Elon Musk leaps on stage with Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, during a campaign rally Oct. 5, 2024 in Butler, Pennsylvania. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

As Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump remain locked in a tight race according to public polling, both campaigns projected confidence Thursday.

With the election just five days away, the Democratic and GOP presidential candidates are making their final pitches to voters and zooming in on swing states — with neither showing a measurable advantage in the polls.

A senior Harris campaign official said Thursday on a call with reporters that they “feel very good about what we’re seeing.” And the Trump campaign sent reporters a memo showing Trump with polling leads in five of seven swing states, based on Real Clear Politics polling averages.

The Trump memo, written by pollster Tony Fabrizio, showed Trump with slim leads in Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Nevada and larger advantages in Arizona and Georgia.

More than 63.6 million early votes were documented as of Thursday evening, according to the University of Florida Election Lab’s early voting tracker. Across the states that have data on party registration data, Democrats remained ahead with over 12 million voters registered with that party, compared to over 11.2 million Republicans and more than 7.8 million registered with another party or no party.

Senior Harris campaign officials also suggested that Trump is “clearly worried” about losing the race, noting he is “ramping up baseless claims of election fraud and irregularities.”

They referenced a Truth Social post from the former president on Wednesday in which Trump claimed that “Pennsylvania is cheating, and getting caught, at large scale levels rarely seen before.”

“REPORT CHEATING TO AUTHORITIES. Law Enforcement must act, NOW!” Trump wrote.

The former president’s campaign won a lawsuit Wednesday in the Keystone State over claims that voters in Bucks County were turned away when waiting in line to get mail ballots. A judge extended the mail ballot deadline in Bucks County to the close of business on Friday. The statewide deadline was set for Tuesday at 5 p.m.

“Needless to say, Pennsylvania is not cheating,” a senior Harris campaign official said on the call, adding that “a handful of people were allegedly turned away from early voting lines in Bucks County” and “the county responded by agreeing in court to additional days, not just hours, of early voting.”

A senior Harris campaign official said the system is “working just as it should,” referencing three counties in the Keystone State that identified suspicious registrations and declined to process them while also coordinating with law enforcement.

“All of this is cheating only in the mind of someone who wants to claim he was cheated, and it’s yet another example of how Donald Trump tries to sow doubt in our elections and institutions when he’s afraid he can’t win,” the official said.

Elon Musk’s voter sweepstakes

Meanwhile, a Pennsylvania judge on Thursday placed a lawsuit against billionaire Elon Musk and his America PAC on hold while the fate of a federal court taking on the case is up in the air.

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner sued Musk and his super PAC earlier this week over allegations that the Trump ally’s $1 million-a-day voter sweepstakes constitutes an illegal lottery.

Musk’s lawyers argued Wednesday that the state court was not the proper venue for the lawsuit and filed to move the case to a federal court.

Though the world’s richest man was ordered to appear at Thursday’s hearing, he did not show up.

Many voters feeling anxiety, frustration over campaign

Roughly 7 in 10 Americans feel frustrated or anxious about the 2024 presidential campaign, while a little over one-third feel excited, according to an AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released Thursday.

Nearly 80% of Democrats feel anxious about the race, compared to nearly two-thirds of Republicans and about half of independents, per the poll.

Americans’ feelings about the 2024 presidential campaign are similar to 2020, when, according to the same pollsters, 3 in 10 felt excited, nearly 7 in 10 were frustrated and almost two-thirds said they felt anxious.

Upcoming from the Harris, Trump campaigns

Harris is set to hold a campaign event in the Appleton area of Wisconsin on Friday and a rally and concert in Milwaukee later in the day.

The veep’s running mate, Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, is slated to campaign in Nevada and Arizona over the weekend.

Ohio GOP Sen. J.D. Vance, Trump’s running mate, is scheduled to hold rallies Friday in Portage, Michigan, and Selma, North Carolina.

Trump is set to hold Friday rallies in Warren, Michigan, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The Harris campaign said Thursday it will host its election night at Howard University in Washington, D.C. — the vice president’s alma mater.

Voters lined up outside the Marksbury Family Branch of the Lexington Public Library on Thursday, the first day of early voting in Kentucky. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Kevin Nance)

As no-excuse early voting began in Kentucky Thursday, some polling locations saw long lines of people eager to cast their ballots.?

Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear and Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams both voted early Thursday morning at their local polling places. They later appeared together at Beshear’s weekly Team Kentucky update to discuss early voting.?

“We have had occasional and sporadic instances of lines this morning when the polls opened,” Adams said. “We had the same thing in 2020 on the first day of voting. That’s not unusual. Those lines have calmed down. They’re moving very, very quickly. You’re going to have a longer line and a longer voting experience if you wait until Tuesday.”?

Social media users shared photos and videos of a long line outside of the early voting locations like Bowman Field in Louisville and the Tates Creek branch of the Lexington Public Library in Lexington.?

Republican Sen. Whitney Westerfield said on X that about 150 voters were waiting in line at the Bruce Convention Center in Hopkinsville before the polling location opened.?

“It’s never like this,” Westerfield added.?

Adams and Beshear worked on a bipartisan deal in 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic to expand voting access in Kentucky. That included introducing early voting in the state. Beshear later signed legislation making three days of no-excuse early voting permanent in 2021.?

“I encourage all eligible Kentuckians to make a plan to get out and vote,” Beshear said before adding early voting will continue on Friday and Saturday.?

Adams issued a plea last week when predicting a massive voter turnout in Kentucky. “For the love of God, vote early,” he said, which Kentuckians seemingly are heeding.?

The secretary said Thursday that Kentucky had record voter turnout in the 2020 election, and 45% of voters cast ballots early then. Before that, Kentucky’s highest turnout was in 1908.?

Additionally, Adams said 71% of mail-in absentee ballots have been returned ahead of Tuesday’s election. Each county has at least one drop box for voters to return ballots.?

Adams also highlighted that some races on the ballot are nonpartisan, meaning straight-ticket voters still need to fill in bubbles to cast votes in those elections. He encouraged voters to review sample ballots, which will also include language for two constitutional amendments, before going to vote.?

“This is an open book test. You can look at your ballot before you show up to vote. I did that myself this morning,” Adams said. He brought a sample ballot with him to review names for nonpartisan offices.?

For more voting information, visit govote.ky.gov. The website directs users to local sample ballots and polling locations, as well as their hours.?

The general election in Kentucky is Tuesday, Nov. 5. Polls will be open then from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. local time.?

Gov. Andy Beshear talks to reporters after a Wednesday night rally in Lexington. (Kentucky Lantern photo by McKenna Horsley)

LEXINGTON —?Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear is joining other Democrats in calling for the U.S. president to be elected by popular vote, saying the country needs to “move to a place where seven states don’t decide the presidency.”?

“We’ll have better government. We’ll have better politics. We’ll have better elections when we get to that point,” Beshear said Wednesday at a gathering of Democrats in Lexington.?

When asked to further clarify in a Thursday press conference, Beshear said that candidates would be encouraged to campaign for votes in all states rather than just in swing states if the popular vote decided the president. He added that such a system would get “us closer to a place where we can govern in a way that lifts all Americans up, that we’re not pushed towards any extreme, that we don’t write off crazy things that some candidates may or may not say, but that we would truly get an election for all Ameriicans.”?

“I think to do that, we would ultimately have to abolish the Electoral College,” Beshear said. “I know that’s been with us a long time, but we see where things currently stand.”?

The Electoral College consists of 538 electors — mirroring states’ total members in Congress — meaning a candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.?

In 48 states, the winner of the popular vote, no matter how slim the margin, is awarded all of the state’s votes in the Electoral College. Maine, Nebraska and the District of Columbia use a proportional system to award electoral votes.?

Some Democrats, including Beshear and Democratic vice presidential nominee Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, are renewing calls to do away with the Electoral College in favor of a national popular vote.?

According to POLITICO, the U.S. has had five elections in which the winner of the popular vote lost. The races in this century where this happened are Vice President Al Gore’s 2000 bid against President George W. Bush and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign against President Doanld Trump.?

Both Gore and Clinton are Democrats. Bush was the last Republican to win the popular vote during his 2004 reelection campaign.?

Beshear’s Wednesday night comments drew ire from Kentucky Republicans on social media. The Republican Party of Kentucky said on X that abolishing the Electoral College would make “Kentucky have no say in presidential elections.”?

In a Thursday evening statement, Republican Senate President Robert Stivers said the GOP Senate Caucus sees the Electoral College as “a vital pillar of our Republic that ensures smaller states like Kentucky continue to have a voice and we reject any attempt to dismantle it.” Stivers added that Beshear’s position “proves that he is a nationalized Democrat through and through” and “violates what our founding fathers, including Washington, Jefferson, and others, envisioned for this great country.”

“Governor Beshear’s proposal to eliminate the electoral college not only threatens the federal balance but disrespects every Kentuckian who values their representation in the highest levels of government,” Stivers said. “This proposal is a blatant dereliction of his responsibility as the head of the Commonwealth’s executive branch and a disrespectful affront to every Kentuckian who values their right to be heard.”

Kentucky has eight electoral votes, which have consistently gone to Republican presidential candidates since the 2000 presidential election.?

In his response on Thursday, Beshear said that Kentucky would benefit from a popular vote for president, although he doubts the Electoral College will be abolished anytime soon.

“At the end of the day, regardless of the changes that are or are not made, certainly in my activities, I want to make sure that we are moving not just this state, but other states into a place where they are also considered important in these elections, that we have a seat at the table nationally. That’s good for Kentucky, but it’s also good for every single state.

A recent Pew Research Center poll found that 63% of Americans would instead prefer that the winner of the popular vote be the winner of the presidential election while 35% prefer maintaining the Electoral College.

This story was updated Thursday evening with additional comments.?

Voters lined up at the downtown branch of the Lexington Public Library Thursday morning as early voting began in Kentucky. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Kevin Nance)

On the first morning of early voting in Kentucky, voters in Lexington waited to enter the polling place at the Tates Creek branch of the public library. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Kevin Nance)

With days left in Kentucky’s general election, supporters and opponents of Amendment 2 are traveling the state to make their last-minute pitches to voters.?

Republicans U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, his wife Kelley Paul and former Attorney General Daniel Cameron spoke to a Bowling Green rally for the amendment Monday evening. Meanwhile, Kentucky Democrats, including Gov. Andy Beshear and Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman, made their case against the amendment during a Fayette County Democrats’ rally on Wednesday, the evening before early voting began.?

Both the senator and the governor are backing political action committees that are spending a lot of money on this issue ahead of the election. The Protect Freedom PAC, sponsored by Pennsylvania billionaire and mega donor Jeff Yass, has spent $3.75 million to promote Amendment 2 and has released ads featuring the Pauls. Meanwhile, Kentuckians for Public Education, a PAC operated by Beshear’s campaign manager, has raised more than $975,000.?

Amendment 2, which has divided Kentucky politicians along partisan lines, would allow the General Assembly to fund nonpublic schools, or those “outside the system of common schools.” The amendment would suspend or “notwithstand” seven sections of the state Constitution to allow public money to flow to nonpublic schools. The legislation for the amendment was a priority for Republican lawmakers earlier this year and an attempt to overcome constitutional hurdles cited by Kentucky courts striking down earlier charter school and private school tax credit laws.

At the Bowling Green rally, which was sponsored by Americans for Prosperity of Kentucky, Sen. Paul blamed Kentucky courts. It “boggles the mind,” he said, that the courts “interpreted our Constitution to say the legislature wasn’t allowed to debate, discuss or legislate on education” but he was unsure of how a different ruling could come without a new court. Kentucky Supreme Court justices are elected on a rotating election schedule.?

“This originated in the courts,” Paul said of challenges to funding nonpublic schools. “They created this problem.”?

Last December, Franklin Circuit Court Judge Phillip Shepherd wrote that charter schools are “private entities” that do not meet the Kentucky Constitution’s definition of “public schools” or “common schools,” striking down a state charter school law. Before that, the Kentucky Supreme Court in 2022 unanimously struck down a law creating a generous tax credit to help families pay for tuition at private schools. The opinion, which upheld a circuit court ruling by Shepherd, cited a long line of precedent reinforcing the Kentucky Constitution’s ban on the state financially supporting private schools.

Paul said that support for the amendment is “getting closer, but I still sense that we need more momentum.” He urged attendees at the rally to canvass and spread the word about the amendment.?

“It is not legislation. It doesn’t appropriate any money,” he told the crowd. “It doesn’t take a single penny from public education. It’s an amendment that allows the legislature to do what they’re supposed to do — debate how best we should get education for our kids.”

When asked by a reporter what system the legislature should consider if the amendment passes, Paul said lawmakers must debate that. He pointed to the legislation struck down by the Supreme Court? “So I would say vote for Amendment 2 if you believe in private charity, you believe in private philanthropy, you believe in church schools, non-religious schools,” he said. “You believe that somehow we ought to have some kind of educational choice.”?

Republican House Speaker David Osborne has previously said that debate about what should come next if the amendment passes will likely be “contentious.” Republican Senate President Robert Stivers predicted “we’re probably a year away from any type of legislation.”?

Democrats, meanwhile, are honing in on the ambiguity and uncertainty surrounding what could come should the amendment pass. Speaking with reporters after the Fayette County rally at The Burl in Lexington, Beshear said “there is no question that this is simply a voucher scheme” despite what Republicans say. Under such systems, families can use vouchers of state funds to send students to their school of choice.?

“Our solution should be to fully fund public schools and not to give a blank check to Frankfort politicians to move money away from them and further defund them,” the governor said.?

Beshear said “Kentuckians have further educated themselves” about Amendment 2 and was confident it would be defeated Tuesday. He said opponents of the measure, including the Kentucky Education Association, AFT union members, teachers, superintendents, Lexington area faith leaders and parents, have “put in a lot of work” ahead of the election.?

“People are fundamentally against giving Frankfort politicians the ability to take money away from public schools and send it to unaccountable private schools,” Beshear said, referring to how public schools are overseen by the Kentucky Department of Education.

Coleman echoed Beshear’s sentiments in her speech to the crowd. A former educator herself, she has been holding press conferences across the state to speak out against the amendment.

“There are more reasons than I have time to cover right now about why Amendment 2 is detrimental to our schools, our families, our communities in this commonwealth,” she said Wednesday. “But let me tell you this: this General Assembly is undeserving of a blank check from the voters.”?

Volunteers and staffers will be hitting the campaign trail themselves with little time left before the polls close at 6 p.m. Tuesday. A representative of AFP said at the end of the Bowling Green rally that the group is aiming to make 20,000 contacts with voters this week after making 200,000 contacts through canvassing already. One of the largest PACs against the amendment, Protect Our Schools, has canvassing and tour stops listed throughout Kentucky through Election Day on its Facebook page.?

The general election in Kentucky is Tuesday, Nov. 5. No-excuse early voting began Thursday, Oct. 31.

Lois Thompson says her new house's porch is "out of this world." She moved into the "net zero" home in late August. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Liam Niemeyer).

WHITESBURG — In her old house — built more than 100 years ago by a coal company — Lois Thompson says she couldn’t afford to run the heat pump on her fixed income.?

When winter cold seeped through the walls, Thompson, 76, sectioned off a room by hanging up her son’s $10 childhood quilt; she would sit by a propane heater until the heat drove her into the cold kitchen.

“They’ll freeze you to death in the winter,” she said of her house and others like it that were built to be heated by a coal stove. “For the people like me that don’t have the money, you’re living in a drafty house. … You can’t insulate it. You don’t have the money for that.”

The propane heater, the house and the cold are now memories.?

Thanks to a local housing nonprofit, Thompson moved into a new house in August on the site where her old home, damaged by flooding in 2022, had stood. Also gone are her fears of high electricity bills. She paid just $21.61 in October, slightly above the minimum charge for utility customers in her community.

“It still don’t seem real, and I’m living in it,” she said. “I say, ‘Lord, I thank you.’ That’s all I can do.”?

The reason behind her rock-bottom power bill: a years-long effort by Whitesburg-based HOMES Inc. to build “net zero” homes. That is, houses with zero monthly electrical costs because of their energy-efficient construction and rooftop solar panels that generate power.?

For years, the? nonprofit — its full name is Housing Oriented Ministries Established for Service Inc. — had been grappling with the challenge of responding to some of Kentucky’s highest electricity costs in a region where incomes are low.

The devastating floods that overwhelmed Eastern Kentucky in 2022 wiped out thousands of homes and also brought new resources for housing, allowing HOMES Inc. to look toward the power of the sun. The nonprofit has built five “net zero” homes including Thompson’s and is now working on a new housing development for flood survivors that will have eight “net zero” homes.

In a region built on coal, the pressure of soaring utility bills and the need for housing are driving a new vision of what the energy future could be.

“In our climate today, everything gets political. This doesn’t have to be about left or right. This doesn’t have to be about coal or solar. It can be about common sense, too,” said Seth Long, the executive director of HOMES Inc. “As coal built this country with energy in the past, we need to pivot. And I think solar can play a part in that pivoting to something else.”?

Solar skeptic to solar advocate

Long wasn’t always a believer. He recognized that solar panels on rooftops saved electricity but didn’t think they made sense economically without subsidies because of their upfront costs.

The numbers on a spreadsheet presented by Josh Bills, an energy specialist from the economic development organization Mountain Association, convinced him otherwise. HOMES Inc. could install rooftop solar on its office in Whitesburg and be financially ahead, even if it borrowed the entire cost of the solar system. The price of rooftop solar panels has halved over the past decade.

Long had been looking for a way from under his nonprofit’s high electricity bills. Despite adding energy efficiency measures to the office such as air sealing and? efficient light bulbs, the bills from Kentucky Power were still too high — up to $1,600 a month, something that wasn’t sustainable.?

“The spreadsheet said that that would work, and I kept doubting and kept wondering.”? Long finally said, “Why don’t we borrow $70,000 and put the system on and see if this will work?”

So, they borrowed the money and installed the solar system. It’s paid off every month since, performing better than the projections.?

“We came out ahead financially, way ahead. Some of our electric bills since then have been as low as $53 a month,” Long said. “It was eye opening to me.”

Long’s horizons of what’s possible began to expand. He added solar to his maple syrup farm to save money there. He knew small businesses in Eastern Kentucky also struggled with older, energy inefficient buildings and high electricity bills, and most of the funding opportunities, such as the Rural Energy for America Program, were aimed at commercial spaces.

Fewer resources were available for working solar onto affordable housing. As tragic and terrible as the 2022 floods were, he said, there are now “resources and support in ways that we haven’t seen” for that sort of work.?

Ratepayers in the 20 Eastern Kentucky counties served by investor-owned Kentucky Power have struggled for years with high electricity costs. The utility’s residential customers paid the highest average monthly bill in the state at $187.56 according to a 2023 state report, and that was before a controversial 5% rate increase was approved last year.?

Power bills can soar above that average during the winter. Kentucky Power data show its? poorest Kentucky ratepayers have the highest bills. That’s in part, Kentucky Power executives say, because of high electric heating costs during the winter. Poor insulation and energy inefficient electric heating cause bills to reach north of $400 a month when it’s cold.?

Thompson said she sees Facebook posts during the winter by people “just about in tears” because “the electric bills are so high,” forcing them to decide whether to buy food or pay Kentucky Power.?

That’s where the potential of “net zero” homes comes in.

“A lot of people in our area are living in houses that were designed for coal heat, and, you know, not so much heat pumps. But everybody switched from coal to electric heat, and it’s just — it’s so expensive for them,” Long said. “The flood has given us opportunities to tear down older homes and replace them with new energy efficient homes and even ‘net zero’ houses.”?

HOMES Inc. has? built five “net zero” homes so far, constructing an energy-efficient “envelope” around the structure and then letting? the power of rooftop solar take the home all the way to “net zero.”?

Their efforts have been recognized by a national nonprofit that scores energy efficiency. The HERS index compares a home’s energy efficiency to a home built by average standards, which would score 100 on the index. A home with a HERS score of 70, for example, would be 30% more energy efficient than the average home. A score of 50 would be 50% more energy efficient.?

Long said Lois Thompson’s “net zero” home scored a negative 17 on the index, meaning it generates more electricity than it uses. And the nonprofit doesn’t plan to stop there.

A new future out of the floodplain

Up a gravel road on a hill just outside of Whitesburg, hopes for the future and current frustrations meet.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency had originally planned to put small cottages there in? a development known as Thompson Branch. When those plans didn’t work out, state officials asked HOMES Inc. for its ideas. The answer as seen on a cool afternoon earlier this month: eight soon-to-be “net zero” homes.

Over the rumble of a truck dumping cement for a new sidewalk, Joe Oliver, an assistant construction manager, explained how they’ve made it work: using smaller, affordable solar systems, only what’s needed to get to a “net zero” rating; building and designing homes ready for rooftop solar; and having an in-house solar installer to reduce costs. An average solar system runs the nonprofit around $15,000.

“The more that we can make things affordable, I think the better off everyone is everywhere,” Oliver said. “If you could generate enough money, say, to pay for the [solar] system, why wouldn’t you?”

Their in-house solar installer, Clayton “Fuzz” Johnson, a bearded 29-year-old, went to school to become a master electrician and learn how to install solar panels. Johnson said electricians are few and far between in Eastern Kentucky, let alone those who know how to install solar.

Johnson says solar is becoming more appealing in light of the rising costs Eastern Kentuckians are facing for groceries, taxes and electricity.?

With the decline of coal mining and other heavy industry and the coinciding loss of population in Kentucky Power’s territory, more and more of the burden of paying for electricity has fallen on fewer and fewer people, leaving Johnson, Oliver and others voicing frustration with the situation.?

““They’re going to get their return on investment,” Johnson said of Kentucky Power.

Johnson believes that with people already leaving instead of rebuilding after the floods, high power bills will only increase the outmigration.

Johnson, standing inside the frame of a “net zero” home, wondered if batteries could be hooked up to store electricity from solar from the rooftop panels. HOMES Inc. has yet to try adding home battery systems with the rooftop solar because the nonprofit considers the added cost to still be too much. The cost of batteries has plummeted in recent years due to a boost in electric vehicle production.??

