petrochemicals, petroleum products and other liquids. (Brad Racino / Floodlight)**** When the EPA urged the state to keep considering environmental justice, LDEQ replied that such considerations were “beyond the scope” of the plan. LDEQ operates 35 permanent air monitoring stations and says that it operates “a robust air monitoring network that meets and exceeds all regulatory requirements.” But the agency acknowledges that the network is not designed to monitor pollution in fenceline communities. Jason Meyers, who oversees the agency’s 35-person air monitoring team, told Floodlight: “We run our sites well. We have good operators, and [the network] provides very high-quality data.” The agency has two mobile monitoring vans that respond to incidents, monitor air quality in parts of the state without permanent stations, and fill in when major storms knock out power. The department also measures toxic air pollutants at 19 sites around the state, but that equipment doesn’t monitor continuously. Most of those monitors sample every sixth day — on a fixed, publicly known schedule — meaning plant operators know when the air will be tested. “Financial and technical constraints limit full monitoring coverage” of all toxic air pollutants, LDEQ acknowledged. While community advocates have pushed for more air monitoring, Louisiana has moved in the opposite direction. Since 2020, the state has lost four air monitoring stations. Expenditures for the LDEQ division that oversees air monitoring fell nearly 15% between 2020 and 2026. Adjusted for inflation, spending dropped by more than one-third. Louisiana’s challenges are not unique. Across the country, state monitoring agencies have faced years of stagnant federal support even as equipment and labor costs climbed. The number of operating air monitors nationwide fell by nearly half over the decade ending in 2021, the last year for which EPA has published figures. “Your dollars are just not going nearly as far,” said Chet Wayland, who led EPA’s Air Quality Assessment division for 18 years. “The bottom line is that more money is desperately needed for monitoring.” The EPA does monitor toxic air pollutants at 26 stations nationally — but none are in Louisiana or Texas, two of the states with the largest toxic emissions volumes. **How industry got its way** For years, former Louisiana Sen. Cleo Fields, a Democrat from Baton Rouge, returned to the Capitol with the same proposal: Require major industrial polluters to monitor toxic air emissions at their property lines and report what nearby communities were breathing. Each time, the bill died. “I got so frustrated because every year this was opposed by industry for no good reason,” Fields, now a member of Congress, told Floodlight. State regulators, he added, “were working totally in concert with industry … and the citizens just had no voice.” Fields said he repeatedly heard from the petrochemical industry that his proposed bills would cost industry too much. “Well, what is it costing people?” he asked. “It’s costing them their lives.” After Fields’ failed attempts, state Sen. Royce Duplessis tried again this year with a bill requiring perimeter monitors at facilities emitting toxic pollutants. That measure also failed. The Louisiana Chemistry Association and other groups have repeatedly fought these efforts, helping to kill bill after bill in the state legislature. The powerful trade group represents 70 chemical industry companies that operate more than 100 sites across the state. The association has found a legislative ally in Republican state Sen. Eddie Lambert, an attorney from Ascension Parish who chairs the state Senate environmental committee — the same committee that repeatedly killed the bills. Campaign finance records show Lambert received more than $28,000 in political contributions from petrochemical, oil and gas and other polluting industries since 2020. He has also reported investing in major oil companies. He told Floodlight that neither his investments nor campaign contributions from industry have influenced his decisions in the legislature. “I don't take that into consideration at all,” he said. Lambert added that he was surprised oil and gas companies had donated to his campaigns because he consistently backed lawsuits filed by Louisiana parishes seeking to hold the industry accountable for coastal damage. In opposing one fenceline monitoring bill in 2021, Lambert contended that “air moves around” and that pollution readings near industrial plants could be skewed by other sources — an argument also made by the chemical industry. An LCA staffer told a state Senate committee that year that requiring industries to conduct fenceline monitoring could “create unnecessary paranoia on the part of the public” and expose companies to lawsuits “based on false readings of air monitors.” Air quality scientists, however, have found that properly designed fenceline monitoring systems can isolate a facility's emissions from other sources. In 2024, Lambert sponsored the Community Air Monitoring Reliability Act (CAMRA), which prohibits the use of air pollution data for enforcement or regulatory actions unless it’s captured by EPA-approved monitors — equipment that typically costs tens of thousands of dollars, far beyond the reach of most community groups. The LCA helped draft the bill, Daniel Bosch, an attorney representing the group, acknowledged at a state Senate committee hearing in 2024. Speaking in favor of the CAMRA law, Brian Landry, the LCA’s vice president of political affairs, told the Senate committee that his group had noticed private and public funds flowing to community groups to do their own air monitoring. Community air monitors can reveal pollution hotspots that distant government monitors miss. In some communities, the data have prompted regulators to investigate pollution complaints and helped residents push for stronger oversight. CAMRA, Landry said, was intended to ensure that any community monitoring data given to LDEQ “for any future purpose is accurate and definitely correct.” In a statement to Floodlight, LCA president David Cresson defended the law, saying it ensures “data used to enforce our state's environmental protection laws complies with minimum U.S. EPA standards” and doesn't stop residents from monitoring air quality for their own information — only from using unregulated methods for enforcement purposes. A top EPA regional administrator at the time, however, called the bill “inconsistent with federal law.”  Despite the EPA’s letter and widespread community opposition, the state legislature passed the bill. Critics say the law has stifled community air-quality reporting efforts, which typically rely on low-cost monitors. It’s what stopped Kyereh from her own monitoring efforts in St. Rose. After CAMRA became law, legislators in Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia introduced similar bills, also using arguments promoted by industry groups. That legislation failed in West Virginia but passed in Kentucky and Ohio. CAMRA had been law for just two months when Lambert traveled to the Henderson Beach Resort in Destin, Fla., to speak at a conference hosted by the Louisiana Chemistry Association. The group paid his $450 hotel bill. “I wouldn't consider that a big deal,” Lambert told Floodlight. He said it isn’t reasonable to expect state senators —whose base salary is $16,800 a year plus a $6,000 expense allowance — to cover such costs themselves. The Louisiana ethics code allows lawmakers to accept lodging and meals from industry groups, as long as they're tied to a public speech and the gifts are disclosed. Asked whether Louisiana needs more public air monitoring stations, Lambert said industrial plants already collect emissions data. “If we already get the information from the plants, why would we want to spend our resources there?” he asked. Under EPA rules, however, some plants are allowed to report emission estimates rather than direct measurements — and those estimates can be wildly off base. A 2025 ProPublica investigation found that when the EPA required temporary physical monitors at industrial sites, 97% of facilities were underreporting emissions. At a Dow Chemical facility in Plaquemine, for example, emissions of vinyl chloride — a carcinogen — were more than 150 times higher than the company’s estimates. **Left to wonder** Tish Taylor lives less than a mile from the Denka Performance Elastomer plant in St. John the Baptist Parish, which made neoprene, the synthetic rubber used in wetsuits. After federal regulators determined the plant’s chloroprene emissions posed an “unacceptably high” cancer risk to surrounding communities, Denka suspended production in 2025. Chemical producer DuPont continues to operate on the same campus and has faced its own EPA penalties for emissions violations. The two closest public monitors — each about five miles away — measure only lead and ozone. Taylor loves working in her garden. But when the wind blows on a sunny day, she knows that there’s something toxic in it, she said. “I just have to wonder how much.” == * * * ## Mark Sanford joins crowded race for US Senate with familiar warning on government overspending Former Gov. Mark Sanford is joining the race to replace U.S. Senate Lindsey Graham on a pledge to "get Washington's finances back in order." By Seanna Adcox (South Carolina Daily Gazette) Published: July 23, 2026 Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford speaks to the media during a campaign stop at the Statehouse on Sept. 16, 2019, in Columbia, South Carolina, during his brief presidential campaign. (Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images) Former Gov. Mark Sanford announced Thursday he’s joining the race to replace U.S. Senate Lindsey Graham on a pledge to “get Washington’s finances back in order.” It’s a familiar message for Sanford, who’s spent decades as a congressman, governor, and presidential candidate warning about the nation’s escalating debt. According to the U.S. Treasury, that debt has climbed to nearly $39.7 trillion, up from $4.7 trillion when Sanford was first elected to the U.S. House in 1994. “I’m worried for our children because for the first time, America’s borrowing from the future faster than we’re building it,” Sanford says in a video announcing his bid. “If left unaddressed, that debt will crush our economy. It will wipe out our savings, and it could even destroy our republic.” Sanford is among a growing list of candidates seeking the GOP nomination in next month’s special primary following Graham’s death July 11 at age 71. His death is a “reminder to all of us how short and precious life is,” Sanford says in the video’s opening, noting his father was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease when he was in high school. That diagnosis is what prompted Sanford’s family to move to the Beaufort County property where he spent summers growing up. His entry into the U.S. Senate race follows announcements by U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman of the 5th District, U.S. Rep. Russell Fry of the 7th District, and Graham’s sister, Darline Graham, who was sworn in last week to fulfill the late senator’s term that ends in January. > 2 SC congressmen launch bids for US Senate, as Darline Graham says ‘I’m in’ Candidate filing for the Aug. 11 primary began Tuesday and ends July 28. Five other candidates have turned in their paperwork to be on the ballot. They include Upstate businessman Mark Lynch, who placed a distant second in the GOP primary Lindsey Graham won easily last month. Others include Duke Bukner, a Walterboro attorney who’s twice unsuccessfully challenged U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn in the heavily Democratic 6th District. One candidate doesn’t live in the state — yet. Clark Neilson filed Tuesday with a Charlotte address but plans to build a house on land he owns in Charleston County, The State newspaper reported. Earlier this year, Sanford jumped into the open contest for the 1st District in an effort to win back the seat he’s held twice before. But he ended that bid less than a month later, saying he planned to form a nonprofit focused on bringing the debt down. The two-term governor not only has statewide name recognition, but he could also stand out from the crowd as a candidate not touting an alignment with President Donald Trump. In 2019, Sanford launched a bid to challenge Trump’s bid for a second term, hoping to spark a national debate about the mounting debt. But his short-lived presidential campaign never got traction. Even the South Carolina GOP refused to hold a 2020 presidential primary, which Sanford protested by traveling the state with a cardboard cutout of Trump. Trump endorsed Darline Graham last Friday in a post encouraging her to run. * * * # State audit clears up one Rocky Mount utility headache, draws attention to another problem by Mackenzie Thomas, Carolina Public Press July 20, 2026 A recent state audit has calmed concerns that Rocky Mount residents were double-billed for utilities, but also drew attention to more than $30,000 in total outstanding utility bills from two City Council members. Rocky Mount provides utility services for more than 31,000 customers across the city as well as nearby areas of Nash, Edgecombe and Wilson counties. These services include electric, gas, water and sewer, the audit report said. Some residents first raised questions about utilities in late 2025, when they received two bills within a month and thought they had been double-billed, the report said. ##### **[** Subscribe for FREE to Carolina Public Press’ Daily, Weekend and Election 2026 newsletters.**]** While the audit found that residents were not double-billed, it revealed that two City Council members — **Charles Roberson** and **T.J. Walker** — had racked up more than $30,000 in total outstanding utility bills. Both council members have since paid off those balances. This latest development comes as Rocky Mount has faced pressure from the state Local Government Commission to fix serious financial problems. While the city has made significant progress in its recovery efforts, the audit report emphasized the city still has “little margin for error,” calling into question the current council’s ability to lead the city through the remainder of its recovery. ### Utility billing concerns The misplaced concern over double-billing stemmed from a large gap between meter reading and billing dates, which the city’s Director of Business and Collections Services first discovered in December 2025 after staff layoffs, the report said. The reason for the gap was “unauthorized and undetected modifications” to the meter reading and billing schedules, which led to meter readings occurring earlier and earlier each month, even though the city’s policy is to schedule these readings for roughly the same week each month, the report said. Proper billing practices are outlined by the North Carolina Utilities Commission, which instructs utilities to bill customers within roughly five days of the meter reading. While Rocky Mount’s utilities technically don’t fall under the jurisdiction of the commission, the city still tries to abide by its guidelines, the report said. However, Rocky Mount was billing customers seven to 14 days after meter readings, even 30 days afterward in some cases. These delays had been going on as far back as January 2025, the report said. City Manager **Elton Daniels** said these kinds of delays can cause “corresponding fluctuations in the amount due on a customer's invoice.” To resolve the gap, the director decided to send an additional utility bill in either December 2025 or January 2026. The city made multiple efforts to help residents understand the reasoning for the additional bill including discussions at council meetings, meeting with customers in person and over the phone to discuss concerns, and posting information on the city website and social media pages, Daniels said. Despite these efforts, some residents still thought they were being double-billed and went to the news media to share their concerns, the audit report said. When CPP asked how receptive residents seemed to be to the audit’s findings, Daniels said that while the situation “understandably created frustration and uncertainty for citizens,” the audit confirms no improper billing occurred. City officials are still unsure who was responsible for making the schedule changes that caused the billing gap in the first place and reasons behind that change, the report said. When CPP asked whether the city plans to investigate further who was behind the schedule changes that led to the gap and whether there are concerns it might happen again, Daniels said: “We will continue to implement improvements that strengthen our operations while maintaining our commitment to transparency, accountability, and quality customer service.” ### Outstanding payments The audit found that council members Roberson and Walker each had their own outstanding payments. Roberson had 30 utility accounts that had a total outstanding balance of more than $27,000 and hadn’t made a payment in more than six months, the report said. Walker had an outstanding balance on one utility account of more than $3,000 and hadn’t made a payment since February, the report said. After the billing gap was discovered in December, the city initiated a temporary pause on late fees and service disconnections for all utility customers due to potential financial difficulties from the additional bill, the report said. If any customers — including the council members — fell behind on payments, the pause meant they wouldn’t be penalized or have their service disconnected. However, the billing gap was discovered in December 2025, and these council members continued to not pay their bills through April 2026, the report said. When CPP reached out to Roberson and asked how it reached this point, he explained that he’s had multiple utility accounts for several years for city redevelopment projects which were on AutoPay. Before the billing problem, he removed his accounts from AutoPay because he couldn’t determine how payments were being applied across his accounts. “My questions were never about avoiding payment,” Roberson told CPP. “They were about the accuracy, transparency and accountability of the city's billing system. My goal has always been to help build a utility system that is efficient, reliable and works fairly for every customer.” Roberson also said he supported bringing in the state auditor to conduct an independent audit of the utility billing system. The report argued that the lack of payments from council members suggested “they took advantage of this decision to further their own personal financial interests.” Roberson, on the other hand, said he respectfully disagrees. “The temporary suspension of late fees and utility disconnections was a citywide administrative policy that applied to every utility customer,” he said. “I did not vote to create that policy, I did not direct staff to implement it, and I received no preferential treatment, write-offs, or debt forgiveness. “I believe the report establishes facts regarding account balances, but I do not believe it identifies evidence supporting conclusions about my personal intent or motivation. I have respectfully asked the Office of the State Auditor to reconsider that language during the review process.” Council members did follow through on the auditor’s recommendation that they pay their outstanding bills. Letters from the city obtained by CPP showed that Roberson — whose outstanding balance had grown to more than $34,000 at that point — paid his bills and had a zero balance on his accounts as of June 9. Walker also paid his outstanding bills and had a zero balance as of June 16. Carolina Public Press reached out to Walker’s office for comment, but he did not respond prior to publication. ### Impact on financial recovery This isn’t the first time a City Council member has been delinquent in their utility payments, according to a 2020 state audit. Council member **Andre Knight** previously had an outstanding utility balance of more than $47,000 that accumulated over two decades, starting as far back as 1999. Previous city officials went against city policy by ensuring Knight’s services weren’t disconnected despite his lack of payment and ultimately wrote off the amount he owed, arguably giving him “preferential treatment,” the 2020 report said. When the state auditor recently followed up on the status of Knight’s written off balance, it found there had been no change since 2020. **Brianna Kraemer** , deputy communications director for the state auditor, said that unlike the other two council members, Knight’s outstanding balance is not active since it was written off. “That said, the Auditor's Office is not abandoning its accountability efforts in Rocky Mount, and Councilmember Knight should not be let off the hook,” Kraemer said. More recently, Knight had more than $300 written off from two utility accounts last year, though he paid the original balances owed afterward, the report said. CPP reached out to Knight’s office for comment, but he did not respond prior to publication. Considering the recently discovered outstanding payments of the other council members, the auditor pointed to a “longstanding culture” among the City Council that “prioritized individual gain over the public interest,” the report said. The findings couldn’t come at a worse time for the city, which is still recovering from a financial crisis first identified in a state audit earlier this year. As part of the city’s response to increase revenue, it hiked utility rates by 15%, the report said. “While such measures are likely necessary, they can be unpopular with the public, and therefore it is incumbent on the governing body to reinforce the public understanding of the City’s commitment to its priority of sound management of public funds,” the report said. “Thus, private actions that lend even an appearance contrary to that understanding put this priority at risk.” After the revelations about City Council members, the auditor argued the council’s ability to lead the city through the remainder of its recovery is “diminished,” the report said. However, Roberson said he’s as committed as ever to improving the city’s finances. “For years before I got on the council, I have advocated for modernizing the utility billing system, improving transparency, strengthening internal controls, reducing unnecessary costs to utility customers, and ensuring that residents have confidence in the city's billing practices,” Roberson told CPP. “I intend to continue that work.” The report indicated the city’s total operating budget is $279 million — making $30,000 merely a drop in the bucket. But its documented financial issues mean it’s already on thin ice. The message from the state auditor and the LGC since March has been clear: there’s very little room to mess up again. “Rocky Mount continues to face financial and personnel issues that need to be addressed,” State Auditor **Dave Boliek** said in a press release. “The State Auditor’s Office will not stop providing much-needed transparency to the people of Rocky Mount, so that they can make informed, educated decisions on what’s best for their community.” In addition to paying off outstanding utility balances, the auditor recommended that the city automate its bill scheduling process, correct its meter reading and billing schedules, and protect these schedules from unauthorized changes, the report said. The city affirmed the auditor’s findings and said it has made “good-faith efforts” to address the auditor’s recommendations, having already completed some actions while others are still underway. “Collectively, they demonstrate the city's commitment to implementing meaningful corrective actions, strengthening governance and utility billing practices, enhancing internal controls, and ensuring compliance with applicable laws, policies, and industry best practices,” the city said in its response letter. “The city believes that the actions already taken, along with those currently underway, will improve operational effectiveness, promote accountability, and support the continued restoration and enhancement of public confidence in City operations.” This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # How South Carolina Prisons Are Limiting Access to Books by Gary K. Farlow, Prison Journalism Project July 14, 2026 In October, the South Carolina Department of Corrections began restricting the number of places from which prisoners can receive books, which has caused major disruptions for people in my facility. The approved vendors include Hamilton Book, Books N Things Warehouse, Books to Inmates, SureShot Books Publishing and the online stores of Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million. Noticeably absent from the list was Amazon and any of the nationwide free books-to-prisoners organizations. The list also did not include a single university or college. Before October, there had only been restrictions on the subject matter of books, which still continue. Incarcerated people at MacDougall Correctional Institution, where I’m detained, say the book policy has impacted their studies. “The biggest obstacle we’re facing with correspondence college programs is that this new policy is being interpreted in its strictest sense,” said one person working on his master’s in substance abuse counseling from an accredited university. He added that he believed “even class assignments are being rejected as coming from unapproved vendors.” Another man said that books he ordered and paid for before the policy change had also been rejected. “My entire next semester’s texts were sent, but I received a notice telling me I couldn’t have them since it was not from an approved vendor,” said the man, in his second year of a bachelor’s program. “When I tried to explain that it was from a university and not a bookseller, it was like I was speaking Klingon or something.” In such cases, prison staff have given people the choice of paying for return postage or simply having the “contraband books” destroyed. Everyone I spoke to for this story requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation. In an email to a Prison Journalism Project editor, Chrysti Shain, a spokeswoman for the South Carolina Department of Corrections said that the policy was created to help stop the flow of drugs into state prisons. Shain said SCDC had concerns about books being handled by people working at "unverified brick and mortar stores prior to shipment.” “By requiring that all book orders come directly from established, nationally recognized online retailers, SCDC can ensure that materials are shipped securely from controlled commercial distribution centers — minimizing risks while still allowing for extensive access to reading material,” Shain said. Shain denied that academic materials were being rejected on a widespread or regular basis, adding that the institution’s leadership was working with those who were taking correspondence courses to ensure they received their materials. “If an inmate has had coursework denied, they have not communicated with staff about it. We know of no instance in which this is true,” Shain said. Writers, poets and artists also say the policy has prevented them from receiving books and publications they were published in. “My art was just released as part of an inmate collection by a publisher out in California,” one artist told me. “I was so excited when I got the letter telling me that my art was going to be published only to have the mailroom reject the anthology. I didn’t have the funds to mail it home, so I guess they just put it in the trash.” According to Shain, the policy change coincided with a six-month investigation into a scheme in which a former employee and an incarcerated person mailed books with drug-laced pages to at least 20 incarcerated people across 14 prisons. Through the investigation, SCDC agents discovered 666 pages soaked in synthetic marijuana and 241 Suboxone strips in the packages. All of the shipments were disguised as being shipped from a bookstore. Last fall, Shain said, 15 incarcerated people at McCormick Correctional Institution overdosed and two of them died from drugs that SCDC believes were paper soaked in fentanyl-tainted K2. “The new policy allows inmates to receive books from reputable booksellers, and no one to be injured or killed by the contents,” Shain said. “It provides a level of safety that was not there before.” One staffer I spoke to at my facility said the prison had previously intercepted books with illegal substances sprayed on paper and even books being mailed in from fabricated book vendors. “Books have been received in revised Amazon boxes — that were not from Amazon — that contained controlled substances,” he said. “It’s often a real challenge to determine what’s authentic and what’s bogus.” “We’re just following directives,” said another staff member. “We didn’t make this new policy, but we have no choice but to follow it.” Both requested anonymity because they were not permitted to speak to the media. Prior to the new policy, there was a daily list of prisoners called to the mailroom to sign for and receive books. Now, days go by when no one is called. “It’s like it always is in prison — if one person messes up, everybody pays for it,” one old-timer told me. “I have been down near ’bout 30 years and I ain’t never seen it no different.” “Typical knee-jerk response,” said another person. “Instead of punishing the ones responsible, they punish everyone.” This article first appeared on Prison Journalism Project and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # OPINION: Rising health insurance exchange costs are bad news for Mississippi’s working poor by Bobby Harrison, Mississippi Today July 19, 2026 Mississippi had one of the nation’s largest declines in the Affordable Care Act health insurance exchange enrollment based on early 2026 numbers, meaning that it has become even more difficult for the state’s working poor to garner medical care. According to The Associated Press, Mississippi’s ACA health insurance exchange enrollment declined 26.4% from February 2025 to February 2026. It is likely that the enrollment will drop even more – perhaps significantly more – because of the higher cost to obtain a policy from the health insurance exchange based on decisions made by the administration of President Donald Trump. It could be logically argued that the higher costs of the insurance policies obtained on the exchange impact Mississippi’s working poor more than any other group in the country. First of all, Mississippi’s working poor population is behind the proverbial healthcare eight ball because the state is one of 10 nationwide that has not expanded Medicaid, as is allowed under the Affordable Care Act with the federal government paying the bulk of the costs. Clergy from across the state during a press conference at the state Capitol urge legislators to expand Medicaid, Wednesday, March 20, 2024, in Jackson. In the 40 states that have expanded Medicaid, many of their low income people do not have to depend on the healthcare exchange for coverage. They can sign up for expanded Medicaid to obtain healthcare. But in Mississippi, Medicaid expansion is not an option. So, when the Joe Biden administration pushed through legislation to greatly enhance the already existing federal subsidies for exchange health insurance policies, the working poor in Mississippi – even extending to middle-class families – signed up en masse. Mississippi had the second-highest increase in exchange enrollments – second only to Texas, which also had not expanded Medicaid. After the enhanced subsidies went into effect, Mississippi had a 242% increase to 338,159 people, according to KFF, a nationwide nonprofit that studies healthcare policy. Of the 10 states with the recent highest declines in ACA enrollment after the enhanced subsidies ended, Mississippi and South Carolina were the only two that had not expanded Medicaid. The enhanced subsidies ended in December 2025 after the Trump Administration and the Republican-led Congress refused to extend them. While multiple Republican lawmakers made efforts to pass legislation to extend the subsidies, U.S. Sens. Roger Wicker and Cindy Hyde-Smith and other Republican members of Mississippi’s congressional delegation made no visible efforts to reinstate the enhanced federal aid. As a result of the enhanced subsidies ending, KFF estimated that a 40-year-old Jacksonian earning $30,000 per year would see his or her monthly insurance cost increase from $42 to $155 for a policy purchased on the exchange. Based on that calculation, it should not be a surprise that Mississippians are dropping the health insurance exchange policies. After all, they are dealing with higher costs for groceries, gasoline and other necessities at the same time they are being hit with higher healthcare insurance costs. They are making the decision to drop the health insurance policies and hoping they do not get sick and understanding that if they do face a major medical bill with no insurance, they will be unable to pay it. The medical bills they cannot pay place a burden not only on them and their families, but also on the overall state healthcare system that must absorb those unpaid costs. In short, Mississippi's working poor have been hit with rising health insurance exchange costs and no Medicaid expansion, meaning they have less access to healthcare than most Americans. But the fact that poor Mississippians, facing higher costs, cannot afford healthcare should not be a surprise. Is it even news? Like the old adage goes, it is not news when dog bites man. It is news when man bites dog or when a poor Mississippian actually has access to decent healthcare. This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # As college graduates fret over finding jobs, a record shortage of workers is projected by Jon Marcus, The Hechinger Report July 12, 2026 Even as job seekers fret about artificial intelligence and tech behemoths announce massive layoffs, Matt Walsh is finding it surprisingly hard to help technology companies hire certain kinds of workers. That’s what Walsh’s recruiting firm, Blue Signal, does. And in specialties including semiconductor production, “the unemployment rate is probably negative 20 percent,” the CEO of the Phoenix-based search company said. “It’s ridiculous. There just aren’t enough people.” College graduates booed commencement speakers who hyped AI, which has steadily reduced the number of entry-level jobs available, and Meta cited AI when laying off more than 8,000 workers in May. But economists are sounding alarms that the AI talk is masking a different problem. It’s not that there won’t be enough jobs, these experts say — it’s that the United States is already facing what's projected to be the biggest shortage of workers in its history. The problem “could hobble the American economy for years to come,” predicts the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. “The largest labor shortage the country has ever seen,” the Lightcast labor market data company calls it. JPMorganChase warns of a national security risk from “a pervasive talent deficit that constrains the nation’s capacity to build, compete, and protect its interests.” And it’s not only tech workers. There will be shortages in the tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of nurses, physicians, teachers, engineers, pharmacists, mental health counselors, construction workers and airplane mechanics, both government and independent sources project. Most are jobs AI generally can’t do. “All of these people who keep a society functioning are the very people we’re not going to have enough of,” said Ron Hetrick, Lightcast’s principal economist. Among the trends that have been leading to this moment: a mismatch between the careers college graduates are pursuing and the kinds of jobs employers are struggling to fill. Far fewer students are majoring in health care fields than are needed to meet demand, for instance. **Related: Interested in innovations in higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly** higher education newsletter**.** “We have pumped so many young people into business and finance” when what’s really in demand are graduates in other fields, Hetrick said. “It’s like a factory producing these workers like widgets, even though society is saying, ‘We really don’t need them.’ And the factory just keeps pumping them out.” But the principal reason for the looming workforce shortages is much more basic. It’s that a protracted decline in the birthrate is coinciding with a record wave of retirements. Between 2024 and 2032, when the last baby boomers sign up for Social Security, more than 18 million college-educated workers will leave the labor force while fewer than 14 million enter it, according to the Georgetown center. Meanwhile, even as the number of people with associate and bachelor’s degrees falls, the center forecasts, the number of jobs requiring them will grow. That will leave a gap of 4.6 million fewer workers than are needed. Lightcast puts the deficit at an even higher 6 million. These aren’t dystopian predictions. The shortages are already showing up, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce reports. In many industries, it says, even if every worker now unemployed were plugged into an open job, there would still be positions left unfilled. “We have a crisis in front of us in not preparing people for the world that’s coming,” said Bill Haslam, the Republican former governor of Tennessee and co-chair with Democratic former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Commission on the American Workforce. The effect of population shifts on the supply of talent, with or without degrees, has been compounded by a drop in the proportion of high school graduates choosing to go to college; a sharply reduced rate of immigration; and a growing number of Americans who have left the workforce altogether because of such things as lack of child care, early retirement, incarceration and substance addiction. College and university enrollment is down by nearly two million students since its peak in 2010, the U.S. Department of Education reports. The low birthrate since around then means the number of college-age Americans is forecasted to decline by another 13 percent through 2041. ## The Looming Workforce Cliff ### Projected shortages of workers, 2024 to 2032 Managers | 2,900,000 ---|--- Teachers | 611,000 Driver/sales workers and truck drivers | 402,000 Nurses | 362,000 Engineers | 210,000 Construction workers | 200,000 ### Projected shortages of health care workers by 2038 Licensed practical nurses | 245,950 ---|--- Registered nurses | 108,960 Mental health counselors | 99,780 Addiction counselors | 77,050 Primary care physicians | 70,610 Physical therapists | 60,610 Pharmacists | 30,400 Pediatricians | 9,320 OB-GYNs | 7,660 Cardiologists | 7,270 ### Projected shortages of semiconductor industry workers by 2030 Technicians | 26,400 ---|--- Engineers (master's or doctoral degrees) | 17,400 Engineers (bachelor's degrees) | 9,900 SOURCES: Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce; U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration; Semiconductor Industry Association **Related:** What it’s like to enter the job market in the middle of an AI revolution Fewer than half as many people immigrated to the United States last year as the year before, the Census Bureau says; yet 41 percent of the home health aides who will be increasingly needed to care for the nation’s aging population have historically come from somewhere else, along with a fifth of nursing assistants, dentists, pharmacists and registered nurses. “We’re doing a fantastic job of rolling up the welcome mat and saying, ‘We don’t want you,’ ” said Brad Hershbein, senior economist and deputy director of research at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. Walsh, at Blue Signal, has a theory about why there seems to have been little attention to the looming labor shortage, outside of the industries affected. He uses the metaphor of frogs that will jump out of a pot of boiling water if they’re dropped into it but not if the water is brought to a boil gradually. In the same way, people are only slowly becoming aware of shortages, Walsh said. Already, in his small Illinois hometown, he said, he’s noticed it takes six months for people to get a doctor’s appointment because there aren’t enough doctors. “ ‘Everybody needs to hear this,’ ” Lightcast principal economist Ron Hetrick said an audience member implored him after he spoke at an event about the problem. But “some people really haven’t felt the pain enough to care as much as they should.” Besides, said Allison Shrivastava, education and labor market economist at the college search and ratings platform Niche, attention has been focused on the shrinking supply of entry-level jobs in certain fields. “When people are having trouble getting into the labor market, it’s hard to say there are going to be labor shortages soon,” Shrivastava said. **Related:** Faster, thinner: Colleges are swiftly trimming a B.A. degree to three years The fact is, she said, that “we are going to be hard pressed to find a corner of the economy where labor shortages don’t have an impact.” Shortages of workers have already begun to slow production lines at manufacturing facilities tied to the defense industry, according to JPMorganChase. Semiconductor plants are being built faster than they can be staffed. Too few electricians, line workers and technicians mean delays in the modernization of the energy grid. The semiconductor industry payroll is projected to grow by nearly 115,000 jobs by 2030, which is 67,000 more than there are workers now or projected to be in the pipeline to become technicians and engineers, the Semiconductor Industry Association estimates. “The semiconductor industry is not alone here,” however, said Erik Hadland, the association’s director of technology policy. “We’re a small part of a much larger issue.” State governments, which are closest to the problem, have been scrambling to avert it. To get college graduates to come or stay and work, some will help them pay off their student loans. A bill under consideration in Minnesota would offer in-state tuition to most public colleges and universities for children of parents who take jobs in that state, waiving the previous requirement that students have graduated from a Minnesota high school after attending for a minimum of three years. Several states have combined their higher education and workforce development agencies, including Missouri and Colorado. Connecticut has established both an Office of Workforce Strategy and a Career Pathways Commission. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has formed a working group to review that state’s workforce development infrastructure and increase the number of college graduates. Some states face shortages that appear more severe than others. South Dakota has just 41 workers for every 100 open jobs, for instance, while California and nine other states have more workers than jobs, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce finds. In Pennsylvania, a study commissioned by the state Department of Education has projected that the state needs to increase the number of people with credentials beyond high school by more than 4 percent to fill a shortage of 218,000 such workers a year by 2032. That will be a significant challenge, considering that college enrollment there has generally been falling. There are also shortages in industries whose workers don’t need college and university degrees. Fewer than half as many people are entering the construction trades as are needed, for example, according to Branka Minic, CEO of the Building Talent Foundation, which represents 3,600 employers who are trying to fill that gap. **Related:** More than a quarter of private colleges are at risk of closing, new projection shows “There’s plenty of jobs” in the skilled trades, she said, some starting at $50 an hour. “Show me what college graduates earn that kind of rate.” As for the prospect that AI can fill those largely physical roles, she told of seeing a poster plastered on an unfinished building. “Finish this, ChatGPT,” it said, mockingly. That higher pay is an example of how the market will respond to shortages, said Hershbein, at the Upjohn Institute. In some industries, he said, “wages and compensation will adjust, people will find training, businesses will train people and there will be adaptations. Necessity is the mother of invention.” Job seekers also need more current information about where the demand is greatest, said Cheryl Oldham, former vice president of education and workforce policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and now executive vice president for human capital at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “We’ve got to develop systems that can be much more nimble and responsive to the needs of the labor market, because the labor market is changing probably faster than it’s ever changed,” said Oldham, who also served in the George W. Bush administration. Some savvy workers are figuring it out for themselves. Seth Russell’s high school counselor nudged him toward college. Instead he learned welding and now works full-time as a fabricator. “I got hired straight out of high school. I have no debt. I’m just making money, paying bills,” said Russell, now 22, who lives in Torrance, California. “There’s so many jobs out there.” _Contact writer Jon Marcus at 212-678-7556,__jmarcus@hechingerreport.org_ _or jpm.82 on Signal._ _This story about_ shortages of workers_was produced by_ The Hechinger Report_, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our_ higher education newsletter_._ This article first appeared on The Hechinger Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # It takes a village: This Dane County community helped pioneer a national movement for aging together by Addie Costello / Wisconsin Watch, Wisconsin Watch July 14, 2026 Click here to read highlights from the story * Village programs like SAIL help older adults stay independent by connecting them with volunteers, social activities and trusted service providers. * Members both give and receive help, creating a neighbor-to-neighbor support network that reduces isolation and helps people age in their own homes. * Dane County's SAIL is one of the nation's oldest village organizations, and similar programs are expanding as communities look for new ways to support an aging population. Lush greenery and bright flowers surround John Short’s longtime Madison home. But the 83-year-old is not the one with a green thumb. That belongs to a volunteer through Sharing Active Independent Lives (SAIL), who visits regularly to work in Short’s garden. It’s one benefit he receives as a member of SAIL, a nonprofit-run network that helps older adults in Dane County find community and stay independent. While Short needs yardwork help, he can still drive. So he volunteers those skills, taking fellow members to appointments. Other members help with household chores while tech-savvy volunteers offer computer advice. One woman even volunteers by calling members on their birthdays. The network of older adults helped pioneer the village model, a national movement that encourages neighbors to support each other as they age in the communities they choose. Dane County members ages 55 and older pay sliding-scale dues to access volunteer services, social activities and a list of vetted service providers. SAIL launched in 2005 and is considered the country’s second-oldest village model. Now, there are 285 villages, including two others in Wisconsin, according to the Village to Village Network, which brings villages together to share best practices. Short joined SAIL more than two years ago, becoming one of about 500 members. Aside from receiving help in his garden, he has used the village’s list of background-checked service providers to hire a handyman. Short didn’t mind handing off some of the home maintenance after taking care of it for nearly three decades. He’s filled his extra time by reading more books and playing more bridge. Members can also join regular social activities, including clubs for books and biking. Members ages 90 years and older get an additional perk: a special lunch twice each year. Short has yet to qualify for that invitation. He finds connection through chats during volunteer driving shifts. While he typically refrains from asking passengers their ages, he recalls that the first woman he drove was 102. The rides, often to doctor’s appointments, have “been kind of fun,” he said. Such joy from volunteering doesn’t surprise Christine Klotz, president of the village’s operating council. “You get more from SAIL when you give more,” she said. Christine Klotz, 75, stands in her home outside of Madison, Wis., July 1, 2026. She joined Sharing Active Independent Lives with her husband a decade ago, paying full membership dues for years despite not needing services beyond social connection. (Addie Costello / Wisconsin Watch) Klotz, 75, joined SAIL with her husband a decade ago, paying full membership dues for years despite not needing services beyond social connection. “I just really believe in the model and believe in the concept of paying it forward,” Klotz said. “I want the organization to be strong when we need it.” Unlike other aging resources, members design and direct SAIL, Klotz said. “You're joining a group of people who are committed to work together to help each other as we get older.” ## **Want to join a village?** Dane County residents can learn more about SAIL at sailtoday.org or by calling 608-230-4445. Northern Door County residents can learn more about Do Good Door County at dogooddoorcounty.org/sail or 920-333-1083. Felician Village, a senior living community in Manitowoc, coordinates Felician Village at Home. To learn more, visit felicianvillage.org or call 920-684-7171, ext. 425. ## **What if you don’t live near a village?** Check with your Aging and Disability Resource Center to learn about similar programs nearby, said Ann Albert, the executive director of AgeBetter, the nonprofit that runs SAIL. Places of worship, libraries and local organizations that are actively recruiting volunteers can offer similar social benefits and a sense of connection found in the village model, said Shannon Guzman, the director of housing and livable communities with AARP Public Policy Institute. Want to start a village? Contact the Village to Village Network for resources and guidance. This article first appeared on Wisconsin Watch and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # WVU Health leadership failed to address painkiller thefts for years as opioids devastated West Virginia by Henry Culvyhouse, Mountain State Spotlight July 17, 2026 WVU Health Systems knew for years that employees were stealing highly addictive drugs. A federal settlement shows the medical system didn’t take enough steps to report and stop the problem. Between 2017 and 2024, drugs were disappearing inside the WVU Health System while the state was engulfed in a deadly and widespread opioid epidemic. In 2022, the Drug Enforcement Administration launched an investigation. Federal officials found systemwide theft and lax record keeping, and said the state’s biggest hospital system failed to stop nurses and other staff from stealing controlled substances. WVU Health Systems and the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of West Virginia entered into a $4.1 million settlement this week, which mandates the hospital system adopt procedures to prevent thefts, and to report when they happen. Details of the settlement show that as early as January 2017, the hospital system failed to report a suspicious order for Dilaudid, a powerful synthetic opiate the Mayo Clinic said is used as a last resort. As early as 2018, hospital officials recognized there was a problem in the Morgantown area. That same year in February, a patient complained she did not receive her Percocet, a mild painkiller, according to the settlement. Records show the suspected thief, a medical provider, was seen nodding off at the nurse’s station. In 2019, West Virginia University Hospital hired an outside expert to review procedures and issue a report. “The report identified multiple, potential controlled substance diversion issues, such as not securely storing controlled substances,” the settlement noted. “Leadership at WVUH was aware of recommendations to prevent diversion of controlled substances, not all of which were implemented across the WVUHS facilities.” During the first quarter of 2021, at least two medical providers admitted to stealing painkillers. Federal officials found the hospital system did not report these thefts to the DEA. The DEA launched its investigation into the issue in May 2022, after receiving reports that a nurse had stolen drugs, according to the settlement. “During the course of the investigation, DEA investigators learned that various WVUHS facilities, at various times, systemwide, were aware of employees suspected of diverting controlled substances from WVUHS facilities and patients,” the settlement states. Despite the incidents listed out over the years, and the systemic failures to prevent the theft of drugs detailed by the DEA, a hospital spokesperson in a statement downplayed the case as mainly a problem of paperwork. “Importantly, this matter concerned regulatory compliance, recordkeeping, and documentation requirements. It did not involve findings that WVU Health System intentionally engaged in unlawful distribution of controlled substances or that patient care was compromised,” the spokesperson said. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of West Virginia, which took the lead in the settlement, through a spokesperson declined to comment on the settlement. As to where the drugs went, Kevin McWilliams, a DEA spokesman for the Louisville Field Office, which oversees West Virginia, said that the investigators concluded most were being abused by the medical providers who took them. He said paperwork issues at the hospital made it very difficult to determine the quantity of drugs that had been stolen over the years. Moving forward, WVU Health Systems has agreed to implement a systemwide invoice tracker for controlled substances, a dedicated team to investigate the theft of drugs, a database of employees who have been suspected of stealing drugs and an education program on controlled substances. Additionally, WVU Health Systems will install more cameras and file any report of suspected theft to the DEA in a timely manner. This article first appeared on Mountain State Spotlight and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # Orleans DA’s office withholding critical case records from law firm reviewing wrongful convictions by Robert Stewart, Verite News New Orleans July 21, 2026 The Orleans Parish District Attorney’s office has repeatedly denied requests for public records from Innocence & Justice Louisiana, a nonprofit, pro bono law firm that has helped free dozens of wrongfully convicted prisoners. Internal case records held by the DA’s office are critical to the firm’s investigative work, said Jee Park, executive director of Innocence & Justice Louisiana, which was previously known as Innocence Project New Orleans. The ongoing denials, which began earlier this year, could result in delays to appeals and post-conviction proceedings, running the risk that innocent people will continue to languish in prison unnecessarily. “Most of our wrongfully convicted clients have been exonerated based on information contained in police and prosecution records,” Park said. “This has included evidence that another person committed the crime, that state witnesses had motives to lie to the jury, and that eyewitnesses were pressured to make a false identification of our client.” Park said that Innocence & Justice routinely requests records for its clients, which can be challenging for incarcerated people to access particularly because of the costs associated with obtaining them. “We rely on state actors to comply with Louisiana's public records laws in the interest of transparency, accountability, and revealing the truth,” Park said. In January, Innocence & Justice Louisiana filed a lawsuit against the DA’s office on behalf of one of its former employees. Beginning in 2024, the employee — Alexandria Cahill — tried to obtain records related a murder case it was investigating. According to the suit, Cahill’s requests were repeatedly met with delays and denials from the DA’s office, allegedly in violation of state sunshine laws. The Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office on South White Street in New Orleans, pictured in June 2026. Since the suit was filed, the DA’s office has denied at least seven requests for access to additional records in its custody, according to communications between the law firm and the DA’s office, which Innocence & Justice provided to Verite News. In emails and court filings, the DA’s office has claimed that Innocence & Justice owes thousands of dollars for records it has already provided the group, saying it will not comply with records requests until that bill is settled. Innocence & Justice Louisiana disputes the fees. In April, an Orleans Parish Civil District Court Judge ruled for the DA’s office, dismissing the suit. Innocence & Justice is appealing the ruling. The DA’s office did not respond to multiple requests from Verite News for comment. Cahill, the former employee, could not be reached for comment. The lawsuit marks a notable rift between Williams and the group, which the DA once counted among his allies. Williams, a former defense attorney who was elected in 2020 by campaigning as a progressive prosecutor, has a history of working with Innocence & Justice. Beginning in 2002, Williams did pro bono work for the firm to help free wrongfully incarcerated people. In 2003, he worked with the firm to help free Greg Bright and Earl Truvia, who had spent more than 27 years in prison for a 1997 murder in New Orleans’ Calliope project that they did not commit. Williams also served for years on the organization’s board of directors, according to Williams’ 2020 campaign website. After taking office in 2021, Williams hired former Innocence Project New Orleans Director Emily Maw to head his newly created civil rights division, which was tasked with reviewing potential wrongful convictions and excessive sentences under previous administrations. The work of the civil rights division led to hundreds of prisoners having their sentences reduced or being released. ### Fight over fees The fees that Williams’ office is saying Innocence & Justice owes can be traced to the post-conviction case of Raymond Laugand. Laugand was convicted of second-degree murder for the 1996 shooting death of a 27-year-old man in New Orleans. After two trials — the first was overturned by the Louisiana Supreme Court after it found that Laugand’s legal counsel was not prepared for trial — he was sentenced to life in prison in 2002. Innocence & Justice, then Innocence Project New Orleans, investigated his case and proved that the state withheld evidence that could have changed the outcome for Laugand. Williams’ civil rights division participated in a joint review of Laugand’s case together with the organization. And in 2023, the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office agreed that Laugand did not receive a fair trial. Laugand’s conviction was vacated in September, 2023. But the Louisiana Attorney General’s office, which took over the murder case in 2024 after Williams recused himself from it, sought to re-prosecute Laugand for the murder. During discovery in Laugand’s new case, Innocence & Justice asked an Orleans Parish Criminal District Court judge to subpoena the DA to provide certain records pertaining to Laugand’s case. The DA’s office provided those records, sending the organization an invoice for roughly $5,400 for copying charges. A subsequent subpoena for additional records resulted in an invoice for about $3,900. Louisiana’s public records law allows public bodies to charge fees for providing copies of public records. And it gives the custodian of the records the right to refuse providing additional public records if the requester has an unpaid balance. But the law governing subpoenas in Louisiana says that when the court determines a criminal defendant seeking case records is determined to be indigent — or unable to pay — the custodian of the records should provide them without an advance fee. The fees should only take effect upon a conviction. In Cahill’s case, Innocence & Justice argues that Laugand was found to be indigent But the DA’s office maintained its position that Innocence & Justice is not entitled to review or receive any public records until it pays the unpaid balance from the records obtained through subpoena for the Laugand case. In a legal filing, the office further said that the law firm’s request for records through subpoena is “a public records request in disguise.” Robert Jones. Robert Jones is a former client of Innocence & Justice Louisiana — he was incarcerated for more than 23 years for a murder and sexual assault conviction obtained through prosecutorial misconduct and the state’s withholding of evidence and sentenced to life in prison. Innocence & Justice helped him get exonerated for those crimes. He won his freedom in 2015 and later sat on the group’s board of directors at the same time as Williams. In an interview, Jones said the indigent status of the client in question is key to understanding the situation. It would be different if the client were paying a law firm for representation, but the group represents its clients at no charge, as its clients often do not have the means to pay for complex investigations and post-conviction legal work. “I think that maybe the courts and the DA’s office are actually missing that. They're missing that piece.” Jones said about the indigent status of the law firm’s client. Jones said that while he was incarcerated he wrote to the Orleans Parish DA’s Office for years requesting his records, but was only able to get them in full when Innocence & Justice stepped in to represent him. “The records can literally determine whether a person dies in prison or [is] released from prison. That’s the importance of the records,” Jones said. This article first appeared on Verite News New Orleans and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * *

Down Ballot covers state and local news in the U.S. It's produced by journalist Ben Ledbetter

By Berry Craig (Kentucky Lantern) Published: July 16, 2026 Democratic socialism is on the rise in some blue states, but socialists are still rare in ruby red Republican Kentucky. That wasn’t always so. Six-score years ago, Louisville hosted the Christian Socialist Fellowship movement’s first national convention. The movement even spread to the Jackson Purchase, arguably Kentucky’s Trumpiest territory today. The CSF aimed “to perfect an organization of the ‘Christian people who believe in socialism,'” according to the June 18, 1906, Louisville Courier-Journal. Conservative evangelicals might rate “Christian Socialist” as the most oxymoronic of oxymorons. Nonetheless, the CSF hoped to “permeate churches, denominations, and other religious institutions with the social message of Jesus; to show that socialism is the necessary economic expression of Christian life; to end the class trouble by establishing industrial democracy, and to hasten the reign of justice and brotherhood on earth,” according to the June 19, 1906, C-J. The Christian socialists met in Liederkranz Hall with “delegates from many states…in attendance,” the paper reported on June 18. Speakers at the three-day gathering included the Rev. W.H. Ramsay of Louisville’s Unitarian Church. William A. Ward of Henderson was elected CSF treasurer. Delegates tapped for secretary Lucien V. Rule “whose Post Office is Goshen, but who is reckoned usually as a citizen of Louisville,” the C-J told its readers on June 19. The convention also featured outdoor speechmaking on the Jefferson County courthouse steps and at Third Avenue and Market Street. At the YMCA, the Rev. D.P. Bliss of New York City addressed the Louisville Ministerial Alliance, explaining the CSF’s aims and urging “that the Louisville Ministers co-operate with the Fellowship.” Christian socialism took root even in rural areas, including the Purchase, the state’s westernmost region. In 1911, Viola, in Graves County, welcomed, or at least tolerated, a “Second Annual Summer Meeting of'” local Christian socialists, according to The Christian Socialist, the CSF newspaper. The rally, mostly held outdoors, followed a smaller 1910 get-together, apparently in a tobacco barn. The 1911 meeting lasted from July 30 to Aug. 6 and attracted a large crowd; 800 showed up for the closing session, The Christian Socialist reported. Meanwhile, in 1909, British socialist writer John Spargo wrote that the Christian Socialist Fellowship had organized meetings nationwide. In an article published in the July issue of the American Journal of Sociology, he added that “many of its most active members are equally active in the socialist party itself. Just prior to the last election, some 200 ministers, all in actual charge of parishes, and representing all the leading Protestant sects, signed a manifesto pledging themselves to the socialist cause, and it is said that upward of two thousand other ministers have signified their general sympathy and support.” There were Catholic Christian socialists, too, Spargo wrote. “When a bishop of the Protestant Episcopal church in America can carry the red card of membership in the socialist party, and when, as at the last convention in Chicago, delegates to the national convention of the socialist party, as loyal Catholics, without any shame or apology to any of their comrades, can go directly from mass to the work of shaping the policy of the socialist party, it is obvious that we are in the presence of a new socialism of a quality and temper undreamed of by Marx and Engels.” While the CSF faded away, there is an Institute for Christian Socialism whose website says the group’s mission is supporting “US churches, their members, and institutions in confronting the world’s captivity to capitalism and in claiming, embodying, and promoting the radical socialism of the Christian faith and life.” ICS Board Member C.R. Boardman said he doesn’t know of a direct connection to the CSF, but added, “we do consider ourselves in their lineage.” Election success by New York’s Democratic Mayor Zohran Mamdani and other Democrats who belong to the Democratic Socialists of America have given the vapors to Trump and the MAGA faithful and driven centrist Democrats like James Carville to the fainting couch. Trump and the GOP have resurrected old-time Cold War Red-baiting against the Democrats. “Republicans have had success since the McCarthy Witch Trials of the 1950s with simply accusing anyone with policies to the left of Hitler of being a socialist or a communist,” regular contributor Ivonne Rovira wrote in Forward Kentucky. “That’s obviously no longer working. But that doesn’t mean folks won’t try.” In her post titled “Jesus Christ, Super Socialist,” she proposed a sure-fire response to the socialist slam from folks who lean leftward: “The next time someone calls you a socialist whether you’re actually in DSA or just a progressive, embrace it: make your face light up and say, ‘Thank you! I try to be a good Christian!'”

By Lisa Sorg (North Carolina Newsline) Published: July 14, 2026 _This article originally appeared on_ Inside Climate News_, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter_ here_._ Forever War_: This is part of a series about the PFAS crisis in North Carolina._ CUMBERLAND COUNTY, N.C.—Mike Watters was running on two hours of sleep and one cup of coffee as he drove home to Grays Creek from the federal courthouse in Raleigh. Watters is among 2,658 plaintiffs suing Chemours, a chemical manufacturer near Fayetteville, North Carolina, for releasing toxic GenX and other PFAS into the Cape Fear River and surrounding air, soil, groundwater and drinking water wells—including the Watters family’s. By the time he arrived in Raleigh for opening arguments in the lawsuit, he had waited eight years for his day in court. But Watters and the other plaintiffs won’t get to see a trial this week. He learned this morning that both sides had agreed to settle out of court. “I wanted to see it go to trial,” Watters said. “I would have liked to have seen how a jury would have handled it.” Attorneys have yet to disclose details of the settlement, which affects all of the plaintiffs. “We are pleased to report that we have made significant progress in resolving our clients’ claims in a way that will compensate them for the impact of PFAS chemicals from the Fayetteville Works Plant to their lives and property,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys, Brett Land and Cary McDougal, of the Baron & Budd law firm, said. “We believe this is an extremely positive and successful outcome on behalf of our clients.” Jamie White, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, tends to her vegetable garden. She lives in Grays Creek, a community hard-hit by PFAS contamination from the Chemours Fayetteville Works plant five miles away. Credit: Mehmet Demirci/Inside Climate News A Chemours spokesperson said the company had no comment on the case. GenX is one of roughly 15,000 types of PFAS, also known as forever chemicals, because they persist in the environment for hundreds of years. They are used to manufacture Teflon coatings, stain-, grease- and water-resistant materials, and other consumer products. Scientific studies have linked PFAS to higher rates of testicular and kidney cancer, thyroid disorders, reproductive problems, low birth weight and a depressed immune system. Chemours has disputed the link between the chemicals and these health effects. The Chemours plant was owned by DuPont, also named in the lawsuit, until 2015. The plaintiffs were seeking compensation for their diminished home values, the inability to fully enjoy and use their property and emotional distress about their health. Had the trial gone forward, Watters would have finally heard Chemours’ officials testify. If called to the witness stand, Watters could have looked at them while he told his story of how the contamination nearly ruined his life. Bellwether trials such as this one serve as test cases, whose jury verdicts can portend the outcome of future litigation with the remaining plaintiffs. Sometimes, to avoid costly and protracted litigation, the parties settle the cases out of court. That’s what happened in this case. The plaintiffs’ attorneys told Inside Climate News they could not disclose who initiated the settlement. Chemours has faced lawsuits in multiple states, including New Jersey and Ohio. The company has accrued $361 million in PFAS-related litigation liabilities, according to the company’s December 2025 filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. ### **How To Comment on the EPA-Chemours Settlement** The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed a settlement agreement with Chemours to resolve violations of clean water, toxic substances and hazardous waste laws related to PFAS. The proposed settlement would affect three states—North Carolina, West Virginia and New Jersey. The agreement is worth $450 million, but most of those costs are related to alternative water supplies and other mitigation measures outside of North Carolina. The fine itself would be $22.5 million, which the EPA says it calculated based on Chemours’ ability to pay. Half of the money will go to West Virginia. The rest of the money would cover pollution controls and other remediation projects in the three states, albeit with a financial cap and the potential for Chemours to earn financial credits. > The agreement is contingent on a federal court’s approval. > The public can comment on the proposed settlement through July 29. > By email: pubcomment-ees.enrd@usdoj.gov > By postal mail: Assistant Attorney General, U.S. DOJ—ENRD, P.O. Box 7611, Washington, DC 20044–7611 The litigation was among several lawsuits against Chemours and its predecessor, DuPont. Three North Carolina public water utilities affected by the contamination are also suing the companies; one case is scheduled for state court next month. These legal proceedings are happening in the broader context of the Environmental Protection Agency’s erosion of PFAS regulations. The court system is one of the few places where plaintiffs feel they can bring polluters to heel. Under EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, an appointee of President Trump, the agency has proposed rescinding drinking water standards for GenX and two other forever chemicals, which were established under the Biden Administration. The rollback is expected to be finalized this year. In April, Zeldin appointed two Chemours officials, Shawn Gannon and Sean Uhl, to the EPA’s Science Advisory Board, which will “provide Gold Standard scientific advice” to the agency, according to the EPA website. Both Gannon and Uhl were involved in projects at Fayetteville Works and are quoted in court documents unsealed earlier this year related to the public utilities’ lawsuits against the company. In a separate legal case from the litigation involved Mike Watters, the EPA in late June announced a proposed $450 million settlement agreement with Chemours to resolve a raft of environmental violations involving GenX, PFOA and other forever chemicals at plants in West Virginia and New Jersey, and at Fayetteville Works in North Carolina. Critics say the proposed settlement agreement contains so many loopholes it would do little to protect communities near the New Jersey and West Virginia plants and would accomplish even less for North Carolina. North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson, who says the EPA didn’t consult with state officials about the settlement, even as a courtesy, called it “an insult to the people of eastern North Carolina. Our state is ground zero for GenX contamination, but this deal does practically nothing to clean up our water.” Chemours denies that it violated the laws enumerated in the settlement but agreed to its terms. Those include the EPA’s waiver of any future legal action against Chemours for the violations listed in the agreement. That would prevent the EPA from reopening those cases in the future, even under different leadership. The EPA referred Inside Climate News to the U.S. Department of Justice, which issued a statement: “Through this commitment, Chemours will better control PFAS at its plants, allowing the company to continue its manufacturing operations while protecting communities in North Carolina, West Virginia, and New Jersey from PFAS exposure,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Adam Gustafson of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division. “This agreement ensures that the company will manufacture these critical materials in a responsible manner.” The agreement covers only a few of the 15,000-plus types of PFAS, including GenX and its predecessor, PFOA, which is no longer manufactured. Sampling by North Carolina environmental regulators, public utilities and Chemours has found dozens of PFAS compounds in discharges from the plant, public water supplies and private drinking water wells. The lawsuit covered 17 types of chemicals that have been detected in neighbors’ wells. According to previously sealed court records released earlier this year by U.S. Magistrate Robert Numbers II, in 2002 DuPont also failed to disclose the presence of fluoromalonate, which is not a type of PFAS but nonetheless a “toxic compound of concern” in the plant’s wastewater. Nor did the company, in 2008, include all information to the EPA about environmental releases of GenX and workers’ exposure to the compound, according to the agency’s complaint. Meanwhile, the company was also allegedly misleading DEQ by reassuring the agency that it would not release GenX from a specific manufacturing area of Fayetteville Works, court documents show. That was partially true, but DuPont later admitted that it had not disclosed it was releasing GenX and its precursors—chemicals that under some conditions can become GenX—from a different part of the plant into the Cape Fear River and the air through the stacks. From the stacks, those chemicals mixed with atmospheric moisture, became GenX and contaminated the drinking water wells of thousands of people, state environmental regulators found, including the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. “I know the chemicals affected more than just my property,” said Watters, who has participated in studies to measure PFAS in his blood. “I know what’s in my body, and the bodies of my wife, dog and son.” “The communities that have been impacted by this company’s toxic pollution should be infuriated that Chemours is getting away with this,” said Jean Zhuang, senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center. “After decades of research on how much they’ve destroyed the air and drinking water and soil and rivers and all of these communities, the company is fighting tooth and nail to shield itself. It has no intent to protect the community.” _This article was updated on July 13, 2026, to correct a statement about the type of lawsuit filed against Chemours and DuPont. It was not a class-action but a consolidated action._

By Kevin Hardy (Stateline) Published: July 9, 2026 Household water costs could nearly double in some American cities, new research suggests, as climate change further stresses municipal water systems. Researchers at Stanford University and other institutions studied how a hotter, drier climate is poised to spike water bills for residents of Santa Cruz, California, in a peer-reviewed study published this week in the journal Nature Sustainability. While the study focused on that coastal city, the outlook is similar for many cities that will be forced to make costly upgrades to water systems as climate change intensifies, said lead author Jennifer Skerker, who worked on the research while studying for her doctorate in civil and environmental engineering at Stanford. Without significant government funding, the costs of new water transport systems, desalination plants and sewage water reuse systems are likely to be borne by individual water systems, which are expected to pass them onto consumers through water bills. “So this really pits water affordability against water reliability, when in reality we need both of these to have safe, accessible and affordable water for everyone,” said Skerker, who now works for a local water utility. Though low-income residents use significantly less water, they will be hit hard by rising rates, which force them to spend a larger share of their resources, she said. Water rates have increased at three times the rate of inflation over the past two decades, as water providers updated aging infrastructure and addressed deferred maintenance backlogs. > Nitrate contaminates the drinking water of millions of Americans, study finds The research comes as many Americans are already struggling with high energy bills: One in six American households are behind on utility bills, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association. While rising electric prices have sparked outrage among ratepayers, regulators and state lawmakers, relatively cheaper water has not always received the same level of attention. “I think water affordability definitely needs to be part of the conversation with energy affordability,” Skerker said. “…On the water side, households might be using less water than is healthy, or we can even see households making tradeoffs between paying for water or energy, or paying for groceries or medical bills.” Like other Western cities, Santa Cruz has implemented many water conservation practices: By 2021, locals had cut water use by nearly two-thirds over two decades. That leaves few low-cost options to increase water supplies in an area entirely reliant on surface water. The study lays out several potential scenarios for local water bills depending on climate conditions and water investments. In one of the driest scenarios, researchers predict median water bills for the poorest residents could rise from about $60 to $111 per month (in 2026 dollars) by the middle of the century. That means more than one-third of households in Santa Cruz could struggle to afford water. The study acknowledges that cities with larger reservoirs, more interconnected systems or access to lower-cost water sources may not experience the same acceleration in water bills. But it does envision “water affordability hotspots” across the country as more areas struggle to source and treat enough drinking water. “It does seem unsustainable,” Skenker said, “and I think cities really need more help from the state and federal government.” _Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at_ _khardy@stateline.org_ _._ SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE

By Shannon Heckt (Virginia Mercury) Published: July 9, 2026 Prince William County supervisors voted against a rezoning proposal for the Dulles Cloud South data center project Tuesday, less than a week after developers retreated from a legal battle over building the 1,760-acre Digital Gateway data center complex in the county. The Dulles Cloud South project would have been the largest in county history, topping out at nearly 2,000 acres allowing 43 million square feet of floor space for data centers. The local decisions to halt both data center projects “will have statewide ramifications,” Sen. Danica Roem, D-Manassas, said in a call after the vote. Developers asked to amend the county’s comprehensive plan to rezone the acreage bordering Loudoun County from mostly agricultural and residential to industrial to build the project. The county has a technology overlay district that is already zoned for developments like data centers, but some applications have been approved outside of those zones. Prince William is home to over 40 data centers, with dozens more on the way. The Coalition to Protect Prince William county — a group comprising residents and data center opponents —rallied outside the supervisors meeting on Tuesday afternoon. The group was also one of the foremost detractors of the Digital Gateway project. Similarly to their concerns about that proposal, representatives of the group questioned the potential transmission infrastructure needed for Dulles South, its power and water demands, and how the loss of the agricultural land it would require would impact the area’s rural character. The Digital Gateway project was slated to span 22 million square feet near the Manassas National Battlefield Park, space reserved for data centers. The related rezoning appeal had been a point of contention since it was proposed in 2022. Citizens argued in the lawsuit they lodged against the county that leaders unfairly sped up the zoning process and limited public input on establishing a technology overlay district for data center development. “We are sick and tired of having to show up here and fight for a quality of life to protect our grid, to protect our property, this needs to end today,” said Elena Schlossberg, the executive director of the Coalition to Protect Prince William County on Tuesday. County leaders said after they reviewed the proposed rezoning for Dulles South and the change to the comprehensive plan it would require, they recommended against allowing the project to move forward. The supervisors’ report stated: “Although this change would substantially increase the amount of the commercial tax base and increase employment opportunities, the request raises substantial concerns regarding infrastructure adequacy, environmental and rural character impacts, and land use compatibility with surrounding (zones).” Dozens of people spoke for and against the Dulles South project. Those in support of the project told supervisors in the multi-hour meeting on Tuesday that the tax revenue would be beneficial to the county and that development is inevitable in the area. Michael Slater, a resident of the Four Seasons neighborhood who is pushing back against nearby data center proposals, said the county has allowed enough of this kind of development. “We have enough data centers to fuel the whole world. What do you want more for?” Slater said. The board, which has welcomed data center development in the past, was united in their vote against the rezoning, which would have been the first step in the process to begin applications for data centers in that area. “I don’t believe that data centers are the answer to all of our problems, and I am very worried that we’re putting all of our eggs in one basket, and I’m worried about the opportunity cost of voting for every data center that comes before us,” Board Chair Deshundra Jefferson said during the meeting. The board voted against the rezoning 8-0. Roem said the blocking of the Digital Gateway and Dulles South projects represents a “paradigm shift” in the county, where historically, there has been support for the facilities that bring millions in local tax revenue, like much of Northern Virginia. The senator added that the action in Prince William could prompt the General Assembly to pass more legislation to help localities with solving siting issues and meeting their goals to preserve agricultural spaces and access to land for housing developments. “The two counties with the most data centers are telegraphing to the industry that ‘Hey this is too much,’” Roem said. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX.