Some renewable energy advocates envision a virtual power plant; excess power from solar panels on homes and businesses and from electric vehicles would be pulled onto the grid to power communities as an alternative to centralized power plants.

The need and potential for home energy efficiency upgrades in the region are immense, according to HOMES Inc. and other nonprofits.

Long and others, including the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center, are pushing Kentucky Power to do more than it’s? currently proposing to support energy efficiency, noting the challenges of upgrading mobile homes and older homes that disproportionately make up the region’s housing stock. The utility should support energy efficiency programs for new home construction as well, the nonprofits have proposed.?

Also, the utility “has a clear duty to its customers to help them limit their energy usage,” Long has written, “not only for cost savings at the household level but also in order to reduce the overall energy production needs of the region.”

Kentucky Power has argued the costs of what they’re proposing would be too high.

Johnson wants to show what’s possible with the “net zero” homes and that people don’t have to spend most of their paycheck on electricity. Letcher County is still a coal community, he said, and his father works at a coal mine, but high utility bills are melting skepticism toward solar.?

“Everybody is on the same team just trying to get lower utility costs. Like, whatever it takes. We’re all in it together,” Johnson said. “Coal has its purpose, and so does solar. But I think it’s just to a point of trying to live and be sustainable.”?

This story was updated to note Thompson’s home was damaged by flooding in 2022.

Sale prices are displayed for items at a grocery store in San Rafael, California, on Sept. 10, 2024. Grocery prices are just one piece of the U.S. economy, which is key to many voters in their pick for president. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

The economy is key to many voters in their pick for president, but that fervor also makes it an attractive subject for distortions, misinformation, and oversimplification.

Nearly eight? in 10 U.S. voters say that the economy is one of the most important issues to them in this upcoming presidential election, according to an AP-NORC poll conducted in September. Although 66% of voters say the economy is very or somewhat poor, six in 10 also say their personal finances are good.

Millions have already cast their ballots through early or mail voting. But those who are still deciding between the two main candidates – Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump – have until Nov. 5 to wade through various myths and exaggerations to understand the state of the economy and each candidate’s record on related issues.

What is the state of inflation in the U.S.??

The most recent cycle of inflation reached its peak in June 2022 at 9.1%. Inflation has fallen considerably since then and to a more manageable 2.4% in September’s Consumer Price Index, a measure of inflation. Wage growth, meanwhile, has beaten inflation for more than a year. The Federal Reserve cut its key interest? rate by half of a percentage point for the first time in four years in September after inflation neared ?toward its goal of 2%.

But those macro figures don’t hit home with everyone, because of the prices of groceries and other essentials.

The literal prices that people see on goods make them think that they’re not doing as well because they feel that they are higher than they think they should be,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. But, those prices are actually lower as a share of their wages than they were four years ago.”

This doesn’t mean that many voters’ experiences of struggling to afford basic items aren’t real. The cost of housing is very high and puts a strain on people’s budgets. The Fed’s interest rate policy affected credit card rates, and thus, people’s ability to make purchases.

Gould said that despite the positive news of slowing inflation, the lack of long-term wage growth before this recent increase has been hard on many Americans.

“Even though things are good, we know that for the vast majority of people over the last several decades, they’ve been faced with relatively slow wage growth and so it can be hard to feel like you’re going to get ahead,” she said.

Was unemployment higher under Biden or Trump??

The unemployment rate under Donald Trump was fairly low, at 4.7%, when he took office in 2017 , and it mostly trended lower until the beginning of the pandemic. It then shot up to 14.8% in April 2020 and fell sharply for the rest of Trump’s term, which ended in January 2021. The unemployment rate was 6.7% during Trump’s last full month in office.

The labor market has been fairly hot under President Joe Biden. The unemployment rate was 6.4% during the month he and Harris were sworn into office. But since then, it largely fell, and from February 2022 to April 2024, the unemployment rate was below 4%. In September, the unemployment rate was 4.1% but the economy continues to show strong job growth.

Looking at the Biden-Harris administration’s record and Trump’s record outside of the immediate economic impact of the recession and supply shocks during their presidencies, unemployment remained fairly low. Overall, unemployment averaged 3.8% since 2022 and averaged 4% between 2017 and 2019, before the pandemic hit the economy in 2020.

Labor force participation rates and the employment-to-population ratio, measures of the number of people in the labor force and workers employed versus the working age population, were high in the last jobs report and show signs of a healthy labor market.

Skanda Amarnath, executive director of Employ America, a left-leaning group focusing on economic policies, said that it’s also important to understand the percentage of the population adjusting for age, the prime age employment rate. It is marginally higher now, by about 0.3%, than it was right before Covid struck, during the Trump administration, he said.

“We’ve seen generally slower paces of employment gains more recently and that might be just because a lot of people are now back in the labor force itself. It’s probably a little harder to grow employment quickly when you’re coming from a high level as opposed to a low level,” Amarnath said. “Nevertheless, we’re at an employment rate where there’s been a reasonably strong labor demand, a little bit combined with the fact that people are also moving out into their retirement years.”

The American Rescue Plan Act, CHIPS and Science Act, Inflation Reduction Act, and bipartisan infrastructure deal, enacted during Biden’s presidency, helped fuel the recovery, Amarnath said. The CARES Act, which was signed into law byTrump, likely helped the U.S. avoid a protracted recession, he added.

What would Trump’s proposed? tariffs do to the U.S. economy

In an interview with John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News at the Economic Club of Chicago on Oct. 15, former president Trump said tariffs would be good for economic growth.

“We’re going to bring companies back to our country … We’re going to protect those companies with strong tariffs because I’m a believer in tariffs,” he said.

The Trump campaign has also proposed a 60% tariff on goods from China, one of the U.S.’s largest trading partners, and 10-to-20% on other imports. The Tax Foundation, a business-friendly research think tank, estimated that if Trump’s proposed tariffs were to be implemented, it would reduce GDP by at least 0.8% and eliminate 684,000 jobs.

Tariffs would likely result in lower trade and retaliatory tariffs from other countries, raising prices, and costing each household between $1,900 to $7,600 in 2023 in dollars, according to the Budget Lab at Yale, a nonpartisan policy research center.

“If the tariff wars back in President Trump’s first term are any indication, they’re going to respond with their own tariffs and other trade actions,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “Broadly, tariffs are going to raise prices for imported goods, weaken consumer purchasing power and slow growth.”

Zandi added that although the retail sector would be particularly hard hit by these tariffs, he doesn’t think any industry would come away unscathed by the policy.

How do Harris and Trump’s economic plans compare??

Harris has said her plans, which include building more affordable housing supply, restoring and expanding the child tax credit, and supporting legislation to expand labor rights, have been approved by respected economists and sources of financial research.

“Please do check out the Wall Street Journal or Goldman Sachs or the 16 Nobel laureates or Moody’s, who have all analyzed the plans and said mine will strengthen the economy, his will make it weaker,” Harris said.

The reality is a little more complicated. Some of the reports Harris referred to do not say the economy would weaken under Trump but would grow less than the economy under Harris in certain scenarios, depending on the political breakdown in Congress.

Others show the GDP falling more as a result of Harris’ proposals. The Penn Wharton Budget Model looking at Trump and Harris proposals shows the GDP falling 0.4% under Trump by 2034 and declining 1.3% under Harris over the same period, but notably, it does not factor in proposals not to tax tips, mentioned by both candidates, or Trump’s tariff policies.

Before Biden withdrew his candidacy, 16 Nobel-prize winning economists said Biden’s investments in the economy through signing legislation to improve infrastructure and manufacturing would boost economic growth. They spoke out against Trump’s tariff plans. Although Harris is part of the Biden administration, they did not address her specific plans as a candidate. On Wednesday, 23 Nobel-prize winning economists, including the economist who led the last letter, Joseph Stiglitz, endorsed Harris’ specific policies.

Alice Ford, an outdoor content creator and show host, has spent a decade centering conservationist education on her YouTube channel. She said the glut of nature photos and short videos on social media is resulting in “just people wanting to see a place more than they have respect for the place.” (Photo courtesy of Alice Ford)

Don’t pet the fluffy cows.

That’s the Instagram bio tagline for the National Park Service’s popular account, which showcases stunning photos of the diverse terrains of the United States’ 431 national parks.

The cheeky statement, followed by a buffalo emoji, is meant to make its 6 million followers laugh, NPS’ social media specialist Matthew Turner says, but it’s also a very real warning.

“We want you to be really prepared to stay this distance, and be aware of your surroundings at all times,” Turner said. “And to know that if you don’t, there are consequences where you can get hurt.”

Technology and the rise of social media has driven new people to visit public parks and lands, as the platforms make it easier to showcase the great outdoors. But outdoor enthusiasts and environmental conservationists say social media has also contributed to “selfie tourism” or the influx of visitation to specific landmarks that go viral on social media.

It also can describe the behavior of those that crowd a landmark or ignore safety protocol to get the perfect shot.

Every year, there are incidents of people having such dangerous interactions with wildlife, or getting lost in the parks, or even losing their lives. It’s hard to quantify how exactly social media influences the decision making or behavior of park visitors, but several nearly-fatal and fatal incidents have been connected to attempting to capture content.

In 2018, a 29- and 30-year-old couple fell to their deaths in Yosemite National Park in California while attempting to take a photo at Taft Point. Several people have been attacked by bison in Yellowstone National Park over the last three years — at least one was a tourist trying to touch a bison while recording with her phone.

“A selfie in and of itself can inspire others. Maybe you see a friend post from a great trip, and it inspires you to go,” Phillip Kilbridge, CEO of NatureBridge said. “But you better do it thoughtfully. You better realize that when there’s a fence, it’s because there’s loose rock on the other side, or there’s a steep fall, or so many other unintended consequences.”

‘Loving our parks to death’

Kilbridge runs NatureBridge, an organization that teaches young people how to explore the outdoors without technology. The organization was initially founded with the intention of exploring parks in their off-peak seasons, and teaching kids to learn more about themselves and the environment with low barriers to entry on cost and prior education.

The parks have seen a surge in visitors in the last few years, crossing more than 300 million visitors nearly each year since their centennial celebration in 2016.

NatureBridge has brought more than 1 million kids through the program over its tenure and operates in Golden Gate National Recreation Area?in California, Olympic National Park in Washington, Prince William Forest National Park in Virginia and Yosemite. It makes a conscious effort to explore areas and trails that are outside the most popular ones, but high visitorship is putting strain on the hotels and areas surrounding the parks, and as a result, it’s more expensive to operate the program.

The social media effect on certain areas of the parks might be evident in some data from Yosemite National Park. Many drive in, take pictures at the iconic Half Dome and El Capitan rock formations, and then they head out, Kilbridge said. The focus is on “documenting the visit and putting it on their checklist or bucket list, to prove that they’ve done it.”

“You’ve probably heard the phrase, ‘we’re loving our parks to death,’” Kilbridge said. “But the truth is, we’re loving certain parts of certain parks to death.”

Cynthia Hernandez, the National Parks System’s public affairs specialist, said the agency uses social media to show examples of good environmental stewardship. Staff love and encourage new visitors to the parks, but they want them to be educated on preserving the trails, picking up trash, and learning the history and culture of where they’re visiting.

“We ask visitors to be adaptable and to listen to the park rangers,” Hernandez said. “You know, if the parking lot is full, don’t drive wherever. We like to say, ‘what is your plan B?’”

New Hampshire’s public and private lands are feeling the impact from some not-so respectful visitors this year, as its peak fall foliage season — a few-week stretch in late September and October — is bringing an estimated 3.7 million visitors this fall, the Washington Post reported. New Hamshirians, and their neighbors in Vermont, are dealing with clogged roads, crowded hiking trails, trespassing on private property and trash left behind by their visitors, many of whom are doing so in the pursuit of the perfect fall photo.

Some towns have closed roads to non-local traffic, while others have had to pay for extra patrols during on routes leading to lookouts or popular spots. One group of neighbors in Pomfret, Vermont, has raised $22,500 in a GoFundMe to “save” their road from the surge of influencers, with the funds planned to go toward temporary closures and increased signage, the Post reported.

Wesley Littlefield is a Salt Lake City-based marketing manager and outdoor content creator, and the effects Kilbridge described and New Englanders are experiencing are some of the many reasons he’s become mindful of not overexposing certain locations. Littlefield has been posting on social media and making YouTube videos about fishing, kayaking and other outdoor adventures for a few years, and focuses on educating people on ‘leave no trace’ principles.

He loves exploring the Southwest, but some of his favorite trails and natural wonders have become overpopulated after gaining attention on social media. Horseshoe Bend in Arizona is a prime example, he said, as is Antelope Canyon, which sits on Navajo land.

“What was once a peaceful overlook is now packed with people looking to snap that perfect shot, often at the expense of the environment around them,” he said of Horseshoe Bend. “You’ll notice things like litter, soil erosion and even permanent damage to local ecosystems. In extreme cases, wildlife habitats can be disrupted or destroyed, which takes away from the natural beauty and balance of these areas.”

Responsible exploration?

Littlefield said he loves that technology has allowed people to discover new places and share experiences. But carelessness in certain areas has made him more conservative with geotagging certain areas or “fragile” locations. It’s his way of protecting them while still sharing his love for the outdoors, he said.

“We want these places to remain as beautiful and untouched as possible for future visitors,” Littlefield said.

Alice Ford is another content creator who is sharing her outdoor adventures online as a way to educate others about conservation. She hosts a show on PBS called “Alice’s Adventures on Earth,” has a master’s degree in environmental management and has been making Youtube videos showcasing outdoor traveling, hiking and sustainable living for about a decade.

Her bread and butter is in longer-form content where she gets to place the focus on education.

“I think there’s an issue with these three-to-10 second videos showcasing a place,” Ford said. “Where you’re just seeing the most beautiful part, and you’re not learning anything about it, and you’re then not doing any research. And you’re just showing up because you want to get the exact same shot.”

When Ford travels, she’s looking for those less-busy places, not just to discover somewhere new to her, but also to not contribute to the demand of places that don’t have infrastructure to support an onslaught of visitors. Pulling off the side of a road inundated with visitors may not just cause traffic chaos, but also could damage wildlife and road infrastructure, she said.

“I think also another thing that I’ve seen globally is just people wanting to see a place more than they have respect for the place,” Ford said.

There are very real physical dangers to jumping head-first into a hike or a trip without proper preparation, Ford said. She’s seen a rise in visitors to national parks and other places around the world attempting grueling hikes or exploring dangerous areas in extreme heat without the right footwear, food or water.

Two people died during this summer’s brutal heat waves in Death Valley National Park in California, including a 57-year-old man who attempted a short hike on a day when temperatures reached nearly 120 degrees, which can quickly cause serious dehydration and heat stroke.

In Michigan, The Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore — a state park featuring miles of sand and bluffs — has a dune climb that’s been well-documented on social media. The hike includes 3.5 miles of sandy, steep terrain and can take three or four hours.

The Lakeshore gets an average of 1.5 to 1.7 million visitors a year, and reached its peak visitorship in 2020 and 2021, Emily Sunblade the park’s lead education ranger said. The climb has long been a rite of passage, but the park rangers said visitors have been recognizing the location because of social media posts of the famous sign outlining the $3,000 fee incurred for being rescued if you get stuck.

The park instituted a preventative search and rescue program where volunteers stand at the top of the dune and check in with visitors before they attempt the hike in order to quell the strain on local rescue resources, which are performed by township emergency services. The volunteers ask visitors if they have enough water, and if they’re prepared for it to take two or more hours. It dramatically lowered the number of rescues needed, Sunblade said.

“The social media posts we are seeing are having a positive impact as people share their experience of what the hike was like, and what they wish they knew before starting,” Sunblade said.

As much as social media has the ability to overexpose and overwhelm one area with visitors, it remains an essential tool for the Parks Service and for content creators who aim to educate others on responsible visitorship.

It’s an important component of the “digital toolbox” for the Parks Service, Turner told States Newsroom. Their online profiles allow them to engage in real time with visitors and connect with people around the world. They use it as a forum to ask and answer questions, respond to outreach and share resources. And they do lean on memes and humor to get people’s attention and have people “learn without maybe realizing they’re learning,” Turner said.

There are ways to add a photo-worthy spot to your travels, if you do so responsibly, Ford said. She suggests trying to research what’s nearby those locations, and if the local community has been negatively impacted by visitors. If there’s not enough restaurants, stores and accommodations, tourism may hurt the community or put a strain on its resources.

Her hope is that folks are making informed decisions about their travel plans and considering the impact that social media may have on driving them to visit.

“I wish people would have more respect, not only for each other, but for the places that we visit,” Ford said. “And to just think a little bit more before we act in general, like whether that’s the time you’re taking to take a selfie at a popular destination, or the place in which we’re walking.”

The Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, gives her “closing argument” of the campaign in a speech on the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 29, 2024. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

The fallout from a comedian’s racially charged joke at a rally for former President Donald Trump continued Wednesday as the campaign for the presidency raced toward its final weekend, with Democrats on the defensive about President Joe Biden’s reaction to the joke.

Republicans claimed Biden labeled Trump supporters as “garbage,” while Democrats insisted Biden was being misinterpreted, and a battle over the placement of an apostrophe in Biden’s comment spread from the White House briefing room to campaign stops.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Wednesday further clarified Biden’s comment, made on a Tuesday evening call to rally Latino voters. Biden brought up comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s remark at a Trump rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday that Puerto Rico was a “floating island of garbage.”

“They’re good, decent, honorable people,” Biden said Tuesday of Puerto Ricans who live in his home state of Delaware. “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s — his — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”

An initial White House transcript of the call placed an apostrophe after the word “supporters,” making its meaning about multiple Trump supporters. A later transcript placed the possessive inside the word, so it read as “supporter’s,” making it about a single supporter, Hinchcliffe.

Biden posted on X Tuesday evening that was his intent.

“Earlier today I referred to the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump’s supporter at his Madison Square Garden rally as garbage—which is the only word I can think of to describe it,” Biden’s post read. “His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable. That’s all I meant to say. The comments at that rally don’t reflect who we are as a nation.”

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, also told reporters early Wednesday that it was wrong to disparage people over political affiliation, while noting Biden clarified he referred only to Hinchcliffe. The flap over Biden’s comments came just as Harris was giving her “closing argument” speech on the Ellipse on Tuesday night before a crowd in the tens of thousands.

“Let me be clear,” she said. “I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for.”

Latino voters in general and Puerto Ricans in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania in particular are seen as a crucial voting bloc in the closing days of the campaign, and both campaigns are trying to get their support.

Jean-Pierre said from the White House briefing room Wednesday that Biden does not think Trump supporters are “garbage.”

“What I can say is that the president wanted to make sure that his words were not being taken out of context,” she said. “And so he wanted to clarify, and that’s what you heard from the president. He was very aware. And I would say I think it’s really important that you have a president that cares about clarifying what they said.”

Trump repeatedly has said the United States is the “garbage can of the world” as a result of Biden’s immigration policies.

Rubio: Harris camp should apologize

But Trump and other Republicans jumped on Biden’s remark, immediately comparing it to 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s comment that many Trump supporters comprised “a basket of deplorables.” That comment was seen as damaging to Clinton’s campaign against Trump.

At a Tuesday evening Trump rally in Pennsylvania, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida disclosed news of Biden’s statement.

“I hope their campaign is about to apologize for what Joe Biden just said,” Rubio said. “We are not garbage. We are patriots who love America.”

“Wow, that’s terrible,” Trump added. “Remember Hillary, she said deplorable, and then she said irredeemable, right? But she said deplorable. That didn’t work out. Garbage I think is worse, right?”

Harris brings closing argument in N.C.

At a Wednesday afternoon rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, Harris echoed some of the themes she sounded in the “closing argument” speech she gave Tuesday night.

She urged voters in the battleground state to “turn the page on a decade of Donald Trump, who has been trying to keep us divided and afraid of each other.”

She said Trump was focused on personal grievances and seeking revenge on political opponents, while she would work toward improving voters’ lives.

“There are many big differences between he and I,” she said. “But I would say a major contrast is this: If he is elected, on day one, Donald Trump will walk into that office with an enemies list. When I am elected, I will walk in with a to-do list.”

First on her list would be lowering the costs of health care, child care and other expenses for families, she said.

Harris appealed directly to disaffected Republicans, saying she would seek common ground with those she disagrees with. That approach, she said, was also in contrast to Trump, who used charged language to describe his opponents and pledged to retaliate against them.

“Unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy,” she said. “He wants to put them in jail. I’ll give them a seat at the table. And I pledge to be a president for all Americans, and to always put country above party and self.”

Harris won another endorsement from a nationally known Republican Wednesday, with former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger saying he would vote for her despite policy disagreements.

Trump also campaigned in North Carolina on Wednesday, in Rocky Mount, a town in a more rural part of the state about 50 miles east of Raleigh.

He said his campaign was a welcoming one to all races and religions and said Harris was the one running “a campaign of hate” toward Trump and his supporters, while lobbing an insult at the vice president.

“Kamala, a low-IQ individual, is running a campaign of hate, anger and retribution,” he said, repeating a term he has used for her before.

Election integrity

The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee said Wednesday they won a court case in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, over early voting hours, RNC officials said on a call Wednesday afternoon.

A judge in the key swing county extended the deadline to apply for a mail-in ballot after some voters said that long lines forced them to miss the 5 p.m. Tuesday deadline.

On the press call, Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said a Trump supporter had been arrested after telling people in line near the deadline to remain in line.

Party officials, including Trump’s daughter-in-law, RNC Co-Chair Lara Trump, said the result bolstered their confidence in a free and fair election.

“We want to make people all across this country feel good about the process of voting in the United States of America,” Lara Trump said. “It is so foundational to who we are as a country that we trust our electoral process and this type of work allows exactly for that.”

Lara Trump said the party was “incredibly confident” in its staffers dedicated to ensuring the election is fair.

The issue has been a major priority for Republicans since Donald Trump and others claimed, without evidence, that election fraud caused his 2020 re-election loss.

That claim was rejected in scores of courts and a federal grand jury indicted Trump on four felony counts for using the election fraud lie to inspire the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Trump and allies have also speculated that his political opponents would seek to use illegal means, including voting by noncitizens, this year.

But in a departure from that rhetoric Wednesday, the RNC officials voiced confidence that the 2024 results would be trustworthy.

“I think it’s really important that we get the word spread loud and clear that we are taking this seriously, that you can trust American elections,” Lara Trump said. “In 2024, we want to re-establish any trust that may have been lost previously.”

Ashley Murray contributed to this report.

The U.S. Justice Department Wednesday underlined its efforts to protect voters’ access to the ballot box as early voting continues in advance of Election Day. (Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — With less than a week before the polls close on Nov. 5, the U.S. Justice Department Wednesday reiterated its efforts to protect voters’ access to the ballot box through its civil rights, national security and criminal divisions.

“Protecting the right to vote, prosecuting election crimes, and securing our elections are all essential to maintaining the confidence of all Americans in our democratic system of government,” the Justice Department said in a press release.

The Justice Department said that any complaints relating to violence, threats of violence or intimidation at a polling place should be first reported to local authorities by calling 911 and then the agency for further action.

In Washington state and Oregon, two ballot boxes were set on fire. In North Carolina, yellow signs in Spanish have popped up outside voting locations warning people that voting by noncitizens is illegal, something that voting rights groups have called voter intimidation.

There are heightened concerns from election officials and pro-democracy groups about attempts to disrupt the election process and the potential for violence once results are known.

A presidential victor is unlikely to be announced on election night or even the following day, which election officials have warned could easily sow distrust in the official results.

In Maricopa County, Arizona, the nation’s fourth most populous county, local and federal law enforcement officials said they are prepared for violence. Maricopa County was at the forefront of election fraud conspiracy theories in 2020.

Civil rights violations

The DOJ Civil Rights Division “is responsible for ensuring compliance with the civil provisions of federal statutes that protect the right to vote and with the criminal provisions of federal statutes prohibiting discriminatory interference with that right,” according to the agency.

Any civil rights violations should be reported to the agency at 800-253-3931 or online.

That division enforces the laws of the Voting Rights Act, the National Voter Registration Act, the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, the Help America Vote Act and the Civil Rights Acts.

Under those laws it’s prohibited to intimidate voters, as well as have election practices that are either discriminatory or discriminate on the basis of ?“race, color, or language minority status.”

The Justice Department said that throughout the election, its attorneys “will be ready to receive complaints of potential violations of any of the statutes the Civil Rights Division enforces.”

Election-related crimes

The Criminal Division of the Justice Department enforces federal laws relating to election crimes such as voter fraud, destruction of ballots, vote-buying, submitting fraudulent ballots, altering votes and wrongdoing by election officials and employees.

That also includes any threats of violence against election workers and voter intimidation outside of reasons relating to discrimination. ? ?

The Justice Department said any election-related complaints should be directed to the local U.S. Attorney’s Office or the local FBI field office.

The National Security Division in the Justice Department will handle any cases involving foreign influence.

In September, the Justice Department unsealed charges of the Russian government’s efforts to spread propaganda and try to influence voters, including the 2024 presidential election.

“As in past elections, the National Security Division will work closely with counterparts at the FBI and our U.S. Attorneys’ Offices to protect our nation’s elections from any national security threats,” the Justice Department said.

While pregnant with her second child, Cailyn Morreale was assured by her care team that she did not need to discontinue buprenorphine and that her baby would be assessed and monitored using the Eat, Sleep, Console approach. (Taylor Sisk for KFF Health News)

On learning last year she was pregnant with her second child, Cailyn Morreale was overcome with fear and trepidation.

“I was so scared,” said Morreale, a resident of the small western North Carolina town of Mars Hill. In that moment, her joy about being pregnant was eclipsed by fear she would have to stop taking buprenorphine, a drug used to treat opioid withdrawal that had helped counter her addiction.

Morreale’s fear was compounded by the rigidity of the most common approach to treating babies born after being exposed in the womb to opioids or some medications used to treat opioid addiction.

For decades throughout the opioid crisis, most doctors have relied on medication-heavy regimens to treat babies who are born experiencing neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome. Those protocols often meant separating newborns from their mothers, placing them in neonatal intensive care units, and giving them medications to treat their withdrawal.

But research has since indicated that in many, if not most, cases, those extreme measures are unnecessary. A newer, simpler approach that prioritizes keeping babies with their families called Eat, Sleep, Console is being increasingly embraced.

In recent years, doctors and researchers have found that keeping babies with their mothers and ensuring they’re comfortable often works better and gets them out of the hospital faster.

Despite her worst fears, Morreale was never separated from her son. She was able to begin breastfeeding immediately. In fact, she was told, the trace of buprenorphine in her breast milk would help her son withdraw from it.

Her experience was different because she had found her way to Project CARA, an Asheville, North Carolina-based program, administered through the Mountain Area Health Education Center, that supports pregnant people and parents with substance use disorders. Morreale’s care team assured her she did not need to discontinue buprenorphine and that her baby would be assessed and monitored using the Eat, Sleep, Console approach. The protocol deems babies OK to be sent home so long as they’re eating, sleeping, and consolable when upset.

“By the grace of God, he was awesome,” Morreale said of her son.

David Baltierra, former director of West Virginia University’s Rural Family Medicine Residency Program, chair of WVU’s Department of Family Medicine – Eastern Division, and a family physician, suggests this protocol could simply be called “parenting.”

The method is increasingly being used instead of the long-embraced approach to treating opioid-affected newborns called the Finnegan Neonatal Abstinence Scoring System. That tool includes a list of 21 questions (is the baby crying excessively, sweating, experiencing tremors, sneezing, etc.), the answers to which determine whether the newborn should get medication to counteract withdrawal symptoms, which would then require an extended stay in a neonatal ICU.

Baltierra, though, has issues with the Finnegan method. For example, it often results in a soundly sleeping baby being awakened to be scored. That didn’t make sense to Baltierra. If the baby is sleeping, she’s likely doing fine.

Instead, health professionals should look for the telltale signs of a baby experiencing opioid withdrawal syndrome, he said. “Their body is in tension, they have a high pitch, they don’t calm down.”

Baltierra and his colleagues have been training residents to use an Eat, Sleep, Console approach for a decade, progressively more so in the past six years. The results are persuading more health professionals to adopt the method.

A 2023 study found babies treated this way were discharged from the hospital in nearly half the time and less likely to receive medication than those receiving Finnegan-based care.

Matthew Grossman, an associate professor of pediatrics at the Yale School of Medicine, refers to the introduction of the model of treatment he has helped pioneer as “the least innovative” undertaking imaginable.

Research shows that optimal care for pregnant women who’ve experienced opioid use disorder includes treatment with buprenorphine or methadone, which carries the risk their newborn will have withdrawal symptoms. Grossman and colleagues found a non-pharmacological-first approach works best.

He said the Finnegan tool is useful but often too rigid. Under its scoring, one sneeze too many could send a baby to the NICU for weeks.

Grossman said he observed that some babies receiving medications did well for a few days but began to decline when their mothers were sent home without them. Those observations made him ask, “Did the kid need more medicine, or more mom?”

Research by Leila Elder and Madison Humerick, who each did their residency in WVU’s rural program, found that median stays for newborns in withdrawal dropped from 13 days in 2016 to three in 2020.

Elder said babies born at the 25-bed rural hospital where they performed deliveries received medications to treat their withdrawal symptoms only when unrelated issues sent them to other hospitals for NICU care.

The simpler treatment also means more babies born in rural communities can receive care closer to home and has reduced the likelihood a mother will be released before her baby is cleared to go home.

Grossman suggested that rural hospitals are better suited to employ the Eat, Sleep, Console approach than big-city institutions, given the latter’s generally easier access to a NICU and propensity to choose that option.

Sarah Peiffer recalls the first time, as a medical student, she witnessed a nurse administering the Finnegan protocol, discussing it in clinical terms at a new mother’s bedside.

“And I remember being kind of horrified,” she said. The process was clearly distressing to both mother and child. “I felt like there was almost a punitive feeling to it, like we were telling this mom, ‘Look what you did to your baby.’”

Peiffer is now a Project CARA practitioner and family health physician at Blue Ridge Health in western North Carolina and a vocal proponent of ESC and its approach to partnering with families. “You look at all the nonpharmacologic stuff you’re supposed to be doing — like keeping the lights low in the room, keeping the baby swaddled, doing as much skin-to-skin with mom as possible — and you really treat mom as medicine.”

Research suggests immediate postbirth skin‐to‐skin contact offers “vital advantages” to short‐ and long‐term health and bonding.

That contact, Elder said, “releases endorphins for mom,” which helps lower the risk of postpartum depression.

Grossman said developing the Eat, Sleep, Console protocol was simply a matter of pausing to reassess.

The original intent of the Finnegan tool wasn’t to render the process so rigid. But “everybody is excited to have a tool, and then this approach calcified around it,” he said.

Grossman said the objective of the simpler approach was to place the family at the core of care, and shorter hospital stays for babies was simply a fortuitous outcome. The shift in approach fits into a wider move toward judgment-free, family-centered care for those who’ve experienced addiction and for their children.

Now, he said, after five days, mothers often say “‘Can we go home? I think I got this,’” and they’re treated “with the same respect as any other mom.”

Peiffer said she has witnessed this mother-centric care counter “that sense of shame that people feel instead of families feeling empowered to care for their infant.” It represents “such a major shift in how we think about neonatal withdrawal both medically and culturally.”

This story is republished from?KFF Health News, 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.

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Democracy is about representation and cooperation, not partisanship, writes Kris O'Daniel. Had the founders gone down the path of extreme partisanship that we are on today, there would not have been a new nation. (Getty Images)

Despite my 28 years in the United States, my Danish roots continue to shape my perspective, and the claim that the U.S. is the greatest democracy in the world often leaves me with a sense of disbelief — a disbelief that resonates in many corners of the world.

The alarmingly low voter turnout, with little over half of the registered citizens participating in general elections and less than a fifth in primaries, is a stark indicator that our democracy is in crisis. The influence of hundreds of millions of corporate and dark money dollars in campaign ads strongly suggests that money is more important than voters. The United States has many wonderful things, but extreme partisanship makes the U.S. look dysfunctional.?

Unlike countries we like for comparison, the U.S. electoral system has stayed frozen in time and not embraced a democracy that represents both majority and minority voters. “Winner takes all.”

The word “democracy” is mentioned in neither the Declaration of Independence (1776) nor the Constitution (1789). Most will agree that the Founding Fathers’ focus was to protect the new colonies from the British monarchs, “tyrants and other majorities,” and the many poor and uneducated people. It was designed to further the case of individual rights for liberty, not democracy. That was similar to other European nations in those revolutionary times. They, too, feared “the unchecked people’s power.” Democracies were in their infancy.?

The journey to democracy in the United States starkly contrasts with that of European nations. While they, too, emerged from costly wars to gain independence from monarchies and secular powers, they gradually realized the importance and value of all people in strengthening the welfare of the nations, above all through diverse representation.??

In Denmark, indentured servants were freed in 1815. The constitution of 1849 bestowed voting rights, but only for people of status and farmland owners. There, too, was a fear of the uneducated majority; education of the rural population through “high schools” made the “cooperative movement” successful. Denmark is a dynamic democracy — around 85% of Danes vote. Compromises among coalition governments, growing Industries and unions power it. Trust is built, which is critical to Danes’ happiness.?

Constitutional amendments in the U.S. have been approved, but always at a very high cost. Most importantly, slavery was abolished in1865; women got the right to vote in 1920, and Black people in 1965. But we have continued a poisoning system that amputates the power of the vote and democracy itself.?

The political redistricting of congressional districts that maps out each state with the sole purpose of securing a safe majority makes voting pointless for the minority as it will have no representation. That does not stimulate voting. It also discourages the much-needed healthy competition and injection of new candidates. Adding representation of minority groups is democracy; the House would truly become the House of Representatives.??

Members of the U.S. House today “represent” 761,000 people on average versus 469,000 people ?50 years ago thanks to a “hard ceiling” of 435 representatives. The two Senate seats per state today leave residents of large states extremely underrepresented compared to thos e in small states. Today, the 10 smallest states have 3% of the population, but their 20 senators control 20% of the voting power in the Senate. The Electoral College’s construction further amplifies the imbalance of representation since each state’s electors are the sum of congressional districts plus two Senate seats. The Electoral College supersedes the national majority, allowing the losing side to win presidential elections.?

Democracy is about representation and cooperation, not partisanship; we owe that to our forefathers. Had they let themselves go down the path of extreme partisanship that we are on today, there would not have been a new nation. We cannot now call ourselves the greatest democracy in the world.. Some ask, “Are we heading for another civil war, or can we make civil peace?”?

ice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris speaks at a rally on the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2024. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, with the White House as her backdrop, gave what she called her closing argument Tuesday evening, pressing voters to support her bid over that of “unstable” Republican candidate Donald Trump.

The 30-minute speech on the Ellipse was the same location where Trump, then president, held a rally nearly four years ago before his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol. Harris highlighted Democrats’ core argument that another term for the former president would present a threat to the country’s future.

“This election is more than just a choice between two parties and two different candidates,” Harris said. “It is a choice about whether we have a country rooted in freedom for every American, or ruled by chaos and division.”

Harris evoked the conception of the United States, how it was “born when we wrested freedom from a petty tyrant.” She said since then, Americans across generations have fought to protect those freedoms and expand them, from those who marched in the civil rights movement to the troops who stormed the beaches of Normandy.

“They didn’t do that only to see us submit to the will of another petty tyrant,” she said. “We are not a vessel for the schemes of wannabe dictators.”

Karoline Leavitt, Trump campaign national press secretary, said in a statement that Trump’s “closing argument to the American people is simple: Kamala broke it; he will fix it.”

In the crowd of tens of thousands of rallygoers was LaShaun Martin, 52, of Prince George’s County, Maryland, who said she is voting for Harris because the vice president is “incredibly positive.”

“She has been for all people, Republicans and Democrats,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what walk of life you come from. She really wants to represent you, and whatever it is you need to be able to be a prosperous person.”

One week until Election Day

Harris’ speech took place just one week before voting ends on Nov. 5, following a history-making campaign that began when President Joe Biden withdrew from the race following a disastrous debate this summer.?

Biden’s endorsement of Harris and widespread support from Democrats throughout the country forced the GOP to overhaul its approach to the campaign, as Democrats shifted their focus from the policies that Biden wanted to champion to those important to Harris.

In her remarks, Harris rebuked Trump and his supporters for their disparaging comments about immigrants living in the country illegally, a main element of his campaign.

“Politicians have got to stop treating immigration as an issue to scare up votes in an election,” Harris said. “And instead treat it as the serious challenge that it is, that we must finally come together to solve.”

Harris pledged to work with Congress on immigration policy as well as a pathway to citizenship for farmworkers and for the more than 500,000 children brought into the country without authorization. They are known as Dreamers, enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

Harris touched on several of her top policy issues, including housing affordability, abortion access nationwide, a ban on price gouging at grocery stores and expansion of the child tax credit.

Reaching out to the undecided

Harris campaign communications director Michael Tyler previewed the speech earlier Tuesday, telling reporters the vice president would speak directly to undecided voters’ “sense of frustration, their sense of exhaustion with the way that our politics have played out under the Trump era — and offer them directly a vision that something is different, that something different is possible.”

Trump on Sunday appeared at a six-hour campaign event at Madison Square Garden in New York City that brought bipartisan condemnation for a comedian who called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean.”

Ahead of Harris’ Tuesday speech, Trump gave remarks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, accusing her of trying to divide the country and seeking to distance himself from the racist and vulgar remarks made by the comedian and other speakers during the rally.

Trump did not take questions, but told ABC News earlier in the day he did not hear the comedian’s remarks.

“I don’t know him,” Trump said. “Someone put him up there.”

With the presidential race essentially tied, Harris and Trump have both focused their final campaign push on the crucial swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Harris promised the crowd during her speech that if elected she will protect institutions and the democratic ideals that are the bedrock of American law. She also slammed Trump’s comments referring to Democrats as the “enemy from within.’”

“The fact that someone disagrees with us does not make them the enemy within,” Harris said. “They are family, neighbors, classmates, coworkers, they are fellow Americans, and as Americans, we rise and fall together.”

Time to ‘turn the page’

Harris said the country must move beyond the ever-widening polarization that she described as a distinct feature of Trump’s grip on American politics.

“Donald Trump has spent a decade trying to keep the American people divided and afraid of each other,” Harris said. “That’s who he is.”

In her pitch to undecided voters, Harris offered an opportunity to leave the Trump era behind.

“It is time to turn the page on the drama and the conflict, the fear and division,” she said. “It is time for a new generation of leadership in America and I am ready to offer that leadership as the next president of the United States.”

That leadership, she said, would seek to build on bipartisan work.

“I pledge to seek common ground and common sense solutions to make your life better. I am not looking to score political points. I am looking to make progress,” she said. “I pledge to listen to experts, to those who will be impacted by the decisions I make and to people who disagree with me. Unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy.”

During her speech, protesters advocated for an arms embargo on U.S. military weapons sent to Israel amid the war with Hamas. Several senators have also called for an arms embargo.

“Stop arming Israel. Arms embargo now,” one protester said before being escorted out.

The death toll of more than 43,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to health authorities there, has fractured Muslims, Arab Americans and anti-war Democrats within the party. It spurred the Uncommitted National Movement that sent 30 delegates to the Democratic National Convention this summer.

After Harris’ speech, nearly 100 pro-Palestinian protesters surrounded an exit of the campaign rally.

Harris supporters gather

The campaign’s finale in Washington, D.C., was expected to draw more than 50,000 supporters, according to the local NBC affiliate. The Harris campaign estimated 75,000 spectators showed up.

It featured speeches from supporters such as a mother who was able to access affordable insulin for her son because of the Affordable Care Act; a farming couple from Pennsylvania who were previously Trump voters; and Craig Sicknick, the brother of U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who died following the insurrection on the U.S. Capitol.??

“(Trump) incited the crowd to riot while my brother and his fellow officers put their lives at risk,” Craig Sicknick said. “Now, Mr. Trump is promising to pardon the convicted criminals who attacked our Capitol, killing my brother and injuring over 140 other officers. This is simply wrong.”

The Justice Department has charged more than 1,500 defendants in the Jan. 6 attack.

Craig Sicknick endorsed Harris, who he called a “real leader.”

The family farmers, Bob and Kristina Lange from Malvern, Pennsylvania, said they are lifelong Republicans, but will be voting for Harris this election.

“It’s very clear that Donald Trump doesn’t care about helping hard-working people like us,” Bob Lange said. “He’s too focused on seeking revenge and retribution to care about what we need. We deserve better.”

The couple have been featured in multiple digital ads targeting rural voters in Pennsylvania.

History and excitement

Attendees from as far as Illinois to local residents made the trek to the Ellipse for the speech.

Tiffany Norwood, 56, of Washington, D.C., said she attended the rally with her 87-year-old mother, Mary Ann Norwood, for “the history of it, the excitement.”

“I feel we need something different in the United States, and she is it,” said Tiffany Norwood, who identified herself as an entrepreneur. “Her plan for the economy, for the future, for women, for everyone. I love the fact that it’s a big umbrella that includes the melting pot of the United States.”

Some attendees weren’t old enough to vote, such as 13-year-old Grace Ledford of Champaign, Illinois.

The teenager said her first political rally felt “like a big party.”

“Kamala would be a great president because she is, for one, a woman, and she is African American,” she said. “A lot of men presidents don’t know how hard it is to be a woman, especially Trump.”

Daniel Nyquist, 79, of Rockville, Maryland, stood in the crowd wearing a hat with the words “Make America Less Hateful.”

“It’s the alternative of Trump’s theme,” Nyquist said, pointing to his hat. “He’s a big promoter of hate, and this is to counter that.”

The Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump, participates in a Fox News Town Hall with Sean Hannity at the New Holland Arena on Sept. 4, 2024 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump repeated his hard-line immigration position in an hourlong appearance from his Florida country club Tuesday, even as Democrats highlight the racist rhetoric his campaign and allies have used to describe Latinos in the closing week of the presidential race.

Speaking at Mar-a-Lago, the former president made passing references to the criticism his rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday received — including comparisons to a 1939 rally by American Nazis in the same building — but did not directly address the uproar caused by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s jokes targeting Puerto Rico and Latino immigrants.

Trump sought to change the narrative that has followed the New York rally, calling the atmosphere “an absolute lovefest.”

“I don’t think anybody has ever seen anything like what happened the other night at Madison Square Garden, the love, the love, the love in that room. It was breathtaking,” he said.

“You know, they started to say, ‘Well, in 1939 the Nazis used Madison Square Garden.’ … What a terrible thing to say, right? Because, you know, they’ve used Madison Square Garden many times. Many people have used it, but nobody’s ever had a crowd like that.”

The former president continued promoting his uncompromising position on immigration, which has been the primary focus of his campaign, employing racist language to describe the issue.

“I know we talk about inflation and the economy, but there’s, to me, there’s nothing, nothing more important than the fabric of our country being destroyed by people placed there, violently placed there,” he said. “I think what’s happening on the border is the single biggest issue, and I’m seeing it more and more when I speak.”

Trump repeated the debunked claim that Aurora, Colorado, had been overrun by Venezuelan gangs and claimed, without evidence, that “a minimum” of 325,000 migrant children had been brought into the country as “slaves or sex slaves.”

Trump did not take questions at the event that had been billed as a press conference.

Harris, DNC keep Puerto Rico in spotlight

Democrats, including the party’s presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, sought to contrast the language Trump and his allies have used about Latinos with that used by Harris.

“Donald Trump spends full time trying to have Americans point their finger at each other, fans the fuel of hate and division,” Harris told reporters Monday about Trump’s New York rally. “And that’s why people are exhausted with him.”

A Tuesday press release from the Democratic National Committee noted Harris campaigned at a Puerto Rican restaurant in Pennsylvania on Sunday night at nearly the same time Hinchcliffe called the territory a “floating island of garbage.” Hinchcliffe also made a lewd joke about Latino immigrants.