**It's Friday July 10, 2026 and in this morning's issue we're covering:** Arrests of immigrant parents create mental health crisis for children, New Mexico regulators announce 16 community solar projects are online, generating power, A Mom Called 911 For an Ambulance. NYPD Sent Handcuffs, Therapy in a tent: The healthcare many homeless Californians need but aren’t getting, New Orleans Haitian community reeling in the wake of U.S. Supreme Court ruling, How The Death Penalty At 50 Is Far More Broken Than We Knew, Can guaranteed income help people leaving incarceration? Two NC local governments are testing it. **Media outlets and others featured:** Minnesota Reformer, Source New Mexico, MindSite News, CalMatters, Verite News, The Marshall Project, North Carolina Health News. __Charlotte's Documenters, powered by Charlotte Journalism Collaborative, has launched and I'm one of multiple people that will be providing coverage of under-reported public meetings in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.__ City Bureau__in Chicago runs the Documenters program. -- Ben Ledbetter, Editor of Down Ballot__ Charlotte Documenters * * * ## Arrests of immigrant parents create mental health crisis for children By Claudia Boyd-Barrett, KFF Health News (Minnesota Reformer) Published: June 24, 2026 _This_ article_first appeared on_ KFF Health News. LOS ANGELES — Damian Zermeño, 15, sensed something was wrong the moment he got home from school. His aunt sat at the dining table, sobbing. His father, who’d walked him to the bus stop that morning and promised to take him to dinner when he got back, wasn’t there. Saúl Zermeño, a 45-year-old single dad, had gone to a routine check-in appointment at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office that morning, a requirement he’d complied with for years. The father had deferred action that allowed him to stay and work in the U.S., according to his attorney. But that day, Oct. 3, officers deported him to Mexico, where he hadn’t lived since he was 9 years old. Zermeño had been Damian’s sole caregiver since he was a baby because his mother chose not to be involved in the boy’s life, the family said. Suddenly, Damian, who was born in the U.S., found himself separated from his father by thousands of miles and a heavily guarded border. The previously cheerful 10th grader, who doesn’t have a driver’s license and can make a few basic dishes but isn’t used to cooking for himself, faced navigating his teenage years alone, his dad’s presence reduced to a two-dimensional image on his phone. “I thought it wasn’t true,” Damian said. “I just went to my room. I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t even want to eat.” Damian is among an estimated hundreds of thousands of children, most of them U.S. citizens, separated from a parent by the Trump administration’s deportation policies. Their mothers and fathers have been deported or locked for months inside detention centers, often miles away from where their families live. These children are separated, sometimes violently, from the adults they depend on. Parents have been arrested while dropping kids off at school, inside their homes, and at immigration check-ins with their children present. Most people detained have no criminal conviction. (Being in the U.S. without authorization is typically a civil offense). With their parents gone, kids’ lives are plunged into fear and uncertainty. As a result, a generation of children from immigrant families are exhibiting mental health problems that could affect them for years. Parents, therapists, and others who work with immigrant families said they’ve already encountered preschoolers with speech delays, elementary school children who talk of suicide, and teenagers too anxious to leave the house. Research has shown repeatedly that separating children from their parents harms their health and development. The stress of losing a primary caregiver creates havoc in a child’s brain and body, increasing their risk for mental and physical health problems, including depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, a weakened immune system, and developmental delays. “You can just see it in their faces; it’s almost like the light has been dimmed in their eyes,” said the Rev. Tanya Lopez, a pastor at Downey Memorial Christian Church who regularly visits immigrant families as part of a support organization made up of Los Angeles-area religious leaders. The health risks from this stress response are long-term. People who experience parental separation and other traumatic events as children are more likely to have heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and other chronic conditions as adults. In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said ICE does not separate families, and that parents are asked if they want to be removed from the country with their children or to designate a safe person for them to stay with in the U.S. However, a report by the Women’s Refugee Commission and Physicians for Human Rights found that many parents aren’t given that choice, and that ICE often doesn’t ask detainees if they have children or take steps to ensure that children left behind are safe. Saúl Zermeño said ICE officers didn’t ask about his son or check on Damian’s well-being when he was deported. For days after his father’s deportation, Damian didn’t want to leave his room, eat, or go to school. He stopped talking to his friends. He stopped playing his favorite video game, _Fears To Fathom_. When he returned to school a week later, the teenager would cry in class or walk out overwhelmed with sadness. Even his favorite subject — English — lost its appeal. Damian and his father were inseparable; family members joked that they never saw one without the other. Zermeño took Damian, who has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, autism, and other health conditions, to his medical appointments. He cooked for him and combed his hair. He loved to take Damian to his favorite Thai restaurant or to get boba drinks after school. As much as they joked around and played pranks on each other, Zermeño also taught Damian the importance of work by bringing him along to construction jobs and to find supplies at Home Depot. Damian used to get annoyed with his father’s motivational chats about responsibility. Now they’re one of the things he misses most. “I thank my dad every day for teaching me to be strong before he left,” Damian said. Elsewhere in Los Angeles, Jacob, a shy 9-year-old with cropped, curly hair, skinny limbs, and a serious expression, was missing his mom. On a Saturday in May, he clung tightly to his father’s hand as they walked among homeless people, street peddlers, and the stench of urine that hangs in the air outside the building where they live in a cramped apartment. He hoped his mom would soon be released from immigration detention so that he could hug her again. “If my mom was here, I’d be happy,” he said. “Right now, I’m not.” Jacob is in some ways a typical 9-year-old. He likes playing _Roblox_ and _Street Fighter_. He dreams of becoming a police officer and of owning a guard dog, “because you can train them and they defend you.” But he also endured a harrowing journey, even before being separated from his mom in January. Jacob’s family fled their home country of Colombia in 2024 because members of a paramilitary group threatened to kill them, his father, Andreis, said. During their journey to the United States, Jacob saw dead bodies while trekking through the jungle, was kidnapped and robbed at gunpoint with his parents, witnessed a rape, and had to sell candy and beg for money, his dad said. _KFF Health News_ is not using the father’s or son’s real name because the family fears it would jeopardize their asylum cases. After the family arrived in Los Angeles, Jacob suffered from nightmares and an intense fear of being alone. He started to recover once he began attending school and got connected to therapy through the school district, his dad said. For a short while, the family felt they had found peace. Then, immigration officers detained Jacob’s mother at a check-in appointment while he and Andreis sat in the waiting room. The mother has a pending asylum application and no criminal record, Andreis said. The father said he and his son broke down when officers informed them of his wife’s detention, handing them a bag with her wallet and cellphone. They returned home without her, leaving Jacob inconsolable. “He was terrified,” the father said, fighting back tears, his voice growing quiet as he recounted that moment. “He was crying with rage.” After that, Jacob didn’t want to eat or go to school. When he went to school at his dad’s insistence, his teacher called home to ask why he was crying in class. Jacob couldn’t sleep. He acted out. He blamed his dad. “When will my mom come back?” he asked his dad. “Why do they have my mom? I miss my mom.” At the same time, Andreis said, he was going through his own crisis, trying in vain to console his son while wrestling with grief, worry, and desperation over what happened to his wife. He stopped his work as a laborer for two weeks to take care of Jacob, but that created financial stress and meant he sometimes couldn’t afford to fund his wife’s commissary account so she could buy better food and make phone calls. Jacob lived for those phone calls. Jacob listed all the things he missed about his mom, including her cooking (rice with meat, corn cakes with egg), visiting the park together, and her taking him to get his hair cut, treating him to McDonald’s on the weekend, and bringing him to church. Most of all, he missed being close to her. “I would lie down with her, and I’d watch videos with her,” he said. “My mom would hug me and I’d hug her.” Sometimes he sprayed her perfume on himself so he could smell her. After almost five months at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, Jacob’s mother was released based on a habeas corpus petition in May. The family is still living in fear of detention or deportation. The father worries he too could be detained, and what that would mean for Jacob. Andreis is currently appealing a removal order for the two of them. A recent analysis published by the Brookings Institution estimates that over 200,000 children — including 145,000 U.S. citizen children — have likely had at least one parent detained since President Donald Trump returned to office. About a third of those children are under age 6. The number of children with detained parents is expected to grow as the federal government pours over $200 billion into immigration enforcement, including funding from the GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act and a $70 billion appropriation Trump signed this month. More than 4.6 million U.S. citizen children live with a parent at risk of deportation, according to the report. ## Families broken Noemi, a Guatemalan mother and asylum seeker, stood in the parking lot at an ICE office north of Los Angeles, her three children wailing and clinging to her, glass from the family’s car scattered at their feet. Moments earlier, immigration agents had smashed a window and forced her partner out of the car while he waited for Noemi and the kids to finish a check-in appointment. While they were inside, officers tried to separate Noemi from the couple’s children, ages 9, 7, and 1, but gave up after the kids started screaming, Noemi said. Meanwhile, her partner, a Mexican national who’s lived in the U.S. for almost 20 years, was sent to the ICE detention center in Adelanto. “It was something tragic, something inexplicable that happened that day,” said Noemi, who asked to withhold her full name because she fears government retaliation for sharing her story. “It’s something that marks you for your whole life. My family was broken.” Located in the Mojave Desert, the privately run Adelanto ICE Processing Center is the immigration detention center closest to Los Angeles and one of the largest in the U.S. It held a daily average of over 1,700 people as of April, and a facility next door called the Desert View Annex held an additional 426. Since her partner’s detention in December, Noemi said, their children haven’t been the same. > How one Minnesota family is managing life after deportation Her 7-year-old daughter, till then usually happy and smiling, became depressed and refused to eat. Her once-high grades plummeted, and she forgot the names of letters and numbers in both English and Spanish. She and her 9-year-old brother struggled to sleep and asked constantly about their dad, wondering if he was taken because they’d done something wrong. “Why is this happening to us?” they asked her. “We’re good. We’re studying.” Noemi’s youngest daughter went back to crawling for three months, even though she’d already learned to walk before her father was taken. The little girl would cry out in her sleep, “Pa! Pa!” Sofia Mendoza, a therapist who works with immigrant families at a community clinic in Los Angeles County, said separated children can experience a form of grief. It’s hard for them to come to terms with their parent’s absence because the parent is still alive, but not with them. This can disrupt the child’s bond with that parent and their ability to form trusting relationships in the future, she said. Many children also become extremely anxious, angry, and fearful, Mendoza said. Young children often complain of physical symptoms such as stomachaches, develop separation anxiety, and regress to earlier behaviors like bed-wetting. Older children may have panic attacks, nightmares, and difficulty focusing, Mendoza said. Caregiver loss is also associated with increased risk of suicide and substance use in children. Norma Gómez, a project manager for the Mixteco Indigena Community Organizing Project in Oxnard, said after immigration raids shook the community last summer, her 9-year-old daughter refused to go to school for a week and was afraid to leave her mom and dad, even though they’re legal U.S. residents. She’d seen other kids at school crying because family members had been detained. Gómez showed her daughter their U.S. residency documents to reassure her. The child asked to make copies for her classmates, hoping they would protect them too. ## ‘Time to be an adult’ Back in East Los Angeles, Damian is living with one of his aunts and struggling to adapt to not having his father around. He said his grades have dropped because he can’t focus in school. He no longer wants to do things he used to enjoy with his dad, such as going out to eat. “Fun is over,” he said. “It’s time to be an adult right now.” Being without his father has forced Damian to become more independent, he and his aunt Claudia Zermeño said. Before, his dad did almost everything for him. Now, Damian does his own laundry, helps with housework, and styles his own hair. He’s protective of his aunts, who are both devastated by their brother’s absence; he hugs them frequently and tells jokes to try to cheer them up. He doesn’t want to upset them more by showing his own sadness. Damian receives therapy both in and outside of school. He said he’s learned breathing exercises that have helped, but he still feels sad and worried a lot of the time. Sometimes he feels angry. “I try my hardest to think, to stay focused,” he said. “But with everything that’s going on, I can’t keep the facade of ‘everything’s normal’ when I feel heartbroken.” Saúl Zermeño, now living in Guadalajara, said he’s worried about his son’s health. Damian has a genetic condition called neurofibromatosis Type 1, which causes tumors to grow on nerve tissue in his body, including one in his head that, if not checked regularly by a doctor and monitored by his family, could interfere with his brain. He also suffers from epilepsy and was born with only one kidney, which means he tires easily and doesn’t play sports. Saúl is afraid his son won’t get the care he needs without him there. As Damian’s legal guardian, Claudia Zermeño is doing everything she can for him, but she has two children of her own and is also caring for her mother, who has neurological problems from a stroke. Damian talks with his dad as often as he can. He hopes to visit his father in Mexico, but he doesn’t have a passport and, as a minor under 16, there are more requirements to get one without his dad present. Saúl is working with an attorney to get permission to legally return to the U.S., but the process is complicated and uncertain. So, for now, Damian’s hanging on to hope that his dad will be allowed to return and is trying to become the man he believes he should be. He’s making plans to get his driver’s license when he turns 16 this month. He’s given up his goal of going to college and instead wants to get a job right after high school to help his aunts and send money to his dad. He still cries, but only when he’s alone in his room. KFF Health News_is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about_ KFF_._ * * * ## New Mexico regulators announce 16 community solar projects are online, generating power By Joshua Bowling (Source New Mexico) Published: July 8, 2026 A worker walks through rows of solar panels at the Cuidando Los Niños Community Solar Project in Belen, which lets PNM customers access solar energy without installing panels on their property. (Courtesy of Affordable Solar) The New Mexico Public Regulation Commission on Wednesday announced that more than one-third of its planned 47 community solar power projects are operational. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX. When fully built out, the community solar program is expected to deliver 200 megawatts of renewable energy in areas serviced by Public Service Company of New Mexico, Southwestern Public Service Company and El Paso Electric, the PRC announced. As of Wednesday, 16 projects are online — stretching from Clovis to Santa Fe — and collectively generating about 71 megawatts of power. The community solar program, which consists of large, shared installations that several customers can draw power from, is aimed at business owners, renters and people who’d prefer not to install rooftop panels, the PRC noted in a Wednesday news release. While the current project has yet to reach its full goal of delivering 200 megawatts across 47 developments, the PRC in 2024 approved a 300-megawatt expansion, which has yet to be scheduled. The projects currently online include the Cuidando Los Niños Community Solar Project and Central New Mexico Community College Community Solar Project in Belen; the Pino solar project in Las Vegas; Global Give a Book Community Solar Project in Los Lunas; Bent Bow Solar, LLC in Salem; SLT Las Cruces and Wings for Life Community Solar Project in Las Cruces; Curry Road North and Clovis Concrete North in Clovis; Locker 505 Community Solar Project in Rio Rancho; Reynolds in Tularosa; WESST Project and Ben Thomas in Roswell; SLT Hidalgo in Lordsburg; Rockhound Sol Community Solar Garden in Deming and Juniper Sol Community Solar Garden in Santa Fe. Trina Jellison, CEO of the anti-child homelessness nonprofit Cuidando Los Niños, told Source NM she was excited to see the project come online. Although the site is in Belen, PNM customers in Albuquerque can sign up to receive energy from it. Jellison said it overlaps with her nonprofit’s goal of addressing youth homelessness in large part because a portion of the energy is dedicated to low-income residents. “Not everybody can afford to put solar on their house,” she said. The PRC’s community solar website, csnewmexico.com, has instructions on how residents can join the program. While the state’s efforts continue to build community solar projects, federal funding for residential solar projects is currently under litigation. The federal government has cut more than $177 million in grant funding to New Mexico since President Donald Trump took office in early 2025, and the lion’s share of those cuts were to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s “Solar for All” program, according to a recent New Mexico Department of Finance and Administration report. About $156 million of those cuts were to the solar program, which sought to help install solar panels in low-income communities. New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez signed onto a multi-state lawsuit in October to challenge the cuts. As of Wednesday, the case is still pending in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. * * * # A Mom Called 911 For an Ambulance. NYPD Sent Handcuffs by Abigail Kramer, MindSite News July 7, 2026 In 2024, NYPD officers arrested Steven (right) and his brother Genaro in their family's Flushing home while he was suffering a schizophrenic episode. His mother, Gloria, has devoted her days to protecting Steven. Photographed July 6, 2026. Ben Fracktenberg/The City Reporter _This story was produced as part of a collaboration between MindSite News and The City Reporter, New York City’s digital independent journalism site. Sign up for the The City Scoop newsletter_ here_._ Genaro watched as four police officers crowded out of the elevator, their boots thudding through the narrow hallway of the apartment building where he lives with his parents and brother, in Flushing, Queens. The officer in front carried a shield that blocked her from head to knees, as though she were facing down a riot, though Genaro was alone. He tried to explain that this wasn't what his family needed. He'd called 911 to ask for an ambulance for his older brother Steven, who is diagnosed with schizophrenia. Steven had been agitated and moody for weeks, not sleeping and smoking too much marijuana. Earlier that evening, he'd started an argument with their father, yelling and pounding on a kitchen cabinet. When things like this had happened before, Genaro, who was 20 years old when the police came, tried to lay low in his room and focus on his homework. But that night, in October 2024, he felt fed up. He walked into the kitchen and told Steven not to disrespect their father. Steven got angrier and knocked over the family's TV, which shattered on the floor. Genaro’s temper snapped, and he punched Steven in the face. Their mother, Gloria, who barely comes to Steven's shoulder, stepped between her sons and told Genaro to do what doctors and social workers had always instructed if Steven was in a crisis: Call 911 and ask for an ambulance to take him to the hospital. (Gloria asked to be identified by her first name to protect the family’s privacy. Genaro and Steven are middle names.) By the time Genaro led the police into the apartment, Steven was sitting on the sofa, sobbing like a child. His parents assumed that soon, someone would lead him downstairs to an ambulance. But that's not what happened. Instead, a police supervisor from the 109th Precinct showed up and started asking questions — not about whether Steven was okay, but who had done what to whom; who had broken what. “He had like a really bad attitude. Everything just got escalated,” Genaro said. Steven and his family had symbols of faith in their Flushing apartment, July 6, 2026. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/TheCity Reporter The supervisor told his officers to put Genaro and Steven in handcuffs. They were both under arrest — Genaro for assault; Steven because of the broken TV. Genaro remembers the officer nearest him asking if they could do the handcuffing outside, where Gloria wouldn't have to watch. The supervisor said no. Gloria started to scream and bang on the table, “like her heart was breaking,” Genaro said. Gloria, who doesn’t speak fluent English, remembers pleading with a Spanish-speaking officer. Genaro was such a good kid; he’d never been in trouble. And Steven, her vulnerable, unpredictable son — what would happen to him in jail? “How is it possible that this is happening right now?” she asked. “We were asking for help. We were not asking for the police to come.” ## Broken Promises The New York Police Department responds to upwards of 149,000 mental health emergency calls each year. In the worst-case scenarios — the ones that make news — the person in crisis ends up dead, as has happened at least 24 times since 2015. But even when everything goes according to plan, police encounters can cause irreparable harm. People in crisis end up in jail. They regularly get handcuffed, forced onto gurneys, strapped down and injected with sedatives against their will. Many describe it as like being kidnapped: Their dignity is snatched away, their autonomy erased. They feel degraded. They are terrified that it will happen again. NYPD officers approach the Queens home of Jabez Chakraborty after his sister called 911, Jan. 26, 2026. Credit: Via NYPD body camera footage It is hard to find an expert who argues that sending cops or hauling people to ERs is a good way to respond to most mental health emergencies. Police are not trained as mental health providers; hospital psychiatric units are usually full and admissions criteria are narrow. Once people in crisis get to the hospital, they are nearly always sent away with a referral to an outpatient clinic — which will also likely be full, with a waitlist. Researchers consistently find that sending mental health teams to respond to emergencies is safer, cheaper and more effective than sending police. For years, officials across the city and state have promised to build better, more humane ways to respond to people in crisis. For years, however, those promises have been broken. Gov. Kathy Hochul said in 2022 she would fund intensive, street-based programs to work with people at highest risk of landing in hospitals or jails. Those programs have waitlists of hundreds. A succession of New York City mayors promised to deploy mobile crisis teams to deescalate emergencies. The teams are so underfunded and understaffed that families sometimes wait days for them to show up. In 2021, the city launched B-HEARD, a pilot program that sends mental health workers and EMTs, instead of police, to respond to 911 calls. Each mayor since has promised to expand the program across the city. And yet, five years after its launch, B-HEARD teams respond to fewer than 7% of citywide mental health emergency calls made to 911. Mayor Zohran Mamdani announces at City Hall Renita Francois will lead the newly formed Mayoral Office ofCommunity Safety, March 19, 2026. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/The City Reporter The current mayor, Zohran Mamdani, has made even bigger promises than his predecessors, campaigning on a plan to triple the size of the mobile crisis program, grow B-HEARD so big that many neighborhoods have multiple teams, and create a new, $1.1 billion city agency to oversee an “unprecedented City investment in mental health services.” > Six months into the Mamdani administration, however, those reforms are nowhere to be seen. After police shot 22-year-old Jabez Chakraborty, who was holding a knife during a mental health crisis in January, Mamdani took the comparatively small step of opening a new Office of Community Safety, with a budget of only $260 million, to oversee not only B-HEARD but violence prevention, domestic violence and other programs. The city budget, adopted June 30, includes no new money for B-HEARD. "The Mamdani administration is committed to strengthening and expanding B-HEARD,” wrote Mamdani spokesperson Sam Raskin in an emailed statement. “When New Yorkers are experiencing behavioral health crises, they should be met with trained health professionals who can respond appropriately and connect them to ongoing care.” ## ‘We’re Alone’ After Steven and Genaro were arrested, police locked them in holding cells at their local precinct. Steven’s stomach hurt so badly from anxiety that he was transferred to Queens Hospital Center, where he spent the night shackled to a bed with a police officer watching him. Hospital staff prescribed medicine for his stomach pain but no one gave him a psychiatric evaluation or treatment. His parents, worried sick, brought his psychiatric medication to the precinct, but officers turned them away. By the time he was arraigned and released, two days after his arrest, Steven was exhausted, afraid and confused. At home, the fear only closed in tighter. Growing up, it had seemed to Steven that his horizons were infinite. He was a soccer player, tall and handsome with close-cropped black hair and big, gentle eyes. At 19, he was recruited to play for a professional team in the Dominican Republic, the Delfinas del Este. But while he was there, his luck broke. His best friend died, and he had knee surgery and was cut from the team. After he came home, it was like his life had snapped shut. He felt like a failure, and it seemed like other people were looking at him and thinking the same thing. Steven started hearing voices. He couldn't relax, couldn't sleep, couldn't go outside. He smoked weed to slow down his mind but it made him irritable and aggressive. Steven says NYPD officers arrested him in his Flushing family home while he was suffering a schizophrenic episode, July 6, 2026. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/The City Reporter His parents, contending with the relentless, stagnant grief of watching their child disappear inside a stranger, rearranged their lives so that Steven would never be left alone. Gloria quit her job as a home health attendant so she could go with him to his psychiatry and therapy appointments. But after the arrest, Steven stopped wanting to leave the apartment at all. News footage played over and over in his mind of people being killed by police. He was scared when the doorbell rang. It seemed that police cars were slowing down when they drove past. He couldn’t shake the dislocating feeling of not really being a person — at least not in the eyes of the police or the people at the hospital or the arraignment court. Steven locked himself in his bedroom, “just constantly thinking, ‘Is it really worth the risk, going outside or going to the store?’” he said. Meanwhile, in the living room, his family circled around what had become an impossible question: What would they do next time Steven ended up in crisis? They knew they’d never call 911 again, but there seemed to be nowhere else to turn. “We’re searching, searching, searching," Steven’s father said, but “we’re alone.” Which is why Gloria was surprised, a few weeks after her sons’ arrest, to get a call with an unsolicited offer of help from an activist named Peggy Herrera. ## Unheard Peggy became an unexpectedly public figure in the world of mental health advocacy in 2019, after she called 911 to ask for an ambulance. Her 21-year-old son, Justin, was having a ferocious panic attack, breaking things and threatening to kill himself. By the time cops arrived, Peggy was locked out of her apartment and Justin — terrified of being arrested — refused to come outside. Police wanted to break down the door, but Peggy stood in front of it. Body camera footage, which aired on local news at the time, shows what happened next: Three cops push Peggy to her knees and cuff her hands behind her back. When Justin comes outside to help his mom, they take him face-down on the sidewalk before EMTs strap him to a gurney. Peggy’s voice is raw, screaming, “Leave my son alone!” In 2021, Justin filed a complaint against the city that, over several years, grew into an ongoing class-action lawsuit with the potential to fundamentally change how New York responds to mental health emergencies. Peggy became an activist, working to keep other people with mental health problems away from cops and out of jail. "People have an illness or they have trauma and what we do is criminalize them and put them in handcuffs," she said. "They deserve to be treated like human beings." Not Another Child Program Manager Peggy Herrera lost her son to gun violence, June 29, 2026. Peggy Herrera helped Steven and Genaro get their cases dismissed after they were arrested when the family called 911 for help during a 2024 mental health emergency. Credit: Alex Krales/The City Reporter There was a moment when it seemed like city officials — along with much of the rest of the country — were listening. In September 2020, amid nationwide Black Lives Matter protests, outrage erupted in Rochester, New York, over body camera footage of a Black man named Daniel Prude, who was forcibly hooded and pinned to the ground by police after his family called 911 for help during an episode of psychosis. He asphyxiated and later died. “I placed a phone call to get my brother help, not to have my brother lynched,” Daniel’s brother Joe Prude told the press. As activists called to defund the police, dozens of cities sent delegates to study a 30-year-old program called CAHOOTS, in Eugene, Oregon, that trained EMTs and crisis workers — most of whom had experienced mental illness themselves — to respond to emergencies. Until the program lost funding in 2025, CAHOOTS teams handled about 20% of Eugene’s 911 calls, saving the city millions of dollars a year without a serious injury or fatality. After Prude’s death, nearly 100 new alternative crisis response programs cropped up across the country. New York City rolled out B-HEARD, starting with a pilot program in three police precincts in Harlem. The goal, officials said, was to get people into voluntary, community-based services, avoid police encounters, and stop the revolving door of the emergency room. It wasn’t long, however, before political momentum swung back towards policing and forced hospitalizations. As shutdowns related to the COVID-19 pandemic lifted, New Yorkers saw a spike in crime and an increase of visibly mentally ill people on the street. In 2022, a 40-year-old woman named Michelle Go was pushed to her death in front of a subway train by a man with a long history of psychiatric hospitalizations. Then-Mayor Eric Adams instructed police to take more people to ERs against their will. Gov. Hochul followed suit, making it easier for hospitals to forcibly commit patients to psychiatric wards. Jabez Chakraborty’s mother called 911 to request an ambulance to their Queens home when her son was experiencing a mental health crisis. Credit: Via NYPD Meanwhile the expansion of B-HEARD stalled out. The program currently operates in fewer than 40% of the city’s police precincts, responding during limited hours to a remarkably narrow range of 911 calls. Even if a B-HEARD team had been available in Steven’s neighborhood, he would likely have been found ineligible. Like most cities with similar programs, B-HEARD screens out incidents involving weapons or violence, according to the Mayor’s Office of Community Mental Health. In practice, however, dispatchers rely on an unusually broad definition of violence — including yelling or property damage. If a person is “banging on a car or they’re destroying items in the house, that would trigger a police response,” Assistant Chief Ebony Washington testified at a 2024 City Council hearing. To Peggy and other advocates, the failure to expand and invest in B-HEARD is a betrayal. “What’s the point if it doesn’t get to the families who need it?” What people in crisis need, she said, is “trained peers: people who’ve been through it and know how to help you.” So when Peggy heard about a Spanish-speaking mom whose two sons faced criminal charges after a mental health emergency, she decided to help them fight in court. ## ‘Don’t take it!’ Early on the morning of his first hearing, Steven and his parents sat in an underground room of the Queens Criminal Court. Dozens of defendants surrounded them, waiting in a swampy atmosphere of tedium and fear to be called before a judge. Public defenders bustled in and out with stacks of folders, each representing a client they had likely never met. When Steven’s lawyer arrived, she called him into a hallway to explain what was about to happen: He was facing a charge of disorderly conduct, she said, but the prosecutor was willing to offer him an Adjournment in Contemplation of Dismissal. ACDs are common, in part, because they are efficient for lawyers and judges. If Steven stayed out of trouble for 12 months, the charges would be dropped. ACDs can pose liabilities for defendants, though, since their arrests continue to show up in immigration cases. If they are arrested again, they stand to face two sets of charges. Steven’s lawyer didn’t explain that he had the option to fight the charge against him. Queens County Criminal Court in Kew Gardens. Credit: Christine Chung/The City Reporter As Steven and his parents filed back into the courtroom, Gloria texted Peggy, trying to understand what Steven had just agreed to. Peggy — stuck in traffic on the Jackie Robinson Parkway — sent vehement replies: “Don’t take it!” “You are going to fight these charges!” “He did nothing wrong!” Once Peggy arrived, the attorney acknowledged that Steven could ask for a trial instead of accepting the ACD. He was called to the bench, and the judge set a date for another hearing. Genaro’s court date was the following day. Peggy coached him ahead of time to tell his public defender that he wanted a trial — not an ACD or any other deal. But he was called to the bench without even a word with his lawyer. Prosecutor and defender conducted rapid-fire negotiations and, in less than two minutes, Genaro found himself accepting a one-year ACD. "I didn't really know what else to do," he said afterward. ## ‘A Pain in the Ass’ With Steven's next court date coming up and the ACD hanging over Genaro’s head, Peggy didn’t have to go far to find them a legal adviser: Her brother was happy to help. Victor Herrera is small, pointy-featured and argumentative. In the 1980s, he found legal codes and grievance procedures the way some people find religion: inside Attica prison, where he was notorious for filing complaints against guards, he said. People have to listen when you’re “a pain in the ass.” After he got out, Victor ended up in the New York City homeless shelter system, where the atmosphere seemed as despotic and deliberately humiliating as prison. He started filing complaints about drug use and missing property — being a pain in the ass. In response, Victor said in a 2016 lawsuit, shelter staff followed what he characterized as a deliberate practice inside city homeless shelters to silence difficult residents: They called 911 to report him as an “emotionally disturbed person.” Close Rikers advocate Victor Herrera spoke outside City Hall about his experiences with the NYPD using mental health as a pretext to arrest people, June 25, 2026. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/The City Reporter Nine times between 2014 and 2016, police and EMTs put Victor in handcuffs and strapped him to a gurney. At least once, officers slammed him against a wall and put him in a chokehold, according to his legal filings. Five times, he was injected with sedatives or antipsychotics against his will. He tried to tell police and doctors that he wasn’t experiencing a mental health crisis, he said, but when someone in a uniform says you’re crazy, nobody else is going to listen to you. “You’re dismissed, you’re dismissed, you’re dismissed,” Victor said. Within a year, New York City paid Victor a financial settlement on behalf of its homeless services agency, public hospitals, the NYPD and the fire department. Two private shelter operators soon followed. The settlements don’t include admissions of guilt but Victor keeps photocopies of the checks. They’re proof, when he needs it, that he got heard. The Department of Social Services did not respond to requests for comment. After the lawsuit, Victor became one of the first clients of a city-funded Intensive Mobile Treatment program, which helped him get an apartment, encouraged him to become an advocate, and provided treatment for his depression and PTSD. A decade later, he still has flashbacks to being strapped down and sedated. “It can happen anywhere,” he said. “I just relive all that.” When it happens, he goes home and climbs into bed with his cats, Boots and Socks. “I start questioning whether I’m still valid to be living,” he said. “The most traumatic, for me, was going to a hospital and not being heard.” What gets him out of bed is the knowledge that people are counting on him. ## ‘We Have to Help Each Other’ By the time Steven had his second court date, in February 2025, the Trump administration had allowed immigration agents into city courthouses. Steven’s father, who isn’t a citizen, stood across the street and waited while Victor accompanied Steven to his hearing. An hour later, they came out with good news: The charges had been dropped and the case was dismissed. Steven’s dad wiped tears from his eyes and shook Victor’s hand. Victor offered to help Genaro contest his ACD. When he called the public defenders’ office, he was told that they never collected evidence — not even body camera footage of the arrest. (Steven, The City Reporter and MindSite News filed a freedom of information request for the footage in Jan. 2025. As of publication, the NYPD had not provided it, despite multiple appeals. The department also did not respond to requests for comment for this story.) For Peggy and Victor, it was an ugly confirmation that not much had changed. After all the news stories and the promises from officials and politicians, “the system is just not set up for people who struggle with mental health,” Peggy said. “We have to help each other.” Their best hope might lie in the lawsuit that Peggy’s son Justin set in motion five years ago. The lawsuit now includes 10 named plaintiffs, though Justin is no longer one of them. He was shot and killed in July 2022, at his own 24th birthday party. The grief still feels like a physical obliteration, Peggy said — like a part of her body was ripped off. But the lawsuit, she said, is part of Justin’s legacy: something he left behind to make the world better. In 2024, NYPD officers arrested Steven and his brother Genaro in their family’s Flushing home while he was suffering a schizophrenic episode. A brother and sister team of activists helped Steven and Genaro avoid criminal prosecution. Photographed July 6, 2026. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/The City Reporter In January, city attorneys filed a letter in court indicating that they’re ready to explore a settlement. If that happens, the terms could include a detailed, enforceable plan with a clear timeline to build a citywide, non-police response for New Yorkers in crisis, said Jenny Marashi, a lead attorney for the plaintiffs. “Imagine if we could meet people in their most vulnerable moment with compassion instead of force,” Marashi said. The blueprints exist for a better solution, she continued. “What you need is a number you can call, where people can come right away, with the discernment to know what you need — which is almost never an emergency room. Ideally those people are led by peers with their own experience” of what it’s like to be on the other side of a mental health call. “Then imagine there are places to go for help, where people actually wanted to be, designed by people who use the services,” she said. “Think about the people that you know. How many of them have had at least some moment where they just couldn’t handle this freaking super hard life?” If we imagine we’re creating a system for all of us, it could be a “thread we can follow” — not just to manage emergencies, but toward a reality where New Yorkers treat one another better in the most frightening, vulnerable moments of their lives. “We could actually have a more healing and safe world,” Marashi said. “Let’s dream big.” _Reporting for this story was supported by the O'Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism_. _MindSite News' work in New York City is supported by the van Ameringen Foundation._ This article first appeared on MindSite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # Therapy in a tent: The healthcare many homeless Californians need but aren’t getting By Marisa Kendall, CalMatters Jessica Scott, 35, and her pitbull, Baby Girl, inside their new apartment in Sacramento on July 1, 2026. Photo by Louis Bryant III for CalMatters This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters. Like many people who are or have been homeless, Jessica Scott struggles with debilitating anxiety. When she finally moved from her stepfather’s car into a Sacramento apartment a few weeks ago, she said one thing played a major role in helping her take that step: Therapy. “When you’re panicking so much that you can’t really talk to people, it’s difficult to do anything,” Scott said. That included making – and keeping – the numerous appointments required to find subsidized housing. Scott used to have her therapy sessions with Anthony Villanueva, a clinician with One Community Health, on a park bench because she had nowhere else to go. But her most recent session in early July was on a blowup couch in her new living room. She credits her ability to get this housing — her first in two and a half years — partially to Villanueva teaching her breathing exercises to calm herself down. Media stories, politicians and splashy state-funded mental health initiatives tend to focus on people who live on the street in the grip of psychosis or other severe mental illnesses — a highly visible but statistically uncommon problem. That overlooks a much quieter but more widespread issue: All across California, unhoused people are suffering at alarming rates from less obvious but potentially enervating mental health conditions, including anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Some of those people manage to navigate the healthcare system, find a therapist and make regular trips to a clinic. Most do not. To fill that void, therapists are meeting their patients wherever they are, conducting therapy in a tent, a homeless shelter or a car on the side of the road. Jessica Scott, 35, gestures to where she used to live when she was pregnant with her now 16 year old son, while speaking with Anthony Villanueva, a behavioral health clinician with One Community Health, during a check-in at her apartment in Sacramento on July 1, 2026. Photo by Louis Bryant III for CalMatters That care is a major help to people like Scott. But there are far from enough street therapists to see everyone. Recent estimates put California’s homeless population at nearly 182,000, and a UCSF study of homeless Californians found that 48% of them reported symptoms of serious depression and 51% reported anxiety. Doctors, nurses and clinicians who work with people on the street told CalMatters the numbers are even higher. They estimate between 80% and 90% of their patients have a mental health condition that could benefit from therapy – most commonly depression, anxiety and PTSD. “I have no capacity to see the amount of patients that we have,” said social worker Lisette Carmona, who provides street therapy in Los Angeles with the USC street medicine team. That’s despite the fact that street medicine, which brings basic medical care (sometimes including therapy) directly to homeless people in encampments and shelters, has rapidly expanded over the past few years. What started in the 1990s as a small, grassroots movement has ballooned into at least 70 teams in 34 counties in California, said USC Street Medicine Director Brett Feldman, who is considered one of the founding fathers of the field. In 2022, the state made it easier for those teams to bill Medi-Cal, helping them grow even more. But they’re still vastly outnumbered, a problem with broad implications, because therapy isn’t just about making people on the street feel better. Practitioners say it also can be a crucial step to getting them into housing. The housing process is difficult and complicated, requiring people to go to the DMV to replace lost identification, answer a lengthy list of questions to determine their eligibility and apply for multiple waiting lists. It can take months or even years, often with plenty of setbacks along the way. “It’s kind of a daunting process for anybody,” said Joann Bianchi Wojick, associate behavioral health director of LifeLong Medical Care's Trust Health Center, which sends a street medicine team out to encampments in Oakland. “But when you’re feeling anxious or depressed, and you have more difficulty organizing your thoughts and your to-do list and your actions, it can feel so overwhelming." Once someone does get into housing, if they haven’t already learned to regulate their emotions in therapy, they risk lashing out at their landlord or new neighbors. That can be a quick ticket to getting evicted and landing back on the street. That’s why street therapy is “so, so important,” said Dr. Katherine Koh, one of the country’s early pioneers of street psychiatry, who practices in Boston. “It needs to be part of the treatment,” she said. “I really think just meds alone is rarely going to be the solution for anybody. It’s teaching people the skills that hopefully will continue to help maintain and regulate their behavior when they move into housing, because if they don’t have that, they’re just going to end up back on the street.” ## Trauma on the streets leaves mental scars While schizophrenia is what often comes to mind when people talk about mental health and homelessness, other ailments are far more common. The UCSF study of homeless Californians found that while two-thirds reported symptoms of mental health conditions, just 12% experienced hallucinations. Depression and anxiety were much more prevalent. Some of that is caused or exacerbated by childhood trauma. A review by The Lancet Public Health journal of more than two dozen studies found that 90% of homeless adults had been through at least one adverse childhood experience, and more than half had been through four or more. Living on the street is also terrible for people’s mental health. They suffer mental scars left by physical and sexual assaults experienced while homeless, psychological damage from having to maintain a constant state of hypervigilance and the mental anguish of feeling unwanted by society. “It’s just causing a lot of suffering in our patients’ lives,” said Dr. Shane Collins, a psychiatrist on the USC street medicine team. California’s “housing first” system prioritizes getting people into housing above all else, promising mental health care and other services will come once someone moves indoors. But housing is in short supply, and thousands of people are stuck waiting on the street without mental health care. Meanwhile, Gov. Gavin Newsom has put a significant focus recently on helping unhoused people with schizophrenia and other acute mental illnesses. He launched CARE Court, a court-based program that connects people in psychosis with treatment, and backed a 2024 statewide bond to fund mental health and substance use treatment beds. In addition, some cities, including Los Angeles, have mobile outreach teams dedicated to helping people on the street with severe mental illnesses. But for the thousands of unhoused people dealing with less-obvious mental health conditions, it’s easy to fall through the cracks. ****First:**** Aubriana Smith, Street Medicine program manager for One Community Health, arranges transportation through Uber Health for patients traveling to health care appointments while conducting outreach in Sacramento on July 1, 2026. ****Last:**** Anthony Villanueva, a behavioral health clinician with One Community Health, explains the care and support the team provides during a visit to the X Street Navigation Center while traveling to the team’s next outreach stop in Sacramento on July 1, 2026. Photos by Louis Bryant III for CalMattersFrom left, Anthony Villanueva, a behavioral health clinician, and Aubriana Smith, Street Medicine program manager, retrieve supplies from their vehicle for another patient during a One Community Health outreach visit at the X Street Navigation Center in Sacramento on July 1, 2026. Photo by Louis Bryant III for CalMatters Terri Roman, 57, has been homeless for 10 years. That’s plenty of time for the day-to-day brutality of life on the street — from drivers leaning on their horns at 4 a.m. just to be cruel and wake her up, to other unhoused people stealing her belongings — to take a toll on her mental health. “The hard thing to cope with is the dislike of homeless people from everybody,” said Roman, who lives in an RV in Oakland with her partner and a dog named Bonehead. “It feels like nobody wants you anywhere.” Like so many unhoused people, she’s also experienced bloodcurdling trauma while homeless. She witnessed a murder and then had to testify in court against the alleged killer — her own ex-boyfriend. Another time, she was grabbed, slapped and kicked by two masked men trying to steal her car at a gas station in the middle of the night. “That’s really damaging,” she said. “Now I’m hyper-vigilant. I go off on people.” She glanced around as she spoke, constantly scanning her surroundings. She could really use someone to talk to and help her process her trauma, Roman said. When she asked her local street medicine team about counseling, they referred her to the Native American Health Center. She went for eight months. But it was hard to get there if she didn’t have money for gas. And she’d lose track of the appointments, with her phone constantly running out of battery and having nowhere to charge it. She missed three appointments, and said the center dropped her as a patient. Now she’s waiting to get back in. It would help immensely if a therapist came to see people on the street instead, she said. “Then homeless people would feel they had someone to turn to,” Roman said. “Or they would feel they’re not alone.” ## Meeting people where they’re at Some lucky street medicine teams have a psychiatrist, but psychiatrists willing to go to homeless encampments are scarce and their time is expensive. That means they often go out on the streets just one day a week, and tend to focus on diagnosing mental health conditions and prescribing medications. That leaves little time for therapy. Collins, the psychiatrist on the USC street medicine team, estimates his team can provide therapy to only about 5% of the patients who could use it. If street medicine teams do provide therapy, it’s usually done by social workers like Carmona, who works alongside Collins. “I am doing therapy anywhere where my patient is at,” she said. “So you can find me on the riverbed, you can find me in a tent…Wherever the patient is comfortable, that’s where I'm conducting their therapy.” ****First:**** At rear, Corrine Feldman and her street medicine team draw blood from a patient in south Los Angeles on Feb. 14, 2023. ****Last:**** Physician assistant Brett Feldman checks on his patient, Gary Dela Cruz, near Dela Cruz's homeless encampment in downtown Los Angeles in November. Feldman is director and co-founder of the Street Medicine program at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. Photos by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters/CatchLight Local Her sessions can last anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour and a half, depending on the patient. She sees some people once a week and others more sporadically. Because her patients can’t escape to a quiet room to be alone when they are upset, or zone out in front of the TV, Carmona thinks up alternative coping strategies for them, such as coloring and journaling. She also does short-notice calls for patients in crisis. For Bert Andernié, 52, therapy helps him deal with the soul-crushing disappointments he experiences on the streets of San Francisco. For example, in May, his caseworker told him he’d gotten a housing placement. Later, he was told that actually, no, there wasn’t a spot for him. He still doesn’t know what happened. “I was so pissed I was crying on the bus,” he said. “I was livid.” Andernié doesn’t have many other people to talk to about his problems, so he hashed out his frustration with the therapist he got matched with after applying for the city’s General Assistance benefits. “It’s nice to have somebody say, ‘yeah, you’re right, that is messed up,’” he said. ## The debate over how to best use scarce therapy resources Not everyone agrees that conducting therapy on the street is a good use of time. Some medical providers prefer to wait until someone is housed, or at least in a shelter. Hollywood 2.0, a mental health team that prioritizes the sickest unhoused people in Los Angeles’ Hollywood neighborhood, doesn’t do traditional therapy on the street. “It’s really hard to catch folks and catch them sober,” said psychiatrist Dr. Chance Cruz. “A lot of times I can't even get a logical answer out of someone because they’re high. So that person couldn’t engage in therapy at that time.” Dr. Chad Koyanagi, one of the national pioneers in street psychiatry who practices in Hawaii, prescribes medication but doesn’t do therapy on the street. “Probably their focus is going to be on finding their next meal, not their relationship with their parents,” he said. “That stuff is going to be dealt with at a later time when their basic needs are taken care of.” Patients in therapy must feel safe before they can recover, and that’s often impossible when living on the street, said Rory Rieger, who oversees the Ritter Center’s behavioral health team in Marin County. “There’s only so many things you can do when a person has that many vulnerabilities and is that stressed,” he said. “Therapy really doesn’t work for someone who is that stressed out.” What his patients really need to make a dent in their mental health is housing. Carmona “vehemently disagrees" with the idea that clinicians can’t do real therapy on the street, and says that idea caters to the comfort of the therapist, not the patient. Carmona has seen patients who seemed hopeless when she met them quickly regain their optimism after starting therapy. The wins aren’t always monumental. Some weeks, it’s small victories, such as when a patient gets upset but refrains from self-harm. Other teams use a both-and approach, such as LifeLong Medical Care in Alameda County. Initially, their street therapy is often crisis management — helping someone cope with losing their belongings in a sweep or get through their depression, said Bianchi Wojick, associate behavioral health director of the LifeLong Medical Care clinic. Once someone gets into a shelter or housing, they can more deeply explore their past trauma. Even without an official therapist, regular medical check-ups on the street can look a lot like therapy. It’s not uncommon for patients to spill their hearts, or even cry, while an empathetic nurse is taking their blood pressure on the sidewalk. Dr. Mathew Beare treats a patient's foot along the side of the road outside Church Without Walls in Bakersfield on March 16, 2023. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters/CatchLight Local For Valerie Campos, gamechanging mental health care didn’t come on the street — it came in a tiny home. She’d grown up homeless and then continued the pattern as an adult in Southern California, ending up getting trafficked and sexually abused. That trauma devastated her mental health. She developed PTSD, as well as depression and anxiety so severe that she couldn’t drive a car on the freeway. “It was just terrible,” said Campos, 49. “It was hard to live minute by minute sometimes.” During the COVID-19 pandemic, Campos moved into a tiny home transitional housing program in Redondo Beach. All of a sudden she had access to something that had seemed unreachable on the street: counseling. Counselors came to Campos’ tiny home every two weeks and stayed as long as she needed. They didn’t judge her or her past, and so she began to open up, talking about her childhood, her homelessness, and everything she’d been through. They taught her coping skills, the warning signs that could indicate her depression was rearing up again, and how to journal and keep track of her moods. They helped her get medication for depression and anxiety. She learned to recognize, and stop, her self-sabotaging behaviors. “I’m a whole different person,” Campos said. “I’m back on the freeway, driving.” Four years ago, Campos moved from the tiny home into her very own apartment in Gardena, thanks to a federal housing voucher. She isn’t sure how much longer she’ll be able to stay, as the program paying for her apartment — the federal Emergency Housing Vouchers — is running out of money, and Campos has been told her subsidy will end in December. But she does know that getting mental health support saved her. Without it, she wouldn't have been able to hold down an apartment. And without an apartment, she doesn’t think she would have made it. “I don’t think I would be here right now,” she said, “if it wasn’t for the counseling and the housing.” _This story was reported with support from the Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism._ This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. * * * # New Orleans Haitian community reeling in the wake of U.S. Supreme Court ruling by Cris Seda Chabrier, Verite News New Orleans July 8, 2026 Between French hymns and Kreyòl singing, the fear and outrage at the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allowed the government to end legal protections for Haitians was palpable among congregants at First Haitian Baptist Church. “Gangs take over businesses, homes,” Pastor Jean Wilfrid Alexis, who leads the congregation, told Verite News after a recent Sunday service. “To go there is to go to die.” The termination of temporary protected status (TPS) in Mullin v. Doe is expected to affect roughly 350,000 Haitians and 4,000 Syrians nationwide, leaving them unable to obtain legal employment and live in the United States. Greater New Orleans has a Haitian population of around 2,300, according to the latest U.S. Census estimates. The ruling will affect approximately 10 people in First Haitian’s congregation, according to church leaders. Naomi, a former TPS holder and congregant, came to the United States with her children, who are now adults, in 2021. She has been unemployed since February and said, through a translator, that she felt broken by not being able to work. Since 2025, the Trump administration has stripped nationals of at least eight countries of TPS, including Venezuelans and Hondurans, that, with a population of almost 29,000, are the largest group of Latino immigrants in the Greater New Orleans area. The majority of immigrants do not have criminal records, according to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse data. Haitians tend to fill low-paid positions in healthcare that are chronically understaffed, such as elderly care and nursing home assistants. Nora Ahmed, legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, said that the Trump administration has been stripping legal status from documented immigrants to then deport them. “What this administration has largely done since it came to power was identify, I always say, documented people, and then sought to arrest documented people because they know exactly where they are and what they're doing, because by and large they report to ICE,” she said. Nora Ahmed, legal director for the ACLU of Louisiana, in New Orleans on March 8, 2026. Ahmed said that the Trump administration's approach to immigration enforcement has changed the type of cases that courts are seeing. Congress created TPS in 1990 to give status and work authorizations for people fleeing war, natural disasters and other “extraordinary and temporary conditions” that prevent migrants from safely returning home. President Donald Trump and former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem attempted to end TPS for Syrians and Haitians in June 2025, but were blocked by lower courts. Haiti first received TPS in the wake of a catastrophic 2010 earthquake. It has been continually renewed for that country because of political instability and other natural disasters. In 2021, the Biden administration extended it due to the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse and the subsequent takeover of Port-au-Prince by gangs. “It is temporary protected status based on the country's condition, that is the key,”said Guerline Jozef, the founder and executive director of Haitian Bridge Alliance, a nonprofit that is co-counsel on NTPSA v. Noem, another legal challenge to the termination of TPS for Haitians and Venezuelans. In Mullin v. Doe, the Supreme Court held that a provision in the TPS statute barred any lawsuit challenging the Department of Homeland Security secretary’s decision to extend or end TPS on non-constitutional grounds. “The Court said that questions of whether the DHS secretary followed the law cannot be heard by courts in the first place, meaning that in the future even an openly unlawful decision to grant or terminate TPS could be entirely insulated from judicial review,” wrote Aaron Reichlin-Melnick in an explainer published by the nonprofit American Immigration Council. The Supreme Court majority determined that President Trump's racist remarks — such as saying that the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio eats cats and dogs — did not violate the Constitution’s equal protection clause. The justices did not take into consideration a leak of internal emails that showed DHS moved to terminate the protections without seeking input from the State Department. The ruling follows increasing partisan polarization in the nation's highest court, whose decisions have led to ample criticism and plummeting public confidence as people see the Republican majority supportive of the Trump administration’s agenda. Critics say the ruling is underscored by historic racism and white supremacy. “It is very disturbing, very concerning that in 2026 we still have justices who are willing to fall in line with the anti-Black extreme racist ideology in government, including a Black justice, to show you how deeply ingrained this mentality is, and continues to be,” Jozef said. While TPS was never supposed to provide a clear legal pathway to permanent residency or citizenship, Haitians made their homes in the United States with the legal protections, and now they face deportation to a country beset by gang violence and massacres. In February, four Haitian women deported from Puerto Rico were found decapitated and thrown into a river within months of arriving in Haiti, according to Leonard Prophil, a Haitian community leader who lives in Puerto Rico. A poor neighborhood shows the damage after an earthquake measuring 7 plus on the Richter scale rocked Port au Prince Haiti just before 5 pm yesterday, January 12, 2010. The First Haitian Baptist Church congregation is no stranger to this violence. “I have one lady who has her husband in Haiti, who now he cannot go public because he's hiding himself because he had been kidnapped,” said Estaniel J. Pierre, the finance manager of the church who has helped members protected by TPS. “They will not find anything, anywhere, any place to live, any house to live, because the gang members, they took their houses. If they go back, they will be homeless.” There are few avenues for migrants stripped of TPS to legally remain in the U.S., particularly because the Supreme Court decision coincides with a constantly shifting legal landscape. Lawyers representing refugees in New Orleans say they cannot keep up with the changes in law and that they are struggling to reach clients that have been detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). “You have five bases for asylum. The nexus has to be based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion, [particular social group]. Everybody understands political opinion, right? But membership in a particular social group, like young men who are being recruited to be in gangs (or young women), where the courts are trying to say, ‘Well, that's not really a particular social group,’ and they're trying to make it as difficult as possible for respondents or applicants to meet the standards,” Regine Dupuy, an attorney with NOLA Diaspora Immigration Law, said. The decision will likely result in family separations and tear away people from communities, according to advocates. On Sunday, Pastor Alexis displayed a photograph of a congregant — a father taking a selfie with his two young children. The man has been in ICE detention for at least a month. As he displayed the photo, he urged the congregation to support his family. “If you cannot do anything, you cannot work, you don't have anything to eat,” Pierre, the church’s finance manager, told Verite News. “We can support you as a church.” This article first appeared on Verite News New Orleans and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # How The Death Penalty At 50 Is Far More Broken Than We Knew The racial disparities, the arbitrary outcomes, the endless waiting and the risk of executing the innocent persist.By Maurice Chammah and Jill Castellano Additional data reporting by Steven Rich Graphics by Jill Castellano _This article was first published by_ The Marshall Project_, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their_ newsletters_, and follow them on_ Instagram_,_ TikTok_,_ Reddit_and_ Facebook. Fifty years ago, Americans set out on a polarizing mission: to find a just and fair way to punish the worst of the worst crimes by execution. In some ways, this was a surprising choice. In 1972, a narrow majority of the U.S. Supreme Court had scrapped the country’s entire death penalty system, calling it “morally unacceptable,” “racially discriminatory” and “arbitrary.” It seemed possible that Americans might join our peers in Europe and Latin America, many of whom had ended executions for good. This article was published in partnership with The Guardian. But then Americans, as we often do, went our own way. In the summer of 1976, the Supreme Court issued another landmark decision, Gregg v. Georgia, that brought the death penalty back with a set of attempted fixes intended to make it less arbitrary, including guidance for jurors and automatic appeals. On the 50th anniversary of Gregg v. Georgia, The Marshall Project analyzed more than 9,000 death sentences handed down across the nation since states brought the punishment back. The analysis also coincides with the release of “The Last 12 Weeks,” The Marshall Project’s new podcast with Serial Productions and The New York Times. The podcast features a case that has dragged on for more than 30 years, and the data suggests this is typical: People on death row and the families of their victims often have to wait decades for a resolution to their cases. And most of the time, the outcome is not an execution. If one goal of the death penalty is to deter crime, it’s hard to imagine anyone being deterred by a very low chance of being executed decades in the future. Last week, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine called for his state to abolish the death penalty, due to its failure as a deterrent and the emotional cost to victims’ families. “Our system is an epic fail,” said Frank Baumgartner, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor who spent years gathering the data along with researchers from the Death Penalty Information Center. “Every flaw they sought to rectify has been a failure, and now there are new problems that didn’t used to exist.” Black people are still overrepresented on state death rows. And whether someone gets the death penalty still depends more on where they commit a crime than on the crime itself. But the new data also reveals how rarely a death sentence ends as lawmakers intended: Fewer than 1 out of every 5 people sent to death row has been executed. Supporters and opponents of capital punishment can debate who is to blame for this dysfunction, but the new data gives us a window into why the death penalty remains so broken. States passed new laws and started issuing new death sentences in 1972, inviting the Supreme Court to approve these efforts a few years later. Soon after, a network of highly skilled defense lawyers emerged — often with federal funding — to specialize in death row appeals. (We feature several such lawyers in “The Last 12 Weeks” podcast.) These lawyers often opposed the death penalty as racist and immoral. They dug into trial transcripts and sent out investigators who found all kinds of problems, from prosecutors making racist statements and kicking Black people off juries to defense lawyers literally falling asleep at trial. Eventually, defense lawyers convinced the Supreme Court to nix the death penalty for crimes committed before the defendant turned 18 and for people with intellectual disabilities. All of these developments — the failures at trial and the defenses’ successes at finding them — help explain why more than a third of death sentences handed down over the last 50 years have been thrown out by the courts. When that happens, prosecutors can seek a new death sentence, and sometimes they do so multiple times. Curtis Flowers, whose case was made famous by the podcast “In the Dark,” faced the death penalty in Mississippi courts six times before the charges against him were finally dropped. But in other cases prosecutors have agreed to let the defendant plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence, or jurors refused to give the death penalty again. “It's such an inefficient system, as you're wasting huge amounts of money on capital trials that end up in reversals 20 years later,” Baumgartner said. These trials regularly hit the million-dollar mark to pay for all the lawyers, investigators, and expert witnesses involved. The 1990s saw the emergence of DNA testing and legal efforts to overturn wrongful convictions, like the Innocence Project. It became more common for judges to free people from death row — 1 out of 50 cases since 1972 — due to evidence of their innocence. But it wasn’t always a court that stepped in to stop an execution: In more than 400 cases, a governor or president has commuted someone’s death sentence. The reasons vary. Sometimes it’s because a state abolishes the death penalty, as 23 have done. Other times, a leader wanted to stop a successor from executing people; President Joe Biden freed 37 men from federal death row before leaving office. (He did not free three men convicted of mass shootings whose commutations would have been especially controversial: Dylann Roof, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Robert Bowers.) Another big reason why people are not executed can be boiled down to politics. Support for the death penalty in polls has declined to around 50%. Amid pressure from activists and the public, pharmaceutical companies began refusing to sell their products for lethal injections. Governors like Ron DeSantis of Florida and Greg Abbott of Texas made executions a priority, and their states found new suppliers or alternate methods like firing squads. But others gave up. Meanwhile, some governors oppose the death penalty on paper, but risk political blowback if they go too far. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California and Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania both halted executions in their states, but neither has commuted any sentences. The result is that more than 700 people remain on death row in those states — a de facto life sentence that costs far more taxpayer money, given the ongoing appeals. Of the more than 9,000 death sentences over the last half-century, 8% of cases have ended with the condemned person dying by causes other than execution. Some of those ended in suicide. At least one person was killed by another prisoner. Put together complex legal processes and political ambivalence, and the result is a system that takes a very long time to reach unpredictable outcomes. The average person executed last year waited on death row for almost 27 years. Three decades ago, the average wait was only 12 years. The irony is that lawmakers have spent a lot of that time trying to limit appeals and quicken executions. They have evidently failed, while also increasing the risk of executing innocent people, by restricting what kinds of evidence they can bring to court. There are now more than 2,000 people on death rows across the country. More than a quarter of them have been there for more than 30 years. “They’re not leaving, so they’re just going to go into geriatric care,” said Baumgartner. The punishment’s future is anything but clear. Jurors are sending fewer people to death row. At the same time, President Donald Trump is pushing for a revival and talking about bringing back firing squads. But there is little indication that any of the problems that have bedeviled the punishment for the last half century — the racial disparities, the arbitrary outcomes, the endless waiting, the risk of executing the innocent — have been fixed, or whether they can be. * * * # Can guaranteed income help people leaving incarceration? Two NC local governments are testing it by Rachel Crumpler, North Carolina Health News July 6, 2026 #### **By Rachel Crumpler** James Earquhart, 66, walked out of prison in December. After 15 years behind bars, he suddenly had to find a place to stay, look for work and figure out a way to rebuild his life. “It’s a lot of complications getting out and not having anything to come to,” Earquhart said. About a month later, he got a call with unexpected good news: His name had been drawn in a lottery for a new pilot program in Durham named ROOTED (Resources & Opportunities for Ongoing Transition, Empowerment & Dignity). Earquhart is among 107 formerly incarcerated people living in Durham getting monthly financial assistance through the program — $8,400 over the course of a year. Participants must earn no more than 60 percent of area median income, have spent at least nine consecutive months incarcerated and have been released after Jan. 1, 2024. Earquhart has used the money to pay rent at a transitional house, buy clothes and cover other necessities. While working a landscaping job, he said the program’s monthly payments have helped ease the financial strain of starting over. “Without it, right at this point in time, I would probably be out there on the street,” he said. Every year, more than 18,000 people are released from North Carolina state prisons, and thousands of others leave county jails. Many return to their communities without the resources or support needed to rebuild their lives and face barriers to basic needs such as housing, employment and health care. The city of Durham, along with Mecklenburg County, is testing whether guaranteed income can help formerly incarcerated people stabilize their lives and reduce costly cycles of recidivism. An April 2026 report from the North Carolina Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission found that 41 percent of nearly 12,000 people released from North Carolina state prisons in fiscal year 2023 were re-arrested within two years, and 37 percent were sent back to prison. This revolving door into prison has a steep price: Housing one person in a North Carolina prison costs taxpayers more than $54,000 per year. With incarceration carrying financial and community costs, Durham and Mecklenburg officials are exploring whether guaranteed income can be a cost-effective way to help people succeed after release and thus reduce the need for future spending. Early outcomes are encouraging, program leaders say, and they’re going to keep tracking the results to help government officials decide whether to keep funding the initiatives. “Our goal is to stabilize, to bring a greater sense of well-being and to ultimately reduce or eliminate recidivism,” said Shannon Delaney from Durham’s Community Safety Department, which is overseeing the ROOTED program. **Looking for reentry support?** Check out our resource page**.** #### **Why guaranteed income?** Guaranteed income programs provide unrestricted, recurring cash payments to people to boost their financial stability. In recent years, local governments across the nation have launched such programs with varying payment amounts, duration and populations served, including pregnant women and people experiencing homelessness. While critics question this use of public funds, a growing body of research suggests guaranteed income programs reduce financial stress, improve mental and physical health outcomes and increase housing and food security. Recipients primarily spend the money on groceries, rent and debt reduction. Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein, who studies incarceration and health, is part of a multidisciplinary team of researchers from Duke University that is evaluating Durham’s ROOTED program. Only a handful of guaranteed income programs, she said, have specifically focused on serving formerly incarcerated people. It’s a population that faces steep economic barriers because many leave incarceration with little or no savings, and their criminal records hurt their chances of finding jobs. Only 37 percent of people released from state prisons in 2024 reported employment within a year after their release date, according to N.C. Department of Commerce data. Their median wages were just $8,518. “I think it’s particularly important for this population,” Brinkley-Rubinstein said. “The experience of incarceration is so destabilizing, that when people leave, it is very difficult to find a job. “Giving people a small amount of cash, relative to what it takes to survive, I think can go a really long way.” Durham officials aren’t starting the ROOTED program from scratch. In March 2022, the city launched a similar one-year guaranteed income pilot program called Excel as part of Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, a nationwide initiative. The pilot, funded mostly by a donation from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and other private donors, provided $600 per month in unconditional cash payments to 109 formerly incarcerated participants. Researchers at the Center for Guaranteed Income Research at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy & Practice evaluated the program. Their 82-page report published in February 2025 found recipients were significantly more likely to maintain full-time employment and had higher food security and housing stability, compared with the control group not receiving payments. Recipients also reported less difficulty abstaining from substances, staying away from criminal activity and avoiding probation or parole violations. After seeing those results, Durham City Council members allocated $1 million to launch another one-year guaranteed income program. “Our goal is shared prosperity, and so one way to do that is to make sure people who have the toughest time finding housing and jobs have some support to give them a little bit longer runway to find that,” Durham City Council member Carl Rist told NC Health News. “It’s both to really provide that support for individuals, but also we know, as a community, it’s one way to reduce crime.” While Rist acknowledges there are skeptics of guaranteed income, he argues the investment is worthwhile and cost-effective if one year of supplemental income helps prevent the steeper public cost of reincarceration. ROOTED gives participants a choice between two payment structures: steady monthly payments of $700 or larger payments at the beginning of the program that taper over the course of the year. Researchers hope the comparison will show whether one option is more successful than the other, which could shape future guaranteed income programs. Jesse Lopez, a research scientist at the Wilson Center for Science and Justice at Duke Law who is evaluating the ROOTED program, said the payment structures were selected fairly evenly by participants. “Those who chose the larger upfront payment described using it to just get rid of some immediate obstacles, like they needed to repair a vehicle, they needed to reinstate a driver’s license, they needed to put down a down payment or deposit for rent,” Lopez said. “Other people were trying to be very strict and were thinking in terms of a budget and wanting to create stability and plans, so they can avoid overspending and build long-term financial discipline.” At the start of the study, Lopez said a large number of participants were dealing with food, housing and financial instability. Lopez doesn’t expect guaranteed income to eliminate every barrier participants face, but he hopes studying the results will show where the payments make the biggest difference. Researchers will compare participants’ outcomes to those of applicants not selected for the program. #### **Mecklenburg tests the approach** Mecklenburg County, home to North Carolina’s largest jail, is testing a similar initiative. More than 1,000 people returned to the county from state prison in 2025. Sonya Harper, who has led Mecklenburg County’s Criminal Justice Services for**** a decade, said many people seeking reentry assistance arrive with “next to nothing.” “They don’t have housing plans, they don’t have any source of income or job or anything, and that’s our starting point,” Harper said. Criminal Justice Services launched RAMP Up (Reentry Assistance Mobility Program) in July 2024 after Mecklenburg County commissioners allocated $500,000 for the pilot program. The program provides $600 a month for a year to 60 randomly selected formerly incarcerated Mecklenburg County residents. Program eligibility is narrower than Durham’s program, as RAMP Up excludes people convicted of certain violent felonies, firearm offenses and sexual offenses. Harper said county leaders intentionally adopted narrower eligibility to reduce the likelihood of public pushback. Before receiving their first payment, participants had to complete a financial literacy workshop. They also complete quarterly budgets throughout the year. Harper said those requirements are important because they reinforce that the payments are a temporary boost, not permanent assistance participants should come to rely on. “We settled on it being $600 per month because we wanted it to be enough funding to where it could be impactful and make a change each month, but we didn’t want it to be so much that folks could become dependent on it,” Harper said. Another 60 residents were selected as a comparison group so county leaders could better measure the program’s impact on reentry outcomes. Harper said housing outcomes have been one of the clearest signs of the program’s impact. At enrollment, more than two-thirds of RAMP Up participants were living in transitional or temporary housing. By the end of the year, that number was reversed — 69 percent were living in permanent, stable housing. Harper attributes that improvement to many participants putting their payments toward housing. In contrast, only 47 percent of the comparison group said they had permanent housing at the end of the year, and 13 percent of them said they were homeless. In the first year of the program, only 5 percent of RAMP Up participants had been re-arrested and were back in custody. Before entering the program**,** participants had been arrested an average of 8.7 times and had most recently spent an average 49 months incarcerated. Those initial results convinced county leaders to continue the pilot. The RAMP Up program just started its third cohort July 1, and Harper said data from all three years will be compiled into a report that county commissioners will use to determine whether to make the program permanent with recurring funding. “If you’re able to meet your basic needs, you’re less likely to be out and reoffend,” Harper said. “This is much less expensive than what it would be to keep somebody housed in either a state prison or even in our county jail.” That’s been the experience for Earquhart, who said the monthly supplemental income has put him in a better position to rebuild his life. One of his biggest goals in the coming months is finding an apartment he can afford so he can move out of the congregate transitional housing where he currently pays $175 a week. “I’m not where I want to be, but I’m getting there,” he said. This article first appeared on North Carolina Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * *

By Anne Braly (Tennessee Lookout) Published: July 6, 2026 It’s easy to be fooled by AI photos, so in an effort to help Tennessee travelers verify where online photos were taken, the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development has launched its new “It’s Real” campaign. It’s a program that promises that the photos you see on its website – TNVacation.com – are not AI-generated, but the real thing. “It’s a commitment to authenticity and a promise to travelers that, when it comes to Tennessee, what you see is what you get,” says Mark Ezell, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development. The campaign does not include filtered pictures that may make sunsets a little more brilliant or autumn leaves a little more colorful. Conversely, AI-generated photos might have a tree in a yard where there is none or a mountain in West Tennessee where the land is pancake-flat. Ezell says it’s up to his department to inspire Tennesseans and others to choose to travel in the Volunteer State and plan their experiences with confidence. “Travelers rely heavily on photos when deciding where to go, and our survey showed that many people struggle to tell the difference between real and AI-generated images,” he says. Tennessee Tourism’s certification includes content credentials and secure metadata to show travelers who, when, where and what the photos they are seeing were captured. This will be done for both new and existing photos on its website. > We want to make sure travelers know when they look at photos on TNVacation.com, they can trust that what they see is a real place captured by a real photographer. > **– Commissioner Mark Ezell, Tennessee Department of Tourist Development** Nancy McCullough of Brentwood, Tenn., travels regularly in the state and has seen pictures of places she’s been to and knows fully well that what she’s seeing is not true to reality. And she thinks the Get Real campaign is one that travelers to the state will appreciate. “It’s a fabulous idea,” she says. “It’s hard enough to trust what you see on the internet these days anyway. But if you know that the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development is following the no-AI rule, then you should be able to know that ‘what you see is what you get.” That’s what Ezell says the Get Real campaign is all about, “Our travelers deserve to know before they go,” he says. Geographically speaking, Tennessee is divided into three “grand divisions” — East, Middle and West — each with distinct landscapes, climates and elevations. “Tennessee is home to some of the most beautiful landscapes, cityscapes and attractions in the country, and we believe that beauty stands on its own,” Ezell says. “We also know it’s getting harder to spot the difference between what’s real and what’s not. We want to make sure travelers know when they look at photos on TNVacation.com, they can trust that what they see is a real place captured by a real photographer.” Jared Kreiss often contributes photos seen on TNVacation.com, and while, as a professional photographer, he’s usually able to distinguish between AI and real photos, he knows many people, particularly older people who may be less experienced with newer technology, cannot tell the difference, he says. “I find it incredibly frustrating to see AI-generated images being passed off as photography of real places, and even more frustrating when people believe they’re real. To me, that’s deceptive,” he adds. “It’s becoming harder and harder to tell real from AI. I am incredibly excited about this campaign and to know Tennessee’s tourism department is working to preserve what is real. I think it is more important than ever to protect that. I really value that.” Costs for the Get Real campaign are incorporated into the tourism department’s existing marketing efforts to introduce the certification to travelers through paid promotions. There are no significant new expenditures associated with the program, says Ezell. According to figures released from Tourism Economics and TDTD, 2025 was a banner year for tourism in the state with 147 million visitors spending a record $31.7 billion. That’s a 3.3% year-ver-year increase and 36.6% growth since 2018. “Our job is to market Tennessee and help bring visitors to our state,’ Ezell says. “Giving travelers the confidence in what they see helps support that mission. Using real and authentic photos for our marketing is a priority.” Tennessee is the first state to implement a program like this, and it’s one that Ezell hopes other states will follow. “As travelers and consumers of the internet ourselves, we’ve all experienced moments where we question whether what we’re seeing online is real,” he says. “We saw an opportunity to be proactive and help travelers feel more confident when they choose to travel to Tennessee. Our job is to bring people to Tennessee and show them the beauty of our state, and we rely heavily on photos to do that.” SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX.

by Amanda Watford, Stateline May 5, 2026 Ty Wooten didn’t realize the weight of answering his first 911 call — until more than a decade later. A woman had dialed 911 to report that her husband had shot himself in front of her and their 7-year-old son, on the family’s living room couch. It was Wooten’s first call as a dispatcher. “I wasn’t prepared for that, and I didn’t quite realize how difficult that call was for me for several years,” said Wooten, who has worked in the 911 industry for more than 30 years, both taking calls and managing dispatch centers. He is now director of government affairs for the International Academies of Emergency Dispatch, an industry group that helps set standards for emergency dispatch centers. Wooten pushed the experience aside. It wasn’t until about 15 years later, while swapping stories with colleagues, that the details came rushing back — triggering a spiral of anxiety, panic attacks and depression that would take time to fully confront. “I had taken that experience and kind of put it in the corner of my mind, and built a wall around it so I wouldn’t think about it again,” Wooten said. Wooten’s experience reflects a broader reality for first responders, who are routinely exposed to traumatic events but often lack the space — or support — to process them. Across the country, state and local officials are increasingly looking for ways to change that, expanding mental health resources and testing new approaches aimed at reducing stigma and improving access to care for 911 dispatchers, police officers, firefighters, paramedics and emergency medical technicians. Research suggests that first responders face higher rates of trauma-related mental health challenges than the general public, with repeated exposure increasing the risk of post-traumatic stress, depression and anxiety. That strain has also been linked to burnout, and to higher rates of substance use and suicidal ideation. > Stigma still keeps police from seeking mental health care, study finds Some policing experts say untreated trauma and stigma around mental health don’t just harm police officers — they can also ripple outward, influencing split-second decisions on the street and the quality of encounters with the public. “It’s not just a personal and individual tragedy. It’s also potentially going to have a direct consequence for how officers treat those they encounter on duty,” said Heidi Bonner, a criminal justice and criminology professor at East Carolina University. At the same time, rising health care costs and concerns about affordability have made access to mental health services more difficult for many nationwide. Some communities are already experimenting with new approaches for first responders. In Brevard County, Florida, some first responders now have access to therapy dogs, peer-to-peer counseling and confidential hotlines. Florida state officials last year also announced they were developing a more coordinated, statewide mental health program for first responders. In Virginia, Henrico County firefighters gained access to a new app that allows them to seek mental health support anonymously. They are one of the first departments in the country to use the platform. Some experts say anonymity can help reduce barriers tied to stigma and fear of professional consequences. ## Expanding options Even as awareness grows, many first responders still don’t seek help — a gap that policymakers and local agencies are increasingly trying to address. “You’re going to see something horrible, and the expectation is, ‘Yeah, that’s what we do — you just got to deal with it,’” said Alanna Badgley, a paramedic in New York. Badgley also is the EMS external affairs coordinator for the International Association of EMTs and Paramedics. “Bringing up if you were feeling some kind of way might have been seen as a sign of weakness, or that you weren’t cut out for the job, so a lot of people would kind of hide it,” she said, describing what the culture was like when she started in emergency medicine in 2010. She added that there’s now a growing recognition that first responders need to be honest about their mental health and seek support early and often. Quotation > You’re going to see something horrible, and the expectation is, ‘Yeah, that’s what we do — you just got to deal with it.’ > > **– Alanna Badgley, paramedic in New York state** Many agencies or departments offer employee assistance programs, or EAPs, which provide confidential counseling and support services for employees dealing with personal or work-related stress, but some first responders may hesitate to use them. “A lot of first responders worry about the potential for their employer to know what’s going on if they go through their EAP,” Badgley said. A 2025 survey by the National Emergency Number Association found that nearly 70% of telecommunicators reported feeling stress before every shift, with fatigue and anxiety among the most common symptoms. In recent years, states and municipalities say they’re focusing on reducing barriers to care, including affordability. “We will pay whatever it takes for someone to get help,” said Tom Synan, the police chief of the Newtown Police Department in Ohio. Synan also is a speaker with the nonprofit Law Enforcement Action Partnership. “I think that’s what’s going to help first responders have long careers, better home life and better service to the community,” he added. ## State efforts In New York, state officials launched an online training program in March to help mental health professionals better understand and support first responders, with a focus on responder culture and barriers to care. New Jersey Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy in January signed into law a measure that provides employment protections for first responders diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, barring retaliation and guaranteeing they can return to their jobs once cleared. The law is already in effect. In Nebraska, Republican Gov. Jim Pillen in April signed into law a bill that shields peer support conversations from being used in court or disciplinary proceedings. Minnesota legislators are considering a proposal to allow first responders to access donated mental health services, including counseling and peer support, without violating state gift laws. And in Missouri, lawmakers have advanced legislation to study alternative therapies, including the psychoactive compounds psilocybin and ibogaine, for treating conditions such as depression, substance use and post-traumatic stress, with first responders and military veterans eligible to participate in supervised studies. > Medicaid cuts could add pressure to already-stressed psychiatric units Other states have taken similar steps in recent years. Last year, Ohio lawmakers approved $40 million for a PTSD treatment fund, while Texas is developing a statewide peer support network for firefighters and EMS personnel. Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Utah and Washington have enacted laws to protect the confidentiality of peer support counseling. Lawmakers in Vermont are considering similar legislation this year that would ensure conversations in peer support groups remain confidential for first responders. Still, advocates say access alone does not guarantee use — particularly when providers may not fully understand the realities of the job. “The trauma is so unique,” Badgley said. “It’s hard to feel comfortable confiding in somebody who just really isn’t trauma informed, or doesn’t understand the first responder mentality.” Some first responders say the mental health strain of the job goes beyond exposure to traumatic calls. It’s often shaped just as much by internal and external pressures, including workplace dynamics, public expectations, staffing shortages and required overtime, and stressors from life outside the job. The combination can leave first responders struggling to process their stress. “When you feel helpless — and you’re the person who helps — who do you go to?” said Synan, the Newtown police chief. Synan said his department has worked to create space for those conversations, holding debriefs after difficult calls and encouraging officers to talk through what they experienced without pressure or judgment. ## A culture slow to change When now-retired firefighter Frank Leto joined the New York City Fire Department in 1983, mental health support barely existed. “The mental health support at that point was probably drinks after work,” he said. The expectation was to absorb whatever you saw and move on — until, as Leto put it, “You just stuffed it down until it started taking things from you: your family, your relationships, your health, eventually your job.” That code of silence began to break after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. “There was really no option for the fire department to not address the mental health needs of our firefighters and their families,” Leto said. > AI therapy chatbots draw new oversight as suicides raise alarm He moved off the line to help expand the department’s counseling unit and its early peer support efforts, but their first major idea — embedding clinicians in the hardest-hit firehouses — “was an utter failure.” Firefighters rarely spoke to those experts, and the clinicians were overwhelmed by the scale and immediacy of the trauma. The breakthrough came when the department stopped trying to import help from the outside and instead formalized what had long existed informally. Training firefighters to support one another created a trusted buffer between the rank-and-file and clinical care, and over time that model “became part of the fabric of the department,” he said. The International Association of Fire Fighters, a labor union, recognized how powerful that shift was and helped fund the work in New York City. Today, Leto, who is a member of the IAFF Disaster Response To-Go Team, estimated that roughly 15,000 IAFF members have been trained in peer support — a sign that, in a culture slow to change, attitudes around mental health are beginning to shift. But that progress has been uneven, and many departments — across fire, law enforcement, emergency medical services and 911 dispatch — are still working to build systems in which seeking support is normalized and accessible. “Looking at mental and physical and overall well-being is not one answer with one solution,” said Wooten, the former 911 dispatcher. “These are all things that have to be worked at collectively and multifaceted to make sure that we can hopefully create an opportunity to fix some of these larger systemic problems.” _Stateline reporter Amanda Watford can be reached at_ _awatford@stateline.org_ _._ YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.SUPPORT Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.