Trump also promised “a new golden” age of closed borders at the event.

“Donald Trump’s MAGA Republican Party is driven by hate and extremism – and that’s exactly what the Trump campaign chose to relay to voters as his closing message in this campaign,” DNC Co-Executive Director Monica Guardiola said.

“These hateful and racist attacks reveal a deeper truth about Trump’s Project 2025 agenda: he will wind back the clock on our rights, rip children from their mothers’ arms, disinvest in our communities, and shutter our small businesses so that he can pad the pockets of his billionaire backers.”

The statement also said the party would launch billboard ads near Pennsylvania’s Puerto Rican communities featuring a Washington Post headline that quoted Hinchcliffe.

“Trump rally speakers lob racist insults, call Puerto Rico ‘Island of Garbage,’” the billboards read, according to the release.

Pennsylvania, perhaps the most critical of seven swing states in next week’s election, is home to about 8% of the 5.6 million Puerto Ricans who live in the United States, the fourth-highest concentration of any state.

The DNC billboards will be placed on highways near Allentown, Reading and Philadelphia, which have significant Puerto Rican populations, the DNC said.

Trump was scheduled to make a campaign stop in Allentown on Tuesday afternoon.

Trump tries reversal

At Mar-a-Lago Tuesday morning, Trump sought to frame Harris and Democrats as anti-American agents, a continuation of a theme he has stressed in the closing weeks of the campaign that his political opponents are “the enemy within.”

Commentators and experts on extremism have warned that language veers toward fascism.

In calling his own campaign event one of love — despite the aggressive anti-immigration position — Trump said Harris was running “a campaign of hate.”

“Really, perhaps more than anything else, it’s a campaign of hate, campaign of absolute hate,” he said. “I said yesterday that she’s a vessel. She is a vessel. It’s a very big, powerful party with smart people — they have to be smart, but it’s vicious. They’re vicious, and they’re perhaps even trying to destroy our country.”

Voters should check the "write-in candidate" bubble and need not worry about remembering their chosen candidate's first name, says a spokesperson for the Kentucky secretary of state. (Austin Anthony for The Kentucky Lantern)

Voters in a southeastern Kentucky district will be able to choose among 11 write-in candidates for the state Senate seat held by the late Sen. Johnnie Turner who died last week.

“They can use just the last name and it does not need to be spelled correctly as long as the intended candidate can be clearly determined,” said Michon Lindstrom, a spokesperson for the Kentucky secretary of state.

She said voters also must check the “write-in candidate” bubble. No list of the write-in candidates will be posted at polling places, Lindstrom said, but if a voter asks for one they should be provided with a list.?

Kentucky Sen. Johnnie Turner of Harlan dies

The 29th Senate District is made of ??Bell, Floyd, Harlan, Knott and Letcher counties.?

Turner of Harlan died last week as a result of injuries he received in a lawnmower accident in September. He was seeking reelection after winning a contested Republican primary in May. He faced no Democratic challenger in the general election. An independent candidate, David Suhr, withdrew his candidacy a week before Turner’s death.?

The deadline to file as an official write-in candidate was Friday. Excused, in-person absentee voting was already underway. ?Three days of early voting start Thursday. Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 5.

State? party leaders have weighed in on their favorites — Republican Pineville Mayor Scott Madon and Democrat and attorney Justin Noble of Emmalena in Knott County.?

The other nine candidates are:

• Craig E. Blackburn, Prestonsburg
• John Clem, Cranks
• Willie Crase, Garrett
• Leonard Hendrickson, Pine Top
• James Richard Tanner Hesterberg, Prestonsburg
• Valerie Ison Horn, Whitesburg
• Andrew Thomas Saylor, Wallins Creek
• James Tyler Ward II,Whitesburg
• Paul Williams, Prestonsburg

The Senate Republican Campaign Caucus Committee endorsed Madon Friday. In a press release shared by the Republican Party of Kentucky, Senate President Robert Stivers said Madon “has a deep connection to the district and a track record of delivering results for his community.”?

The Senate Democratic Caucus Campaign Committee released its endorsement of Noble Friday as well..?

Gov. Andy Beshear endorsed Noble on X and added that he “will be focused on supporting our public schools, ending the teacher shortage, and serving the people of Eastern Kentucky with integrity” if elected. Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman joined Beshear in endorsing Noble.?

Lindstrom added that Turner and Suhr’s names will be on the ballot but any votes cast for them will not be counted. Local precincts should have signs saying votes for them will not count.?

The deadline to print ballots for the general election in Kentucky was Sept. 16.?

A ballot drop box at the library and recreation center in Wheaton, Maryland, on Oct. 6, 2024. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)

As the United States continues to see election-related violence and lawsuits challenging voters’ eligibility, a democracy watchdog group is aiming to make sure voters are protected when casting their ballots.

A week ahead of the presidential election, in which Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are vying for the Oval Office, the nonpartisan group Common Cause is gathering volunteers across the country to assist Americans in voting without obstruction.

“Right now, we’re seeing litigation ranging from challenging voters’ eligibility, to challenging their completed ballots, challenging long-standing rules around elections, trying to purge voter rolls,” said Sylvia Albert, democracy and representation policy counsel for Common Cause, during a Tuesday media briefing.

“I think most important to know is that this close to an election, individuals cannot rewrite laws by whim or remove people from the voter rolls — there is clear law to protect voters from these kinds of attacks,” she added.

Albert said the organization is keeping an eye on all of the cases where voters’ eligibility or their completed ballots are being challenged and is “working with partners to ensure that somebody is always at the table to protect voters.”

“But, really, the message that we want to get across is that every eligible American should have the freedom to vote and to have their voice heard, and voters should rest assured that they should cast their ballot and know that it will be counted,” she said.

Common Cause state leaders in Florida, as well as in the swing states of North Carolina, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, also shared some election protection efforts and what they are witnessing in terms of early voter turnout.

Virginia Kase Solomón, president and CEO of Common Cause, cited thousands of election protection volunteers who have signed up and said more are joining daily. The organization co-leads the Election Protection coalition.

“Our coalition is operating field programs in 42 states for the 2024 election,” she said, adding that “our election protection hotlines are open, and they are already assisting voters.” That number is 866-OUR-VOTE.

More than 51.3 million early votes were documented as of Tuesday afternoon, according to the University of Florida Election Lab’s early voting tracker.

Meanwhile, as fears of election-related violence in the U.S. persist, two ballot drop boxes were set ablaze this week in Vancouver, Washington, and Portland, Oregon — destroying hundreds of ballots — and authorities believe the incidents are likely connected.

Suzanne Almeida, director of state operations for Common Cause, said “we have not seen a trend coming out of the fires that we saw earlier … that there are ongoing attacks on ballot drop boxes.”

Almeida noted that “vote by mail is still incredibly secure” and “ballot drop boxes are still an incredibly valid way to return your ballot.”

“In fact, at this point in the election cycle, I would not recommend putting your ballot in the mail,” she said, urging people to instead use a ballot drop box or other ballot return system.

Almeida also recommends that any voter in Washington or Oregon who believes their ballot was affected by the fires should track their ballot online at the websites for their local and state elections officials.

“You should reach out to those elections officials and get a reissued ballot,” Almeida said. “We are in no way too late to get those ballots … voted and counted.”

Kentucky should consider creating triage centers to temporarily house children in state care who can’t immediately be placed in foster homes, said Kentucky Youth Advocates executive director Terry Brooks. (Getty Images)

After receiving what she called “numerous” complaints about foster children in Kentucky sleeping in office buildings without supervision by trained staff, state Auditor Allison Ball said Tuesday the Office of the Ombudsman will investigate.

Calling it an “ongoing crisis” that is “years” in the making,? Ball said the ombudsman will investigate the Cabinet for Health and Family Services to get at the root causes.?

Terry Brooks, the executive director of Kentucky Youth Advocates, said the problem isn’t new — and solving it won’t be? simple or cheap.?

It involves a “niche population” of high-needs youth who likely need specialized care, he told the Lantern.?

“It’s not typically 5-year-old kids who look like they fell off a TV commercial,” Brooks said. “You’re talking about older kids, teenagers, high levels of acuity, probably some special needs, probably with a history of aggressive behavior. I’m painting a portrait of a young person who we definitely need to care for, but we know it’s going to take creativity and resources to be able to do that.”?

A spokesperson for the auditor said the office thinks the practice has “been going on for two years and has affected about 300 children, but we’ll know exactly once we dig in.”??

The cabinet said in a statement that it has “taken action to address the challenges that come with placing youth with severe mental and behavioral problems or a history of violence or sexual aggression with foster families or facilities.”

“We’ve publicly addressed this many times with lawmakers and have offered more funding to secure additional safe, short-term care options for youth,” a cabinet spokesman said. “When one of these placements are necessary, we work to make sure each youth has a safe place to stay until a placement can be made. We urge those interested in becoming a foster parent to help us meet the needs of all our youth, please visit?KyFaces.ky.gov.”

In 2023, The Courier Journal reported that a shortage of available and willing foster families was a factor in the state’s decision to house some youth in a Louisville office building. WDRB reported earlier this year that the practice has continued, despite concerns raised by a Louisville judge.

“My office has continued to receive numerous complaints of foster children and teenagers sleeping on cots and air mattresses in office buildings, often not supervised by trained staff,” Ball said in a statement. “I have instructed the Ombudsman’s Office to investigate this issue to uncover the problems associated with this ongoing crisis.”

“The vulnerable children of Kentucky deserve to be placed in nurturing environments where they are provided with the resources, stability, and care they need,” Ball said.?

Staff are still trying to confirm how many office buildings are involved, a spokesperson for Ball said, though “we can confirm that this is not exclusively a Jefferson County issue.”?

Sleeping in an office building can compound trauma youth already have experienced, Brooks said. “It certainly is not going to create a positive childhood experience,” he said. “It’s going to create more adversity to kids who have already experienced too much adversity.”?

Kentucky ‘can’t do this on the cheap’?

Kentucky needs more families to foster, but it also needs a better system to support children who can’t be placed, Brooks said. Kentucky must “incentivize” — through higher wages and reimbursements — a “willingness to take on tough cases.”.?

Lawmakers can look to Tennessee, he said, which has faced similar problems and responded by increasing? payments to foster parents and wages to state staff working with higher-needs children.

“They have just owned the fact that,‘if I’m getting paid $15 an hour, I’m probably not going to be volunteering to get bitten, spit on and other issues with tough kids,’” Brooks said.??

Another solution Kentucky should consider, Brooks said, would be? to create triage centers — safe, secure, designated spaces — to temporarily house children who can’t immediately be placed.?

“If the General Assembly cares about those kids sleeping in offices as much as (CHFS Secretary Eric Friedlander) and Auditor Ball, then they’ve got to take action,” Brooks said. “And it can’t be rhetorical. It has to be resources. So I don’t know if that is looking at existing resources, I don’t know if that’s taking the big swing (and) reopening the budget, but you can’t do this on the cheap.”?

This story was updated with response from the cabinet.?

The Kentucky Supreme Court hears oral arguments in a case between the Jefferson County Public Schools board and the Attorney General's Office over possible special legislation, Aug. 14, 2024. (Kentucky Lantern photo by McKenna Horsley)

Kentucky Supreme Court Chief Justice-elect Debra Hembree Lambert has appointed Justice Robert B. Conley to serve as deputy chief justice starting in January.?

Lambert is the current deputy chief justice, but was elected by her fellow justices to succeed outgoing Chief Justice Laurance VanMeter last month. Lambert and Conley will assume their new roles on Jan. 6, 2025.

“Justice Conley is a man of exceptional character and good judgment,” Lambert said in a statement. “I know he will ably serve in this new role with integrity and will do all he can to advance the work of the Court of Justice.”

The deputy chief justice fills in when the chief justice is recused from a case or administrative matter,?

Conley was elected to the Supreme Court in November 2020. He represents the 7th Supreme Court District, which covers 32 counties in Eastern Kentucky.?

In 1994, then-Gov. Brereton Jones appointed Conley to fill a district judge vacancy in the 20th Judicial District of Greenup and Lewis counties; he was elected again to that seat for three terms. Conley was elected to the circuit bench in the two counties in 2006 and served there until joining the Supreme Court.??

The Democratic presidential nominee, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, alongside Philadelphia City Council member Quetcy Lozada, right, and Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker greets supporters at Freddy & Tony’s Restaurant, a locally owned Puerto Rican restaurant on Oct. 27, 2024 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. ?(Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris is slated to deliver what the campaign is calling her “closing argument” Tuesday night at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., as she aims to reach undecided voters in the final stretch of the presidential election.

Just a week out from Nov. 5, the Democratic presidential nominee will use her final pitch to voters to “turn the page” from former President Donald Trump, Harris campaign Chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a Tuesday morning call with reporters.

The Ellipse, a large grassy area just south of the White House, was the site of Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021, remarks urging his supporters to march on the U.S. Capitol.

Harris and Trump remain neck and neck in polling, both nationally and in swing states, in a race that could very well be decided by only a handful of voters across those battleground states.

In the press call, the Harris campaign previewed the contents of the veep’s highly anticipated speech, which is expected to draw tens of thousands of people.

For many undecided voters or those who are “questioning whether or not it is worth it to engage in the election at all,” Harris’ speech is an “opportunity for the vice president to intimately speak directly to that segment of the electorate’s sense of frustration, their sense of exhaustion with the way that our politics have played out under the Trump era — and offer them directly a vision that something is different, that something different is possible,” said Michael Tyler, Harris campaign communications director.

The veep is set to focus on “what her new generation of leadership really means, and centering that around the American people, what they care about, and that she’s going to make clear that she’s committed to ensuring that their needs and priorities are her top priority,” said O’Malley Dillon, who noted that Harris will touch on her vision, values and plans.

“You’re going to hear her really speak to middle-class families and what they’re worried about, and what she’s going to do about it, and she is going to very much focus the speech on them, on the American people, unlike what we hear from Donald Trump, which is his focus on himself, and we know that that is a pretty stark contrast,” O’Malley Dillon added.

Harris campaign Co-Chair Cedric Richmond, a former Louisiana congressman, said the veep will “use the powerful symbolism of the location to remind Americans that Trump is someone so all-consumed by his grievances and his power and his endless desire for revenge that he is not focused on the needs of the American people.”

Meanwhile, the Trump campaign continues to face a backlash following comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s series of racist and vulgar remarks during a Sunday night rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, including calling Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage.”

“I think just seeing what’s happened over the course of the last 48 hours, the growth of support in some of our targeted Puerto Rican community, and some of our battleground states, obviously we have strength there to come in, but we obviously have seen a lot of movement and growth over the course of the last several days based on the response to what happened with Trump’s event,” O’Malley Dillon said.

With Trump set to hold a Tuesday rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania — a city and state with large Puerto Rican populations — the Democratic National Committee is launching a new billboard campaign across the Keystone State underscoring Hinchcliffe’s remarks.

Catch up on States Newsroom election coverage from all 50 states.

This was the scene on a rainy primary Election Day in 2023 at Elkhorn Crossing School in Georgetown. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Abbey Cutrer)

Early voting for all registered voters will begin this week as a surge of Kentuckians participated in excused in-person absentee voting last week.?

Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams said in a post on X that 16,441 voters cast ballots last week during the first three days of in-person absentee voting, which is a 114% increase over the same period in 2022. Adams said those voters included 9,739 Republicans, 5,690 Democrats and 1,012 voters registered as “other.”

Three more days of excused in-person absentee voting continue through Wednesday.

No-excuse early voting begins Thursday, Oct. 31, and lasts through Saturday, Nov. 2. Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 5.?

Voters will cast their ballots in a number of races, including elections for president, U.S. representatives, state legislators and many local offices. Kentucky voters will also consider two constitutional amendments, one that would bar those who are not U.S. citizens from voting in Kentucky elections and another that would allow the General Assembly to fund nonpublic schools.?

Early voting polling locations and hours vary by county. To find local information, visit the State Board of Elections’ website. Also listed are Election Day polling locations and drop box locations for returning mail absentee ballots.?

The deadline to request absentee ballots was Oct. 22. At the time, Adams said on X that 130,695 Kentuckians had requested a ballot.

“As absentee ballots generally make up 2%-4% of all ballots cast, this portends a massive overall turnout,” Adams said. “For the love of God, vote early.”?

During the 2020 presidential election, 658,000 voters requested an absentee ballot. That was amid the coronavirus pandemic and emergency regulations that expanded eligibility to vote by mail in Kentucky.?

As of Saturday, 56.49% of requested mail-in ballots had been returned to local county clerks’ offices, according to State Board of Elections data.?

In September, 24,536 Kentuckians registered to vote. The deadline to register for the general election was Oct. 7.

Kentucky has 1,649,657 registered Republicans, or 47% of the total number of registered voters. Democrats make up 43% of registered voters with 1,507,936 voters.

For more voting information, visit govote.ky.gov.?

Pedestrians look toward a Waymo autonomous self-driving Jaguar taxi stopped at a red light in Los Angeles. States are trying to prepare for more widespread use of self-driving cars in the future with new laws. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Early one morning last year, as state Rep. Josh Bray left his small town of Mount Vernon in southeastern Kentucky to make his way to the Capitol in Frankfort, he decided to count how many drivers he saw texting or distracted by something else.

He quit counting after 24 when he saw a truck driver reading a newspaper while going down the road.

The incident spurred the Republican lawmaker’s effort to pass a bill this spring in the Kentucky legislature that sets rules for self-driving vehicles, including the largest commercial trucks after July 2026. Bray thinks the rules will ensure that self-driving vehicles are safer than those operated by often-distracted human drivers.

The new law for fully autonomous vehicles — those designed to function without a human driver present — requires owners to file a safety and communication plan that law enforcement can use and to have a minimum of $1 million in liability insurance per vehicle, roughly 10 times higher than the amount for regular personal vehicles.

“I felt like it was necessary to have something on the books in Kentucky because we are kind of a logistics hub,” Bray said. For example, he said, self-driving baggage handling vehicles at a northern Kentucky airport now will be able to cross a state road.

The legislature approved the bill in late March and a few weeks later overrode a veto by Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, who said the bill advanced too quickly and that there should be a testing period before fully autonomous vehicles are allowed to drive in the state.

While no fully autonomous cars are in regular use in the country yet, some states have allowed limited testing and pilot programs on public roads. Many state legislatures are trying to get ahead of self-driving vehicles that eventually will be on their roads by setting standards for operating the vehicles and rules for law enforcement if they see an autonomous vehicle breaking a traffic law. And many laws require, as Kentucky’s does, a minimum insurance requirement to protect drivers, passengers and pedestrians, should the vehicles be involved in an accident.

This year, five states and Washington, D.C., enacted bills dealing with fully automated vehicles, according to Douglas Shinkle, associate director of environment, energy and transportation for the National Conference of State Legislatures. The new laws in Alabama, Kentucky and South Dakota allow for the operation of fully autonomous vehicles, while California’s new law deals with safety requirements. North Carolina’s brings the vehicles under updated dealer regulations for all cars.

Updates to current laws

About half the states already have statutes regulating vehicles operated by some degree of autonomous technology — ranging from the fully autonomous vehicles that are not on the road yet to those that have some driver-assist functions, Shinkle said. But many of the laws are being changed already.

“There’s been a steady progression of bills,” he said, “with some going back and refining some of the language. Every year some new states are getting into the mix.”

Most of this year’s new laws have to do with commercial vehicles, he said. States hope to bring in manufacturers of the vehicles or other industries that would use the technology.

“A lot of this is motivated by states that don’t want to be left behind,” Shinkle said. ”They hope this may lead to jobs in their states.”

But labor unions worry that driving jobs might be lost to the technology.

Dustin Reinstedler, president of the Kentucky chapter of the AFL-CIO, testified against the bill in his state, saying at a legislative hearing that his union preferred alternative legislation calling for a study of the “effects of autonomous vehicles on our roads and the jobs of over 50,000 workers.”

Already, autonomous ride-hailing vehicles from Waymo, formerly known as the Google self-driving car project, dot the landscape in Los Angeles, Phoenix and San Francisco, allowed to drive within limited areas.

Safety concerns

Fully autonomous vehicles have raised safety concerns. California enacted a law this year that will, among other things, require manufacturers to continuously monitor every autonomous vehicle on the road and designate a remote human operator to immobilize a vehicle if necessary. The law also allows law enforcement to issue a notice of noncompliance when autonomous vehicles violate local traffic ordinances.

Earlier this month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began an investigation into four crashes of Teslas operating with a partial-automation system (which can navigate highways and steer the car on city streets but requires a licensed driver to be present), including one in which a pedestrian was killed. In a news release, NHTSA said reduced visibility may have led to the crashes.

A NHTSA spokesperson said in an email that in each incident, the Tesla entered an area with reduced roadway visibility due to sun, glare, fog or dust. She would not elaborate nor be further identified.

Bray, the Kentucky lawmaker, argued that the self-driving vehicles and driver-assist vehicles are “much safer than human drivers.” He added that fully autonomous vehicles, such as large trucks, could run in the middle of the night, taking traffic off the roads during peak hours and lowering the risk of tired drivers falling asleep.

The idea of semitrucks without drivers makes Kentucky Republican state Sen. Greg Elkins uneasy. He opposed the bill and supported the governor’s veto.

“My reasoning was I just don’t think technology is there yet, particularly with 18-wheel vehicles,” he said in an interview. “I would have been OK with the bill that would have restricted [it to smaller vehicles].”

Alabama’s new law requires a minimum of $100,000 in liability insurance for fully autonomous vehicles, about the same as ordinary cars.

California’s new law requires $5 million in insurance for manufacturers testing autonomous vehicles on state roads, should any one of them be in an accident.

Robert Passmore, a vice president at the American Property Casualty Insurance Association, a trade group for insurance companies, said that should individual autonomous vehicles come into regular usage, the insurance companies still have to answer the question of “who was driving at the time.” He argued that the liability coverage should mirror that required for regular cars with drivers.