**It's Friday July 3, 2026 and in this morning's issue we're covering:** NC budget agreement finally reached**,** Virginia braces for dangerous heat wave ahead of Fourth of July weekend, Their town burned to the ground. Should they get a pass from California’s new housing laws?, On Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, a community network steps up to increase Vietnamese language access to healthcare, How a solar energy developer lobbied for and won a reduced state permit fee amidst farmer pushback, A Heat Wave is Hitting New York. Know Your Rights Ahead of Soaring Temps, Chemours must cut Ohio River ‘forever chemical’ pollution under new settlement. But a fight over future permit limits looms. **Media outlets and others featured:** Carolina Public Press, Virginia Mercury, CalMatters, North Carolina Health News, Mississippi Today, Investigate Midwest, The City Reporter, Mountain State Spotlight. * * * # NC budget agreement finally reached by Sarah Michels, Carolina Public Press July 1, 2026 By the time the first fireworks go off this Independence Day weekend, Gov. **Josh Stein** will have the long-awaited budget on his desk. Lawmakers are supposed to pass a two-year budget in odd-numbered years, but they weren’t able to come to an agreement in 2025. That means North Carolina is still running on the last budget passed in 2023, more than 1,000 days ago. As a result, state employees and teachers have gone without raises, construction projects are in a holding pattern, various priorities remain unmet and the state hasn’t fully adjusted to the current economic climate amid inflation and recent federal funding cuts. ##### **[** Subscribe for FREE to Carolina Public Press’ Daily, Weekend and Election 2026 newsletters.**]** For more than a year, Senate Leader **Phil Berger,** R-Rockingham, and House Speaker **Destin Hall** , R-Caldwell, butted heads over tax policy, teacher raises and funding for a children’s hospital. While lawmakers passed a series of mini-budgets in 2025 to partially fund the state’s Medicaid program and address disaster recovery needs after Tropical Storm Helene and Tropical Depression Chantal, among other priorities, there was no comprehensive spending plan in sight. This May, Berger and Hall finally came to a loose agreement on a few of the bigger issues remaining, including how quickly to reduce the personal income tax rate. There was no physical document, though, until Tuesday morning, when lawmakers dropped the 634-page budget. Wednesday, the House and Senate voted to approve the budget with bipartisan 92-23 and 37-12 votes, respectively. Thursday, they will make a third and final vote before sending it to Stein. Then, the governor will decide whether to sign, veto or allow the budget to take effect without his signature. “This one’s been a long time coming, and it's been a hard-fought battle, but when we started this session, we said that we got to have the right budget, not just any budget,” Hall said on Wednesday. ### Big budget stuff: Taxes, salaries and cuts In all, the budget outlines $34.4 billion in spending over the next year — about a billion more than in the House’s and Senate’s initial proposals. That billion dollars is set aside for future use. Hall told reporters it’s intended to go toward the state’s rainy day fund and other state reserve funds, if not used for future legislative matters. The budget replenishes the state’s rainy day fund, used in case of natural disasters or other emergencies, to the tune of $450 million. That brings the balance up to about $4.2 billion. Rep. **Dean Arp** , R-Union, said years of conservative, fiscal discipline allow lawmakers to spend money while still putting a significant portion into reserves. “This budget funds today's challenge without mortgaging our children's future and our grandchildren's future,” he said. ### Budget for taxes As outlined in the spring, the budget restructures North Carolina’s personal income tax schedule. Back in 2023, lawmakers made a plan to cut the income tax rate from 4.75% to 2.49% by 2030 through various “triggers,” revenue thresholds the state had to meet to cut the rate each year. Amid inflation and federal uncertainty, Hall wanted to change the plan. The House’s original proposal would have effectively paused cuts by raising revenue thresholds high enough that the state wouldn’t reach them for a while. Berger, however, was adamant that they continue moving forward. In the end, they found a compromise with a new schedule that would reduce the rate more slowly, based on years instead of revenue triggers. The income tax rate will drop from 3.99% to 3.49% in 2027, to 3.24% in 2030 and to 2.99% after 2032. Beyond 2032, there’s still a possibility of lowering it all the way to 2.49%, if the state meets certain revenue thresholds. “Our current tax rates, we felt were not in the best interest of us long term, so we renegotiated those to what we believe is a better and fairer and more equitable tax rate that reduces the tax rate, gives our citizens more of their hard-earned money back into pockets,” said Rep.**Donny Lambeth** , R-Forsyth. There are also a few other tax provisions. When data centers first located in North Carolina, lawmakers offered various tax exemptions as an incentive. They’re now rethinking that. The budget removes data centers’ sales tax exemption for electricity use, while keeping in place some other tax exemptions. Rep.**Pricey Harrison** , D-Guilford, said it’s “past time” lawmakers did that. However, she wishes they also removed the sales tax exemption on data center equipment. The budget also raises taxes on sports wagering operators’ wagering revenue from 18% to 23%, and taxes prediction market operators at 6% of sports-related trading fee revenue earned from North Carolina users. In the bill, lawmakers allow counties to levy up to a half-percent sales tax to be exclusively used for public education, if a majority of voters agree in a referendum and the county does not already take advantage of a separate extra sales tax. ### Salaries and vacant positions One of the most important jobs of a state budget is to pay all the people who work for the government or one of its departments. That includes public school teachers, state employees and law enforcement. Educators are getting an average 8% raise, based on years of experience. Much of the investment, however, is concentrated in the beginning years of teachers’ careers; the budget raises starting salaries to $48,000 before local supplements. It’s the largest average teacher raise since 2006, Hall said. It is not retroactive to 2025, though. Law enforcement officers will receive raises, too. State Bureau of Investigations and Alcohol Law Enforcement will get the most, with average 20% raises, while correctional officers will get an average 15% raise and probation and parole officers will get an average 10% raise. All local law enforcement will receive a one-time $1,750 bonus. “Backing our law enforcement means more than saying thank you,” Rep. **Brenden Jones** , R-Columbus, said. “It means making sure the people who protect our communities, patrol our roads, investigate crimes and keep order in our prisons know that North Carolina stands with them.” State employees will get an across-the-board 3% raise, plus a $1,000 or $1,750 bonus depending on their income. Meanwhile, retirees get a one-time 2.5% cost of living supplement payment. North Carolina State Employees Association Executive Director **Ardis Watkins** said the raise doesn’t even keep up with inflation, much less make up for a year without a raise. “If N.C. is being run like a business, it is a business in terrible financial shape,” Watkins said in a statement. “Cutting the workforce, shutting workers out from any raise only to follow it with peanuts. This is what a business does when it’s in trouble.” Hall said the House would have liked to give retirees more, but they had to compromise. “COLA just costs a lot of money, because of just the huge sum that the state’s paying out to its retirees,” he said. “I think it makes sense to do that at some point.” Finally, the budget cuts hundreds of vacant positions in the Department of Adult Corrections, which has experienced widespread staffing shortages. The department will have to cut up to half of its vacant positions, excluding healthcare-related roles. These cuts won’t impact anyone’s employment, but they will limit the number of people the department can hire in the future. ### Helene North Carolina has caught up with the federal government on Tropical Storm Helene recovery funding, Hall told reporters. Tropical Storm Helene hit North Carolina in September 2024, lawmakers have passed a series of recovery packages totalling over $2.1 billion. They’ve been hesitant to risk granting money that could eventually be provided by the federal government instead, but the federal government has moved slowly. So, they tend to wait for the federal government to take action, then respond in turn. After this budget’s investment, North Carolina has caught up with the federal government on Helene recovery funding, Hall told reporters. The state budget returns $151 million in previously appropriated but unused funds to the state Helene fund, and also appropriates $706 million in new funding for various needs. A majority of the funding, $450 million, is required state match funding to draw down federal aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for public assistance, hazard mitigation and US Army Corps of Engineers help. The state dedicates $30 million for continued private road and bridge repairs, while implementing policy to streamline design and engineering processes for those projects. Local governments, and specifically volunteer fire departments, will be able to apply for grants to get part of a $65 million pot of money for infrastructure needs ineligible for FEMA relief. Madison County is singled out for local government help, and will get $27 million for infrastructure needs. The local government cashflow loan program is also replenished to the tune of $20 million. Housing is an ongoing project in Western North Carolina. The budget dedicates $40 million to a temporary relocation assistance program for certain people to use while waiting for a long-term solution. It also grants $35 million to active disaster volunteer groups repairing and rebuilding homes. Other Helene recovery money will go toward a dam safety grant program, landslide mapping efforts, tourism development and efforts to reduce wildfire risk. It may not be the end of Helene funding. Hall said after recent talks with US Rep. **Tim Moore** and US Sens. **Ted Budd** and **Thom Tillis** , he’s confident that North Carolina will soon receive “a large, large amount of funds down to continue on with Helene relief.” ### Medicaid, SNAP and healthcare After federal cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, the state has to fill the gap. Earlier this year, lawmakers fully funded the Medicaid rebase, or the amount of money required to continue funding current recipients. They did so reluctantly. In a series of legislative meetings, they expressed concern about skyrocketing costs, particularly for applied behavioral analysis therapy, a treatment for patients with autism. They discussed ways to reduce waste, fraud and abuse within the program. Now, the budget includes money to strengthen oversight and use enhanced data analytics technology to root out waste. It also funds continued Medicaid expansion. According to Rep. **Tim Reeder** , R-Pitt, the budget funds 32 positions and allocates $15 million to help take on the additional work of implementing Medicaid work requirements and eligibility redeterminations. The budget maintains Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program funding after the federal government changed the amount of administrative costs states are required to pay. There’s funding to improve county SNAP operations through extra Department of Health and Human Services support positions and technology enhancements. Additionally, the state will provide $5 million in matching funds to draw down $60 million in federal funding for SUN Bucks, a summer food assistance program for students. In other healthcare news, the budget increases childcare subsidy rates and creates a statewide rate floor using $100 million of federal grant money. Also, A newly established Child Welfare Escalation Team will support county Department of Social Service officers, provide more reviews of abuse and neglect reports and expand training for employees to better identify and respond to abuse and neglect. ### Education Nearly half of all budget spending is dedicated to education, including public schools, community colleges and the University of North Carolina’s various campuses and programs. There are also quite a few policy changes. The budget establishes a pilot program to reduce chronic absenteeism through early intervention in several counties, repeals TeachNC and changes the formula the State Board of Education uses to allocate funds for limited English proficiency students to include all English learners, not just those under a certain proficiency level. It expands an early literacy screener, which identifies students who may need extra reading support, from just grades K-3 to grades 4 and 5 and dedicates $13.8 million for middle school literacy professional development. “We are in this reading crisis,” said Rep.**Tricia Cotham** , R-Mecklenburg. “It's at every level. It starts very young, but we can't give up on our kids.” Mathematics remains a legislative focus, with money set aside for a universal math screener at low-performing schools, training for middle school math teachers, development of a standard curriculum for K-8 students and participation in a program designed to increase the number of college-ready high schoolers using a Khan Academy artificial intelligence tutoring program. In the budget, lawmakers say they’ve identified $35.7 million in savings from students enrolled in private schools using Opportunity Scholarship funds in the past two academic years. Since the state does not have to pay for their public education, and per-pupil funding tends to be greater than an Opportunity Scholarship award, there may be some savings, depending on tuition and household income. Those identified savings will be reinvested into math curriculum, literacy professional development and bonuses for school nutrition and custodial staff. ### Justice and public safety In September 2025, lawmakers passed Iryna’s Law, a wide-ranging criminal law bill in response to the fatal stabbing of Ukrainian refugee **Iryna Zarutska** on Charlotte’s public transit system. It included various reforms requiring more work for judicial officers. The budget adds funding for 10 new criminal attorneys to address the higher caseload, as well as for 18 assistant district attorneys. The bill also provides $30 million for school safety grants. It funds 24 additional State Bureau of Investigation positions to address drug crimes, violations of vapor product laws and other issues. Under the budget, the Department of Transportation and State Bureau of Investigation could use automatic license plate readers. ### Children’s hospital and NC Innovation One sticking point of budget talks was whether to continue funding a new children’s hospital in the Triangle. Berger said legislative leaders agreed to fund the project in 2023, and needed to finish the job, while Hall wasn’t convinced the need for another Triangle hospital justified the state’s investment. Berger won’t get as much as he wanted, but the budget does include $208.5 million to help build the behavioral health hospital. Hall said he’s still unsure whether the project is viable. Another area of disagreement was over NC Innovation, a nonprofit that provides grants to university researchers to commercialize their work. While lawmakers originally gave NC Innovation $500 million in the 2023 budget, Hall and Berger disagreed over whether to give the program more money or claw it back. In the end, they settled on taking back the $500 million for other purposes. “Ultimately we didn't use the capital from that in this budget, and so it's just sort of left on the table for future legislatures to deal with,” Hall said. ### Other budget loose ends The State Board of Elections got a few wins in the final budget. Lawmakers provided $15 million toward the total overhaul of the State Election Information Management System, (SEIMS), a longstanding priority for the agency. They gave the first $15 million toward the $60 million project in one of last year’s mini-budgets. There’s enough agency funding to pay for about 14 new employees, too. Visitors to coastal North Carolina may soon encounter tolls when they take ferries. The budget requires the Department of Transportation to establish tolls for all ferries. Local residents would be able to buy yearly commuter passes for $150. The state will invest $133.9 million into the JetZero economic development project at Piedmont Triad International Airport. The Division of Motor Vehicles will see a few changes. They’ll develop an electronic vehicle registration system to eventually eliminate the need for physical registration cards or renewal stickers. Driver license examiners’ starting salaries will increase, four new drivers’ license offices will open and 30 additional oversight positions will become available. Throughout a lengthy debate in the House, Democrats asked whether the year-long wait was worth it. For Rep. **Terry Brown** , D-Mecklenburg, the answer is a resounding no. While lawmakers stalled, life went on for North Carolinians facing rising costs, Democrats said. Teachers, law enforcement and public employees went without raises, and will not get them retroactively. “This budget is a year late and an investment short,” he said. This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * ## Virginia braces for dangerous heat wave ahead of Fourth of July weekend by Markus Schmidt, Virginia Mercury July 2, 2026 Gov. Abigail Spanberger on Wednesday urged Virginians to prepare for dangerous heat and humidity expected to blanket much of the commonwealth through the Fourth of July weekend, with forecasters warning heat index values could reach as high as 115 degrees in some areas. The National Weather Service said Virginia is expected to face a prolonged heat wave from Wednesday through Sunday, with the worst conditions likely from Thursday through Saturday. Temperatures across much of the state are expected to climb into the upper 90s and low 100s, combined with heavy humidity. “As Virginia expects record-breaking high temperatures leading up to and throughout the holiday weekend, the safety of all our neighbors is my highest priority,” Spanberger said in a statement Wednesday morning. “I am asking Virginians to do all you can to keep yourself and your loved ones safe. Stay hydrated, stay cool, and check on your neighbors.” State officials urged residents to avoid strenuous outdoor activities during the hottest hours of the day, drink water regularly and spend time in air-conditioned spaces whenever possible. Officials also warned residents to never leave children or pets inside vehicles, where temperatures can rise rapidly even within minutes. Virginians seeking relief from the heat can use the Virginia Department of Health’s online cooling center locator to find nearby public facilities. The heat wave arrives as large parts of Virginia are already dealing with worsening drought conditions and declining river levels after months of unusually dry weather. Beginning Wednesday, Richmond and neighboring localities including Chesterfield, Goochland, Hanover, Henrico and Powhatan counties implemented voluntary water-conservation measures tied to falling flows along the James River basin. Under the region’s James River Regional Flow Management Plan, voluntary conservation measures begin when average river flows fall to 1,700 cubic feet per second for 14 straight days. Regional officials asked residents to voluntarily reduce lawn watering and other non-essential water use while utilities continue to monitor river conditions. Odd-numbered addresses are asked to water lawns only on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, while even-numbered addresses are asked to water on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Richmond officials said regional water systems remain capable of meeting drinking water and emergency needs, but warned that continued dry weather west of the city has reduced river flows throughout the watershed. Local officials emphasized that the current conservation measures remain voluntary. The dry conditions extend well beyond Central Virginia. Last month, Spanberger and the Virginia Drought Monitoring Task Force urged Virginians across the state to voluntarily conserve water, warning Virginia was experiencing its driest stretch since 1941. State officials said precipitation totals were running about eight inches below average across much of the commonwealth. Other localities have also warned residents about worsening drought conditions and the possibility of future restrictions. Officials in New Kent County recently cautioned that prolonged heat and dry weather can place additional strain on water systems and could eventually require stronger conservation measures if conditions continue deteriorating. The combination of prolonged heat and drought has heightened concerns about public health, agriculture and wildfire risks heading into one of the busiest travel weekends of the summer. Virginia has experienced several major droughts and heat waves over the past century. The drought of 1930 devastated farms across Virginia during the Dust Bowl era and caused agricultural losses later estimated at nearly $1 billion in today’s dollars. Six years later, Richmond recorded 103 degrees on June 30, 1936 — still among the hottest temperatures ever officially documented in the city. Virginia also endured severe heat and drought during the summer of 1980, when a nationwide heat wave contributed to widespread crop damage and thousands of heat-related deaths across the country. Another major heat wave struck Virginia in 2024, when heat index values exceeded 105 degrees in parts of Central Virginia and promoted widespread heat warnings. Federal climate experts have warned that extreme heat events are expected to become more frequent and intense as average temperatures continue rising. State health officials this week encouraged residents to wear lightweight clothing, use sunscreen, avoid heavy outdoor exertion during peak afternoon heat and regularly check on elderly neighbors and vulnerable family members. Officials also urged Virginians to monitor local weather forecasts and use the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s HeatRisk tool to track heat dangers by zip code. YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.SUPPORT Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Samantha Willis for questions: info@virginiamercury.com. * * * # Louisiana Supreme Court frees death row prisoner, calling evidence against him ‘scientifically indefensible’ by Richard A. Webster, Verite News New Orleans June 29, 2026 _This article was produced for_ ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network_in partnership with Verite News._ Sign up for Dispatches_to get stories like this one as soon as they are published._ Former Louisiana death row inmate Jimmie “Chris” Duncan is officially a free man following a unanimous ruling Monday by the Louisiana Supreme Court. In the opinion, justices upheld a lower court’s decision to toss out Duncan’s 1998 conviction for killing his former girlfriend’s toddler, Haley Oliveaux, citing flawed forensics practices used to convict him. Justice Cade R. Cole wrote on behalf of the seven-member court that new evidence presented by Duncan’s legal team left no doubt that his conviction should be overturned. “The post-conviction evidence undermined the core factual premises on which the state depended,” Cole wrote in the official opinion. Two other justices, including Chief Justice John Weimer, issued opinions concurring with Cole. “I am flooded with relief,” said Chris Fabricant, a member of Duncan’s legal team and director of strategic litigation with the Innocence Project in New York, in an interview. “It would have been a moral outrage for the conviction to be reinstated.” The court’s ruling came after a 2025 Verite News and ProPublica investigation examined the reliability of the key forensic evidence used to convict Duncan, now 57. At the time, he faced the possibility of being put to death as Gov. Jeff Landry, a staunch death penalty advocate, made moves to expedite executions after a 15-year pause. Duncan’s conviction was based largely on now-discredited bite mark evidence presented by forensic dentist Michael West and pathologist Steven Hayne. Their analysis, which was critical to Ouachita Parish prosecutors securing Duncan’s conviction, claimed to match marks on Haley’s body to Duncan’s teeth. But experts have since deemed such evidence, fairly common at the time of Duncan’s 1998 trial, to be junk science. Meanwhile, the longtime partnership between West and Hayne has come under scrutiny from civil rights attorneys, forensic experts and the courts over concerns about the validity of their techniques. In the 28 years since Duncan’s trial, nine other prisoners have been set free after being convicted in part on inaccurate evidence given by West and Hayne. Three of those men were on death row. Duncan was the last person awaiting an execution based on the pair’s work. In his opinion, Cole reexamined the use of supposed bite marks, which were the only physical evidence tying Duncan to the alleged crime. Cole pointed to a video of West’s 1993 examination of Haley, which was not shown to jurors at trial. In that recording, West can be seen taking a mold of Duncan’s teeth and grinding it into and across the girl’s body, seemingly creating bite marks where none previously existed. Referencing previous testimony from a defense expert, Cole wrote that “it was ‘scientifically indefensible’ to identify those marks as having been made by Duncan, and that the angles shown in the West Video were physically impossible for a human bite.” West has previously said he was simply using what he called a “direct comparison” technique — in which he presses a mold of a person’s teeth directly onto the location of suspected bite marks. Weimer wrote in a concurrence that the bite mark evidence used to prosecute Duncan was similar to “trial by water” tests used by witch-hunters in the 17th century, in which suspected witches were bound with rope and lowered into a body of water. If they floated, they were considered guilty of witchcraft, while those who “passed” the test by sinking often drowned. “We now look back at those practices as asinine and absurd, since those who fell victim to those practices often did not survive, regardless of whether they were found guilty or innocent,” Weimer wrote. “The bite mark evidence and the sexual abuse evidence used in the trial against the accused has proven to be similarly specious.” Duncan’s prosecution “demonstrates we cannot be too careful in determining whether the death penalty should be implemented in cases such as this case because of the finality of the sentence and the impossibility of rectification,” Weimer wrote.“Such an irreversible and tragic consequence is inimical and deleterious to our system of justice if carried out based on evidence that is devoid of legitimacy.” ### 'This should be the end of this case' Police arrested Duncan on Dec. 18, 1993. He was babysitting Haley that day in the home he shared with the girl’s mother in West Monroe. Duncan told law enforcement he had put the child in the bath, then went downstairs to wash dishes. When he heard a noise coming from the bathroom, he rushed upstairs to check on her and found Haley floating face down in the water. She was pronounced dead a few hours later. Duncan was initially booked for negligent homicide, but prosecutors upped the charge to first-degree murder after Hayne and West conducted Haley’s medical exam and claimed they discovered evidence, including the purported bite marks, that she had been sexually assaulted and intentionally drowned. Following two weeks of testimony during the trial in 1998, the jury found Duncan guilty and sentenced him to death. While Duncan awaited an execution date, his new team of postconviction attorneys uncovered evidence that pointed to his innocence, including an expert witness who said that the child’s death was not a homicide but the result of an accidental drowning. In addition, investigators working for Duncan’s legal team interviewed a jailhouse informant who recanted his earlier trial testimony that Duncan had confessed to the crime. Duncan’s conviction was overturned in April of last year by former Ouachita Parish Judge Alvin Sharp. He was let out of prison on bail in December, but he continued to await a final decision on his case after prosecutors appealed Sharp’s ruling. Steve Tew, district attorney for Ouachita and Morehouse parishes, has never wavered in his insistence that Duncan was guilty of murder and that he should be put to death. His office appealed Sharp’s decision to the state Supreme Court. During oral arguments in April, Tew said that since Duncan was the only person with Haley at the time of her death, his guilt could not be debated. “We don’t need the bite mark evidence to put Mr. Duncan in the apartment alone with this child,” Tew said. Haley’s mother, Allison Layton Statham, has publicly supported Duncan’s release from prison and the overturning of his conviction; so have family members of Haley’s father, Lloyd Donald Oliveaux, who died in 1996. They have excoriated the state’s tactics, claiming they repeatedly asked for a meeting with prosecutors to express their concerns, but never received a response. Tew, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday, said at the April hearing that should the Supreme Court refuse to reinstate Duncan’s conviction, he would retry him, though he did not say what charge he might pursue. When asked about the prospect of Duncan being retried for murder, Fabricant, the Innocence Project attorney, said, “If there is any sense of fairness and justice left, this should be the end of this case.” In addition to the Innocence Project, Duncan’s legal team includes the Mwalimu Center for Justice in New Orleans and the Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner law firm in Atlanta. This article first appeared on Verite News New Orleans and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # Their town burned to the ground. Should they get a pass from California’s new housing laws? By Ben Christopher, CalMatters This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters. Altadena may get a reprieve from two of California’s marquee housing laws after a bill to temporarily exempt the fire-torn community sailed through back-to-back Assembly hearings on Wednesday. The two laws being put on hold — Senate Bill 9 from 2021 and Senate Bill 1123 from 2024 — legalize the construction of up to 10 small houses on plots otherwise reserved for single-family homes and make it easier to split land into smaller parcels which can be sold off individually. Senate Bill 1090 by Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, a Democrat whose district includes Altadena, would exempt the unincorporated town’s single zip code from the two laws through 2030. That’s meant to give Eaton Fire survivors “the time they need to rebuild their community without the overpowering influence of predatory developers looking to take advantage of the devastation and suffering,” Pérez said at a press conference on Wednesday morning. Altadena “shouldn't be a playground for people who want a return on investment,” added the town’s Assemblymember John Harabedian, a fellow Democrat. The bill is “about protecting Altadena and keeping Altadena Altadena.” With the rebuilding effort in Altadena progressing slowly, mired by sluggish insurance payouts, pending litigation and escalating construction costs, only a few dozen permits have been filed that make use of these state laws, either by professional property developers or individual homeowners. Some pro-housing advocates and even some Altadena residents worry that the new bill, which supporters frame as a curb on out-of-town investors, could inadvertently make it harder for some fire survivors to rebuild and remain. The stated purpose of the legislation is “to stop greedy developers from taking advantage of Altadenans, which, of course, we all agree with,” said Caroline Paules, a town resident and founder of a small home construction company, speaking before the Assembly’s housing committee. “I believe what it actually does is prevent Altadenans from housing themselves — and also Altadenans from helping to house each other.” Preventing speculators from profiting from the Los Angeles rebuild without also harming homeowners is a tough balance to strike. Lawmakers are also considering a bill to give the California Coastal Commission more authority over reconstruction projects pursued by anyone who purchased a property after a future disaster. That’s meant to check investor-led redevelopment. It could also make it more difficult for survivors to sell their properties should they decide or be forced by necessity not to rebuild. SB 1090 received unanimous support from both the Assembly housing and local government committees, even if some “Yes In My Backyard”-aligned members expressed some apparent discomfort. The debate over the legislation pits California’s longstanding efforts to turbocharge housing construction against the interests of many Altadenans who want to rebuild the community as it was. It also raises questions about who and what gets prioritized when a community is rebuilt after a natural disaster in California. “I don’t think it’s NIMBYism and I don't think it's unreasonable for us to say, ‘We’re still in a state of emergency. Let us recover,’” said Nic Arnzen, chair of Altadena’s Town Council and a supporter of Pérez’s bill. Arguments like these are a fixture of California housing debates. Locals often object to new, denser development, or to the policies promoting it, on the grounds that while more homes may be needed statewide, the conditions specific to a particular town or neighborhood — whether it’s heightened wildfire risk, historic significance, the physical scale or demographic make-up  — argue that it shouldn’t be built _here_. But Arnzen and other supporters of SB 1090 say that the temporary nature of the bill and Altadena’s extraordinarily unusual circumstances make this a legitimately special case. The two housing laws at issue were intended to gradually add density to urban areas as existing homes are periodically sold and as rare vacant parcels are developed, he said. They were “never meant to apply to towns that were two-thirds destroyed.” Before the fire, 95% of all the houses in parts of Altadena touched by fire were single-family homes, according to a UCLA analysis. Forcing the state laws upon the burn area would “completely reshape the character of the neighborhood,” said Arnzen. ## A lot split as a lifeline Though Pérez’s bill is written to help Altadenans rebuild on their terms, Andrew Post worries it might prevent his parents from rebuilding at all. Post’s parents, retired physicists Jonathan and Christine, lost their house on North Marengo Avenue. They were determined to rebuild from the start, over their son’s initial objections. But an as-yet uncertain insurance payout, the couple’s modest fixed incomes and uncertain construction costs make for a tight reconstruction budget. Unexpected construction delays or a denied insurance claim and “they could be dead broke and have an unfinished house,” said Post. Even if construction goes as planned, the couple will have little left to live off of. In early June the family filed paperwork with the county to see if they could split the parcel, as allowed under the law. The typical Altadena homeowner hoping to rebuild is short $550,000 after accounting for past and expected insurance payouts, according to a survey by the nonprofit Department of Angels. Splitting up a lot and selling a chunk to a developer, as SB 9 allows, could help many homeowners close that gap, said Azeen Khanmalek, director of the pro-housing advocacy group Abundant Housing LA. These density-boosting state laws should be seen as “potential tools and pathways to help some homeowners come back and rebuild, rather than as threats,” he said. Post, who grew up in Altadena, said he’s sympathetic to concerns about density, historic preservation, parking and traffic — to a point. Altadena prides itself as a historic refuge of relative affordability, diversity and tolerance in Los Angeles County. The best way to preserve that legacy is to enable more multiplexes and small starter homes, said Post. “The character of the neighborhood is, I think, better preserved by keeping it affordable rather than by keeping the white picket fence architecture,” he said. “I am very focused on the question of whether my parents ever live in Altadena again,” he added. “It’s hard for me to prioritize a preference for the neighborhood character over an ability to be part of that character.” ## SB 9 in Altadena Of the 5,645 parcels with damaged or destroyed homes in Altadena, 52 have active permits that invoke SB 9, according to a data dashboard commissioned by the town council. Of those, 14 are under construction and two are complete. That relatively low number may partly reflect the typical geometry of Altadena parcels, said Devang Shah, a principal with Genesis Builders, which is building single-family homes for fire survivors. “They’re narrow and deep,” he said, which makes it hard to pack in additional units or dice them up for sale. Even so, the handful of submitted plans — and renderings depicting a type of multifamily dwellings largely alien to pre-fire Altadena — have provided ample fodder for some locals eager to protest denser development and the perceived threat posed by investors and developers capitalizing off the community’s tragedy. John Chan, a Los Angeles architect who has pushed for redeveloping Altadena to be more pedestrian-oriented and who supports the use of density-boosting state laws, said a handful of poorly designed SB 9 projects — “sardine cans for rent extraction,” he said — have soured many locals on the possible upsides of density. “It’s creating a backlash to SB 9 that I think is really going to hurt Altadena,” he said. ## “Altadena not for sale” In both Altadena and the Palisades that backlash began brewing almost as soon as the flames were extinguished. In the summer of 2025, long before hinting at any aspirations for higher office, former reality TV star Spencer Pratt began posting on social media assailing SB 9 and “opportunistic developers” hoping to make use of the law to rebuild in the Palisades. Responding to that pressure, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass issued dueling executive orders to nullify the law in areas that fall within state-designated “very high” wildfire hazard severity zones inside Los Angeles county. Newsom’s order only covered a small portion of Altadena. Even after the state expanded its fire severity maps, much of the Eaton Fire burn area did not fall into the “very high” category. The order therefore did little to quell anxieties among the residents who saw denser redevelopment not as an opportunity for struggling homeowners, but as a boon to out-of-town developers and speculators. Pérez was hoping to address those concerns when she introduced an earlier version of SB 1090 this spring which would have banned large residential investors from making unsolicited offers to purchase parcels in the burn area. That hyperlocal focus also tapped into a growing national interest in preventing investors from purchasing single-family homes, a remarkably bipartisan cause championed by both Newsom and President Donald Trump. The bill sailed through the California Senate on partisan lines. In mid-June, Perez rewrote the bill to focus on the state density laws. Her office said the bill’s new focus reflects the more pressing concerns of many Altadenans. “What I am not going to allow is for my community to be treated differently than the Palisades or than Malibu,” Pérez said on Wednesday. Arnzen, for one, said he’s less concerned about existing homeowners selling to land speculators. “I don't fault people for selling to the highest bidder,” he said. “If I was selling my property, would I have the wherewithal to make sure it goes into the right hands? I don’t know.” Instead, he wants to see temporary limits on what those new buyers can do with the property once they have it. Arnzen said he moved to Altadena two decades ago because he wanted his young kids to grow up “in a small town, not in a cookie cutter subdivision, not in a city.” After losing their home to the fire, he and his husband are now in the process of relocating to an accessory dwelling unit on their property, which they’ll live in while they rebuild. When construction wraps up, the two plan to move into the new house and rent out the smaller one “to push back on the housing crisis in the state,” he said. “Because I think we should all do our part.” _Jeremia Kimelman contributed the data visualization to this story._ This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. * * * # Martin County residents keep pressing state officials for funding to reopen hospital by Jaymie Baxley, North Carolina Health News June 29, 2026 **Key takeaways:** * Martin County was already among North Carolina's most economically distressed communities before Martin General closed in 2023. The shutdown only exacerbated economic issues. * ECU Health has proposed converting Martin General into a Rural Emergency Hospital under a federal designation. It would be the first hospital to reopen under the rubric. * To reopen would require about $220 million in state appropriations. It's unknown what the status of the proposal is in Republican lawmakers’ negotiations. #### **By Jaymie Baxley** When Martin General Hospital closed its doors in 2023 after 73 years of service, residents of Martin County in eastern North Carolina were left without a local emergency department. At the time the hope was to get the facility reopened quickly with new management. Three years later, residents still have to travel across county lines to access life-saving care. Given those circumstances, it was no surprise that a plan proposed by ECU Health to reopen the hospital came up repeatedly when state officials visited Williamston, the county’s seat of government, last week. Devdutta Sangvai, head of the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, and Lee Lilley, a Martin County native who leads the state’s Department of Commerce, were in town as part of a “listening tour” organized by Gov. Josh Stein’s office. The event, held in a room typically used for school board meetings at Martin Innovative Early College, offered an “opportunity to understand the impact and intersection of community and health care,” according to Sangvai. “As I think about the challenges throughout the state, Martin County is really the exemplar of a community that really wants to solve its health care challenges,” he said. “We know there have been really acute challenges that you've had to face, in particular with the hospital, but the one thing I've seen here is a consistent and persistent interest in ensuring that there's adequate health care resources in Martin County.” A listening session organized by Gov. Josh Stein’s office drew dozens of concerned citizens to Martin Innovative Early College in Williamston. Nearly 50 concerned citizens from Martin and surrounding counties turned out for the hourlong session. More than a dozen attendees shared their thoughts on issues ranging from food insecurity to wastewater infrastructure, but one topic bubbled up more than any other: the fate of Martin General. Tom Franklin, a retired cardiovascular physiologist and former health system administrator who has lived in Martin County for seven years, recalled a recent medical scare involving his wife. He told the officials that her nearest option for care was an emergency department half an hour away in Bertie County. “We need a lot of help,” Franklin said of the situation. “It just doesn't make any sense at all that our EMS folks have to carry emergency patients to adjacent counties, and if we have to be hospitalized, we have to go to adjacent counties too.” #### **A path forward?** ECU Health, the state-affiliated hospital system based in nearby Greenville, has spent the past year promoting a plan to revive Martin General as North Carolina's first Rural Emergency Hospital — a federal designation launched in 2023 as a lifeline for struggling hospitals in rural communities. Facilities that convert to Rural Emergency Hospitals are required to provide 24/7 emergency care and outpatient services, but they are prohibited from offering inpatient services and must have agreements in place with area trauma centers to accept patients once they’ve stabilized. In exchange, they receive a 5 percent boost to Medicare payments for covered outpatient services, plus monthly payments of about $285,625 from the federal government. ECU Health has put forward a plan to reopen Martin General as a Rural Emergency Hospital. While 50 hospitals across the country have converted, all of those facilities were still operational when they made the switch. None of the hospitals are in North Carolina, which has the second largest rural population in the country, next to Texas, and where 10 rural hospitals (and two non-rural hospitals) have closed since 2005. Under ECU Health’s plan, Martin General would become the first shuttered hospital in the nation to reopen as a Rural Emergency Hospital. The proposal, unveiled to the Martin County Board of Commissioners in May 2025, asks state lawmakers to appropriate $220 million toward the project. About $70 million would be used to rebuild the emergency hospital on Martin General's old campus in Williamston, with the rest funding a new inpatient bed tower at ECU Beaufort Hospital in neighboring Beaufort County. That funding request has been tied up for months amid prolonged negotiations in Raleigh over the state budget in an environment of reduced federal receipts. The project remains in limbo. Roy Lilley, uncle of Lee Lilley, is the treasurer for Advancing Community Health Together, a nonprofit formed in 2024 to advocate for the hospital's return. During the session, he said his organization has raised $89,000 through two fundraisers and secured a $50,000 grant from the North Carolina Community Foundation. “We are trying to help ourselves, but we need additional assistance from the General Assembly to advance our goals,” Roy Lilley said, adding that he hopes his nephew and Sangvai will “continue to work with the General Assembly to fund the plan put forth by ECU Health.” Roy Lilley of the nonprofit Advancing Community Health Together. Lee Lilley said that he, Sangvai and Stein have “encouraged” lawmakers to approve the appropriation, and they’re “optimistic that there will be funding” in the budget to relaunch emergency department services in Martin County. At the same time, he acknowledged that getting the money is only the first step. “We stand ready to work with this community on all the work that would be needed to reopen a hospital, as well as to look at the broader health care ecosystem of this area,” he said. “It's not just the emergency room that's critical. The wraparound services and the entirety of the health care ecosystem are [also] important to this community, this community's health and well-being and, from my perspective, the community's economic viability going forward.” NC DHHS Sec. Devdutta Sangvai speaks during a listening session in Williamston on June 25, 2026. Sangvai, who noted that he was a hospital CEO before taking the reins at NC DHHS, said his department would move quickly on construction and licensing matters if the funding comes through. “We'll be committed to move those things as fast as possible through the department so we don't become something that's slowing things down,” he said, adding that the community has a “quality partner” in ECU Health. “I think we have to really be thankful and not overlook the reality that, when this thing gets to go — and I'm going to continue to remain optimistic about that — you have a partner who really understands what they're doing and isn't here to find a way to make a dollar off of Martin County.” #### **The cost of closure** By most measures, there aren't that many dollars to be made in Martin County. The county, which has a population of fewer than 22,000, is categorized by the N.C. Department of Commerce as one of the most economically distressed counties in the state. About 20 percent of its residents live in poverty and about 38 percent receive care through Medicaid. Martin General's closure only compounded those challenges. Opened in 1950, Martin General thrived for decades as Martin County's only hospital. After outgrowing its original two-story building in downtown Williamston, the facility moved in 1973 to a 22-acre campus on nearby South McCaskey Road. As Martin County's population declined beginning in the 1990s, the hospital's revenues fell with it. Former operator Quorum Health attempted to cut costs by discontinuing maternity services in 2019 and shuttering the intensive care unit in 2021. Those changes weren’t enough to keep Martin General afloat. Quorum closed the 43-bed hospital’s doors in August 2023, citing “financial challenges related to declining population and utilization trends.” A banner that has been posted at the entrance of Martin General since August 2023. During a conference organized by the NC Rural Center in April, Martin County Manager Dexter Batts said the closure “had a huge impact from an economic development standpoint.” He estimated that the loss of hospital-related labor income alone cost the county $12 million, with total economic activity losses reaching $33.1 million. That’s in line with findings from the UNC Chapel Hill Sheps Center for Health Services Research showing that when rural hospitals close the local labor force decreases, along with the local population. Meanwhile, Martin County's annual contribution to emergency medical services swelled from $550,000 to $1.4 million as ambulances were forced to make longer runs to neighboring counties — a significant burden for a community with a budget of less than $46 million. “Our budget is so limited that we can barely scrape by in a normal year,” Batts said. Gov. Stein did not attend last week’s public listening session, but he did participate in a roundtable discussion with local leaders before the event. He later told reporters that the state is “working and having conversations with other important players to revive the hospital.” Sangvai closed out the session with a pledge to residents. “We're going to do everything we can to help you find a way to get the hospital up and running again,” he said. This article first appeared on North Carolina Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # On Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, a community network steps up to increase Vietnamese language access to healthcare by Anna Hu, Mississippi Today June 26, 2026 BILOXI — As a young teen in 1960s Saigon, Vietnam, Coi Nguyen learned English by listening to tape recorders and comparing her speech to the cassette's. When her friends teased that there was no one to practice with, she responded, “I talk to the machine.” Now, Nguyen lives on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, where she volunteers for the local Vietnamese community as a translator and interpreter at doctor’s appointments and legal hearings. Sometimes, Nguyen said, people will give her a tip or take her out to a meal. But for her, the work is not for the money. It’s because of her connection with a community she’s lived in for the past two decades. “Everybody knows me as a friend, a family,” she said. The Coast is home to half the state's 9,000 Vietnamese individuals, who represent one of the largest Asian diasporas in Mississippi. Despite the size of the community, local healthcare workers say there are only a handful of Vietnamese-speaking medical providers in the area, creating challenges for those with limited English proficiency. The persistent language barrier has pushed a network of Vietnamese speakers and volunteers to take matters into their own hands, carving out time to help neighbors navigate the healthcare system. Nguyen, who is semi-retired, describes herself as an easy-going person with the time to help anyone, especially if they’re a good cook. Working in her apartment kitchen under the guiding eye of a lucky cat figurine, she makes calls and scans documents for her neighbors. She records every appointment in her handmade “little book,” which is filled with names, times and addresses scrawled in both English and Vietnamese. Her roster includes those who would otherwise have put off care and some who most potential volunteers didn’t have the patience for. She remembers one woman in particular whose personality neighbors found hard to handle, and who later needed psychiatric care. “I feel like, if I don't drive her, who will? And if I don’t help her, who help?” she said. “It takes me a little more time, but that's okay.” ### **A need for better language access** In the 1970s, large numbers of Vietnamese refugees started arriving in New Orleans, fleeing the fall of Saigon and the conclusion of the Vietnam War. They then gravitated toward Biloxi for work in the seafood industry. By the 2000s, roughly 5,000 Vietnamese people lived in Mississippi, one of the largest such communities in the Deep South, according to data from the U.S. Census. Among those who settled in Biloxi were the parents of Emma To, who co-created the Gulf Coast Vietnamese Narratives museum exhibition to honor Vietnamese contributions to coastal history. Emma To sits on her mother’s lap in their Bayou Auguste Housing Projects home, formerly known as Homes for African Americans. After To’s mother started working for the casino industry, they no longer qualified for public housing and moved into a rental home. To’s family lived in public housing surrounded by Vietnamese neighbors. Like many Vietnamese children in the area, she was the bridge between her family and their English-speaking surroundings. “When I was growing up, I was the interpreter,” she said. “I interpreted for my parents. If they had surgery or whatever, I skipped school and went to surgery with them.” It was never a comfortable experience, she said, because relaying medical jargon was difficult as a child. Neither To nor her parents knew specialized medical terms in Vietnamese. The barriers in language access to healthcare that To experienced growing up remain present on the Coast today. The Singing River Health System, a major regional provider, saw over 700 Vietnamese patients in the past year, of whom over 60% likely needed interpretation or translation services, a hospital spokesperson said. Hospitals that receive federal funding are required by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to offer “meaningful access” to language assistance, although there is no government enforcement of the policy. Many have third-party services, such as LanguageLine Solutions, to connect healthcare providers with virtual interpreters. However, many Vietnamese-speaking patients prefer to have an in-person interpreter, according to Cynthia Le, a bilingual nurse practitioner at the Singing River Health Medical Clinic in downtown Biloxi. She said she is one of the handful of Vietnamese-speaking healthcare professionals who grew up on the Coast and stayed to serve her community. She uses her Vietnamese daily, and patients are often referred to her because she is fluent in their native tongue. “I still have a good bit of Vietnamese patients that don't have the family support or can't speak the English language at all,” she said. “It's just easier for them to speak directly (to me) than go through another person to translate.” The Singing River Medical Clinic in downtown Biloxi has a Vietnamese speaking nurse practitioner and a Vietnamese speaking doctor. June 19, 2026. In her two decades of practice, Le found that speaking to patients in Vietnamese allows them to have more agency in their own care because they understand why their medications are important and are more likely to accept preventive care, such as cancer screenings. “I have a lot of patients that don't want to go do their colonoscopy because they don't have anybody (who speaks Vietnamese) to take them,” she said. ### **A network of volunteers and grassroots organizations step up to fill gaps** Many children, young and adult, accompany their parents to medical appointments as interpreters, multiple healthcare providers said. But as younger generations start their careers and have their own families, some, including Le, have seen the number of family interpreters on the Coast drop. To meet the need for in-person interpretation, volunteers and community health workers step in. Dat Thanh Phung, Nguyen’s grand-nephew, immigrated to Mississippi from Vietnam seven years ago and followed her into the insurance broker business. In between studying for his accounting degree and taking care of his young family, he volunteers to help his insurance clients with their doctor's visits. “They let me know before, one week, and I will fit my schedule to them,” Phung said. Phung is still practicing English himself, so he’ll often call clients to go over their symptoms in advance, making sure he knows how to say those symptoms in English. “I just want to make sure that I understand 100% about the sickness and what medication they need,” he said. For Phung, the motivation to help others stems from his own experiences stumbling through language barriers, like when he took 14 visits to the DMV to fill out permit paperwork. He’s heard his clients talk about not wanting to go to the emergency room because they wouldn’t be able to speak to the workers. Instead, he said, they “absorb the pain.” When he helps interpret, Phung said that he can assuage some of that worry and that clients often invite him to a meal as thanks. Nguyen spends much of her free time helping people who can’t go to the doctor on their own. She said one woman only trusts her to accompany her to physical therapy appointments, and another always asks if she can sleep over at “Ms. Coi's house.” Over the years, she’s gotten to know the personalities of her repeat clients, whom she also sees at church, in the restaurants and local supermarkets. “I get to the point that I know people inside out,” she said. ### **Organizations seek to broaden access** Outside of volunteer efforts, one of the only organizations supporting Vietnamese language access to healthcare in the Gulf Coast area is Boat People SOS. The nonprofit helps community members set up appointments, sends interpreters to doctor’s appointments and connects people with Medicare-covered transportation. The Biloxi office of the national nonprofit organization Boat People SOS, which helps Vietnamese clients with interpretation and translation across medical, legal, immigration and daily life areas. June 19, 2026. Nguyen worked part-time at Boat People SOS shortly after she moved to Mississippi from Canada, and got connected to other local efforts to improve healthcare access. One instance is when she was tapped by the Mississippi Department of Health in 2021 for their COVID-19 Vietnamese Task Force to lead vaccination outreach for the community. Like many of the people she helps, Nguyen lives alone in Biloxi. Her daughter, Annie, is in nursing school and works in a hospital 90 minutes away. Three years ago, Nguyen lost her son Peter, who was living in Canada at the time. His passing is another reason she finds fulfillment in her volunteer work. “If I am alone and then have nothing to do, I will miss him and I cry all day, you know? But talking to people and helping them fills up my time,” she said. Coi Nguyen holds a photo of herself and her daughter, Annie, who is in her last year of nursing school. The decision to become a nurse was influenced by her mother and her family’s dedication to helping others, Annie said. June 19, 2026. There are limits to Nguyen’s efforts. While she has heard of others in the community who will offer rides or help with interpretation, most don’t have the dedicated time that she does or the longstanding knowledge of each person’s history. She said she worries about the people she will one day leave behind, especially those that she drives to appointments because they physically cannot drive or don’t own a vehicle. Nguyen added that the number of Vietnamese-speaking providers and volunteers remains limited. She said she wishes for more organized financial support from the city or state to help patients access healthcare through organizations such as Boat People SOS. The low-income Vietnamese community and those who don’t speak English at all are most vulnerable, she said. “I'm 65 years old, I cannot stay here forever,” she said. “But if I'm gone, who help them, you know?” _This story was produced as part of the AAJA VOICES fellowship program, a student journalism project of the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA)._ _This story was produced with support from the Sarah Yelena Haselhorst Fund for Health Journalism._ This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # How a solar energy developer lobbied for and won a reduced state permit fee amidst farmer pushback by Juan Vassallo, Investigate Midwest, Investigate Midwest February 24, 2026 NextEra Energy’s 2,000-acre solar farm under construction in northwest Oklahoma is set to become one of the state’s largest renewable energy developments. Under Oklahoma law, its construction permit carried a $2.5 million fee. But Christopher Banks, project manager for the Skeleton Creek Energy Center, believed the company deserved a major discount. “Although we still have questions about the necessity of a building permit for solar arrays, we are agreeable to pay a fee in this case for the sake of expediency,” Banks wrote to the Oklahoma state fire marshal, who manages the fee, in a May 22, 2025, email, obtained by Investigate Midwest through an open records request. “Skeleton Creek hereby proposes a fee of $15,000.00.” After back-and-forth negotiations, the state attorney general’s office got involved. In an email to NextEra’s attorneys, Alex Pedraza, an assistant attorney general, argued that other states calculate permitting fees based on either a project’s valuation or its kilowatt capacity — approaches that would have resulted in higher fees for NextEra if applied in Oklahoma. Pedraza recommended that NextEra accept the Fire Marshal’s revised proposal of half a million dollars. “I believe you’ll find that both these methodologies as applied to your client’s solar farm projects would result in permitting fees totaling far greater values than OSFM’s self-implemented permitting fee cap,” wrote Pedraza in an Oct. 22, 2025, email. The talks ended in November, when NextEra agreed to pay the reduced fee of $500,000. As electricity demand surges, driven in large part by energy-hungry artificial intelligence infrastructure, rural Oklahoma has become a battleground over land use and power. The state’s wide-open spaces and low costs have attracted a wave of renewable-energy projects and data centers, and some lawmakers, including the governor, have actively courted energy companies to tap into those opportunities. Construction was underway in 2025 of a NextEra solar farm in Garfield County, Oklahoma. photo by Ben Felder, Investigate Midwest But many farmers and ranchers believe these renewable energy developments are disrupting their rural communities. Opponents often cite concerns about falling property values, environmental and fire risks, loss of farmland and a lack of transparency. Underlying those fears is a deeper frustration — that powerful out-of-state and foreign companies are rapidly reshaping rural landscapes with little benefit for the people who live there. Signs opposing a new solar farm in Garfield County, Oklahoma on March 2, 2025. photo by Ben Felder, Investigate Midwest Despite the pushback, NextEra Energy, a Florida-based company that is the world’s largest producer of wind and solar power, has continued its aggressive lobbying efforts, seeking to reduce its payments in state fees and suing local governments that attempt to block its projects, while also spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on campaign donations. “It’s laughable that NextEra would request a reduction from $2.5m (as calculated by state statute) to $15k,” State Rep. Jim Shaw, a Chandler Republican who has been outspoken against the renewable energy sector, wrote in a statement to Investigate Midwest. “This speaks volumes to the disingenuous nature of ‘green energy’ companies who are looking to avoid and divest as much responsibility and obligation as possible.” #### **How state discretion shaped a $2.5 million permit fee** This story is the result of records requests, careful document review, and months of follow-up reporting. **A $5/month membership helps sustain this work.** Keith Bryant, the Oklahoma state fire marshal — whose office is the only state agency that regulates renewable energy projects in Oklahoma — ultimately used discretion granted under the administrative rule to reduce NextEra’s fee to $500,000. (The rule allows fees to be “waived or reduced when, in the opinion of the State Fire Marshal, the reduction of fees is in the best interest of both parties.”) Keith Bryant Bryant said the standard square-footage formula produces unusually high fees for large solar projects because of their footprint, even though that footprint does not necessarily reflect the project’s overall scope. The $0.20-per-square-foot rate, he noted, applies to all new construction projects, not just renewable energy facilities. “If I was to apply the 20 cents a square foot to these facilities that are into the thousands of acres, the permit fee would be exorbitant,” Bryant told Investigate Midwest. The Skeleton Creek project is the third solar facility in Oklahoma to have its permit fee capped at $500,000. The other two are TwelveMile III in Johnston County, in the southern part of the state, and Huckleberry Solar in Mayes County, outside Tulsa. Both projects are developed by Texas-based Leeward Renewable Energy. The Huckleberry project has a power purchase agreement with Google to support the company’s AI data centers. The fire marshal could soon decide on similar fees, with NextEra Energy alone planning four additional solar farms and other developers lining up projects as well. As more renewable energy projects come to Oklahoma, lawmakers have increasingly filed bills that could further regulate the industry. Rep. Mike Dobrinski, a Republican whose district includes NextEra’s Skeleton Creek project site, introduced two bills last session — both still alive at the Capitol and expected to be considered again this session — that would directly affect projects like Skeleton Creek. One would establish setback requirements for solar and energy-storage facilities. The other would give the Oklahoma Corporation Commission regulatory authority over renewable-energy projects and require the agency to issue permits. Rep. Mike Dobrinski “The intent of that bill was never to be restrictive or punitive with cost or anything like that,” said Dobrinski of the latter bill, HB 2155. “Just to get a mechanism in place for our renewables that is similar to what oil and gas producers and developers have been doing for decades.” Some Garfield County residents opposing the Skeleton Creek project say they contacted Dobrinski, but felt he was strongly supportive of renewable-energy development and dismissive of their concerns. “It’s pretty clear to us who butters his bread,” said Lora Dierksen, an area resident who, along with 29 others, has sued to block the project. Between 2020 and 2024, Dobrinski received $10,000 in campaign contributions from NextEra, according to public records. The company has also made contributions to Reps. Chad Caldwell and John Pfeiffer — two Republicans whose districts include parts of Garfield County — and it has donated $10,000 to Gov. Kevin Stitt. NextEra has also given $15,000 to Turnaround Team PAC, a political action committee with ties to Stitt. In total, NextEra Energy has contributed more than $865,000 to Oklahoma political campaigns between 2015 and 2025, and its former lobbyist, Zachary Swartz, now serves as the USDA’s rural development director for the state. The company employs about 16,000 people, reported roughly $24.7 billion in revenue and about $5.5 billion in net profit in 2025. It owns Florida Power & Light, the nation’s largest electric utility. In Oklahoma, it currently operates 18 wind farms and four energy storage facilities. NextEra did not reply to several requests for comment. ## Renewable energy pushback grows in rural Oklahoma In their lawsuit, area residents argue NextEra’s Skeleton Creek project is partly on land zoned for agricultural use, not industrial development. “I live in the country for a reason — to get away from industrial-looking things, for peace and quiet,” Dierksen said. “This brings nothing to Waoukomis, Oklahoma.” After a Garfield County judge issued a summary judgment in favor of NextEra, the residents appealed, and the case is now before the Oklahoma Supreme Court. According to NextEra, the Skeleton Creek project is expected to employ eight to 10 permanent workers and generate about $65 million in tax revenue for Garfield County over 30 years. The project has a power purchase agreement with the Western Farmers Electric Cooperative (WFEC), a generation and transmission cooperative that provides electric power to parts of Oklahoma, New Mexico, Texas and Kansas Critics say projects like Skeleton Creek are being built to feed the surge in artificial intelligence and data centers, not to meet local needs, since Oklahoma already generates nearly three times more power than it consumes. Like many solar and wind farms, data centers have faced strong pushback from local residents in Oklahoma and across the country. A wind farm in northwest Oklahoma. photo by Zach Lucero, for Investigate Midwest Data centers consume vast amounts of water — often comparable to an entire small or mid-sized town — and have driven up electricity costs in other parts of the country. They typically generate little long-term employment once construction is complete and often do not pay traditional property taxes, instead negotiating payments in lieu of taxes, known as PILOT agreements. The pace at which these projects have appeared in rural Oklahoma in recent years has been striking, contributing to a growing sense of displacement and a loss of local control among residents. According to Cleanview, a company that tracks large-scale data-center and renewable-energy developments, five data centers are currently operating in Oklahoma, though the number rises into the dozens when smaller facilities are included. An analysis by The Frontier found that at least 18 more data-center projects are in the pipeline. Renewable-energy development has expanded even more rapidly. Oklahoma currently has 69 utility-scale wind farms, 15 utility-scale solar farms, and four utility-scale battery-storage facilities in operation. Another 44 wind projects, 78 solar projects, and 108 battery-storage facilities have either secured grid-interconnection agreements or are awaiting approval, according to interconnection.fyi, a website that tracks grid interconnection data. A wind farm in Kingfisher County, Oklahoma. photo by Ben Felder, Investigate Midwest As these projects have multiplied, disputes over where they can be built — and who gets to decide — have increasingly come to the fore. Zoning laws have been at the center of many of these clashes. Last year, in the northeastern Oklahoma town of Oologah, the town board voted against rezoning land that would have allowed a Texas company to build an energy-storage facility. In another case, NextEra sued the Wagoner County Board of County Commissioners after the county denied a permit for a proposed 4,650-acre solar farm near Porter. Unlike wind farms, solar and battery-storage projects in Oklahoma are not subject to statewide setback requirements. As a result, zoning rules have become one of the few tools available to local governments and residents seeking to influence where these projects are built. For neighbors of the Skeleton Creek project, the consequences of large-scale development are already tangible. The Hofferbers, ranchers who live next to the site, say that in addition to constant noise and disruption for over a year, they have seen wildlife move onto their land and attack their cattle after NextEra cleared nearby crop fields and wooded areas. Lea Smith, who lives with her husband on a 480-acre cattle and grain farm about a mile from the project, worries about changes to drainage. She said NextEra removed terraces that had been built to control water flow across the land. “If the drainage isn’t right, it washes out our crops,” Smith said. “Last year, more water came across and damaged our crops.” This article first appeared on Investigate Midwest and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # A Heat Wave is Hitting New York. Know Your Rights Ahead of Soaring Temps. ### New Yorkers have some legal rights when it comes to severe heat. Ahead of the Fourth of July heat wave, here’s how to protect yourself. By Rachel Holliday Smith, The City Reporter Jul 1 5:00am EDT Summer in the city is for Coney Island, Central Park and coco-mango-cherry carts. But when the heat becomes dangerous — as it will this holiday weekend — the focus switches to cooling centers, Con Ed and air conditioning. Beginning Wednesday through at least Saturday, a heat wave is hitting New York City, and hard. Feels-like temperatures could soar as high as 109 degrees on Friday. Mayor Zohran Mamdani activated a Heat Emergency Plan on Monday, broadening New Yorkers’ access to cool-down centers, and reminding local agencies of existing rights regarding the heat. The heat is no joke; last year, 21 New Yorkers died from heat, the highest tally in a decade. Nineteen of those deaths happened as a result of just a four-day heat wave in June. When it comes to staying cool — whether in your home or at your workplace — you have some rights in the city. Here’s what to know about those, how to protect yourself, and what you can do if those rules aren’t being honored: ## **Getting away from heat: Cooling centers (for your pet, too)** Because of Mamdani’s Heat Emergency Plan, a number of services will be available to any New Yorker who needs them, free of charge. The Department for the Aging will operate 280 cooling centers during the week, and 210 during the weekend, the commissioner said on Tuesday. Cooling centers can be found in libraries, community centers, senior centers and NYCHA facilities, and you can find one near you here. Cool It! NYC also has a map of spray showers and drinking fountains available here. Subway fans blow hot air at Union Square Station. Tuesday, September 23, 2025. In addition, 15 mobile Cooling Outreach On-Location stations, or COOL vans, from NYC Health & Hospitals will distribute water, electrolytes and sunscreen, as well as providing wellness checks, medical care, and transportation to cooling centers or health care facilities. Vans will have a registered nurse or nurse practitioner on board, meals and snacks, and will be dispatched for at-home wellness checks for seniors. The Dept. of Health and Mental Hygiene will also operate pop-up cooling stations, complete with water, misting fans and cooling towels. Outdoor workers including street vendors, delivery drivers and laborers are encouraged to use these services. The department will also use Health Action Centers and Overdose Prevention Centers as cooling centers. Anyone is welcome to go to cooling centers, and so are service animals. Some cooling centers allow pets — call each location to find out whether yours does, too — but all Petco locations in New York City serve as cooling centers for you and your pets. If you’re looking to cool off closer to home, and you’re 18 or older, head to your local firehouse for a spray cap to turn your fire hydrant into a sprinkler. Spray caps conserve water in case of an emergency, but still allow you to make your own Rio Manhattan. ## **Right to cooling? Not quite on the books** There is no right to cooling in New York City — yet. In December, City Council passed a bill creating a “cooling season” — similar to the winter’s heating season — between June 15 and Sept. 15. Starting in 2030, landlords must provide tenants with air conditioning capable of maintaining 78 degrees or less in bedrooms, upon request. So for now, if your apartment is too hot, definitely head to a cooling center. And it’s crucial to check in on your neighbors to make sure they’re OK. See our guide for specific questions to ask. ## **Con Edison** Con Ed, the utility behemoth behind your air conditioner (and lights, and possibly your stove) is committed to keeping the power running, it says. Con Ed’s policy — as governed by the state Department of Public Service — is to not disconnect your power the day of, or day before, the heat index is projected to reach 90 degrees or higher at Central Park. And if the heat index exceeds 90, the company will suspend disconnections for the next two days. If you are wrongfully or mistakenly disconnected despite that rule, contact Con Ed right away. People endure an early heatwave in Lower Manhattan, April 14, 2026. Still, during heat waves, power grids can be overrun to the point of blackouts, with air conditioners eating up lots of energy. And it wouldn’t be the first time: around the same time last year, more than 10,000 homes were left without power due to a heat wave, primarily in Brooklyn and Queens. If you experience an outage, report it to Con Ed here. If you get an alert from Con Ed asking you to limit energy use, it’s important to do so. Energy-intensive electric use can strain the aging electric grid, which puts you and your neighbors at risk of power outages. ## **Pause on evictions** The Department of Investigation paused evictions on July 1 and 2. Evictions must take place on business days, which exclude weekends and holidays, so no one should be evicted during the span of this heat wave. “No city marshal should show up at anyone’s house to evict them,” said Carolyn Norton, interim chief of litigation and advocacy at Legal Services NYC. “That would be a direct violation of their city directive.” In the event a marshal attempts an eviction, the tenant should contact 311 to make a complaint with the city, and reach out to a legal services organization, Norton said. There’s no official policy that pauses evictions in the case of extreme heat or other dangerous weather. It’s up to the DOI and the courts to make the call. The city previously suspended evictions on May 19 and 20, when temperatures soared past 95. But when it was 100 degrees outside on June 12, 55 households got evicted, according to data from the New York City Marshals. Evictions were not suspended that day. ## **On the job: Worker rights** Through the city’s protected time off law, most employees are entitled to up to 40 or 56 hours of paid protected time off, for reasons including heat-related illness. The Department of Consumer and Worker Protection will remind local workplaces of your rights, too: tens of thousands of businesses will be informed of extreme heat guidance and urged to comply with labor laws, the city said. On June 22, Mamdani signed into effect an executive order establishing guidance to prevent heat-related illness in the workplace. For construction workers, the Department of Buildings must review construction safety requirements to ensure they protect against heat-related illness, and for municipal workers, mayoral agencies must develop heat-illness plans for indoor and outdoor workers. Per Department of Labor and federal OSHA laws, employers have a legal responsibility to protect employees from heat-related illness. According to guidance from the labor department, employers should provide each outdoor employee with 32 ounces of cool drinking water per hour at no cost. Employees should be given sufficient time to drink water throughout the work day, and water needs to be available at all times. Federally, all workers — not just outdoor workers — must be provided with potable water throughout the work day. Employers should also provide shade and paid rest as needed when the heat index exceeds 80 degrees, 15 minutes every two hours when the heat index exceeds 90, and 15 minutes an hour when it exceeds 100. If the heat index exceeds 110, employers should consider rescheduling work, and if that’s not possible, 15 minutes of work with 45 minutes of rest every hour is encouraged. For more information on outdoor workers’ protections, read the Department of Labor’s full guidance here. _Is there something we missed that should have been included in this article? Have a question? Get in touch with our newsroom at ask@thecityreporter.nyc._ * * * # Chemours must cut Ohio River ‘forever chemical’ pollution under new settlement. But a fight over future permit limits looms. by Ken Ward Jr., Mountain State Spotlight June 26, 2026 The Chemours Company plant in Wood County must comply with pollution limits for “forever chemicals” and spend millions of dollars for additional upgrades to reduce toxic discharges, under a settlement with the Trump administration. Chemours will also pay a $22.5 million fine. The settlement will be subject to a public comment period, which has not yet been scheduled. It also needs approval from U.S. District Judge Thomas E. Johnston. But potential battles remain over a renewed water discharge permit for the plant and the Trump Environmental Protection Agency’s moves to rewrite, and likely weaken, legal limits for these chemicals. The company has been violating permitted water pollution limits for years, and the government settlement was prodded along by the West Virginia Rivers Coalition, which filed its own lawsuit and won a federal court order that Chemours halt excessive discharges. Jennie Smith, executive director of the Rivers Coalition, said her organization is “very happy” with the government’s settlement with Chemours. “This settlement secures the infrastructure upgrades needed to safeguard our water resources for now and future generations,” Smith said. The Washington Works facility outside Parkersburg, formerly owned by chemical giant DuPont, has been at the center of a decades-long controversy over emissions of a class of chemicals called PFAS. These chemicals, resistant to heat, water, oil and grease, have been used in making a wide variety of everyday products, from nonstick pans to waterproof clothing to fast food wrappers. But exposure has been linked to serious health conditions, including cancer, liver and kidney damage, developmental problems and immune system disorders. And for years, DuPont knew about potential health issues, but did not tell the public. Federal officials said the new settlement, which also covers operations in New Jersey and North Carolina, totals $450 million. Much of that is $280 million to supply clean drinking water to residents near the West Virginia and New Jersey plants. It also includes $90 million over 15 years to reduce PFAS emissions and an estimated $60 million to reduce water and air emissions specifically at the West Virginia plant. “This landmark settlement shows the administration’s commitment to protecting the public from harmful water pollution,” said Adam Gustafson, principal deputy assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Environmental and Natural Resources Division. Chemours reached the settlement with the DOJ, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection. In a statement, Chemours said the company “continues to focus on responsibly resolving outstanding environmental and regulatory matters with terms that improve site operating certainty and include payment and remediation commitments that are structured over time.” Chemours also noted that the company had settled, for less than $1 million, litigation brought by the West Virginia Rivers Coalition that prompted U.S. Judge Joseph R. Goodwin’s order that excessive pollution at the plant be stopped. Earlier this month, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had overturned Goodwin’s ruling. And a federal government deal with Chemours would have created significant legal hurdles for the environmental group’s litigation. * * * * * * During that case, Chemours had warned that a court order could force the Wood County plant to slow production and potentially cost the area much-needed jobs. But Chemours managed to comply with Goodwin’s order, and stopped violations at two of its discharge points, said Jim Hecker, senior environmental attorney at Public Justice, which helped represent the Rivers Coalition. Hecker said the government settlement “builds on that progress and demonstrates the power of citizens coming together to demand accountability through our legal system.” An EPA press release quoted Gov. Patrick Morrisey saying the settlement, “is an encouraging first step, but it addresses only one piece of a much larger issue.” “We remain actively engaged in discussions to reach a comprehensive resolution for the Washington Works facility that protects our citizens and ensures West Virginia’s communities have confidence that these issues are being addressed for the long term.” One key matter unresolved is the exact language for pollution limits in a renewal of the plant’s WVDEP-issued water pollution discharge permit. The industry-friendly Trump administration has also indicated plans to change drinking water standards and industrial plant discharge limits for forever chemicals. The Rivers Coalition said it is closely monitoring these issues. In a statement, the group said, “Citizen enforcement can play an important role in protecting water quality and public health when regulatory processes move too slowly. Environmental compliance and economic stability are not mutually exclusive.” This article first appeared on Mountain State Spotlight and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * *

by Donavyn Coffey, The Daily Yonder June 24, 2026 Mandy Withers was in her late 20s when she first realized she was more than tired. Then, a young mom of three, just out of graduate school, and training for her new position as a pulmonary and sleep medicine nurse practitioner, she thought falling asleep after dinner and foggy mornings were just the price of doing business. But as she stood in the corner of the exam room, and listened to her new boss screen patient after patient for sleep apnea, she silently checked “yes” to most of the symptoms. She wasn’t just busy, she was chronically unrested. A sleep study proved as much. And with the addition of a CPAP machine, she suddenly found she could finish a movie with her family after a day at work. That was 15 years ago, and better sleep changed Withers' life. “But if I hadn’t been working in sleep medicine, I would have had no idea,” Withers said. Sleeplessness is a fixture of Eastern Kentucky, where Whiters and her family live. A groundbreaking study in 2015 revealed that Appalachia has some of the highest rates of insufficient sleep in the country, and Eastern Kentucky counties fared the worst. But the reasons for the region's chronic unrest have been severely understudied. Now, new research reveals rates of poor sleep are more widespread than first believed. The new study published in JAMA Open Network found that 65% of participants reported clinically significant insomnia, compared to a national average of 10%. And for those living below the poverty line, rates of insomnia surged even higher to 80%. “That is a massive rate of insomnia prevalence,” said Mairead Moloney, lead author on the study. “It's a huge alarm bell that something is going on in this population that needs addressing immediately.” Because sleep is not isolated. Sleep quality has sweeping implications for human health, making Eastern Kentucky’s chronic restlessness a public health crisis. But without more research, without some understanding of what’s driving the phenomenon, it's almost impossible to intervene in a meaningful way. Sleep experts in Appalachia are calling on others to join the investigation. Because if sleep can be restored to Eastern Kentucky, it could be restored anywhere. ### **Out of Control** Almost from the start, the study didn’t go as expected. Moloney’s team set out to pinpoint some of the social factors that could be driving sleep issues in Eastern, Kentucky. They intended to compare six hotspot counties — counties with sleep health well below the national average — to six control counties. The control counties were similar in geography, demographics, and earnings, but believed to have better sleep health. “Spoiler alert, our hypothesis that there would be differences between the hotspot and non-hotspot counties… disproven,” Moloney said. In fact, the results showed the rates in control counties were no better than in the counties believed to have the worse sleep issues. And the rate of sleep disorders in all counties — both hotspots and controls — were significantly higher than researchers expected. More than 50% of respondents reported obstructive sleep apnea, which is a biologically driven condition common in men and people with obesity. Another 65% reported insomnia, which is largely driven by social factors and belief systems. And another 44% reported general insufficient sleep. And these soaring rates, they’re probably still “an underrecognition of the real problem,” said Sunil Sharma, MD, chief of Pulmonary, Critical Care & Sleep Medicine at West Virginia University who also studies sleep disparities in Appalachia. The data for the study were collected digitally, meaning Eastern Kentuckians without broadband access couldn't be included. The issues of sleep health likely go farther than the researchers could measure, Sharma said. Unchecked, this kind of chronic sleep deprivation wreaks havoc on a person’s and a region’s well-being. Lack of sleep has been linked to increased risks of obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, certain types of cancer, and all-cause mortality, all conditions for which Eastern Kentuckians exceed the national averages. Poor sleep is also linked to mental health challenges, including anxiety, depression, and impaired emotional regulation. But the power of sleep is also a reason for hope, Moloney said. “I have this working hypothesis that if we can improve people's sleep, we can really reduce these negative health outcomes.” ### **Sleep Inequity** And a deeper look at insomnia, showed potential connections to finance challenges. Among the respondents who made $20,000 or less, insomnia rates escalated to almost 83%. “The lack of finances, that brings a lot of stress into people's lives,” Moloney said. And in eastern Kentucky, where an estimated 24% live below the poverty line —$33,000 for a family of four — that leaves a lot of people at risk of wakeful nights. ”If they don't know how they're going to get food on the table or get the next tankful of gas that’s a very, very stressful state to be in, ” Moloney said. Stress then begets things like worry and rumination, fear of the future, and regret about the past — all things that “quite literally keep people up at night,” she said. But money isn’t the only problem. Even respondents who made over $100,000 still had an insomnia rate of 44%, well above the national average. Other social factors, such as low social support, smoking, living alone, and unemployment were predictors of poor sleep health. And trauma history was linked to both sleep apnea and insomnia. “There are very high trauma rates in this population,” Moloney said. For many in Eastern Kentucky, life is already stressful and then a traumatizing event happens: a spouse is lost, a grandchild moves in, thousands were displaced in the 2022 floods. The brain's response to these traumatizing events is often rumination, the process of thinking and thinking about a negative event or a stressor. “It thinks it’s protecting you,” Moloney said of the brain. But in reality, many people are left with a cascade of thoughts they can’t turn off even when they’re tired. ### **A National Appeal** “To me, it's a tragedy that we know these things are happening,” but we don’t have a good explanation for why, Moloney said. “There should be many more of us in the sleep research field and the social behavioral sciences. who are focused on this region, in my opinion.” Sharma agreed. He said that many sleep medicine physicians are shocked to learn that his home of West Virginia, is the most sleep deprived state in the country, not the busy urban centers of coasts. The research in Eastern Kentucky, should have “national appeal,” he said. A better understanding of sleep in Appalachia could change how we understand and treat sleep everywhere. “If we can improve sleep here, that’s a winning lottery ticket for every other place,” he said. According to experts, there’s very much hope. With more information, the right sleep interventions have the potential to be an extremely effective — and low cost — way to offer Eastern Kentuckians relief from sleeplessness and also the host of mental, physical, financial and relational challenges that sleeplessness perpetuates. Already, solutions like app-based cognitive behavioral therapy and in-hospital sleep education have been shown to dramatically improve sleep quality. “I know from my research and from others that if we can improve people's sleep, we can improve their lives, “ Moloney said. “Their stress will go down, and their health will improve. This is my long-term investment and goal for the region is to get more research done so that we have clear answers as to why people aren't sleeping. * * * _Donavyn Coffey is a Kentucky-based journalist covering healthcare and technology, with a particular interest in how innovations play out in rural places. Her work has appeared in Wired, TIME, Scientific American, Popular Science, and Vogue, among others._ This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