“Our position is that these vehicles should be insured the same,” he said. “The things that can happen as the result of driving are pretty much the same. Whatever the minimum limits are for that type of vehicle, those are probably appropriate [for autonomous vehicles]. Most people carry more than the minimum anyway.”

This article is republished from Stateline, a sister publication to the Kentucky Lantern and part of the nonprofit States Newsroom network.

"I have in mind a program of independent media designed with LGBTQ youth and young women in mind," writes Fenton Johnson. "Youth and, if they chose, their parents and teachers would be invited to attend, with discussion groups to follow. Local civil rights activists would chair; local legislators would be provided an invitation to attend and justify their votes." (Getty Images)

Angela Cooper and Ona Marshall contributed a powerful commentary regarding the Sundance Institute’s elimination of Louisville from its list of host cities. I support everything they say, and thank them for writing it. But as a lifelong activist in documentary and independent filmmaking, I offer another perspective — not contradictory but supplemental.

If one believes — as I believe — in the power of art to change hearts (so much more difficult to move than mountains), I suggest Sundance should be targeting cities like Louisville and Nashville and Orlando in states like Kentucky and Tennessee and Florida, rather than withdrawing from them.

It’s no wonder Sundance didn’t choose Kentucky

I have in mind a program of independent media designed with LGBTQ youth and young women in mind, curated by Sundance in collaboration with, for example, Frameline, the San Francisco-based LGBTQ media distributor, and local contacts, such as the Kentucky Fairness Campaign.

All three states have LGBTQ and women’s organizations, private foundations, and concerned individuals who would, I believe, contribute to the cost of curating programs and supporting documents as well as touring. I imagine such a program presented in private venues (e.g., museums, supportive churches) where youth and, if they chose, their parents and teachers would be invited to attend, with discussion groups to follow. Local civil rights activists would chair; local legislators would be provided an invitation to attend and justify their votes.??

My proposal has a distinguished precedent: In 1978 the California LGBTQ community faced a ballot initiative proposed by state Sen. John Briggs unhappily similar to the “don’t say gay” laws passed by legislatures in Florida, Tennessee, and Kentucky and pending in other states.? In response the LGBTQ community organized community forums statewide. The most famous of these debate teams featured San Francisco Board of Supervisors member Harvey Milk and San Francisco State University professor Sally Gearhart, but there were many others. I served on one, traveling to suburban and small town community colleges and churches to debate the proposition with the initiative’s sponsors.??

We were spat upon, vilified, and assaulted, even as we bonded as a community in ways that in hindsight prepared us for more difficult challenges to come. And in the end we won: In midsummer 1978, polls showed the Briggs initiative winning by an overwhelming majority; that November it lost resoundingly.? The success story has a sobering coda that illustrates the price of the ticket: A few weeks after that victory, Milk was assassinated in his City Hall office.

If one doubts the power of art, consider perhaps the most powerful slogan to emerge from the 20th century — three simple, unforgettable words coined by gay New York graphic artists:? Silence = Death. But the slogan implies its inverse: Action = Life. ?“Don’t say gay”: It reads like a command but in fact is an invitation and opportunity to tell our stories.??

These states’ discriminatory legislation also has a precedent: Between 1865 and 1950, Jim Crow laws enacted by Southern legislatures, led by Kentucky, drove many African Americans to leave the state. Asked whether writers should excavate and tell painful stories of past violence and discrimination, University of Kentucky professor Frank X Walker said, “I believe the truth shall set you free.” Indeed it shall, but one must start by speaking it out loud. What local activists need from arts organizations based in more open-hearted states is not a turned back but a helping hand.

If women seeking control over their reproductive decisions and LGBTQ Southerners are to have a future other than that envisioned by the white Republican legislative majorities (“get out”), now is the time to act. I keep always in mind the words of James Baldwin, that great Black, gay voice of the American conscience: “There is never a time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment, the time is always now.”??

Editor’s note: Fenton Johnson will be in conversation with authors Brother Paul Quenon and Jon M. Sweeney in “Reflections on A Spiritual Journey” at 11:15 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 2, at the Kentucky Book Festival at Joseph Beth Booksellers in Lexington.

A man participates in exit polling after voting in the South Carolina Republican presidential primary at Dreher High School on Feb. 24, 2024 in Columbia, South Carolina. (Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — A pro-democracy organization warned Monday that disinformation and violent rhetoric could make the weeks that follow Election Day especially fraught, pushing the country past the upheaval that arose four years ago during the last presidential transition.

The comments from three members of the Defend Democracy Project came just days before voting ends on Nov. 5, though with several races extremely close, the country may not know for days who won the presidential contest as well as control of Congress.

That could leave considerable space for speculation as state election workers count mail-in ballots and potentially undertake full recounts, similar to four years ago.

“I think the biggest vulnerability will continue to be the mis- and disinformation that will happen in the aftermath of the election,” said Olivia Troye, who previously worked for Vice President Mike Pence as a special adviser on homeland security and counterterrorism.

Troye raised concerns that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump may make false claims about election fraud and encourage violence similar to what took place on Jan. 6, 2021, should he lose the Electoral College again.

Troye referenced an election bulletin from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security she said cautioned that “candidates, elected officials, election workers, members of the media, judges involved in these cases” could all become targets of post-election violence.

“And they’re also concerned about the visible attacks and violence on polling places or ballot drop boxes,” Troye said, referencing the burning of ballots inside drop boxes in Oregon and Washington states early Monday morning.

Michael Podhorzer, chair of the Defend Democracy Project, said during the virtual briefing for reporters that one of the reasons many state officials didn’t go along with requests to “find votes” for Trump in the days following the 2020 election was because President Joe Biden had “two states to spare.”

“And that created a prisoner’s dilemma for every Republican election official who might have done the wrong thing,” Podhorzer said. “So if you take the call to (Georgia Secretary of State) Brad Raffensperger, he understood that even if he could find those votes that Trump wanted, unless two Democratic secretaries of state overturned their results, Donald Trump was not going back to the White House.

“And what that meant was that there wasn’t any single actor, in the way there was in 2000 in Florida, who could actually change the results of the election.”

That could be different this time, should Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris win by a small margin, potentially just one state’s Electoral College votes, he said.

Accepting the results

The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research released a survey Monday showing 86% of registered voters believe whoever loses the presidential election should accept the results, though just 33% expect Trump will concede if he fails to secure the votes needed to win the Electoral College.

About 77% of those surveyed expected Harris to accept the results should she lose the presidential race.

Anxiety about post-election violence was rather high among the registered voters surveyed, with 76% saying they are extremely or somewhat concerned about violent attempts to overturn the election results.

Eighty-two percent said they were at least somewhat concerned about “increased political violence directed at political figures or election officials.”

Voters are also worried about foreign interference in the elections, with 78% of the registered voters surveyed saying they are extremely or somewhat concerned about it “influencing what Americans think about political candidates.”

The co-chairs of Issue One’s National Council on Election Integrity —? former U.S. Reps. Barbara Comstock, R-Va., Donna Edwards, D-Md., Tim Roemer, D-Ind., and Zach Wamp, R-Tenn. — released a written statement Monday addressing a fake video produced by Russian actors about ballots in Pennsylvania. The statement also criticized a Maryland Republican congressman who said North Carolina should just give its Electoral College votes to Trump.

“Foreign adversaries are seeking to influence U.S. elections by sowing division and spreading false information to undermine confidence in our system of self-government,” the co-chairs wrote. “In addition, people who want to win at all costs continue to spread false claims about election integrity and may create chaos, delay results, and challenge the outcome of our fair electoral process.”

The four wrote the suggestions from Maryland Rep. Andy Harris, chairman of the far-right U.S. House Freedom Caucus, that North Carolina simply grant its 15 Electoral College votes to Trump “before votes are counted are dangerous and against the rule of law.”

“By rejecting the so-called independent state legislature theory in Moore v. Harper, the Supreme Court affirmed that state legislatures do not have the power to replace the popular will with a slate of electors,” they wrote.

Issue One describes itself as a “crosspartisan” organization that works to “unite Republicans, Democrats, and independents in the movement to fix our broken political system and build an inclusive democracy that works for everyone.”

GOP blowback on Puerto Rico insults at Trump rally

Democrats and Republicans united somewhat Monday to express anger about comments a comedian made about Puerto Rico during a Trump rally on Sunday at Madison Square Garden.

Tony Hinchcliffe, who spoke in the hours leading up to Trump’s comments, called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now.”

Hinchcliffe later said Latinos “love making babies” and made additional lewd comments.

Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Nanette Diaz Barragán, D-Calif., released a statement Monday calling the comments shameful and dangerous.

“This type of language emboldens prejudice, encourages violence, and undermines the values of unity and respect that our country is built on,” Barragán wrote. “It’s deeply troubling to see Republican leaders celebrate this rhetoric instead of promoting unity and truth.”

Vice President Harris told reporters traveling with her that the comedian’s comments were part of the reason voters are “exhausted” and “ready to turn the page” on Trump.

“It is absolutely something that is intended to, and is fanning the fuel of trying to divide our country,” Harris said.

Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott posted on social media that the comedian’s comments about Puerto Rico were “not funny and it’s not true.”

“Puerto Ricans are amazing people and amazing Americans! I’ve been to the island many times. It’s a beautiful place. Everyone should visit!” Scott wrote. “I will always do whatever I can to help any Puerto Rican in Florida or on the island.”

Florida Republican Rep. Carlos A. Giménez posted on social media that the comedian’s comments were “completely classless & in poor taste.”

“Puerto Rico is the crown jewel of the Caribbean & home to many of the most patriotic Americans I know,” Giménez wrote. “@TonyHinchcliffe clearly isn’t funny & definitely doesn’t reflect my values or those of the Republican Party.”

Puerto Rico’s delegate to the U.S. House, Jenniffer González-Colón, a Republican, called the comedian’s remarks “despicable, misguided, and revolting.”

“What he said is not funny; just as his comments were rejected by the audience, they should be rejected by all!” González-Colón wrote. “There can be no room for such vile and racist expressions. They do not represent the values of the GOP.”

Ariana Figueroa contributed to this report.?

Patients who qualify for medical cannabis — with a history of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), cancer or other approved medical conditions — can apply for cards Jan. 1. (Getty Images)

LOUISVILLE — Kentucky awarded its first 26 medical cannabis licenses through a lottery held Monday at the Kentucky Lottery Corporation in Louisville.?

The first round of licenses, drawn by state lottery staff, went to 16 cultivators and 10 processors.?

Monday’s winners will get an email within 24 hours and must pay a licensing fee within 15 days. Failure to do so will result in licensing forfeiting, said Sam Flynn, the executive director of the Office of Medical Cannabis. Winners will have to renew after a year.?

Gov. Andy Beshear called the Monday drawing a “big step forward.”?

“Medical cannabis can help people, especially with really serious conditions,” Beshear said after the drawing. “People will be buying product that is grown here, that is processed here, that is tested here, that would otherwise be in other states.”?

Flynn said the program is focused on equitable access for Kentuckians who qualify for medical cannabis.?

“??We want to make sure that these folks have access points throughout the state,” he said. “We want to make sure they have the safest possible medical products and the best possible care available.”??

In a statement, Kentucky Lottery President and CEO Mary Harville said, “over the 35 years of its existence, the Lottery has been known for conducting drawings for a plethora of its draw-based games, first with machines and balls, and now, with state-of-the-art random number generators.”?

“These drawings are conducted with the highest level of integrity and are in accordance with industry established procedures,” said Harville. “We are happy to be able to bring this level of integrity to the cannabis drawings.”

A bipartisan effort?

In 2023, the legislature legalized medical marijuana for Kentuckians suffering from chronic illnesses.?

Then, the bipartisan House Bill 829 that became law during this year’s legislative session moved up the medical cannabis licensing timeline from January 2025 to July 1, 2024.?

During the application period, July 1–Aug. 31,? the state received 4,998 applications for medical cannabis business licenses, including 918 cultivator and processor applications, according to Beshear’s office.?

Patients who qualify for medical cannabis — with a history of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), cancer or other approved medical conditions — won’t be able to apply for cannabis cards until Jan. 1.

Flynn said providers who write certifications for those cards will prescribe types and amounts like any medication.

“We want to make sure that this is safe, that it’s driven by health care and health care decisions,” Flynn said.

“Help is on the way,” Beshear said. “There is a new day coming in Kentucky…where you’re going to be able to get safe medical cannabis to help you with your conditions.”???

A lottery date for the dispensers will be announced on Thursday, Beshear said.?

The winners?

The 10 processor winners are:?

1. KYP LLC – Jefferson County?
2. Kaldem Holdings – Muhlenberg County?
3. Limestone Processing – Fayette County?
4. Hilltop Healing Investco – Warren County?
5. Bijal Kentucky LLC – Boyd County?
6. AJ Alchemy Labs LLC – Barren County?
7. Jill’s Dispensary LLC – Christian County?
8. One Leaf Technologies LLC – Bullitt County
9. Ice House Processing, LLC – Fulton County
10. LMMKY LLC – Warren County

The 16 cultivator winners are:?

1. Natural State GreenGrass CannaCo LLC – Warren County?
2. KSYKAPP, LLC – Barren County
3. NG Health LLC – Fayette County
4. Armory Kentucky LLC – Estill County
5. JMOKY LLC – Warren County
6. Canopy Capital LLC – Grant County
7. L&O Legacies – Boyd County?
8. Synapse Remedies LLC – Jefferson County?
9. CW Bluegrass, LLC – Daviess County?
10. Popp Cultivation LLC – Bracken County?
11. Arizona Bay Investments LLC – Lincoln County?
12. Wong Investments, LLC – Christian County?
13. Joseph Serock – Christian County?
14. Elevated Essence LLC – Bullitt County?
15. Slaughter Branch LLC – Hopkins County?
16. Goeing Blue LLC – Fayette County

Richard Beliles joined protests for civil rights in the 1950s in Louisville and was chair of Common Cause/Kentucky.

Richard Vincent Beliles, a Louisville lawyer known for keeping a vigorous watch on government ethics and political money often at his own expense, died Oct. 23 at Baptist Health East in Louisville. He was 90.

“He was like the lonely warrior. He did so much to make government better and paid out of his own pocket expenses to file lawsuits to accomplish that,” said Ivonne Rovira, former executive director of Common Cause/Kentucky who worked with Beliles, longtime chair of the organization. “He did not get rich working for Common Cause.”

Common Cause is a national advocacy group that describes its mission as “curbing the excessive influence of money on government and promoting fair elections,” but Beliles took up many causes, including coal-mining protests, without being partisan.

Former state Senate Majority Leader David Karem, D-Louisville, said Beliles “deserves a lot of respect. He was very gentlemanly in his push for transparency in government and went after wrong wherever he saw it.”

Tom Loftus, a former Courier Journal Frankfort reporter who became an expert in campaign finance, said Beliles was “an interesting person. He was a quiet, sometimes awkward sort of guy — the last person you would ever think to be any sort of rabble rouser in government — but he always kept a careful eye on ethics in government and campaign finances.”

Loftus said Kentucky “owes a debt of gratitude for his being a watchdog for good government for so many years.”

Loftus noted that Beliles usually supported Democrats in elections but “would go after them when he thought they were taking the wrong steps in public office.”

For example, he voted for Democrat Paul Patton in the 1995 race for governor but soon after Patton took office, Beliles called for a state investigation of Patton’s campaign finances.

He claimed the late Patton aide Danny Ross had possibly violated campaign fundraising rules by coordinating with labor unions to promote Patton in Louisville.?

A grand jury in 1998 indicted Ross, Patton’s chief of staff and two Louisville Teamsters in connection with the questions Beliles raised. Patton pardoned everyone before a trial could be held.?

“I liked Patton,” Beliles said, “but there were serious problems in how he won that race that needed to be examined.”

‘Fighter for transparency in government’

In 2007, Beliles filed ethics complaints against then Senate President David Williams, a Republican from Burkesville, after Williams sponsored a lunch where lobbyists were asked to help raise $50,000 in campaign funds in apparent violation of the law.

The complaint was dismissed after Williams said his aides had made a mistake.

“And all this occurred when Williams was at the peak of his power in government,” said reporter Loftus.

In 1997, Beliles filed a complaint asking the Legislative Ethics Commission to look into a free five-day trip that then-House Speaker Jody Richards, D-Bowling Green, took to a Costa Rican resort to study international trade agreements.??????????????????????????????????????????

Questions arose whether cigarette maker Phillip Morris paid a nonprofit group to pay for Richards’ travel that included a jungle safari. Lawmakers cannot accept gifts from lobbyists.?

Richards denied knowing of Phillip Morris’ role in his trip, and he said no one in Costa Rica lobbied him on anything. The ethics panel sided with Richards and dismissed the complaint.

“Richard Beliles was a fighter for transparency in government,” said former Louisville WHAS TV reporter Mark Hebert.

“He was also the loudest voice for Kentuckians concerned about the corrupting influence of money in politics and understood clearly the role and power of the media to shed light in dark places.”

Beliles maintained a private law practice in downtown Louisville for many years; the last 17 years of which he practiced entirely on a pro bono basis. He received two undergraduate degrees from the University of Louisville and later obtained his law degree from the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law.

Beliles won many civic awards, including the 2017 Citizen Award of The League of Women Voters. He was chairman of the board of directors for Wayside Christian Mission and was a former board member for five years of the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance and president of the KY United Nations Association.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Beliles participated in civil rights protests in downtown Louisville. He was among picketers in front of the Brown Theatre protesting the denial of public accommodations to Black citizens who were barred even from attending the play “Porgy and Bess.”

For three years in the 1960s, Beliles served as the director of organization of the Democratic Party of Jefferson County.

Beliles also was an aide to Louisville Mayor Frank W. Burke and was the unsuccessful Democratic nominee for Congress in 1988 against Republican Jim Bunning.??

He was a Mason and a member of the Alexander Hamilton Society.

His obituary says his survivors include daughter Sherry Beliles of Louisville and son Mark Beliles (Nancy) of Charlottesville, Virginia. He is also survived by his brother David Beliles of Longboat Key, Florida.; his sister Beverly Belle-Isle of Jeffersonville, Indiana; four grandchildren; 10 great-grandchildren and many relatives and friends.

Funeral services will be at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 29, at Pearson’s Funeral Home, 149 Breckenridge Lane, Louisville. Burial is to follow at Resthaven Cemetery in Louisville.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that memorial gifts be made to Fourth Avenue United Methodist Church, 318 St. Catherine St. Louisville 40203 or Wayside Christian Mission, 432 E Jefferson St., Louisville 40202.

East Kentucky Power Cooperative, which distributes electricity to 16 cooperatives, plans to add solar installations generating 757 megawatts of power and expand transmission infrastructure. (Getty Images)

FRANKFORT — A federal investment of up to $1.4 billion to expand renewable energy will help transform how a Kentucky utility serves future generations, its CEO said Monday.?

Officials from East Kentucky Power Cooperative (EKPC) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture joined Gov. Andy Beshear at the state Capitol Monday morning to tout funding that will build solar installations producing 757 megawatts of electricity and improve transmission infrastructure.

EKPC President and CEO Tony Campbell said the funding, which could consist of grants or subsidized loans, was a “defining moment” for the nonprofit utility that generates electricity for 16 power distribution cooperatives across the state. The USDA announced the funding last month.

“We will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and operate with less carbon intensity, while maintaining reliability service and competitive rates,” Campbell said. “East Kentucky Power Cooperative is doing our part to help address global greenhouse gas emissions and slow the impact of climate change. We are boldly planning for Kentucky’s energy future.”

The funding comes from the Empowering Rural America program (New ERA), monies made available through the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act opposed by all of the Republicans in Kentucky’s congressional delegation.

Administrator of the USDA’s Rural Utilities Service Andy Burke also said EKPC will receive additional funding in the form of tax credits on top of the $1.4 billion from the New ERA program.?

The USDA received 157 proposals for clean energy projects, and so far the federal department has awarded funding for nearly two dozen of those proposals including to EKPC.?

Beshear called the announcement one of the biggest investments in the state’s electric infrastructure since the New Deal, saying the funding would help with economic development for companies that want renewable energy.?

“Just about every company asks what energy portfolio we can bring to them. It’s either commitments to sustainability they’ve made,or they’ve been demanded by their downstream customers,” Beshear said. “The answer has always been, ‘We’ll get there, and we’re working on it.’ We’ve got a very big answer today with about $1.4 billion.”

Campbell told reporters EKPC intends to build solar installations itself instead of purchasing solar power from private solar developers, known as power purchase agreements. He said the solar installations have to be “on the ground” by Sept. 30, 2031 to comply with a federal deadline.

Roughly 40 transmission projects are also being planned, he said, for “both reliability and to allow more renewables to flow” to homes and businesses. Earlier this year, EKPC proposed to build two solar installations in Fayette and Marion counties generating a combined 136 megawatts of electricity.

Like other electric utilities in Kentucky, EKPC generates the majority of its power from burning coal, the biggest emitter of greenhouse gasses contributing to climate change among electricity sources. Environmental advocates have previously lauded New ERA funding but argue more needs to be done to move utilities from fossil fuels to clean energy sources.?

EKPC is supporting a lawsuit to federal regulations that would require utilities to curb nearly all greenhouse gas emissions by 2032 from new natural gas-fired power plants and existing coal-fired power plants. Campbell said the New ERA funding would help the utility “go down the path to start decarbonizing our generation portfolio” while not harming the reliability of the power supply.?

The leader of the United Nations last year called for developed nations to have carbon-free electricity generation by 2035 and a phase out of coal-fired power by 2030 in order to avoid the worst harms from climate change. A United Nations report last week found the world was on track for catastrophic warming by the end of the century because of the unabated burning of fossil fuels.?

When asked about the call for action from the United Nations’ leader, Campbell said renewable energy paired with battery storage systems hadn’t “evolved enough” to “totally run the country on that.”?

“We have to have reliable power plus decarbonize,” Campbell said.

Other utilities across the country are investing significantly in solar installations and battery storage systems, and the International Energy Agency considers solar and wind power to be the cheapest form of electricity in most of the world.?

Burke, the USDA official, said the decreasing cost of renewables and battery storage systems is “going to build that clean energy future we need.”?