by Rose Hoban and Will Atwater, North Carolina Health News June 25, 2026 #### **By Rose Hoban and Will Atwater** **Key takeaways:** * The U.S. Department of Justice seeks hundreds of millions from Chemours in a federal complaint over years of PFAS contamination in three states, including North Carolina. * Despite housing the only GenX-producing facility in the U.S., North Carolina may receive little to nothing from the proposed settlement. * Since 2017, North Carolina has pursued enforcement actions against Chemours. It continues to seek accountability. In a surprise move on Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced a proposed settlement with chemical manufacturer Chemours over the company’s contamination of major waterways in three states, including North Carolina’s Cape Fear River. The proposed settlement agreement, totaling about $450 million, seeks to remediate what the DOJ called “years of historic and ongoing pollution of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), known as PFAS, from the Defendants’ chemical facilities.” “Through this commitment, Chemours will better control PFAS at its plants, allowing the company to continue its manufacturing operations while protecting communities,” read a release from DOJ. “This agreement ensures that the company will manufacture these critical materials in a responsible manner.” Almost immediately, though, in a response sent to the media, North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein and Attorney General Jeff Jackson denounced what they called a “backroom deal” that leaves “virtually nothing for North Carolina.” Jackson said that he only learned of the pending agreement on Tuesday, June 23. > “This [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency], which has already weakened protections against chemicals like GenX, is now allowing polluters to pick and choose how and where they’ll fix their contamination — leaving North Carolina with no guarantees,” Stein said in the release. The settlement was announced from the Southern District of West Virginia, where Chemours operates and “transferred PFAS materials between and among the West Virginia facility and the facilities in New Jersey and North Carolina.” It’s the latest twist in a long-running saga of industrial pollution of waterways in North Carolina — and across the country — and the efforts to hold manufacturers responsible. These efforts have played out over the course of multiple presidential and gubernatorial administrations with varying degrees of force. #### **Drop in the bucket** Announcement of the agreement came on the same day that Stein, along with Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Reid Wilson, had been visiting homes in the Wilmington area where residents have been pushing for action around PFAS remediation for almost a decade. “Forever chemicals like PFAS cause serious health problems, and one out of three North Carolinians currently drink water with PFAS levels that exceed upcoming federal health standards,”**** Wilson said in a statement. The money flowing to North Carolina as a result of this settlement would amount to a drop in the bucket for water utilities like the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, which provides drinking water for hundreds of thousands of residents in the Wilmington area. Since 2017, the water utility has spent more than $92 million to remove PFAS from drinking water for ratepayers, including the installation of a granular activated carbon system, according to information provided by the utility. Stein said his administration has pushed for more than $1.6 billion in water infrastructure projects to improve drinking water and wastewater treatment, and to mitigate PFAS contamination. That’s after the Cooper administration and the state legislature funnelled more than $1.5 billion of American Rescue Plan Act dollars to water and sewer projects across the state. In Stein and Jackson’s joint release, they criticized the amount of money that will come to North Carolina as a result of Wednesday’s settlement. In their statement, they noted that, “Chemours will get to propose the projects it will fund, without any input from North Carolina or its residents. If any of the states require Chemours to do any additional PFAS cleanup or mitigation, the money that Chemours spends can get credited against this $90 million pool. Chemours doesn’t have to make any commitments to spending any of this money in North Carolina.” The $90 million sum, if divided by three states over a 15-year period, would amount to roughly $2 million annually for each state. The dollars are minuscule compared with the amount already spent on studying and mitigating PFAS contamination statewide. N.C. State epidemiologist Jane Hoppin, principal investigator of the GenX Exposure Study, told NC Health News that since 2017, she has raised about $11.5 million in funding to support her research project, which includes collecting blood and other biological samples from 1,200 people and examining it. Hoppin said she will continue to rely on research money to fund the project for years to come. Though Kemp Burdette, executive director of the Wilmington-based environmental advocacy group Cape Fear River Watch, couldn't put a number on how much money the organization has spent collecting water samples, paying for lab tests and helping to enforce the 2019 consent order established between Chemours, Cape Fear River Watch and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, he told NC Health News it's a lot — and the work continues. Kemp said he and his staff continue to inform the public on PFAS-related environmental issues and contribute to proposed policy and PFAS litigation. The North Carolina Collaboratory, a General Assembly initiative that coordinates research across the UNC System to support state and local government decision-making, has received approximately $54million from the North Carolina General Assembly since 2018 to support PFAS research, Steve Wall, the senior research advisor, shared in an email to NC Health News. “$450 million dollars sounds like a lot, but when you’re trying to divide up $450 million between three states over 15 years, it’s a drop in the bucket for the amount of money needed to remove PFAS,” said Beth Kline-Markesino, founder of Stop GenX in our Water, a former nonprofit advocacy group. “This doesn’t include the thousands of well owners in our state with detectable PFAS limits from Chemours,” she continued. “The $450 million dollars is a start to help struggling utilities install filters, what our country needs is enforceable PFAS limits in drinking water. #### **Decades of pollution** Since the first detections of PFAS pollution in the Ohio River Valley in the early 2000s, research has been underway to track the health effects of the chemicals, known for their persistence in the environment. Since then researchers have found possible links between PFAS and several health effects, such as low birth rates, certain forms of cancer, weakened immune systems, thyroid disease, and liver and kidney damage. The Cape Fear River pollution was revealed in a 2017 Wilmington Star-News exposé revealing that the chemical GenX and other, older, forms of PFAS had been found in riverwater downstream from Chemours’ Fayetteville Works plant on the Bladen County border. At first, local utilities and the state, which had been alerted to the problem by NC State University water quality scientist Detlef Knappe, did not publicize the findings. The Cape Fear River winds over 200 miles through central and eastern North Carolina. It is a source of water for industry and public drinking water systems and in the summer of 2016, it was found to contain the chemical contaminant GenX. This aerial view captures Lock and Dam No. above Wilmington. The facility, which produces industrial gas, plastics and resin chemicals, had been improperly storing chemicals on its property. The settlement documents also note that the company had allowed PFAS-tainted effluent to flow into the Cape Fear River. “From 2004 to 2022, Old Dupont and Chemours surface water sampling downstream of Fayetteville Works detected PFOA (Perfluorooctanoic acid) and PFOS (Perfluorooctane Sulfonic Acid) discharges to the Cape Fear River, with PFOA concentrations of 42,000 - 49,000 [parts per trillion] and PFOS concentrations of 40,000 - 44,000 [parts per trillion] in 2021,” the settlement reads. Subsequent studies of the surrounding area found contamination of soil and drinking water wells from PFAS, ostensibly emitted out of the chemical facility’s smokestacks and carried by the winds to surrounding areas. Monitoring had also detected other stormwater discharges from 2019 to 2021 that totaled about 1.8 million parts per trillion for PFOA. In 2020, a report from the NCDEQ found “staggering” amounts of PFAS pollution in discharges into the Deep River, a tributary of the Cape Fear, that measured 1,000 parts per trillion of PFOS, far less than the concentrations released by Chemours. In 2019, the state reached a consent agreement with Chemours that fined the company $12 million and required it to speed up actions to remove contaminants from the air, groundwater and the river water. After the initial contamination event in Ohio and West Virginia, Chemours’ precursor company, DuPont, paid out hundreds of millions of dollars to study the effects of the chemicals, remediate the pollution and compensate victims. _The proposed consent decree, lodged in the Southern District of West Virginia is subject to a 30-day comment period and final court approval. Information on submitting comment and access to the settlement agreement is available on the_ Justice Department’s Proposed Consent Decree webpage_,” according to information provided by the EP_ A. #### **Multiple claims against Chemours:** Wednesday’s agreement details years of issues with how Chemours handled its hazardous waste at plants in all three states. According to the findings, in North Carolina, Chemours: * Discharged tainted water without the correct federal permits * Failed to include relevant information about chemicals created by its processes as it started to release GenX in 2008, including failure to include all information “to the extent known or reasonably ascertainable, about worker exposure to GenX and environmental releases.” * Failed to document compliance with restrictions around how much GenX was being released into the environment. * Unlawful manufacture and processing of hexafluoropropylene oxide at Fayetteville Works as part of the PFAS production process. * Unlawful manufacture and processing of carbooxohalide, a PFAS precursor chemical, at Fayetteville Works. * Unauthorized acceptance of GenX waste shipped from Chemours facilities in the Netherlands for long term storage in North Carolina. In addition, the complaint notes that Chemours storage of hazardous waste in unauthorized containers were improperly labeled. This article first appeared on North Carolina Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

by Brett Walton, Circle of Blue June 21, 2026 Decades ago, before it was much of a concern, water moved through the average U.S. home in enormous quantities. Toilets pulled 3.5 gallons per flush or more. Washing machines filled like tiny swimming pools. Water flowed and flowed. Things have tightened considerably since then. New data shows that U.S. homes are becoming ever more efficient in their water use. Between 1999, when the first residential end-use study was released, to the third edition, which was published last week, indoor water use dropped by 43 percent. The tightening of indoor water use has allowed cities to grow despite mounting concerns about water availability, especially in the western states. Peter Mayer, who led all three studies, attributes the three-decade decline not to behavioral changes but to federal policies, codes, and standards that required water-efficient designs. “It’s almost entirely due to technological changes in fixtures and appliances,” said Mayer, principal engineer at Water DM. “There are some behavioral components but they are quite small. The real impact has been the fact that when you flush the toilet it uses much, much less water today than it used to. And when you run a load of clothes, those machines use half the water they used back in the 1990s.” The main contributors to indoor water use, the study found, are toilets and showers, which combine for about 60 percent of the total. Faucets, which rank third, are another 23 percent. Per person indoor use, according to data from individual homes, was 38.5 gallons per day for single-family homes and 39.8 gallons for multi-family buildings. **Past and Future Water Use** The catalyst for these water-use changes was the Energy Policy Act of 1992, which was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush. The act dramatically tightened the water-use standards for toilets, showers, and faucets. Later, the Department of Energy mandated that clothes washers use less water. Then in 2006, the EPA launched WaterSense, a voluntary program to label the most water-efficient options available in the marketplace. The Trump administration has attacked those same path-breaking policies. In a May 2025 executive order calling for the repeal of federal water-efficiency standards, Trump labelled water conservation policies as part of the “unnecessary radical green agenda.” Water sector representatives see it differently. Conservation has helped cities grow while using less water. In Santa Fe, for instance, water use per person has dropped by 42 percent since the mid-1990s while total water use in the city is the same as the mid-1980s. In the wetter Seattle metro area, water use is about the same today as the 1950s. “Studies like this can help utilities with planning, conservation, and infrastructure,” said Kenan Ozekin, the chief research officer for the Water Research Foundation, which sponsored the study. The data informs the correct size for treatment plants and how much water might be needed for future growth. Even with the three-decade decline, there is still room for improvement. The federal standard for toilets is 1.6 gallons per flush. Yet more efficient models are on the market. California and Colorado – two states where water supply is a policy priority – have adopted the WaterSense standard of 1.28 gallons per flush as their own. Local governments are displaying even more ambition. Castle Rock, a high-growth city on Colorado’s Front Range some 30 miles south of Denver, passed an ordinance last year that all new homes and apartments must install ultra-high efficiency toilets that use 0.8 gallons per flush. The Cambria Community Services District, in southern California, requires high-efficiency appliances and fixtures to be installed when an existing home is sold. In light of the water-conservation success indoors, the biggest savings to come will be outdoors, Mayer said. In dry western regions, lawn irrigation and landscaping can account for half or more of a city’s water use. The study drew from several data sources. Forty-eight utilities provided data on residential water use in their service areas. Nearly 60,000 households responded to a water-use survey. And nearly 70,000 in-home readings were provided by Flume, a company that makes a water-use sensor. Because homes with a Flume device might be more attuned to their water use, the researchers attempted to select homes that matched regional consumption patterns. No study is perfect, but the results show an unmistakable trend line for indoor water use: down. “It’s important in the context of the Colorado River and the water crisis in America to understand that the residential sector has really been doing its part,” Mayer said. “The residential sector has worked hard and there’s been concerted effort to reduce consumption. And it’s been successful.” _Lead image: U.S. households are using less water thanks to more efficient fixtures and appliances. Photo @ J. Carl Ganter/Circle of Blue_ This article first appeared on Circle of Blue and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

**It's Friday June 26, 2026 and in this morning's issue we're covering:** FIFA’s Haiti jersey ban echoes the long campaign to discredit and downplay the Haitian Revolution**,** Key NC Senate budget writer offers glimpse at Helene relief numbers in state budget**,** Rural Tennessee needs family doctors. Can $200,000 lure them to the state’s small towns?, Top court orders disclosures in NJ cops’ use of facial recognition technology, Federal judge blocks key pillars of current U.S. president's executive order restricting mail voting in 2026 election, A Pipeline Company Says It Will Protect the Environment in North Carolina. Its Record in Tennessee Says Otherwise, Reducing harm: This New Orleans nonprofit can help you pay for medication, food, rent and more, Stepping back from brink of financial disaster in Rocky Mount. **Media outlets and others featured:** The Conversation, NC Newsline, Tennessee Lookout, New Jersey Monitor, Votebeat, Inside Climate News, Verite News, Capitol News Illinois, Carolina Public Press. Support Down Ballot * * * ## FIFA’s Haiti jersey ban echoes the long campaign to discredit and downplay the Haitian Revolution The move is part of a longer history of obscuring and demonizing the Haitian Revolution and its leader, Jean-Jacques Dessalines. **By Julia Gaffield, William & Mary (The Conversation) **Published: June 15, 2026 Ahead of its first match in the 2026 World Cup, the Haitian national soccer team was forced to make a last-minute change. But it didn’t have anything to do with its roster or travel plans. It was the team’s jersey. FIFA, the sport’s global governing body, said the jersey design violated its rules, which ban political slogans or imagery. FIFA didn’t elaborate on which components of the jersey were problematic. But the issue almost certainly stemmed from the small image of a group of people holding the Haitian flag that appeared on the right hip of the jersey. After the decision was made, a spokesperson for the team confirmed that the original jersey included “an image depicting the Battle of Vertières and some independence heroes raising the Haitian flag.” The commemoration was doubly symbolic since Haiti officially qualified for the World Cup for just the second time in the men’s tournament’s history on Nov. 18, 2025, which also marked the 222nd anniversary of the famous 1803 battle that secured Haiti’s victory over France in its war for independence. While the spokesperson for the team described the image as including “some independence heroes,” I think it’s safe to assume that Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who led the Haitian revolutionaries during the Battle of Vertières, is the central figure of the vignette. The subject of my 2025 book, “I Have Avenged America,” Dessalines was the man who declared Haiti’s independence from France, and he was Haiti’s first head of state. **_Read more:_** Jean-Jacques Dessalines: Reassessing the Haitian revolutionary leader’s legacy But because of his radical and violent fight for freedom, Dessalines’ enemies often described him as ferocious and barbaric, both during his lifetime and in the centuries after his death. They sought to undermine his leadership and undermine Haiti as a country, depicting him as a figure whose sole purpose was violence for violence’s sake, rather than a revolutionary driven by any ideological or political commitments. ## A successful slave revolution In the late 17th century, France had colonized the western third of Hispaniola, the island that Haiti now shares with the Dominican Republic. By forcing enslaved men, women and children to work on sugar and coffee plantations, the French turned the colony, which they called Saint-Domingue, into one of the wealthiest in the world. In August 1791, enslaved men and women rose up in revolution. It was the world’s first and only successful slave revolution: Within two years, they forced the French to abolish slavery. The Haitian Revolution – as the event is known today – became a war for independence only when the French tried to reinstitute slavery in 1802. Dessalines declared Haitian independence on Jan. 1, 1804, and Haiti became the first nation to permanently ban slavery. ## The ‘silencing’ of the revolution The effort to discredit the Haitian Revolution by targeting Dessalines began during the war for independence against the French. Criticism only intensified after the Declaration of Independence. That year, French propagandist Louis Dubroca, a mouthpiece of the Napoleonic government, published a slanted, factually incorrect biography of Dessalines. Even though the book got some basic facts wrong, such as claiming that Dessalines was born in Africa, its impact has been indelible. “Cunning and hypocritical,” Dubroca wrote, Dessalines “is also brutal, impetuous, and violently excessive. He inspires a kind of terror in all around him.” An image that accompanied an 1806 Spanish translation of the book still haunts the memory of the Haitian Revolution: It depicts Dessalines hoisting a sword in one hand and holding the severed head of a white woman in the other In the decades after the revolution, opponents of the young nation routinely claimed that Dessalines had massacred the entire white population on the island after declaring independence. Yes, in the context of ongoing war with France, Dessalines executed some French citizens, including those who had participated in Napoleon Bonaparte’s bloody campaign from 1802 to 1803 to regain control over the colony and reintroduce slavery. After 1804, however, hundreds of white French people remained in Haiti and were naturalized as Haitian citizens, securing equal rights under Dessalines’ 1805 Haitian constitution. But the facts didn’t matter. The hyperbolic narrative of unmitigated violence served to discredit and undermine the revolution’s successes. Thomas Jefferson became so worried that enslaved people in the United States would be inspired by the Haitians that in his correspondence he frequently depicted the Haitian Revolution as a violent upheaval rather than a struggle for freedom. Jefferson went on to ban trade with Haiti in 1806, and the U.S. did not formally recognize Haiti’s independence until 1862. The strategy of denying Haiti’s success became so effective that the Haitian anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot called it the “silencing” of the Haitian Revolution. ## A pattern emerges The World Cup jersey ban marks Haiti’s second sartorial controversy of 2026. In early 2026, the International Olympic Committee required Haiti’s Winter Olympics team to modify its opening ceremony outfit for similar reasons. The garments, designed by Stella Jean, a Haitian Italian fashion designer, featured a painting of the Haitian revolutionary Toussaint Louverture, Dessalines’ fellow revolutionary. Once again, the design was deemed political. Dessalines and Louverture fought together throughout the revolution, but they are often portrayed as opposites. Louverture, in this framing, is strategic, diplomatic, rational and reasonable. In contrast, Dessalines is typically described as violent, unthinking, emotional and heartless. But there’s a noteworthy distinction between the Olympic ban and the current one imposed by FIFA. For the Olympics opening ceremony, the banned outfits depicted a single, specific person: Louverture. In the case of the World Cup jerseys, the mere implication of Dessalines, standing alongside his fellow revolutionaries, was enough to elicit a backlash. Ever since the Haitian revolutionaries first rebelled against the French in 1791, the proslavery and imperialist powers of Europe and the Americas had a special interest in ensuring that Haiti failed. Both then and now, targeting revolutionaries like Dessalines has supported that goal. The irony is that more people may be learning about Haiti’s revolutionary history in the process. Saeta, the company that designed the controversial jersey, has announced on Instagram that it will restock it. The jersey has become a fan favorite. _This article is republished from_ The Conversation_, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by:_ Julia Gaffield_,_ William & Mary **Read more:** * Haiti at the World Cup is more than an underdog tale – it is the story of global migration * Meet Haiti’s founding father, whose black revolution was too radical for Thomas Jefferson * For Iran’s diaspora, a tough World Cup call: To support the national team or protest – or both? _Julia Gaffield does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment._ * * * A single family home is completed in Black Mountain, N.C., after Hurricane Helene. Through state and federally funded efforts, the state has repaired or rebuilt more than 1,000 homes, with more than 2,800 others in process. (Photo: Renew NC) ## Key NC Senate budget writer offers glimpse at Helene relief numbers in state budget By Clayton Henkel (North Carolina Newsline) Published: June 22, 2026 For many residents of western North Carolina affected by Hurricane Helene, it’s been 20 long months of waiting and wondering — when will things get back to normal? And just how much more funding is coming from the government? Sen. Ralph Hise (R-Mitchell) told members of the Governor’s Advisory Committee on Western North Carolina Recovery Monday that legislators are working to finalize the state budget, but the exact appropriation for Hurricane Helene relief has yet to be settled on. “I have no idea if that’s going to be a separate bill or if that’s going to be built into the budget as we come out with that,” said Hise. “But the biggest portion of it is obviously the state match for the federal government. I think that’s about $450 million to this point.” Hise, a co-chair on the Senate Appropriations Committee, calls that a “continuing number” that is likely to rise as more federal money comes in. The state is required to earmark a percentage of matching funds. Hise said one of the biggest challenges for budget writers is trying to get their hands around FEMA’s funding process and which local issues and rebuilding projects will qualify for federal funding. “The risk is when we’ve heard nothing from FEMA on a lot of these projects, even water and sewer and those kinds of things,” said Hise. “If you put state money towards them and they’re ultimately awarded in the FEMA process, FEMA will reduce whatever the state gets.” Hise said in cases where local governments are assured a project may not meet federal guidelines and may be denied, legislators have been receptive to allowing them to request state funds to shorten the wait time on critical projects. Sen. Kevin Corbin (R-Cherokee) says about $2.4 billion in state money has directly been spent on Helene recovery with an additional $2 billion redirected from state agencies to assist in rebuilding. Nonprofit and philanthropic partners have contributed $1.4 billion. The federal government has provided just over $9 billion in recovery funds. Still, Corbin says more federal funding is critically needed. He traveled to Washington with Governor Josh Stein earlier this month to encourage the state’s congressional delegation to push for $10 billion in additional funding for western North Carolina. The bulk of the request — more than $3 billion — is needed to repair and rebuild damaged homes and recover lost housing stock. The federal funding request also included $300 million for private roads and bridges to restore access to homes and emergency services. More than 3,000 eligible applications have been submitted to the state’s private roads and bridges program, overwhelming the pool of money that was initially set aside. > Helene recovery once again takes center stage as NC legislators return to Raleigh “I think we’re possibly looking at putting another $100 million into private roads and bridges from state funding,” said Corbin. That figure would match what Stein requested from the legislature back in March for the third phase of Hurricane Helene recovery funding. Another critical part of the ongoing recovery is improving communication. Major Kevin Owens with the North Carolina State Highway Patrol said Monday they are hoping the upcoming state budget will include funding for 31 additional towers for the Voice Interoperability Plan for Emergency Responders network, commonly called the VIPER system. VIPER is North Carolina’s statewide public safety communications system that provides reliable and secure digital voice communications to first responders, law enforcement and partner agencies. Owens says the VIPER network was the only way communication got through in the first few weeks after Helene. Seventy-five percent of cell sites in the Helene-affected counties were out of service; 200,000 wire or land line subscribers were also left without a way to communicate. More than 1,700 miles of fiber were damaged or destroyed, according to the Land of Sky Regional Council. Owen said the additional towers and planned upgrades to allow automatic data traffic rerouting would mean zero downtime on VIPER in a future emergency. “The robustness of the network would be even greater in the readiness of any future natural disaster that we may experience,” said Owens. The Governor’s Advisory Committee on Western North Carolina Recovery meets again July 17. Members are hoping by then they may have more clarity on the latest federal funding request, as well as what state legislators have agreed to fund. * * * Dr. Ty Webb, who has been practicing medicine in Sparta, Tennessee, for nearly 30 years, is nearing retirement and has fears about how health care needs will be met in rural Tennessee as fewer physicians move to small communities. (Photo: John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout) ## Rural Tennessee needs family doctors. Can $200,000 lure them to the state’s small towns? By Jamie McGee (Tennessee Lookout) Published: June 22, 2026 In a small clinic room in Sparta, Tenn., Dr. Ty Webb moved his chair near his 70-year-old patient and encouraged her progress with weight loss and smoking. His wife, Janet Webb, a pharmacist and scribe, helped consolidate more than a dozen medication bottles and discard those no longer needed. When his patient shared fears about her new heart condition, he offered tissues and assured her that she would be able to navigate the necessary care. “Stress is going to make you feel like you can’t keep anything straight,” Webb said. Turning to the many pill containers, he added, “We’ll try to simplify.” Webb explained next steps and upcoming blood tests, before moving on to his next patient down the hall, counseling once again on cigarettes and commending improved blood sugar levels. It’s a familiar routine, one he has fulfilled for nearly three decades as a family physician, often serving the same families he met when he first moved to the town of 5,000. But as his retirement and those of other family physicians draw nearer, he carries with him concerns and questions about what that will mean for the rural communities they serve. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX. “Finding physicians to do what I do and take my place — I’ve been looking for 15 years and can’t find somebody,” Webb, 59, said. “There is no one coming in to replace the doctors like me out there and we are five to seven years from retirement. There is about to be a really big problem.” Webb is among a shrinking pool of family medicine doctors in rural Tennessee. Young family doctors must navigate a more complicated medical landscape for independent practice than in previous decades, and aspiring physicians are often drawn to higher salaries in more specialized fields or to positions in urban areas. That leaves many rural counties in Tennessee with a shortage of doctors. The number of family physicians in rural areas in the South fell by 14% in the seven years through 2023, according to a recent Annals of Family Medicine study. Tennessee’s urban counties, including Davidson, Williamson and Knox, have ratios of fewer than 1,100 residents to one primary care physician, while nearly 30 rural counties have ratios that exceed 4,000 to one, according to 2022 data from the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute. Tennessee has ranked among the least healthy states for decades. About one in three Tennesseans live in rural areas, where life expectancy and incomes are lower and reliance on public health insurance and health risks are higher, according to a 2025 state report. “We have a dearth of physicians practicing in areas of our state that need it most,” said Dave Chaney, executive director of the Tennessee Academy of Family Physicians. “When family doctors are in communities, people live longer, are healthier and the overall cost of care goes down.” To help address these rural health care needs, Tennessee lawmakers, led by Republican state Sen. Rusty Crowe of Johnson City, approved a loan repayment program in 2023 to encourage family physicians to work in underserved areas. The Tennessee Academy of Family Physicians Foundation, which developed the program, began selecting recipients this year who will receive as much as $200,000 in loan repayment dollars during five-year commitments. The new family physician loan repayment program is part of a broader focus in Tennessee to boost health care outcomes in rural parts of the state. Gov. Bill Lee launched a rural health care taskforce in 2022 and the state was awarded $207 million in federal funds in 2025 to be allocated through a five-year Rural Health Transformation Program. #### ‘A degradation of care’ For Webb, moving to a town heavy in Bluegrass music, grain silos and cattle farms felt like a natural step for him after completing his medical residency. Sparta, located 90 miles east of Nashville, was a departure from his years studying medicine in Memphis and growing up in Indianapolis, but he knew he could use his broad medical specializations in a smaller town, he said. He joined a practice with three other family medicine doctors, delivered babies, offered psychiatric care, performed colonoscopies and did rounds at the local hospital. He and Janet raised three kids on a 50-acre farm, where they now host grandchildren and care for their three dogs. His home, his clinic, his grocery store, his kids’ schools, his church and city hall are all within a short drive. “It’s fabulous. The cost of living is low, people are great,” Webb said. “It’s just the pace of life is different. I enjoy the smaller community.” Most of Webb’s patients live in White County, but some drive from two or three counties away, having built relationships with him and his team that now consists of three nurse practitioners and a physician assistant. He no longer sees hospital patients, but at his Sparta clinic and at a smaller office in Spencer, his team sees about 12,000 patients and he works 12- to 14-hour days to fit them all in. His clinic gets multiple calls a day from people seeking to establish primary care, openings that do not exist. “We can’t accommodate that. We’re full,” Webb said. Other rural Tennessee doctors describe similar demands. Dr. Katherine Hall, 47, is a family physician in Athens, Tenn., often with a two-month waiting period for new patients. She tries not to turn people away, but that makes it more difficult to see her existing patients when they are sick. On a typical morning, she has fed her horses and made hospital rounds before her clinic opens at 8 a.m. “It is really hard to be available for acute needs when I’m spending all my time catching up and managing the refills and the labs and the other management of patients,” she said. “I see 24 to 27 in a day. You can’t really squeeze more in than that.” Dr. Wm. Ryan Bartz, 47, who works in Selmer in West Tennessee, has a full clinic for 10 hours on weekdays, sees acute care patients and makes regular house calls. He has been compensated or thanked with plates of cookies, fresh chicken eggs and beef donations, even soup deliveries when he has been sick. “I love my job,” he said. “It’s not a clock-in, clock-out job.” > Rural Tennessee is bleeding independent physicians, new report finds As an independent physician, Webb believes he is better positioned to care for patients than those working at hospitals, where longevity is also uncertain. Seventeen hospitals have closed in rural parts of Tennessee since 2012, and as of 2022, more than 20 rural hospitals were at risk of closure, according to annual state health reports. But, being an independent family medicine doctor comes with its own bureaucratic and billing challenges, and Webb said he understands why young doctors are often discouraged from following course. Many seek more defined hours, which is hard to make work financially and to meet patients’ needs in a rural private practice, he said. Dealing with insurers reluctant to cover costs is increasingly adding to his work load, along with keeping up with ever-evolving regulation. Webb is less certain that he will be working into his 70s, as he had long envisioned. “I love medicine. I would keep doing this for a very long time,” he said. “The problem is the bureaucracy of medicine and it’s killing me.” More than half of non-metro doctors in Tennessee were older than 65 in 2022, compared to a third in metro areas, according to data from Rural Health Information Hub, illustrating the upcoming pressures on rural communities. Meanwhile, Tennessee lost 42 percent of independent physicians in rural areas in the five years through 2024, according to a Physicians Advocacy Institute report. A further reduced physician presence in rural areas in the coming years will mean patients with less access to comprehensive, preventative care, Webb forecast. Patients will have to rely more on nurse practitioners and physician assistants, who are knowledgeable and skilled but whose training is meant to accompany doctors’ roles, he said. Patients will also likely turn more to urgent care clinics or to emergency centers farther away when heart disease, blood pressure or other issues reach crisis levels, adding more costs to the system and to patients. “It’s going to be a degradation of care,” Webb said. #### Financial pressures weigh on specialty and location decisions For many in their residency, their looming medical school debt forces them to seek more lucrative specialties or positions in urban areas that include more patients relying on private insurers. Medical students graduating in 2025 with education debt owed on average more than $220,000, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. “The financial fear is real,” Webb said, adding car payments, house payments and childcare costs to the tally. “Their entire life has been put on hold until they can start work and they are starting that way behind the eight ball financially.” The state’s new loan program helps alleviate at least the medical school debt pressures, which is significant, and Webb said he is hopeful it can draw more candidates to his practice and others facing similar staffing needs. “There is still a hurdle there, but it is a much more achievable hurdle to overcome,” he said. “That’s going to be helpful.” The Tennessee family physician group’s foundation awarded five recipients in April out of about 300 Tennessee family medicine resident doctors training at a dozen programs across the state. The annual cost to the state is forecast to reach $520,000. While other existing loan repayment programs in the state target rural health practitioners more generally, the new initiative only goes toward family medicine doctors. The family medicine program also requires a longer time commitment and a greater repayment level, with the hope that doctors will develop stronger ties to the community and will be more likely to stay beyond the five-year period. Even placing two or three doctors through the loan repayment program can make a meaningful difference, Chaney said. “No other type of doctor is equipped to go into one of these rural areas and provide the type of comprehensive care that these communities need,” he said. “Let’s invest in primary care on the front end, let’s keep people well, improve public health status and, in the long-run, reduce overall costs.” SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE * * * ## Top court orders disclosures in NJ cops’ use of facial recognition technology Critics of facial recognition technology say misidentifications can lead to wrongful arrests. To ensure fair trials, New Jersey's top court ordered more disclosure. By Dana DiFilippo (New Jersey Monitor) Published: June 24, 2026 As police increasingly rely on a controversial investigative tool called facial recognition technology to identify crime suspects, New Jersey’s top court gave defense attorneys a win Wednesday, ordering prosecutors to more fully explain how they used the technology in a Jersey City murder case. New Jersey Supreme Court Justice Douglas Fasciale, in a unanimous ruling, wrote that prosecutors were wrong to deny Tybear Miles’ discovery demand for details on what facial recognition software investigators relied on to arrest him for the June 2021 shooting death of Ahmad McPherson and how exactly they used it. The technology is controversial because misidentifications have resulted in at least eight wrongful arrests nationally, with research showing it most often fails at identifying people of color, women, children, and elderly people. It also has gone largely unregulated both in New Jersey and nationally, alarming civil rights advocates. Wednesday’s ruling builds upon a 2023 state appellate decision that required prosecutors to fork over 13 items related to the facial recognition software police used to charge Francisco Arteaga in a West New York armed robbery case. Fasciale rejected any “mechanical application” of the Arteaga decision to other cases involving facial recognition technology, saying judges must decide such challenges based on case specifics. Still, he said, fairness demands that defendants be able to scrutinize what tools police used to criminally charge them both to challenge the tools’ reliability and to determine how police identified them as a suspect, examine whether the investigation was thorough, and demonstrate the possibility of another culprit. “Although we reject a rigid checklist for (facial recognition technology) discovery, we note that such basic information will, in most cases, constitute the minimum necessary to safeguard a defendant’s right to a fair trial,” Fasciale