“But we need to do it in a reliable way that makes sense to the person who still has to pay that utility bill at the end of every month,” Burke said.

The Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, speaks at a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City on Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

NEW YORK? — Former President Donald Trump promised “America’s new golden age” of closed borders and world peace as he rallied a capacity crowd at Madison Square Garden in his home city in the final stretch of the 2024 presidential contest against Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump headlined the over six-hour rally that featured nearly 30 speakers, some of whom insulted Latinos and attacked Democratic nominee Harris over her race, and he vowed “to make America great again, and it’s going to happen fast.”

“It is called America first, and it is going to happen as no one has ever seen before,” Trump said, adding “We will not be overrun, we will not be conquered. We will be a free and proud nation once again. Everyone will prosper.”

But the event also generated intense criticism from Democrats for remarks made by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who spoke during the afternoon hours ahead of Trump and called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now.”

The joke could prove politically problematic for Republicans, who have been courting the Latino vote, and particularly in the swing state of Pennsylvania, where hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans live.

The United States is home to 5.6 million Puerto Ricans, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of census data, and about 8% of them live in Pennsylvania.

Hinchcliffe, who hosts a podcast called “Kill Tony,” also said Latinos “love making babies” and made a lewd joke about them.

Florida Republican U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, whose state is also home to hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans, on X wrote, “It’s not funny and it’s not true. Puerto Ricans are amazing people and amazing Americans!”

Democrats brought in U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is Puerto Rican, and the vice presidential nominee, Tim Walz, to blast the joke. “When you have some a-hole calling Puerto Rico floating garbage … that’s what they think about anyone who makes less money than them,” she said.

Harris on Sunday in Philadelphia laid out a new policy proposal focused on Puerto Rico.

The former president’s 80-minute speech mostly featured his standard campaign promises and stories, though he added a proposal to his list of tax breaks — a benefit for those caring for sick or aging relatives in their homes. Harris also introduced a policy for at-home care for seniors earlier in October.

Trump repeated his popular pledges to “get transgender insanity the hell out of our schools,” “stop the invasion” at the border and restore peace to Ukraine and the Middle East, which he claims would have never become war-torn had he been in office.

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, told the crowd his time campaigning around the country for Trump has revealed “something very powerful out there happening among the base.”

“I’m telling you, there’s an energy out there that we have not seen before,” Johnson said.

NYC stop a detour

Trump held the rally nine days before polls close on Nov. 5. Nearly 42 million Americans have already voted early, in person or by mail, in more than two dozen states, according to the University of Florida Election Lab’s early voting tracker.

Trump’s New York stop detoured from the seven battleground states in this election’s spotlight — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. His campaign also announced on Sunday two upcoming stops in New Mexico and Virginia during the contest’s final week.

Still, both candidates once again hit Pennsylvania over the weekend, with Trump delivering remarks Saturday at Penn State University in State College, Pennsylvania, and Harris spending Sunday rallying a crowd in Philadelphia.

Harris spoke to the press in Philadelphia, a city she described as “a very important part of our path to victory.”

“I’m feeling very optimistic about the enthusiasm that is here and the commitment that folks of every background have to vote and to really invest in the future of our country,” Harris told reporters.

The vice president criticized Trump for using “dark and divisive language,” including his comments this week that America is the “garbage can of the world.”

“I think people are ready to turn the page,” she said.

Tucker Carlson goes after Harris

Numerous speakers attacked Harris’ record — a standard feature of political rallies — but some comments invoked her race. Trump’s childhood best friend, David Rem, clutched a crucifix and told the crowd Harris is the “antichrist.”

Conservative media personality Tucker Carlson described Harris as a “Samoan Malaysian low IQ former California prosecutor” as he was spinning a scenario in which the Democrats reflect on their candidate post-election.

“Donald Trump has made it possible for the rest of us to tell the truth about the world around us,” Carlson said earlier in his speech.

Harris’ mother was Indian, and her father is Jamaican. Trump has previously questioned her race during his interview with the National Association of Black Journalists.

Carlson, who was fired by Fox News in April 2023, accused Democrats of telling “lies,” and said in a mocking voice, “Jan. 6 was an insurrection, they were unarmed, but it was very insurrection-y.”

The violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 by thousands of Trump supporters came after months of the former president refusing to concede the 2020 presidential election, which President Joe Biden won.

Twenty-eight speakers preceded Trump, beginning at just after 2 p.m. and holding court until the former president took the stage at 7:13 p.m. Trump’s wife, Melania, in a rare campaign rally appearance, introduced him and spoke briefly.

The lineup included the founder of Death Row Records, TV personality Dr. Phil and pro wrestling’s Hulk Hogan and Dana White — some of whom spoke at July’s four-day Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, whose super PAC has flooded more than $75 million into the campaign, was among the cast of speakers.

Musk told the crowd to vote early and that he wants to see a “massive crushing victory.”

“Make the margin of victory so big that you know what can’t happen,” he said, referring to debunked claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

Focus on NYC

The day was heavy on the mystique of New York and Trump’s ties to it. New York City is not only where Trump grew up and followed his father’s path into real estate, but now also where he was convicted in May in a Manhattan court on 34 state felony counts for a hush money scheme involving a porn star.

A vendor hawking campaign gear to supporters waiting to enter Madison Square Garden Sunday morning advertised a hat that read “I’m voting for the convicted felon.”

Several speakers credited Trump with changing the New York City skyline. The 58-story Trump Tower stands on 5th Avenue in midtown Manhattan, among his other real estate holdings on the island.

“New York City made Donald Trump, but Donald Trump also made New York City,” said Lara Trump, Trump’s daughter-in-law and co-chair of the Republican National Committee.

Howard Lutnick, chair and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald and co-chair of the Trump campaign’s “transition team,” told the story of losing just over 650 of his employees in the World Trade Center attack on Sept. 11, 2001 masterminded by known terrorist Osama bin Laden.

“We must elect Donald J. Trump president because we must crush jihad,” Lutnick said.

Lutnick bantered with Musk on stage, estimating the pair could possibly cut $2 trillion in federal spending under a second Trump administration. Trump has chosen the duo to lead a commission on government efficiency if elected.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who took a leading role in spreading Trump’s false claims that he won the 2020 election, received a standing ovation from the full arena.

He accused Biden and Harris of spreading “socialism, fascism and communism.”

Giuliani, a major player in Trump’s false claim that he won the 2020 election, appeared at the rally just days after a federal judge in New York ordered him to surrender his apartment and valuables to election workers in Georgia whom he was found guilty of defaming.

Giuliani, along with a handful of other speakers, also implied that Democrats are responsible for the two assassination attempts on Trump.

“I’m not gonna do conspiracy,” Giuliani said, “but it’s funny that they tried to do everything else, and now they’re trying to kill him.”

The accusation was a theme throughout the daylong event. Speaker after speaker implied or outright blamed Democrats for the two attempts on Trump’s life, never mentioning the perpetrators. The gunman in the first attempt was killed by law enforcement, and the second, who never fired at Trump, has been charged in Florida; neither has been found to have ties to Democrats.

Trump focused some of his comments on New York City, referencing his childhood and adding that he felt sympathy for the city’s indicted Mayor Eric Adams.

The rally ended, not with Trump’s signature closer “YMCA” by the Village People, but with a live rendition of “New York, New York” by Christopher Macchio.

A view from Metzler's daughter's bedroom in July 2024. (Photos by Aubrey Metzler)

Editor’s note: Since this investigation was published Oct. 24 in Rolling Stone ?the Army has offered to move both of the Fort Campbell families into new homes. The story is republished from POGO, The Project On Government Oversight.

On the weekends, Aubrey Metzler lets out her frustration with military housing by screaming at strangers in the haunted house where she works, playing the part of “lunatic.” The 23-year-old mother of two has good reason to feel a little unhinged.?

Metzler says her whole family has been sick ever since they moved into privatized military housing last spring on Fort Campbell, an Army base straddling the edge of Kentucky and Tennessee. Her 17-month-old son is so congested that he has trouble breathing. Her 2-year-old daughter often complains of headaches and stomach pain, and both kids can’t use the tub in the upstairs bathroom without breaking out in hives. Her husband, an Army private first class, has recently been hospitalized for cluster migraines. Metzler herself throws up “every single day,” and describes the family’s housing challenges in a gravelly voice that’s punctuated by coughs and sniffles. On top of all that, the stress over housing has taken a toll on Aubrey and her husband’s mental health, she says, comparing her time working at the haunted house to “therapy.”

Metzler thinks the cause of her family’s health problems is mold, but she says it’s been an uphill battle getting taken seriously. Military family housing at Fort Campbell is run by Campbell Crossing LLC, a development of the global real estate conglomerate Lendlease.?

“Every time they tell me there’s no mold, I find mold. Every time without fail,” Metzler says. A spokesperson from Lendlease said the company complies with Army guidance, and emphasized that the safety of military families is the company’s top priority.

Mold is among the most common — and most harmful — military housing issues around the country, according to advocates from organizations that have worked with thousands of families in situations like Metzler’s. But a gap in federal mold standards has been exploited by the military and housing companies to avoid testing and competent mold remediation, according to military housing advocates, attorneys, and experts interviewed by the Project On Government Oversight (POGO).?

Little recourse against private landlords ?

Newly obtained internal documents reveal just how bad the problem is, and the military’s efforts to contain it both within homes and in the court of public opinion. “Can we reframe the ‘problem’ as just a part of life?” reads a presentation slide from an Army counter-mold workshop held in early 2023. The workshop detailed a multi-faceted plan termed “OPERATION COUNTER-MOLD,” for improving conditions — and public sentiment — on mold issues in the nation’s largest military branch.?

But mold woes are not unique to the Army, nor are they limited to specific housing companies.?

Nearly all of military family housing has been privatized, run by companies that have been called “slumlords” amid a series of recent scandals around deplorable conditions, fraud, and a wave of lawsuits by service members demanding accountability.?

Not to be confused with barracks — which are comparable to dorms and typically run by the Department of Defense (DOD) — privatized military family housing tends to be single-family homes. Approximately 700,000 service members and their families live in these homes, run by 14 companies in the U.S. across 78 developments. Several housing companies have been implicated in fraud schemes in recent years, including one that pled guilty in 2021 to defrauding the U.S. military of millions through falsifying home maintenance records, and another that paid a $500,000 settlement with no admission of guilt in a similar federal fraud case in 2022.?

While the military knows it’s a big problem when property managers fail to address mold, the lack of standards may obscure both the true extent of the damage and the dire impacts it wreaks for military families. Standards for mold could apply to prevention, identification (which could entail testing), or remediation (efforts to remove existing mold).

Plus, the fundamental nature of privatized military housing makes these situations harder for military families to escape. “They end up being trapped,” said Ryan Reed, a Texas-based attorney who specializes in military housing.

Service members typically have to move every couple of years, often into unfamiliar communities where they may not have any support structure outside of the military. This frequency of moving can make it hard for military spouses to have steady employment to provide supplemental income. In most cases, military families have the choice of living on or off base, though experts and advocates have cautioned that in some competitive housing markets, living off base may not be a real option: It can be cost prohibitive on a military salary, or have insufficient options for schools or child care.

When service members live in military housing, their rent is automatically deducted from their salary and sent to the housing company. Unlike in civilian housing, families in privatized military housing don’t have the ability to withhold rent when they have a problem in their home that their landlord needs to address, unless they enter into what is known as a “formal dispute process,” a congressional oversight fix that has a host of problems all its own.?

Aubrey Metzler says they can’t afford to live off base, nor can they afford the cost of child care. “We’re barely making it,” she said. “We are constantly stressed about the kids being in a house that is making them sick, and then feeling bad because we cannot afford to live anywhere else.”

$10.3 million settlement is rare, problem is not

Jason and Sarah Kiernan’s 2-month-old son was emergency airlifted to the Dell Children’s Medical Center in April 2019, struggling to breathe. Days after returning home to Fort Cavazos, another son stumbled through a damp wall, revealing a hidden danger: The home was filled with toxic mold.

Now 5 years old, their youngest son will likely need lifelong care because of a range of conditions connected to oxygen deprivation during infancy — conditions that the Kiernans linked to mold exposure in their lawsuit against the company. After a long legal battle, the Kiernans recently won an unprecedented $10.3 million settlement with an arbitration panel finding that the housing company had misled the family about mold in the home.?

The housing company in the Kiernans’ case was Lendlease, the same private business that oversees housing at Fort Campbell where Metzler lives. Lendlease announced that it was planning to sell off its U.S. military housing portfolio just days before the announcement of the Kiernans’ settlement was made public.

While the Kiernans’ legal victory was rare, their problem is less so.

Mold is the “number one” housing issue that military families face, according to Jean Coffman. She would know — she’s the executive director and board chair of the Safe Military Housing Initiative, an advocacy group that works with military families around the country. Coffman said mold tops the list, both in terms of sheer numbers and the potential for devastating harm to the families through health and economic impacts. Reed said roughly 90% of his military housing cases involve mold.?

Mold was also number one when it came to tenant complaints in both Marine Corps and Navy housing in fiscal year 2019, according to a DOD report to Congress that was obtained by POGO through a Freedom of Information Act request. Mold encompassed 61% of Marine Corps complaints and 29% of Navy complaints in the report, which did not include similar data for the other military branches. More recently, DOD Secretary Lloyd Austin revealed in a letter to Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) that in 2023 there were at least 4,588 reports of mold in Air and Space Forces privatized housing.?

There have been more than 20,000 mold-related work orders in Army buildings since October 2022, with more than 1,000 work orders currently open, according to a spokesperson from U.S. Army Installation Management Command. That number encompasses military family housing, barracks, and other Army facilities. Although the spokesperson confirmed that the Army has far more detailed data on mold-related work orders and maintenance costs, including for military family housing specifically, they declined to provide additional data or to provide a narrower range than “more than 20,000.” The DOD and other military branches have not responded to our requests for interviews and mold-related data.

The full health impacts of this problem are unknown, in part because the Pentagon isn’t tracking whether housing conditions are making military families sick, according to a 2022 report by the DOD Office of the Inspector General.

Medical evidence links mycotoxins (the toxins produced by some molds) to a range of health conditions, including respiratory issues, flu-like symptoms, birth defects, immunosuppression, and cancer. Studies have also found a connection between mold and a number of mental health issues, including depression, anxiety, and “brain fog.” Infants and young children are even more susceptible to mold, with increased risk of asthma.

“There are growing numbers of us who are really worried of what happens when these children are exposed early on,” says Dr. Pejman Katiraei, a pediatrician who specializes in mold exposure.

Hiding behind the lack of standards?

Dallas Vann-Jones shares a wall with Aubrey Metzler in their duplex at Fort Campbell and can commiserate with her neighbor’s housing issues. Vann-Jones’s whole family is sick too (she has a 3-year-old son and a 7-year-old daughter), and she says they have had a hard time getting the housing company to even acknowledge whether mold exists in the house, let alone help with getting rid of it.?

“They just gaslight you,” Vann-Jones said, explaining how she has voiced concerns about mold in the house since January 2024 and was repeatedly told by housing company staff that there was no mold. “I literally sat on my couch and I bawled, ‘You are telling me there is no mold here, but my body is telling me otherwise, my children’s bodies are telling me otherwise,’” she said.

Both Metzler and her neighbor say that they have been repeatedly denied requests for mold testing in their homes which are in Pierce Village, a neighborhood in the Kentucky side of the base.

Housing companies and military branches often use the lack of a federal mold standard by the Environmental Protection Agency to justify refusing to test for mold in military homes, according to Coffman. In the Kiernans’ case, court filings indicate that positive test results for mold were the turning point when the family was relocated from the house.?

“The reason we have successes for getting families displaced and for mandating certain protocols is because we’re holding the card that says, ‘Here are the tests,’” Coffman said.

Official documents by the Army, Navy and Marine Corps Public Health Center, and Air Force caution against the use of mold testing, pointing to a lack of federal mold standards. But even though there isn’t a federally established threshold for safe levels of mold, additional documentation by the EPA and some military branches do suggest situations in which testing should be conducted, such as when there are medical concerns linked to exposure — a nuance that may get lost in communications with military families.

“Many, many times our families push for mold testing,” said Heather Hall, founder and chief executive officer of the Military Housing Coalition, a military housing advocacy group. “That’s always thrown out as a no.”?

It is not Army policy to refuse to test, according to an Army spokesperson. The spokesperson said that the leadership of Army installations have trained and certified mold inspectors, and that they follow the Army Public Health Center’s guidance.?

“We are very, very focused on providing that safe, affordable housing for those soldiers and family members, and our command takes this extremely seriously,” the Army spokesperson said.

The Army’s guidance isn’t as thorough as the most widely used industry standard in the U.S., according to Michael Rubino, an air quality expert and the co-founder of the Change the Air Foundation, a national air quality advocacy organization that is pushing for improved federal mold policies.?

Rubino has extensively reviewed the Army’s mold guide as an expert witness in a legal case, and he cautioned that in that housing case, the management company had failed to follow important elements of the Army’s guidance. “It’s equally as important to ensure the staff in charge of property management are educated and trained properly on the standards and ensure that the standards are being adhered to,” he said. Rubino’s organization points to the need for improved standards not only when identifying the problem, but also through requiring that remediation be conducted by accredited professionals.?

The lack of a mold standard is a widely used defense tactic for military housing companies in lawsuits brought by families, according to Reed, with some housing companies even citing language from the military to discredit the use of tests.

“I can go and do a two hour course and now be a mold inspector,” said Katiraei. This is a problem in military housing, advocates say, which can result in incompetence by contractors hired to deal with mold.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Army Installation Management Command said that their mold mitigation specialists receive two hours of training, but emphasized that approximately 80% of these individuals have also received an OSHA Mold Inspection Certification. The spokesperson said there are approximately 280 mold mitigation specialists for the Army in total, across family housing, barracks, and all Army facilities — Army family housing alone encompasses roughly 87,000 housing units worldwide. The spokesperson said they have the goal to have at least four OSHA certified specialists on each Army installation.

“The techs are not properly trained to identify mold,” Hall argues. “They come in, they misspeak. They will say, ‘mold is everywhere.’”

While a handful of states do have mold standards codified in law, whether they apply on military bases within those states is another question, because of the federal enclave doctrine, a legal defense used to exempt military housing from the protections of some present-day state and local laws.

The mold ‘communication playbook’

“Viewing mold as a normal part of life will decrease anxiety and increase trust,” reads one slide. Another claims, “mold is ubiquitous, its [sic] everywhere.” Yet another slide simply states, “MOLD IS MOLD,” while specifying that the Army’s “Mitigation Working Group” decided not to define what counts as “hazardous mold” because all “visible” mold should be mitigated. Coffman says she hears messaging like this all the time when working with military families, and not just from the Army, but across the military branches.?

That framing is “just ignorance,” according to Joseph Reiss, an expert in mold remediation. Reiss has been working with Coffman’s organization on a pilot project intended to model how military and housing companies should respond to mold, and pushing for Congress to implement federal mold standards. So far, Reiss has conducted mold sampling at 22 military homes. Not all molds hold the same health risks for families, which is why he says testing is so useful. “The goal here is, test: Don’t guess,” he said.

Coffman singled out one military housing company that’s holding itself to a higher standard: Corvias, which recently announced it was seeking certification by the International WELL Building Institute, an organization that sets standards for commercial and residential environments — including for mold.

Lawmakers are aware of the issue and taking some strides to address it, but Coffman says more strenuous response is needed. If passed, a proposed amendment to the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act would require a study on the health effects of mold in military housing and new mold standards. Senators Raphael Warnock (D-GA) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) also recently introduced legislation to improve DOD transparency in reporting on military housing conditions.?

A February 2024 DOD memo identified plans for adopting “livability standards” that could apply to family housing, including those for indoor air quality. But that same memo touts the “higher quality” of privatized military family housing in terms of tenant satisfaction, and suggests the Pentagon may move to privatize barracks as well.

For now, Aubrey Metzler is still stuck in housing where her family feels unsafe. She says the mold the housing company treated in the bathroom this summer has come back, and she recently discovered mold in her dishwasher. She has also noticed mold growing quickly on fabric items in the home. A couple weeks ago, she said the housing company told her they were going to conduct some tests after all, but they still haven’t indicated when that will happen. In the meantime, it’s stressful to stay in a home that she worries is making her children sick.?

“I cry a lot, because my daughter constantly tells me she doesn’t want to be here,” Metzler said. “She doesn’t feel good here, and I can’t do anything about it.”

In January 2023, more than 100 participants gathered at Army Installation Management Command headquarters for a “counter-mold” workshop, focused on educating Army “stakeholders” about mold issues in the nation’s largest military branch. The workshop covered strategies and practices for mold identification, prevention, and mitigation. It also included ample guidance for how Army officials should be talking about mold with the public, referencing a 2023 “Counter-Mold Communication Playbook,” campaign talking points, and social media campaigns.

An Army spokesperson emphasized that education of military families is a critical piece of their work countering mold, whether it be through face-to-face interactions or social media, “because obviously we hope we can stop any mold issues before they start.”

The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) is a nonpartisan independent watchdog that investigates and exposes waste, corruption, abuse of power, and when the government fails to serve the public or silences those who report wrongdoing. ?POGO says it champions reforms to achieve a more effective, ethical and accountable federal government that safeguards constitutional principles.?

Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton, third from left, with Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Gov. Bill Lee and Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, at the November 2023 rollout of Lee’s universal school voucher program. (Photoby John Partipilo for the Tennessee Lookout)

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters

A new universal school voucher proposal will be the first bill filed for Tennessee’s upcoming legislative session, signaling that Gov. Bill Lee intends to make the plan his No. 1 education priority for a second straight year.

Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson said this week that he’ll file his chamber’s legislation on the morning of Nov. 6, the day after Election Day. He expects House Majority Leader William Lamberth will do the same.

The big question is whether House and Senate Republican leaders will be able to agree on the details in 2025. The 114th Tennessee General Assembly convenes on Jan. 14 as Lee begins his last two years in office.

During the 2024 session, the governor’s Education Freedom Scholarship proposal stalled in finance committees over disagreements about testing and funding, despite a GOP supermajority, and even as universal voucher programs sprang up in several other states.

Sponsors in the Tennessee House, where voucher programs have had a harder time getting support from rural Republicans and urban Democrats, attempted to woo votes with an omnibus-style bill that included benefits for public schools, too. But Senate Republican leaders balked at the scope and cost of the House version.

Johnson recently gave a voucher update to school board members in Williamson County, which he represents, on the development of new legislation.

Similar to last year’s proposal, the new bill would provide about $7,000 in taxpayer funds to each of up to 20,000 students to attend a private school beginning next fall, with half of the slots going to students who are considered economically disadvantaged. By 2026, all of Tennessee’s K-12 students, regardless of family income, would be eligible for vouchers, though the number of recipients would depend on how much money is budgeted for the program.

“The bill is not finalized, but we’re all working together with the governor’s office to come up with a bill we all can support,” Johnson told Chalkbeat after the presentation.

Testing accountability is among chief issues to settle

Johnson said the Senate’s 2025 bill will again include some type of testing requirement for voucher recipients — either state assessments or state-approved national tests — to gauge whether the program is improving academic outcomes.

However, the Senate bill will eliminate a previous provision that might have allowed public school students to enroll in any district, even if they’re not zoned for it. That policy proposal had been included at the insistence of Senate Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg, a Bristol Republican who lost his reelection bid in the August primary.

Lamberth, the House leader, did not respond this week to multiple requests for comment about his chamber’s plan, which in 2024 had no testing requirement for voucher recipients. Instead, the House version sought to dramatically reduce testing and accountability for public school students, including replacing high school end-of-course assessments with ACT college entrance exams.

The House bill also included numerous financial incentives to try to garner support from public school advocates. One idea was to increase the state’s contribution to pay for public school teachers’ medical insurance by redirecting $125 million the governor had earmarked for teacher salary increases.

Johnson told school board members the governor is planning a “substantial” increase for public education funding in 2025 but didn’t specify how much or for what.

“I think we’re going to have some things in there that will be great for all public education,” he said when asked later about including costly incentives such as teacher medical insurance funding. “Whether it’s in that (voucher) bill or if it’s in a separate bill is a great question. We will see. I don’t know the answer.”

Williamson County school board rescinds earlier anti-voucher resolution

Johnson told board members in his home district that he expects “nominal” impact to Williamson County’s two suburban school systems south of Nashville, if the bill passes the legislature in 2025. Most enrollees, he said, would be in urban areas that have more low-performing schools and private school options.

Later Monday, Williamson County’s board, including four newly elected members whose campaigns were supported by a conservative out-of-state political action committee, voted 10-2 to rescind a resolution passed by the previous board opposing Lee’s Education Freedom Scholarship Act.

The governor is from Williamson County and graduated from a public high school there in 1977. So it was significant when his local board voted in March to join more than 50 other school boards across Tennessee on record against his signature education proposal.

But Dennis Diggers, a new board member, argued that it was appropriate to revisit the issue given the recent election, and proposed rescinding the resolution.

“Four of the six candidates who won their election ran publicly for more than six months on this issue, so it was out there,” Diggers said. “I am not going to deny the parents in Williamson County the chance to help their kids.”

Meanwhile, a Tennessee policy organization that supports vouchers released a new poll showing 58% of the state’s voters are more inclined to support a candidate who supports letting parents collect public funding to choose where their child is educated, including public, private, charter, or home schools. The Beacon Center poll did not use the word “vouchers” in its question to voters, which tends to poll worse than language about “school choice.”

Universal vouchers would mark a major expansion of vouchers in Tennessee, where lawmakers voted in 2019 to create education savings account options for students in Memphis and Nashville. That targeted program, which has since expanded to the Chattanooga area, has 3,550 enrollees in its third year, still below the 5,000-student cap, according to data provided by the state education department.

A spokeswoman for the governor said his administration continues to work with both legislative chambers on a “unified” universal voucher bill to kick off discussions for the 2025 session. She also noted that $144 million remains in this year’s state budget for the program, even though lawmakers didn’t approve the bill.

“We remain grateful for the General Assembly’s continued commitment to deliver Education Freedom Scholarships to Tennessee families by keeping funding for last year’s proposal in the budget,” said Elizabeth Johnson, the governor’s press secretary.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at [email protected]. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore and his wife Tipper wave to supporters after Gore''s concession speech Dec.13, 2000 in Washington D.C. Gore conceded after the U.S. Supreme Court halted Florida's recount of votes, giving the state's electoral votes to George W. Bush, who won 271 electoral votes, one more than needed. Gore won the popular vote by less than 1%. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Newsmakers)

On election night, a responsible campaign machine has prepared two speeches: the victory speech and the concession speech. When the polls close and the votes are tallied, the hope is your candidate gives the victory speech.

For winners, election night is exhilarating. In the winning venue, buffet tables overflowing with food and drinks satiate the supporters waiting for the “victory speech” from their candidate. Attendees keep busy by noshing, congratulating others, or even taking credit for the win (whether they had anything to do with it or not). The political atmosphere is full of fanfare, and party-goers are filled with a sense of relief that they are not in the room with the loser.

In the losing camp, the light slowly starts to die in the eyes of those watching the returns as they grapple with the reality that their candidate is going to have to give that other speech. The fair-weather fans and supporters sheepishly mill out of the venue, hoping to avoid having to utter the obligatory “you ran a good campaign” to anyone in authority. The food goes uneaten. The champagne remains unopened. A cloud of gloom fills the air, and everyone wants to be anywhere but there. In this fog of defeat, there is one thing left to do: concede.

The losing candidate takes the stage, pushing down a mix of emotions ranging from disbelief to disappointment. In a daze, the candidate reads the words prepared by staffers (who had hoped they would not have to pull out the speech from the unmarked folder they had been carrying all night.) In some cases, the candidate has not even seen the speech because pantomiming political loss before defeat is something few wish to take on.

However, when the time comes, concession is a duty that political candidates should be ready to take on.

Someone has to lose. That’s just the way it is. The most responsible and patriotic course of action a politician can take after losing is to admit defeat, wish their opponent well, and gracefully step aside. The concession speech is the best way to do this. The speech provides closure for disappointed supporters, and also signals to the entire electorate that our system of democracy has prevailed in expressing the will of the people. Concession is the campaign’s coda. As early as the morning after a concession speech, voters begin to move on. Within weeks, the name of the loser fades from memory, and the wheels of democracy keep turning. This is just how it should be.

Unfortunately, we are now seeing an increasing number of political actors and supporters who refuse to lose. Post-election, these candidates clog America’s system with recount requests, court challenges, and specious claims about rigged machines, stuffed ballot boxes, and dead people voting. Even when there is no proof to substantiate their claims, these political losers cry “rigged” and “stolen.” This unpatriotic display is dangerous. When losers refuse to concede and subsequently cast doubt on the political process, it breeds distrust, depresses voting in future elections, weakens our institutions, and, in some cases, leads to political violence.

Across the nation, election officials have been stalked, threatened, and harassed by citizens who were misled by claims of fraud or election meddling in recent years. Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams appears to be working to tamp down election disinformation. On his website, there is a tab called “rumor control.” One click takes you to a page which addresses concerns about election machine security, vote certification and the like.

Adams, a Republican, continues to prove himself an outspoken opponent of election deniers and conspiracy theorists in the commonwealth. Meanwhile, just days before the Nov.5 election, local and federal officials in Washington, D.C., are calling in thousands more police to prepare for the possibility of the sort of election violence we witnessed in 2021.

On Jan. 6, 2021, an angry mob, fueled by lies about election fraud, attacked the U.S. Capitol, assaulted police and terrorized members of Congress who were in the building to certify the 2020 election results. The nation watched live as police were bludgeoned by flagpoles, lawmakers ran for their lives, and our fellow Americans stormed the halls of power to defend a lie told by those who refused to lose.

I find myself thinking more frequently about Jan. 6 as the 2024 election approaches. I often reflect on the destruction and loss that marked that day, and the pain that lingered in its aftermath. I consider the long-term impact on our democracy and wonder if others share my concerns about the potential for political violence. Yet, the question that stays with me the most is this:?Could it all have been prevented by a concession speech?

Besides the main office in Louisville, the FBI has satellite offices or “resident agencies” in eight Kentucky cities. (Getty Images)

Federal law enforcement in 10 Eastern Kentucky counties is now being conducted by FBI special agents from nearby areas while the agency tries to fill vacancies in its Pikeville office.

“The Pikeville territory is currently being covered by FBI special agents from the surrounding areas while we await current vacancies to be filled,” said Katie Anderson, spokeswoman for the state’s main FBI office in Louisville.

She added: “FBI Louisville is fully committed to remaining operational in Pikeville and continue to work with our federal, state, and local law enforcement partners in the area to drive investigations forward.”

Besides the main office in Louisville, the FBI has satellite offices or “resident agencies” in eight Kentucky cities.

The Pikeville office covers Floyd, Greenup, Johnson, Knott, Lawrence, Letcher, Magoffin, Martin, Perr, and Pike counties.

The FBI would not comment on its personnel in ikeville but the Kentucky Lantern has learned that two agents who had staffed the office ?have left it. One retired and the other was transferred to another state.

“It is FBI policy not to comment on personnel matters,” said Anderson. “At the guidance and direction of our office of general counsel, the Privacy Act prohibits us from commenting on or confirming employment, unless it’s a senior executive service employee or there is some other circumstance that rises to the level of an exception to the Privacy Act.”

It is not known how long it will take to staff the Pikeville office.

The FBI investigates a wide range of criminal activity, including terrorism, cybercrime, public corruption, civil rights violations, organized crime, white-collar crime such as health care fraud and public corruption and violent crime.

The FBI’s investigative authority is the broadest of all federal law enforcement agencies. The FBI works closely with other federal, state, local, and international law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

Within the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI is responsible to the U.S. attorney general, and reports its findings to U.S. attorneys across the country.? Its intelligence activities are overseen by the director of National Intelligence.

Besides Pikeville, the other FBI offices in Kentucky and the counties they cover are:

• Main Field Office: Bullitt, Hardin, Jefferson, LaRue, Marion, Meade, Nelson, Oldham, Shelby, Spencer, Washington.
• ?Bowling Green: Adair, Allen, Barren, Butler, Casey, Clinton, Cumberland, Edmonson, Green, Hart, Logan, Metcalfe, Monroe, Russell, Simpson, Taylor, Warren.
• Covington: Boone, Boyd, Bracken, Campbell, Carroll, Carter, Fleming, Gallatin, Grant, Greenup, Henry, Kenton, Lewis, Mason, Owen, Pendleton, Robertso,Trimble.
• Hopkinsville: Caldwell, Christian, Crittenden, Hopkins, Lyon, Muhlenburg, Todd, Trigg.?
• Lexington: Anderson, Bath, Bourbon, Boyle, Clark, Elliott, Estill, Fayette, Franklin, Garrard, Harrison, Jessamine, Lee, Lincoln, Madison, Menifee, Mercer, Montgomery, Morgan, Nicholas, Powell, Rowan, Scott, Wolfe, Woodford.
• London: Bell, Breathitt, Casey, Clay, Harlan, Jackson, Knox, Laurel, Leslie, McCreary, Owsley, Pulaski, Rockcastle, Wayne, Whitley.
• Owensboro: Breckinridge, Davies, Grayson, Hancock, Henderson, McLean, Ohio, Union, Webster.
• Paducah: Ballard, Calloway, Carlisle, Fulton, Graves, Hickman, Livingston, Marshall, McCracken.

Voters make selections at their voting booths inside an early voting site on Oct. 17, 2024 in Hendersonville, North Carolina. (Photo by Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — As an exceedingly bitter, tight and dark campaign for the presidency moves into its last moments, apprehensive election officials and experts warn Election Day is only the first step.

The closing of the polls and end of mail-in voting kick off a nearly three-month process before the next president of the United States is sworn in on Inauguration Day in January. New guardrails were enacted by Congress in 2022 to more fully protect the presidential transition, following the Jan. 6, 2021 mob attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters and a failed scheme to install fake electors.

But even before that shift to a new chief executive begins, a presidential victor is unlikely to be announced election night or even the following day.

It’s a result that will possibly take days to determine, given tight margins expected in seven swing states. Officials needed four days to count all the votes to determine President Joe Biden the victor of the 2020 presidential election.

In states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the law does not allow that process to begin for millions of mail-in ballots until Election Day. Other states allow pre-processing of ballots.

Trey Grayson, Kentucky’s former Republican secretary of state, said ballot authentication could be on different timelines across the country after voting ends on Election Day.

“We have 50 states, plus D.C., that pretty much all do it differently,” Grayson, who served as president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, told reporters Friday on a call of bipartisan former state election officials who are working to explain the process to the public.

It could mean “in a very close election that we don’t know on election night who the president is or who controls the House or the Senate, but we should feel confident over the next couple of days, as we work through that, that we’re going to get there,” he said.

Lawsuits and potential recounts?

Those delays, which former President Donald Trump seized on to spread the baseless lie that the election was stolen from him, are expected again in November, especially as all eyes will be on the battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Additionally, there already are hundreds of pre-election lawsuits, mainly filed by Republicans, ranging from election integrity challenges to accusations of noncitizens allowed to vote in federal elections — something that rarely happens and is already illegal. The legal challenges could further spark delays.

“We will not have a winner on election night most likely and so we need to be able to prepare the public for this,” said Virginia Kase Solomón, the president and CEO of the democracy watchdog group Common Cause, during a Tuesday briefing.

She added that her organization will focus on combating misinformation and disinformation on election night and beyond.

“There is the potential that somebody could claim the win before … all of the votes have been counted,” she said.

In the early morning hours after Election Day in 2020, before results from key states were determined, Trump falsely claimed he won in an address at the White House.??

On top of that, experts say this year could see election denial erupting in countless courtrooms and meeting rooms in localities and the states, as well as across social media, if doubts are sown about the results.

Recounts could also delay an official election result, and the laws vary from state to state.

For example, in Pennsylvania, if a candidate demands a recount, three voters from each of the over 9,000 precincts have to petition for a recount.

“We’ve never seen that happen actually in Pennsylvania,” Kathy Boockvar, the commonwealth’s former Democratic secretary of state, said on Friday’s call with reporters.

An automatic statewide recount is triggered in Pennsylvania if there’s a difference of a half percent of all votes cast for the winner and loser. The final recount results, by law, are due to the secretary of state by Nov. 26, and results would be announced on Nov. 27, Boockvar said.

The margin in Pennsylvania’s 2020 results for the presidential election was between 1.1% and 1.2%, not enough to trigger the automatic recount, Boockvar said.

Taking out the shrubs

State election officials have been preparing for the past year to train poll workers to not only run the voting booths but for possible violence — a precaution put in place after the 2020 election — and have beefed up security around polling locations.

On Friday, Trump posted on X that the election “will be under the closest professional scrutiny and, WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again.”

A reporter asked Grayson about the possibility of aggression from poll watchers. The Republican National Committee announced in April a “historic move to safeguard the integrity of the electoral process,” establishing party-led trainings for poll watchers.

Poll watchers are not a new concept, and Grayson said clear “safeguards” are in place.

“If you’re intimidating, you’re gone. There’s clear laws in every state on that,” he said.

Celestine Jeffreys, the city clerk in Green Bay, Wisconsin, said during a Wednesday roundtable with election workers that the city has an Election Day protocol in place that includes everything from blocking off streets to City Hall to getting rid of shrubbery.

“We have actually removed bushes in front of City Hall” to ensure no one can be concealed behind them, she said.?In the second assassination attempt on Trump earlier this year, a gunman hid in bushes outside Trump’s private golf course.

New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver said during a Tuesday briefing she is focused on the physical safety of election officials.

During the event with the National Association of Secretaries of State, she said such safety is not only a priority during voting but when officials move to certify the state’s election results in December.

“We have all been spending a lot more time on physical security and making sure that our election officials at all levels are more physically secure this year,” Toulouse Oliver said. “And of course, you know when our electors meet in our states, you know, ensuring for the physical security of that process and those individuals as well.”

On Dec. 17, each state’s electors will meet to vote for the president and vice president. Congress will vote to certify the results on Jan. 6.

“We are thinking a lot more about this in 2024 than we did in 2020, but I think that each one of us… have a playbook in mind for how to handle any unanticipated eventualities in the certification process,” she said.

It’s a security precaution that the U.S. Secret Service is also taking.

For the first time, Congress’ certification of the Electoral College on Jan. 6 has been designated a National Special Security Event, something that is usually reserved for Inauguration Day on Jan. 20.

The 2020 experience

In 2020, The Associated Press did not call the presidential election for Biden until 11:26 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 7 — roughly three-and-a-half days after polls closed. The AP, as well as other media organizations, project election winners after local officials make initial tabulations public.

Those tallies are then canvassed, audited and certified, according to each state’s legal timeline. Recounts may also extend the timeline before final certification.

The vote totals reported in Pennsylvania — a state that carried 20 Electoral College votes in 2020 — put Biden over the top for the 270 needed to win the presidency.

Trump refused to concede the race, and instead promised to take his fight to court.

For the next two months, Trump and his surrogates filed just over 60 lawsuits challenging the results in numerous states. Ultimately none of the judges found evidence of widespread voter fraud.

The next step was for Congress to count each state’s certified slate of electors, which by law, it must do on the Jan. 6 following a presidential election.

However, in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6, Trump and his private lawyers worked to replace legitimate slates of electors with fake ones, according to hundreds of pages of records compiled by a special congressional investigation, and by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Trump pressured then-Vice President Mike Pence to block ratification of the Electoral College’s vote at the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress, because the vice president’s role in the certification of electoral votes was not exactly clear in the Electoral Count Act of 1887.

Pence ultimately refused.

Thousands of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 following a “Stop the Steal” rally at The Ellipse park, south of the White House, where Trump told the crowd “We will never concede.”

The mob assaulted police officers, broke windows to climb inside and hurled violent threats aimed at elected officials, including the desire to “hang” Pence. More than 1,500 defendants have been charged by the Department of Justice.

Congress stopped its process of reviewing the state electors in the 2 p.m. Eastern hour as police ushered the lawmakers to safety. The joint session resumed at roughly 11:30 p.m., and Pence called the majority of electoral votes for Biden at nearly 4 a.m. on Jan. 7.

New law on presidential transition

To deter another Jan. 6 insurrection, Congress passed the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transitional Improvement Act of 2022 as part of a massive appropriations bill.

The Electoral Count Reform Act codifies into law that the vice president, who also serves as the president of the U.S. Senate, only ceremoniously reads aloud a roll call of the votes.

Most notably, the provision raises the threshold for lawmakers to make an objection to electors. Previously, only one U.S. House representative and one U.S. senator would need to make an objection to an elector or slate of electors.

But under the new law, it would take one-fifth of members to lodge an objection and under very specific standards — 87 House members and 20 senators.

The Electoral Count Reform Act also identifies that each state’s governor is the official responsible for submitting the state’s official document that identifies the state’s appointed electors, and says that Congress cannot accept that document from any official besides the governor, unless otherwise specified by the state’s law.

Trump and his allies tried to replace legitimate slates of electors in several states with fake electors who would cast ballots for Trump.

The Presidential Transitional Improvement Act provides candidates with funding and resources for transitional planning, even if a candidate has not conceded after the election.

There are already issues with the transition of power. The top Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, sent a Wednesday letter to Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, urging them to sign documents to ensure a peaceful transition of power.

“With fewer than three weeks left until an election in which the American people will select a new President of the United States, I urge you to put the public’s interest in maintaining a properly functioning government above any personal financial or political interests you may perceive in boycotting the official transition law and process,” Raskin wrote.

Denial expected at all levels of government

Experts warn the effort to delay certification of the vote is largely being fought at the local and state levels, and that several groups are gearing up to sow doubt in the election outcome.

Devin Burghart, president of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, said on a press call Wednesday that since 2020, “election denial has shifted away from the capital to county election commission meetings, courtrooms, cyber symposiums and countless conspiracies in preparation for a repeat this November.”

“This time, the baseless claim that undocumented immigrants are somehow swamping the polls has fueled the ‘big lie’ machine,” Burghart said.

Kim Wyman, the former Washington state secretary of state, said the noncitizen topic is not new.

“I’d like to level set and remind everyone that it’s been illegal at the federal level since 1996 and you know, when you think back on 2002 the?Help America Vote Act?basically required voters to provide ID when they register, which is usually a driver’s license or a Social Security number, and states are checking that data against the DMV database. And these protections are enormously successful,” said Wyman.

In two high-profile cases, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Republican-led efforts in Alabama and Virginia to purge voter rolls after alleging thousands of noncitizens were registered to vote. Both states were ordered to stop the programs and reinstate voters – though Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin promised Friday to appeal and even escalate to the Supreme Court.

In Georgia, the state’s Supreme Court delayed new rules until after this election that would have required three poll workers at every precinct to count ballots by hand once the polls closed — essentially delaying unofficial election results.

More than 165 electoral process lawsuits across 37 states have been filed by both parties since 2023 leading up to the 2024 presidential election, according to a survey by Bloomberg of pre-election cases. The journalists found that more than half the cases have been filed in swing states, and challenge almost every facet of the voting process, from absentee voting, to voter roll management, voter eligibility and vote certification.

Republican and conservative groups have filed roughly 55% of the lawsuits, mostly aimed at narrowing who can vote, and overall most of the cases were filed in August and September, according to the analysis.

Courts threw out dozens of lawsuits claiming voter fraud in 2020.

Mai Ratakonda, senior counsel at States United Democracy Center, said anti-democracy groups have used litigation “to legitimize their efforts to sow doubt in our election system.”

“We’ve unfortunately continued to see this trend of filing lawsuits to bolster and legitimize narratives that our elections are insecure and laying the groundwork to contest results later,” Ratakonda told reporters on a press call Wednesday hosted by the organization, whose stated mission is to protect nonpartisan election administration.

This report has been updated to reflect that former Washington state Secretary of State Kim Wyman made the comment that noncitizen voting has been illegal at the federal level since 1996.