wrote. Attorney Dillon Reisman, who had argued before the court on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, called the decision “a really big win against the use of secret, opaque technology by law enforcement.” “It’s a really positive sign that our court takes really seriously that new technologies are subject to constitutional safeguards,” Reisman said. Tamar Lerer, deputy of the state Office of the Public Defender’s forensic science unit, had argued the case in court too and also applauded the ruling. “Facial recognition technology may be novel, but the ability of people accused of crimes to find out how and why they were investigated is not,” Lerer said. In Miles’ case, none of the crime’s eyewitnesses identified him as the shooter or even placed him at the scene, according to the ruling. Instead, police identified him as a suspect after showing a confidential informant footage that surveillance cameras caught of six Black men seen nearby. That informant, who wasn’t at the scene and didn’t see the slaying, identified Miles on the footage by his nickname (“Fat Daddy”) and Instagram handle, according to the ruling. Miles’ sister and ex-girlfriend also identified him as one of the men caught on camera. Police then ran two facial recognition technology searches using Miles’ Instagram profile picture, according to the ruling. One search returned 10 possible matches and listed Miles as the eighth likeliest match, while another search also produced 10 possible matches, the first five of which pictured Miles, the decision says. After defense attorneys demanded more details about the facial recognition technology investigators used, a trial judge ordered prosecutors to turn over the same 13 items the appellate panel in Arteaga’s case specified. Prosecutors appealed, a state appellate court denied their motion, and the Supreme Court agreed to consider the case. Quotation Facial recognition technology may be novel, but the ability of people accused of crimes to find out how and why they were investigated is not. **– Tamar Lerer, deputy of the state Office of the Public Defender's forensic science unit** Fasciale upheld most of the lower court rulings, ordering prosecutors to hand over “basic information,” including the name and manufacturer of the software police used to search for suspects and its performance metrics including error rates. He also directed prosecutors to provide “straightforward items” related to how investigators used the technology, including the original photograph police used as the “probe photograph,” edited copies of that probe photograph, and the photographs the technology identified as matches. He reversed one particular part of the lower court rulings, though, rejecting the defense’s request for proprietary information including the software’s source code. Miles’ attorneys hadn’t proven a need for that information, Fasciale said. But if they do as the case progresses, the court can reconsider that request then, he added. Lerer cheered that part of the ruling too, saying it recognizes that “commercial concerns must yield to constitutional rights.” Reisman noted that New Jersey still has not regulated facial recognition technology more than four years since the Attorney General’s Office solicited public input as a first step toward shaping statewide policy on its use by law enforcement. Former Attorney General Gurbir Grewal in 2020 barred agencies from using one specific facial recognition technology app, Clearview AI, but little is known about how many of the state’s 500-some law enforcement agencies use the technology and how. Dan Prochilo, a spokesman for Attorney General Jen Davenport, called facial recognition technology “a valuable tool for investigating and solving crimes.” “We welcome today’s Supreme Court ruling, which thoughtfully accounts for constitutional rights while confirming that defendants are not automatically entitled to unnecessarily burdensome, proprietary information that would short-circuit vital, well-conducted investigations and prosecutions that make New Jerseyans safer every day,” Prochilo said. In Miles’ case, officers used a facial recognition system that’s part of a multiagency initiative to crack down on illegal drugs in New Jersey and New York. That effort, known as a high intensity drug trafficking area task force, involves officers from federal, state, county, and local agencies in New Jersey and New York. Those multiple jurisdictions and diffused investigations have made it tough for people arrested through the task force’s efforts to understand how they became criminal defendants, Reisman said. “We still don’t even really know what government agency is ultimately responsible for the facial recognition system,” he said. “We don’t know anything about it, and because of that, we can’t even hold it accountable.” SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX. * * * This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access. # Federal judge blocks key pillars of Trump executive order restricting mail voting in 2026 election Dion Nissenbaum, Votebeat Jun 25, 2026 at 2:04pm EDT _Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for_ our free weekly newsletter_to get the latest._ _Update, June 25, 2:05 p.m.: This story has been updated to include comments responding to the ruling._ A federal judge on Thursday blocked key pillars of President Donald Trump’s efforts to overhaul the 2026 elections, declaring unconstitutional his attempts to create centralized lists of adult citizens and giving the U.S. Postal Service unprecedented authority over who can vote by mail. The 37-page ruling by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani concluded that the president did not have the constitutional authority to regulate state elections as he tried to do in a March executive order. The executive order directed the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration to create a nationwide list of verified U.S. citizens over 18, and thus presumably eligible to vote in federal elections. It also called on the U.S. Postal Service to create a system to handle and accept mail-in ballots only from voters on preapproved lists. Talwani’s decision came one day after the head of the Postal Service said the agency would refuse to deliver mail-in ballots to voters that were not on lists approved by the federal government, making explicit what the agency’s proposed new rules had previously implied. In her ruling, Talwani said that the federal government could not use the postal system to regulate who gets ballots. “No law enacted by Congress delegates authority to control mail-in voting to USPS,” Talwani wrote. Talwani issued an injunction specifically preventing the federal government from enforcing those provisions of the order against the 24 jurisdictions (23 states and the District of Columbia) whose attorneys general and governors brought the lawsuit. The list includes most Democratic-led and swing states, including Arizona, California, Michigan, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. However, the injunction applies only to this year’s elections. Talwani granted the Trump administration’s motion to dismiss the plaintiffs’ legal challenges to the executive order as not yet ripe when it comes to future elections. The White House implied that it would appeal the ruling. In a statement, Abigail Jackson, a spokeswoman, said the administration is “confident that we will ultimately prevail.” The U.S. Postal Service didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Some Democratic secretaries of state who brought the case hailed the ruling as a major victory for voters. “Trump will not be able to use the Postal Service to control which voters receive a mail ballot, and cannot use the DOJ to intimidate election officials into following his unlawful order,” said Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold. “The Constitution is clear: States run elections, not Trump. This is a major victory for American democracy.” The ruling is the latest in a series of judicial rebukes to Trump’s efforts to impose federal control over American elections, something that the Constitution leaves to Congress and the states. The executive order is the second election-related one issued by Trump. The first one, issued in March 2025, sought to require prospective voters to prove their citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections and impose restrictions on states accepting mail-in ballots after Election Day. Federal courts have so far blocked major portions of the first executive order, including the effort to require documented proof of citizenship when registering to vote. During the hearing in the case over the second order, in early June, Talwani expressed concerns about the executive order. “What’s the harm if I say no one can use this list for the November election?” ​Talwani asked. The Trump administration has cast the president’s efforts as an attempt to compel federal agencies to enforce existing laws barring noncitizens from voting in elections. Trump has consistently targeted America’s electoral system and, without evidence, accused Democrats across the nation of “rigging” elections. The president has repeatedly claimed that he was cheated out of the presidency in 2020 when he lost to Democrat Joe Biden, even though federal judges, state elections officials, and independent investigations have repeatedly debunked those allegations. Before Thursday’s ruling, the Trump administration had been forging ahead with implementing the executive order. A different federal judge declined in late May to block major parts of the executive order, arguing that the issue was premature because the U.S. Postal Service had yet to take any steps to set up the new system. The following day, the Postal Service unveiled its proposed rules, which would give the agency the power to block delivery of mail-in ballots to Americans across the nation unless they were on a verified list of voters. And in early June, the Trump administration said that it was taking steps to create a new nationwide mechanism aimed at verifying voter citizenship, per the executive order. _Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at_ _dnissenbaum@votebeat.org_ _._ Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here. * * * # A Pipeline Company Says It Will Protect the Environment in North Carolina. Its Record in Tennessee Says Otherwise. ### Damaged wetlands and streams, spills of drilling mud and a federal stop-work order have plagued the Ridgeline Expansion Project in Tennessee. By Lisa Sorg June 25, 2026 _This article originally appeared on_ Inside Climate News_, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter_ here_._ PITTSBORO, N.C.— An 85-year-old widow stood before a panel of Enbridge Gas representatives perched above her on a stage at the Chatham County Agriculture & Conference Center. She had fire in her eyes. “I’m usually a courteous person but you bring out the worst in me,” she said. “I’m going to fight you to the death.” In mid-June she and hundreds of Chatham County residents attended two community meetings, hosted by Enbridge, to voice their opposition to a proposed 28-mile natural gas pipeline that would stretch from Siler City to Moncure in southern Chatham County. Construction could begin as soon as fall 2027, with a service date of spring 2028. Enbridge has not announced the final route, but as company surveyors begin canvassing private properties along the general corridor, residents are analyzing maps that show the pipeline could not only rob them of land through eminent domain, but also cut through forests, wetlands, streams, rivers and a historic Black cemetery. Company documents maintain that Enbridge has a “proven safety track record” and is “committed to being a good steward of natural resources, selecting a route that reduces potential impacts on the environment and following all permit specifications.” But federal records show Chatham residents’ concerns about Enbridge’s environmental performance are valid. Over the past seven months, an Enbridge subsidiary has amassed a dozen non-compliance events related to its Ridgeline Expansion Project in central Tennessee, according to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Enbridge’s East Tennessee Natural Gas is building the 122-mile Ridgeline project to supply natural gas to the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Gas plant, scheduled to open late next year. Kingston, which is west of Knoxville and 115 miles west of the Tennessee-North Carolina line, currently burns coal. It’s the same plant where, in 2008, a containment wall breached and dumped 1 billion gallons of coal ash sludge into the Clinch and Emory rivers. During the pipeline construction, East Tennessee Natural Gas contractors damaged wetlands and streams after driving heavy equipment across stream beds and outside a “designated travel lane,” FERC found. They encroached on private property. Contractors spilled more than 3,000 gallons of drilling mud, known as an “inadvertent return,” while boring beneath waterways, FERC records show. Erosion controls repeatedly failed after heavy rains, sending dirt into wetlands and the Little Emory River. In another instance, contractors pushed heavily sediment-laden water from a large puddle over the erosion controls and into the stream, according to FERC records. East Tennessee Natural Gas told FERC it has corrected the violations and, in some cases, required contractors to undergo additional training, according to federal documents. The Southern Environmental Law Center asked FERC on May 13 to suspend work on the entire project. “Impacts already documented can have long-lasting adverse effects on the local environment,” SELC said. FERC did not respond to the letter, an SELC spokesperson said. Yet a week after the SELC’s letter, East Tennessee Natural Gas incurred its most serious known violation since construction began. On May 20, federally designated biologists arrived at a site along the Emory River to conduct mussel surveys and to relocate endangered and threatened species before East Tennessee Natural Gas built an equipment bridge. But East Tennessee Natural Gas contractors had already built the bridge, according to a letter from FERC to the company. By installing bridge supports in the river, the contractors jeopardized endangered species habitat in that segment of the project and violated a legal agreement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, FERC said. On May 29, FERC’s compliance monitor issued a stop-work order for the project. The commission also required East Tennessee Natural Gas to provide extensive documentation about the decision to prematurely build the bridge. The company attributed the violation to “a communication and interpretation gap on the requirements,” according to company correspondence with FERC dated June 18. Since then, East Tennessee Natural Gas has retrained workers, installed additional signage and fencing and implemented a communication plan. The stop-work order is still in effect, but only at that one location while Enbridge complies with federal requirements, said Enbridge spokesperson Michael Barnes. The Emory River incident is the second time East Tennessee Natural Gas has violated its federal agreements. The company acknowledged to FERC in June that in a review of other sensitive areas, it found a “similar situation occurred at Hurricane Creek” in February. East Tennessee Natural Gas is investigating the incident, the letter said. As for the less-serious incidents, “East Tennessee Natural Gas is cooperating with the applicable state and federal officials,” Barnes wrote in an email to Inside Climate News. “We have taken appropriate actions to avoid further impact. Internally, we are reviewing our processes to reinforce the protocols at these and any sensitive resource areas.” He added, “We remain committed to protecting both people and the environment during the construction of this important energy project.” The Chatham County corridor in North Carolina includes the Rocky River Subbasin, where, like the sensitive habitats along the Tennessee pipeline route, many endangered, threatened and other species of concern live. “It’s considered a globally significant aquatic diversity hotspot,” wrote John Alderman, a retired endangered species and conservation biologist, in a letter to Democratic Gov. Josh Stein., There are 200 sites in the subbasin where many endangered, threatened and other species have been found, according to state wildlife data. The pipeline corridor runs through rugged terrain, where the construction would be more complex. Many residents noted at the Agriculture & Conference Center meeting that Enbridge’s proposed corridor circumvents land owned by Tim Sweeney, the billionaire founder and CEO of Epic Games, which developed Fortnite, one of the world’s most popular video games. Sweeney is a land conservationist who has donated tens of thousands of acres in North Carolina to nonprofits and the Fish and Wildlife Service to protect sensitive habitats. He owns more than 270 parcels in Chatham County, which he’s placed into conservation. When a utility company tried to run high-voltage power lines through the Box Creek Wilderness Area in the North Carolina mountains, Sweeney bought the property for $15 million, won a court case and donated the conservation easement to the Fish and Wildlife Service to prevent the new line from going through. But Sweeney isn’t trying to dodge the Enbridge pipeline, according to his attorney. He and his attorney have been advocating “for a route that minimizes new disturbance by following existing utility easements wherever possible.” “I’m happy to provide easements through my [Chatham County] land following the large power transmission corridor that goes through my conservation land for several miles,” Sweeney told Inside Climate News in an email, “which seems like an ideal route for many reasons.” Enbridge spokesperson Persida Montanez told Inside Climate News that when practical, the company considers routing new pipelines alongside existing rights-of-way to minimize environmental impacts. However, that’s not feasible for the Chatham County project, Montanez wrote in an email. First, Enbridge doesn’t have its own existing right-of-way in the area that could be used for the project, she said. And second, “Following the existing electric transmission easement in its entirety would have impacted more landowners and disturbed additional environmentally sensitive areas not otherwise presently affected,” Montanez wrote in the email. Alderman, who has mapped the potentially affected properties—including his own—said some landowners with existing transmission easements could lose as much as 40 percent of their land if Enbridge builds alongside those rights-of-way. “For people who have only a few acres, the power line easement is a true burden,” Alderman said. * * * # Reducing harm: This New Orleans nonprofit can help you pay for medication, food, rent and more by Halle Parker, Verite News New Orleans June 22, 2026 Sitting on blankets near Bayou St. John, eight volunteers packaged blue tourniquets, cookers, antibacterial wipes and tiny cotton balls into “work kits” aimed at making intravenous drug use safer. They work with Below Sea Level Aid, a nonprofit organization focused on providing mutual aid and reducing harm to some of Southeast Louisiana’s most vulnerable. The group was surrounded by boxes filled with other medical and hygiene products to make other kits. “ I don't care if people use drugs, but I do care that they use it safely, and they know what they're using,” said Jack Waguespack-Slooijer, 26, who founded the New Orleans-based nonprofit. Jack Slooijer, founder of Below Sea Level Aid, a community-driven harm reduction organization, poses for a portrait along Bayou St. John on May 28, 2026.Kosi Ifeji volunteers with Below Sea Level Aid to pack up harm reduction kits along Bayou St. John on May 28, 2026. The volunteers packed Narcan to prevent overdose, test strips to make sure drugs aren’t contaminated, condoms for safe sex and mini shampoos for bathing, among other items. They hand out the kits on the street and in response to calls for mutual aid. The organization started from humble beginnings. In 2023, Slooijer, who uses they/them pronouns, started handing out meals and clothing to people without housing under the city’s overpasses and posting on Instagram. After six months, people started volunteering to help. After a year, Slooijer was awarded their first grant. “It snowballed so quickly,” they said. Slooijer realized they had a knack for grantwriting, and the money kept coming. But no one on the nonprofit’s 8-person staff receives a salary. All the grant money, aside from some small stipends, goes into buying supplies, providing aid and hosting events. On top of distributing kits, the nonprofit runs several other initiatives. Its latest — a medication assistance program — launched in May. Brianna Harris, center, volunteers with Below Sea Level Aid to pack up hygiene kits along Bayou St. John on May 28, 2026. Slooijer works as a patient navigator at a clinic in New Orleans. They noticed their patients often had to pay out of pocket for their medications at the pharmacy. “ I knew that a lot of them, because they couldn't afford, they just weren't gonna take their meds,” said Slooijer. With the new medication assistance program, patients like Slooijer’s can be referred by a clinician to receive money to offset the cost. Some clinics, such as Crescent Care, St. Thomas Community Health Center and Ochsner Health Center, have in-house pharmacies that can directly partner with the group and bill directly to a business card. Otherwise, patients can ask their providers, case managers or pharmacists to fill out a referral. Slooijer said they want the program to be easy to access and they keep the patients anonymous by not requiring the referrals to include names. Instead, the group requests the recipients’ demographics to help them receive more grant money. Currently, the program is funded in part by AIDS United and the New Moon Network. The program provides $20 toward each medication, though Slooijer said they make exceptions depending on the need. In one case, a patient’s insurance didn’t cover Suboxone, a medicine that eases opioid withdrawal symptoms and can cost hundreds of dollars out of pocket. Without the medicine, a person trying to abstain from opioids could turn back to the substance or to the black market for relief. “ I'd rather us pay for it than you try and get it off the street,” Slooijer said. Annika Vanderspek, who provides administrative and logistic support at Below Sea Level Aid, explains how to pack harm reduction kits on May 28, 2026. In addition, Below Sea Level Aid provides a wide range of other programs. It provides direct cash from their mutual aid fund to help pay for other needs, including rent, utilities, food, gas and health insurance. They’ll also organize crowdfunding for specific needs that require more than $250, such as a full month’s rent. It also has a specific fund for sex workers from the city or surrounding parishes. “ I really like getting into St. Bernard and St. Charles and Plaquemines where these services are a lot less accessible,” Slooijer said. Twice a month, the nonprofit hosts rapid testing events for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections where they can connect people to medication that drastically reduces the risk of contracting HIV. Though the group has roots in serving people without housing and those who use substances, the mission has evolved to use mutual aid to reach as many people as possible. Slooijer said they provide school supplies, help incarcerated people with re-entry and operate a mutual aid hotline. Below Sea Level Aid, a community-driven harm reduction organization, packs up hygiene, safe injection and naloxone kits along Bayou St. John on May 28, 2026. Although the term harm reduction is often associated with substance use, Slooijer has adopted the broader definition of the public health philosophy. Harm reduction practices date back to the 1960s, but the rise of modern movement is attributed to the response to the HIV epidemic in the 1980s to reduce transmission through syringe exchanges provided without stigma. The aim isn’t to completely stop the risky behavior but reduce the harm associated with it. Since then, some health care professionals, like Slooijer, have adopted that principle to apply to other behaviors beyond substance use, from safe sex education to promoting bike helmets, as part of preventative care. “ Harm reduction is not just substances. Harm reduction is even just wearing your seatbelt when you're driving. It's reducing harm in any way, so whether that's food insecurity, housing or mental health,” said Slooijer. Residents across the Greater New Orleans area can call Below Sea Level Aid’s mutual aid hotline at (504) 408-1888 for help. This article first appeared on Verite News New Orleans and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # A growing community of recovering gamblers lifts each other up as formal resources lag **How a podcast and 12-step network are doing the work the state can’t, and where it falls short** by Maggie Dougherty and Casey Toner, Capitol News Illinois June 24, 2026 ** _This story is a collaboration between_** Capitol News Illinois and Illinois Answers Project**_._** _**Editor’s note:** Some individuals in this story are identified only by first name and last initial at their request to allow them to speak openly about their addiction without fear of reprisal for actions taken when gambling._ At his worst, Jimmy M. was a rough-and-tumble bar fighter. But he can also be a major mama’s boy. He’s got an easy, warm Little Italy charm that lent itself well to manipulating people just long enough to finance his gambling. Like most gamblers, he grapples with an ego that can make him feel invincible. He’s a softy, a quick crier, a man of big emotions. And now, though only 45, he’s considered one of the tough-love “elders” in Chicago’s Gamblers Anonymous rooms, an image he says he’s tried to reform with a gentler tone in recent years. Gamblers Anonymous, or GA, is a 12-step program founded in the 1950s, following in the footsteps of Alcoholics Anonymous. And for many, talking with other people addicted to gambling at GA helps them keep from stumbling back into their addiction. It can also serve as a much-needed source of light, especially for those early in their recovery. “A lot of people are looking for hope … they feel helpless,” said recovering gambler Dave K., a resident of Chicago’s West Loop neighborhood. “I see people coming in the room who are suicidal, who are on the verge of divorce or getting divorced, about to be evicted. You see that happen to a lot of people and then it’s amazing to see, if people stick with the program for a year, two years, just how different a person they are, and how different their lives are.” ### **Becoming the resource** In 2021, Jimmy began looking for additional gambling recovery resources to supplement his GA attendance. “Whenever I would even type in the word gambling, you would see all these podcasts come up about the other side of it, which is how to win in gambling,” Jimmy said. The few podcasts he found devoted to prevention released episodes only sporadically. So, he decided he’d do it himself. In February 2025, Jimmy launched the podcast, “Gambling Recovery: Taking Back Your Life” with Sam Sherman, an internationally-certified gambling counselor who edits the podcast in his free time. On the show, which airs every other week, Jimmy interviews compulsive gamblers in recovery, gamblers’ family members, addiction counselors, journalists and lawmakers including Massachusetts state Sen. John F. Keenan. The target audience is anyone in recovery or looking to better understand gambling addiction. The podcast, which generates over 2,000 monthly downloads, is in many ways a project by and for the Chicagoland GA community, featuring interviews with many local compulsive gamblers. Before the podcast began, Jimmy only expected friends, family, and GA community members to listen. He now has listeners in 90 countries and receives messages from strangers thanking him. Some of those messages are from people contemplating self-harm or suicide, reaching out to say the podcast had made them hopeful. Jaime L., a local GA member who requested to be identified using an alias due to outstanding legal concerns, spends much of the day in her car driving to work. When gambling, she would duck into a gas station or liquor store to purchase Lottery scratch offs and spend hours scratching tickets in her car. She found Jimmy’s podcast early on in her recovery and says it saved her life. Now, whenever temptation strikes while she’s driving, Jaime now hits play on Jimmy’s podcast instead. Unlike gambling, Jaime said there’s no chance for bad odds when she tunes in to the show. “You’re not playing Russian roulette with the podcast; you’re playing Wheel of Fortune,” she said. ### **GA deserts** For all its good, most members recognize GA as only one piece in a larger puzzle of recovery resources. The 3 to 5 minutes of speaking time allotted to each member per meeting, called “therapies,” is not always enough to address their individual challenges. Many GA members supplement group meetings with individual counseling, though gambling-certified therapists in the state are limited, and insurance does not cover most treatment without the compulsive gambler having an alcohol or drug use disorder, too. While an AA meeting may be found nearly every hour of the day somewhere in Chicago, there is at most one GA meeting a day within city limits, except on Wednesdays when there are two. Major swaths of the city don’t have GA meetings nearby, especially in poor South and West side neighborhoods. Open map in new tab * * * Part of the problem is a lack of awareness about gambling addiction, much less the existence of GA as a resource to treat it, according to counselors in the communities where it’s missing. “Gambling is sort of a social norm with a certain segment of the Black community, and it’s not viewed as an addiction. It’s viewed as a way to make money, perhaps hit a jackpot and really, enhance one’s financial standing,” said Kenneth Smith, a certified alcohol and drug counselor who has worked in several South Side neighborhoods. “It’s at crisis level with some people as far as being an addiction, but it’s not viewed that way by the people who play it on a regular basis.” Often, some of the poorest areas spend the most on gambling. For example, The Chicago Reporter found nearly two decades ago that players in the South Side’s 60619 zip code area spent more on lottery tickets than any other ZIP code in the state, purchasing more than $23 million worth of tickets. The population in the 60619 area, which includes much of the predominantly Black neighborhoods of Chatham, Avalon Park, Burnside and Calumet Park, declined by over 15% between 2000 and 2020, but ticket sales have not slowed. According to Illinois Lottery data, players there purchased the most tickets of any ZIP code in the state last year, totaling over $35 million in sales for a population where one in four people live below the poverty line, according to U.S. Census data. In some communities, gambling is part of the culture, and tackling gambling addiction can face off against a stigma that’s hard to overcome. For example, in Chicago’s Chinatown where mahjong reigns — a tile-based game originating in China — going to the casino provides a place for older residents to socialize and carries the promise of providing for their family, according to Mimi Tsang, who oversees substance use and gambling prevention programs at the Midwest Asian Health Association. “It also kind of goes into the hustle culture of, ‘I need to make money in order for my family to survive back home, or for me to bring them here, so then they can have a better life,’” Tsang said. Casinos have targeted the city’s Asian population with expressway billboards in written Chinese characters and by chartering more than 10,000 bus shuttles a year between Chinatown and Bally’s Casino and another 2,000 between Chinatown and Wind Creek Casino in East Hazel Crest. But there are no GA meetings in Chinatown. Meetings outside the Chicagoland area are even harder to come by. Beyond the small clusters of meetings around major cities, compulsive gamblers in much of the state are lucky if they have one meeting a week within an hour’s drive. Zoom meetings offer a virtual outlet, but many GA members say it doesn’t fully replicate meeting in person. Though compulsive gamblers almost universally agree that recovery is a lifelong and difficult road, gambling addiction counselors say effective treatment is possible with the right tools, and GA members swear by the program’s tenets and the role of community support. “After doing this for so long … I don’t feel like I’m ever 100% in the safe zone,” Jimmy said. But, he added, “it does get easier over time.” _If you or someone you know is struggling with gambling, help is available. Contact the Illinois helpline by calling 1-800-GAMBLER or texting "GAMB" to 833234._ * * * **Read more:** Addicted to gambling in Illinois: ‘Someone has decided they can make money off you’ _**COVER IMAGE:** Jimmy M., a compulsive gambler in recovery, hosts a podcast where he interviews other compulsive gamblers, their family members, addiction counselors and lawmakers. (Credit: Victor Hilitski for Illinois Answers Project)_ This article first appeared on Capitol News Illinois and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. * * * # Stepping back from brink of financial disaster in Rocky Mount by Mackenzie Thomas, Carolina Public Press June 23, 2026 While not out of the woods yet, the city of Rocky Mount has reported making “steady” progress on getting its finances back on track at a NC Local Government Commission meeting this month. The city has been in hot water since a scathing report from State Auditor **Dave Boliek** was released in March, detailing a lack of oversight that arguably led to the mismanagement of millions of dollars in city funds. The LGC warned the city in April that no further budget slip-ups would be tolerated, or else the city would risk a financial takeover. ##### **[** Subscribe for FREE to Carolina Public Press’ Daily, Weekend and Election 2026 newsletters.**]** Since the audit, Rocky Mount has been working diligently to rectify its finances. At the city’s latest LGC meeting appearance on June 9, city officials said they recently submitted their fiscal year 2025 audit and drafted a budget for fiscal year 2027, which was just awaiting a vote. While the outcome on Monday night was close, the council approved the budget 4-3. **Cornelius Jordan** , assistant city manager and public information officer for the city of Rocky Mount, told Carolina Public Press that the city has made “significant progress” in stabilizing its finances, though keeping that momentum will require “continued focus, discipline and sound financial management.” The city’s work has not gone unnoticed by LGC members, who said during their meeting that the city’s progress is “tracking and trending in the right direction.” **Denise Canada** , secretary of the LGC and deputy treasurer of the State and Local Government Finance Division, said she hopes Rocky Mount can serve as an example to other struggling municipalities working to remedy their financial situations. ### Progress made in Rocky Mount The city recently submitted its fiscal year 2025 audit on May 22, according to LGC audit submission records. In May, city officials announced during the LGC meeting that coming out of April, they were reconciled and up-to-date on all of their accounts, putting their summer month projections at $1.7 million. In June, they reported having exceeded their own expectations, finding themselves $8 million above their projections at the close of May. **Elton Daniels** , city manager for Rocky Mount, said in May that while the city’s biggest issue is still cash flow, and its accounts need to continue being closely monitored, the fiscal year 2027 budget is looking promising. Once passed, the fiscal year 2027 budget would reduce spending by roughly $16 million compared to last year’s revised fiscal budget, Jordan said last month, prior to the budget’s passage this week. Daniels had previously described the city as taking an “all-hands-on-deck” approach to solving the city’s financial troubles, saying all ideas were being considered no matter who or where they came from, CPP previously reported. **Kimberly Leonard** , the city’s new chief budget and strategy officer hired in April, has played a crucial role in helping the city get back on its feet. Her input on the city’s finances has been valuable, Jordan said. “Since joining the City, her impact has been particularly valuable in strengthening revenue forecasting, which is critical to aligning expenditures with anticipated revenues, identifying potential financial challenges early, and supporting informed budget decisions,” Jordan said. “Her extensive experience in local government budgeting and operational performance has provided additional expertise as the city continues implementing corrective actions and building a more sustainable financial foundation.” Help also came from the North Carolina League of Municipalities, which Jordan said has provided training opportunities for staff and city officials at next to no cost or no cost at all. At one point the city had been expected to run out of money as early as next month, but due to measures including less spending, operational adjustments and more oversight, projections show that finances will stay afloat through the end of the calendar year, Jordan said. “Just as important, the city has shifted its focus toward aligning recurring expenditures with sustainable revenues and rebuilding a stronger financial foundation for the future,” Jordan said. In addition to regular updates to the LGC, all of these efforts have been instrumental in stabilizing the city’s financial footing and improving its long-term financial management, Jordan said. Canada said the LGC is “pleased” that current city staff have recognized the challenges that were carried over from the former administration and noted the city’s cash position has also improved since March. ### Difficult decisions Getting to this point hasn’t been easy though. Difficult decisions have been made to help get the city back on track, including getting rid of “nonessential” programs, one of which was a summer camp for community kids, Daniels said in this month’s meeting. “From a financial standpoint and operating standpoint, it was just money that we were not seeing the best return on with regard to a balance sheet, things that are very important to the community,” he said. “But you all charged us with making difficult decisions, and so that’s some of the difficult decisions that we had to do.” Other difficult choices included getting rid of and freezing vacant positions, suspending certain employee benefits, reducing travel and operational expenses and more, Jordan said. However, Daniels told the LGC in May that the city has been able to avoid pay cuts for employees. While Daniels didn’t recommend any pay raises in the new budget, he said in May that he’d like to resume the city’s merit program for employees at some point, which rewards them with pay increases based on an annual performance review. “I don’t want to go too many years without reimplementing that program, as well as some type of form of longevity, because you have to reward employees, because the inflationary costs around us continue to go up,” Daniels said. “Even if we remain static, if prices outside go up, in essence, we are losing money.” Despite the reduction in the workforce, the city is still providing its core services. But maintaining the same level of service as before has meant longer working hours for the city’s remaining employees, which Daniels said they think is “something we have to do before we start adding back.” ### Remaining issues for Rocky Mount One remaining issue that was brought up in May and in this month’s LGC meeting was the negative balance in the transit fund, which city officials reported as having a $3 million deficit in May. But the city has plans to address that issue, Daniels said. “We are looking at multiple ways to offer that service, possibly change routes, reduce in some areas, but because federal funds are tied to those, we can’t make those decisions unilaterally,” Daniels said. “We have to reach out to the federal government and our state partners, but we’re also looking at adjusting rates and fees as well, so a combination of different things, but we do plan to address that in the near future.” Daniels pointed out that transit isn’t really profitable anywhere. “It’s one of those quality-of-life things that you deal with,” Daniels said. “It’s so similar to parks and recreation, it’s something that you put in and you don’t expect to have a full return.” Even so, Jordan said the city is not considering getting rid of transit services, since many residents rely on them. Another possible challenge is Senate Bill 1076, which has the potential to restrict the city’s financial flexibility when it comes to transfers between the city’s electric and general funds, Jordan said. The measure would apply to just two cities, Rocky Mount and Louisburg. **Sandy Roberson** , mayor of Rocky Mount, said during this month’s meeting that the bill has passed the Senate and is currently waiting in the House, though it could also face a veto from the governor. If it became law, the new legislation would essentially prevent the city from transferring funds from its electric and gas funds to other municipal funds “as a reasonable return on the city’s investment in these utility operations,” even though these kinds of transfers are currently allowed under state law and other municipalities do them, Jordan said. These restrictions would make the city’s recovery efforts more challenging as they take away a “critical financial management tool,” and would be like “pouring salt into an open wound,” Jordan said. “The city supports accountability, transparency, and responsible utility management. However, major policy decisions affecting local governments should be based on complete financial analysis, operational realities, and direct engagement with local leadership,” Jordan said. “The city remains concerned that the legislation does not fully recognize the corrective actions already underway and could create unintended consequences for long-term planning, infrastructure investment, and municipal services.” The city stopped electric fund transfers after December and the new budget doesn’t rely on them for any general fund operations, Jordan said. ### Next steps One of the city’s top priorities is implementing its fiscal year 2027 budget once it passes. While reductions in spending and other operational adjustments have been worked in, other changes by the City Council are possible during the review process, Jordan said. The city’s fiscal year 2026 audit is still in the “early stages,” with the end of the fiscal year coming up on June 30. After that date, the city will proceed with its year-end financial closing process and other preparations, as the audit will be due on Dec. 31, Jordan said. The LGC previously told CPP that the city is in its current predicament partly due to overspending. When CPP asked how the city would ensure this doesn’t happen again moving forward, Jordan said certain measures are already underway. “These efforts include enhanced financial reporting, operational efficiency initiatives, strengthened budget development practices, increased management review of expenditures, and continued focus on aligning recurring expenditures with sustainable revenues,” Jordan said. “The city has also expanded financial leadership capacity, and established reporting practices that provide greater visibility into the city’s financial position. These measures are intended to support better decision-making and long-term financial stability.” In May, Daniels told the LGC that it would likely be months before the city could move out of crisis mode. Once the new budget was adopted, he could give a better timeline, he said at that time. “I do feel like from a financial standpoint, it’ll be years before we can build back the amount of fund balance that we previously had, because I think we were north of $80 million, so we can’t do that over the course of one or two fiscal years,” Daniels told the LGC. “But I think that the path that we are on, we will be out of crisis mode within the next … 24 months, even sooner depending on the next couple of months.” City officials have been asked to return in July to update the LGC on city finances and what the budget for fiscal year 2026-2027 looks like, Canada said. She and the rest of the commission wanted to see that it’s “balanced without any use of fund balance in any fund” and “has reduced many of the revenue budgets that historically had been budgeted unrealistically high.” Canada said she hopes that the lesson other local governments take away from Rocky Mount’s situation is that financial crises “are almost always fixable.” “Although we’ve received many requests from citizens that we take over Rocky Mount’s finances, the LGC assuming financial control is rarely warranted,” Canada said. “The same tools that are available to us are available to local leaders. Locals just need to be willing to make the hard choices necessary to right the ship.” This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.