Beyoncé takes part in a campaign rally focused on reproductive rights with the Democratic presidential candidate, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, at Shell Energy Stadium on Oct. 25, 2024 in Houston, Texas. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris appeared alongside superstar performer Beyoncé on Friday night to encourage voter turnout and reinforce the differences between the two parties on reproductive rights, with just days to go before voting ends.

The rally at Shell Energy Stadium in Houston, Texas, followed months of speculation about whether Beyoncé would support Vice President Harris publicly ahead of the Nov. 5 presidential election. The two-hour event featured other celebrities, including Willie Nelson and Jessica Alba, as well as women detailing being denied medical care for pregnancy complications in Texas after its abortion ban went into effect.

Beyoncé, who has won more than 30 Grammy Awards as well as hundreds of others throughout her career, said casting a vote is “one of the most valuable tools” that Americans have to decide the future of the country.

“We are at the precipice of an incredible shift, the brink of history,” Beyoncé said, adding that she wasn’t speaking at the rally as a celebrity or a politician.

“I’m here as a mother,” she said. “A mother who cares deeply about the world my children and all of our children live in. A world where we have the freedom to control our bodies.”

‘Horrific reality’

Harris, who is locked in an extremely close race with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, said abortion bans and restrictions implemented during the last two years have been “devastating.”

“We see the horrific reality that women and families face every single day,” Harris said. “The stories are vivid, they are difficult to hear, they are difficult to tell.”

Harris said there are also many stories that women and their families won’t discuss in public about challenges they’ve faced with access to medical care during pregnancy complications.

“An untold number of women and the people who love them, who are silently suffering — women who are being made to feel as though they did something wrong, as though they are criminals, as though they are alone,” Harris said. “And to those women. I say — and I think I speak on behalf of all of us — we see you and we are here with you.”

Harris said if voters give Trump another four years in the Oval Office, he will likely nominate more justices to the Supreme Court, which she argued would have a negative impact on the country.

“If he were reelected, he’d probably get to appoint one, if not two, members to the United States Supreme Court,” Harris said. “At which point Donald Trump will have packed the court with five out of nine justices … who will sit for lifetime appointments; shaping your lives and the lives of generations to come.”

Texas has one of the country’s most restrictive abortion laws, which has led to concerns about its OB-GYN workforce, how the state addresses maternal mortality and testimony before Congress about women having to leave the state to get care for pregnancy complications.

Texas is also where anti-abortion organizations decided to file a federal lawsuit in November 2022 challenging the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s 2000 approval of medication abortion.

The two-drug regimen, consisting of mifepristone and misoprostol, is currently approved for up to 10 weeks gestation and is used in about 63% of abortions nationwide, according to data from the Guttmacher Institute.

The case made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled earlier this year the organizations lacked standing to bring the lawsuit in the first place, but the justices didn’t address the merits of the anti-abortion groups’ arguments.

Speaking at ‘ground zero’

Harris told reporters on Friday before the rally began that Republican lawmakers in Texas have made the state “ground zero in this fundamental fight for the freedom of women to make decisions about their own body.”

Harris contended that access to reproductive rights, including abortion, is “not just a political debate” or “some theoretical concept.”

“Real harm has occurred in this country, real suffering has occurred,” Harris told reporters. “People die, and it is important to highlight this issue because this is among the most critical issues that the American people will address when they vote for who will be the next president of the United States.”

During Trump’s first term in office, he nominated three Supreme Court justices, who later joined with other conservatives to overturn the constitutional right to abortion established in the 1973 Roe v. Wade case.

The Supreme Court’s ruling two years ago sent “the authority to regulate abortion … to the people and their elected representatives.”

That has led to a hodgepodge of laws with 13 states banning abortion, six states restricting access between six and 12 weeks, five states setting a gestational limit between 15 and 22 weeks, 17 states restricting abortion access after viability and nine states not setting a gestational limit, according to KFF.

Polls find support for abortion access

Public support for abortion access has outpaced support for restricting access for decades, according to consistent polling from the Pew Research Center.

The most recent survey from May shows that about 63% of Americans want abortion to be legal in most or all cases, while 36% said they believe it should be illegal in most or all cases.

Additional surveying from Pew shows that 67% of Harris supporters believe abortion access is “very important — nearly double the share of Biden voters who said this four years ago, though somewhat lower than the share of midterm Democratic voters who said this in 2022 (74%).

“And about a third of Trump supporters (35%) now say abortion is very important to their vote — 11 points lower than in 2020.”

In addition to playing some role in the presidential election, voters in 10 states — Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York and South Dakota — will weigh in on abortion access directly through ballot questions.

Congress could supersede any protections or restrictions on abortion access established within states, if the House and Senate ever agree on legislation and a future president signs it into law.

Republicans are slightly favored to gain control of the Senate for the next two years following the election, while control of the House is considered a toss-up, as is the presidential race.

Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump attacked rival Vice President Kamala Harris over immigration policy in Austin, Texas, on Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. In this photo, Trump looks on during a campaign event on Dec. 19, 2023 in Waterloo, Iowa. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Former President Donald Trump in Austin, Texas, on Friday attacked Vice President Kamala Harris over her approach to immigration and border security, while echoing several false claims.

The respective GOP and Democratic presidential candidates spent one of the final days leading up to the election in the heavily red Lone Star State — not regarded as a battleground in the presidential race — at dueling campaign events.

Polling continues to depict the two in a deadlock nationally, as Nov. 5 rapidly approaches.

While Trump focused on the border and crime, Harris was slated to speak in Houston on Friday night underlining her support for reproductive rights — a key issue for Democrats — in a state with one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country.

“We’re here today in the great state of Texas … which, under Kamala Harris, has been turned into ground zero for the largest border invasion in the history of the world,” Trump said during a campaign stop at an airplane hangar.

Trump baselessly claimed that “over the past four years, this state has become Kamala’s staging ground to import her army of migrant gangs and illegal alien criminals into every state in America.”

The former president also knocked Harris’ actions surrounding border security, calling her approach “cruel,” “vile” and “absolutely heartless.”

He also again incorrectly dubbed Harris “border czar.” President Joe Biden tasked Harris with addressing the “root causes” of migration in Central America in 2021, but he never gave her the title of “border czar.” The U.S. Department of Homeland Security heads border security.

Trump also echoed his recent rhetoric, saying the U.S. is “like a garbage can for the rest of the world to dump the people that they don’t want.”

Speaking to reporters in Houston on Friday, Harris said this rhetoric is “just another example of how he really belittles our country.”

“The president of the United States should be someone who elevates discourse and talks about the best of who we are and invests in the best of who we are, not someone like Donald Trump, who’s constantly demeaning and belittling who the American people are,” Harris said.

Trump also reiterated his commitment, if reelected, to launching “the largest deportation program in American history” immediately upon taking the oath of office.

“We have to get all of these criminals, these murderers and drug dealers and everything — we’re getting them out, and we’ll put these vicious and bloodthirsty criminals in jail or kick them the hell out of our country, and we’ll get them out,” he said.

Vance in Michigan?

During a NewsNation town hall in Michigan on Thursday, Trump’s running mate, Ohio GOP Sen. J.D. Vance, fielded a series of questions on topics such as immigration, housing and abortion.

One of those questions came from Trump himself.

“How brilliant is Donald J. Trump?” the former president asked Vance over the phone.

Laughing, Vance replied: “Well, first of all, sir, this is supposed to be undecided voters — I would hope that I have your vote, of all people but … sir, of course, you’re very brilliant.”

The Ohio Republican proceeded to talk about his wife, Usha, and Trump speaking with each other.

Trump, who said he watched the CNN town hall with Harris the night prior, then asked Vance: “How brilliant is Kamala?”

“That’s a very tough one, sir,” Vance said. “I’m supposed to say something,” he added, hesitating.

Vance also defended the baseless claims he’s amplified in recent weeks regarding legal Haitian migrants eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio.

“Well, what I said then, and I’ll say now is, you’re hearing a lot of things from your constituents. They’re telling you things, and I think it’s important for me to listen to the people that are coming to me with their problems,” Vance said.

“Now, do I think that the media certainly got distracted on the housing crisis and the health crisis and the crisis in the public schools by focusing on the ‘eating the dogs and the cats’ things? Yeah, I do, and do I wish that I had been better in that moment? Maybe,” he said.

“But it’s also people in my community, people that I represent, are coming to me and saying, this thing is happening. What am I supposed to do? Hang up the phone and tell them they’re a liar because the media doesn’t want me to talk about it?”

The debunked claims surrounding legal Haitian migrants have prompted a series of bomb threats and closures in Springfield.

People cast their votes on the first day of early voting at East Point First Mallalieu United Methodist Church on Oct. 15, 2024 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Megan Varner/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Nearly 30 million Americans by Thursday had cast their ballots ahead of Election Day, with 13 million choosing to vote in person at early voting centers and another 17 million submitting mail-in ballots, according to data from the University of Florida’s election lab.

The total number of early votes is expected to increase significantly in the days leading up to Election Day on Nov. 5.

Voters will determine whether Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris or Republican candidate Donald Trump occupies the Oval Office for the next four years. On the national level, they’ll also decide which political party controls the U.S. House and U.S. Senate for the next two years.

The nonpartisan Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics say the presidential race is still very much up for grabs, rating the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as toss-ups.

Early voting is higher in several of those purple states than some of their counterparts, according to data from the University of Florida’s election lab.

Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia have each received at least 1.2 million early ballots, while California, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas have all received at least 2 million early votes.

The University of Florida data shows that among states that disclose party breakdowns, Democrats have cast nearly 42% of ballots while Republicans have submitted 35% and other voters have sent in about 23%.

U.S. House control up in the air

Sabato’s Crystal Ball projects that Republicans are at least slightly favored to win 212 House seats, with Democrats holding onto at least 209 seats in that chamber. Another 14 races are rated as toss-ups, meaning control of the chamber is still far from decided.

“Overall, our ratings show just 7 Republican-held Toss-ups and 7 Democratic-held Toss-ups, for 14 total,” Managing Editor Kyle Kondik and Associate Editor J. Miles Coleman wrote in the latest update, released Thursday morning.

“Splitting the Toss-ups down the middle would produce a 219-216 Republican House, so the ratings technically have the Republicans very narrowly ahead—but neither side is favored in the race for the House majority, even at this late stage,” they wrote.

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairwoman Suzan DelBene of Washington state told reporters Thursday the organization has several voter protection efforts underway to ensure Americans who want to vote have an opportunity to do so.

Those efforts won’t stop when the polls close on Election Day, but will continue as absentee ballots are counted, she said in a virtual meeting with the Regional Reporters Association.

“So this is obviously a priority for us, and some of these races are very, very close, so we want to make sure we’re there to help make sure ballots are counted across the country,” DelBene said.

Control of the House might not be announced on election night, or for several days afterward. It took more than a week after the 2022 midterm elections before The Associated Press called control for the GOP.

U.S. Senate tilts toward GOP

The Senate is leaning slightly toward Republican control, with GOP candidates on track to pick up seats in West Virginia and Montana.

Sabato’s has, however, moved Nebraska’s rating from likely Republican to leans Republican, “as the Republican cavalry has had to ride in to help” incumbent GOP Sen. Deb Fischer maintain her seat against independent challenger Dan Osborn.

“Unlike Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Rick Scott (R-FL), the only other two GOP incumbents in races that we rate as something other than Safe Republican, Fischer has, arguably, never had to run in a legitimately competitive statewide general election,” Kondik and Coleman wrote.

Early in-person voting as well as who is eligible for mail-in ballots is determined by each state, meaning when and where voters can cast early ballots varies considerably.

All states are required to host in-person voting on Election Day, scheduled for Nov. 5. More information about voting can be found here.

A prescribed burn will be conducted next week at Taylorsville Lake Wildlife Management Area. (Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources)

Portions of Taylorsville Lake Wildlife Management Area (WMA) in Spencer County will be closed to the public for two days between Oct. 28 and 31 to facilitate a prescribed fire project as part of ongoing hardwood forest improvements on the property, according to a release from the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources.

The department says prescribed burns will be conducted when weather conditions are optimal from both environmental and safety standpoints.

Burns are planned on a 1,600-acre section of the Briar Ridge unit of the WMA south of KY 3228 on the first of the two-day closure, followed by a second day for evaluation to ensure all fires are out. The WMA will not be accessible via KY 3228 if traveling west from KY 248 during this time. The shooting range will be closed on the day of the burn project as smoky conditions are possible, but will reopen the following day. Other public access to Taylorsville Lake and the remainder of the 9,417-acre WMA should not be affected.

Project managers will take into consideration wind, air temperature, relative humidity, soil moisture and other factors before determining when to conduct the burns. If favorable conditions do not occur, this project may be pushed to a later date.

Signs will be posted and gates closed at all access points to the project location and adjacent landowners are being notified of the planned burns. The prescribed fire areas will be monitored until all fire, embers and smoke are extinguished before reopening to the public.

The Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources will announce the work date through an update on its website (fw.ky.gov) and X (@kyfishwildlife).

E.W. Brown solar array at Kentucky Utilities Mercer County plant. (Photo courtesy of LG&E/KU)

Power-intensive data centers will drive growth in electricity demand in the near future, says the utility serving the most Kentuckians. It plans to meet that demand by continuing to replace coal-fired power with natural gas while potentially adding up to 1,000 megawatts of solar power by 2035.

Investor-owned Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities (LG&E and KU) outlined those steps and others in an integrated resource plan filed Oct. 18 before the Kentucky Public Service Commission (PSC), the state’s utility regulator. Kentucky utilities are required every three years to file plans for how they will meet demand at the “lowest possible cost,” although they are not bound to follow them.

The new plan anticipates adding no new coal-fired generation while building as many as four new natural gas-fired plants plus battery storage systems for solar energy — in addition to a natural gas plant already slated for construction.?

‘Panicked rush to gas’ could hike energy costs, report warns regulators

The PSC will consider the new plan as environmentalists in Kentucky push for a faster pivot to renewables and amid urgent calls from climate scientists to halt the burning of fossil fuels to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change.?

There’s also uncertainty over whether new Biden administration regulations that seek to curb nearly all heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions from power plants will withstand court challenges from utilities, coal advocates and Republican attorneys general including Kentucky’s Russell Coleman.?

Data center growth reflects nationwide boom

The utility’s plan says Kentucky is “well-positioned” to participate in the nationwide boom in data centers thanks to a lower risk of severe weather, available telecommunications infrastructure and water to cool equipment, as well as “favorable tax incentives.”?

Data centers are essentially computer hubs that power the internet, ranging from storing data on the “cloud” to processing credit card transactions and the surge of artificial intelligence services. They need a tremendous amount of electricity, sometimes on par with what an entire coal-fired power plant produces. The Lantern previously reported the parent company of LG&E and KU was in talks with data centers interested in locating to Kentucky, and Kentucky lawmakers passed tax breaks this year to incentivize data centers to locate in Jefferson County.?

Driving surge in demand for power, data centers eye Kentucky

“The Companies’ Economic Development team is working with a growing number of data center projects that vary in stages of development, but which mostly have very large power requirements,” the utility states in its planning documents.?

The utility currently needs about? 30,000 megawatts of electricity a year. Models forecast that could increase by 30% to 60% by the early 2030s.?

Data centers could increase the utility’s load by 1,050-1,750 megawatts, according to the utility’s modeling. For reference, its forecast peak load in the summer of 2024 was 6,115 megawatts.?

Seeking more natural gas and no new coal?

Burning coal generated 68% of Kentucky’s electricity in 2023, down from more than 90% a decade earlier, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Only two other states, West Virginia and Wyoming, were as reliant as Kentucky on coal for power generation, making Kentucky an outlier in a nation that has generally transitioned to lower-cost natural gas and renewable energy.?

LG&E and KU coal-fired power plants make up over 60% of the utility’s capacity during the summer. The utility anticipates moving away from coal-fired power in favor of new natural gas-fired combined cycle plants.?

Depending on future demand, the utility foresees building two or three new natural gas-fired combined cycle plants to be paired with several utility-scale battery storage systems between 2028 to 2035. The natural gas plants would generate about 1,935 megawatts of summertime load — energy needed to meet demand at a given time — by the early 2030s. ?That includes power from another natural gas-fired combined cycle plant the utility already is slated to construct by 2027 after receiving permission from the PSC.?

That new natural gas-fired plant was opposed last year by environmentalists as a costly investment that would lock in ratepayers to decades of fossil fuel instead of pivoting to renewables that don’t create greenhouse gas emissions. Similar opposition has met other utilities’ plans to build natural gas-fired plants including the Tennessee Valley Authority.

The Kentucky utility’s plans for investing in natural gas-fired plants conflict with a call last year by the leader of the United Nations for carbon-free electricity generation in developed nations by 2035 and a phase out of coal-fired power by 2030 in order to prevent the worst harms from climate change. The call was based on research from climate scientists including U.S. institutions such as NASA. LG&E and KU has previously pointed to goals set by its parent company to have net-zero emissions by 2050.?

Burning natural gas, which consists primarily of the potent greenhouse gas methane, for electricity is considered to release less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere compared to the burning of coal, but environmental advocates have raised concerns that methane leaks during production and transportation of natural gas are wiping out progress made by the United States on curbing greenhouse gas emissions by phasing out coal-fired power.?

LG&E and KU already has approval to retire one of four coal-fired units at its Mill Creek Generating Station in Jefferson County by the end of this year and another coal-fired unit at Mill Creek in 2027. The utility estimates that retiring the first Mill Creek unit will shave some pennies from ratepayers’ bills starting in March.

LG&E and KU projections call for retiring the other two units at Mill Creek and a single remaining coal-fired unit at E.W. Brown Generating Station in 2035.?

Utilities that opposed Kentucky’s new energy planning commission are now part of it

That would leave Ghent and Trimble County generating stations as its only operating coal-fired plants by 2035. According to the utility, both of those plants would need upgrades to meet existing or anticipated federal regulations on ozone-producing nitrogen oxide emissions and water pollution. LG&E and KU stated it isn’t considering building any new coal-fired power plants because of “the high cost and environmental risk.”

More solar expected, but not until 2028

LG&E and KU’s plans also include more investments in utility-scale solar, potentially adding 500-1,000 megawatts, though the soonest it expects it could add more solar is 2028. The utility is currently planning to build two 120-megawatt solar installations in Mercer and Marion counties; it already has a solar installation in Mercer County at its E.W. Brown Generating Station.

The utility said its agreements to purchase solar power from private companies don’t appear to be moving forward due to issues with getting solar connected to the power grid and cost increases, though adding hundreds of megawatts of new battery storage “could help pave the way for additional new renewable resources in the future.”?

Other utilities across the country are investing heavily in solar installations and battery storage systems, with the Energy Information Administration estimating 58% of all power-generating capacity planned to be installed in 2024 to be solar power. The International Energy Agency considers solar and wind power to be the cheapest form of electricity in most markets in the world.?

Solar power is considered “intermittent,” meaning it produces electricity only during a portion of the day — such as when the sun is shining. But renewable energy advocates have touted battery storage systems paired with solar installations as a way to make the renewable power “dispatchable” and available around the clock.? Solar installations can charge batteries during the day to be used at night.

But LG&E and KU argued that pairing solar with battery systems would be a costly replacement for a“dispatchable” around-the-clock energy source such as coal-fired power. Thousands of megawatts of solar and battery storage would be needed to replace Mill Creek’s 391 megawatts of coal-fired power, the utility’s analysis said.

Advocates and the former PSC chair have expressed concern utilities aren’t able to be held accountable to follow the plans they outline. The last time LG&E and KU presented an integrated resource plan to the PSC, it was chastised by the regulator for not presenting plans that were “actionable” for the future.

LG&E and KU in its latest IRP filing writes the documents are a “snapshot of an ongoing resource planning process” that is “constantly evolving.””

Skepticism about carbon capture, future of greenhouse gas regulations

Looming over LG&E and KU and other coal-reliant utilities are new regulations from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that require coal-fired power plants and new natural gas-fired power plants to curb 90% of their carbon dioxide emissions by 2032 if utilities plan to operate them past 2039.?

Challengers are arguing in court that the technology proposed to comply with the regulation isn’t yet commercially viable at a utility scale. Carbon capture and sequestration is a controversial technology that tries to capture carbon dioxide emissions from power plants to prevent release into the atmosphere. LG&E and KU is planning to install and test a carbon capture system on an existing natural gas-fired plant.?

LG&E and KU in its planning documents wrote that implementing carbon dioxide transport and storage “is not achievable” in the timeline set by the EPA. The utility also wrote that converting coal-fired power plants into burning natural gas is also “questionable” because of the time it would take to establish gas pipelines. Retiring coal-fired power plants by 2032 is an option for compliance, LG&E and KU stated, but “retirements require reliable replacement capacity.”?

“Replacing generation at the scale necessary for compliance is not reasonable” under the EPA’s timeline for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the utility wrote.

LG&E and KU’s integrated resource plan will likely come under scrutiny from a range of stakeholders during PSC review — the attorney general, renewable energy advocates, advocates for industrial and residential ratepayers and local governments in the utility’s territory covering Lexington, Louisville and parts of Eastern and Western Kentucky.

Abortion rights activists rally in protest against six-week abortion bill at the old Florida Historic Capitol on March 29, 2023. (Photo by Briana Michel/Florida Phoenix)

Dr. Cherise Felix says a recent patient yelled and swore at her before eventually hugging her, grateful she would no longer have to carry the planned-for baby that had died inside her.

Felix provides abortions at Planned Parenthood clinics in Florida, which on May 1 banned abortion at six weeks’ gestation. She was able to see this patient, who was about 17 weeks pregnant, because of the abortion law’s limited health exceptions. But before coming to the clinic, the miscarrying patient was turned away by another OB-GYN, something Felix said happens regularly since the ban.

“They’re having to walk around with these deceased pregnancies, and they were wanted pregnancies, but their physicians aren’t comfortable treating them because the laws are so precarious and they’re always changing,” Felix told States Newsroom.

She is among many doctors in Florida who say the six-week ban has disrupted reproductive health care and among more than 850 doctors who this week endorsed a citizen-led ballot initiative to restore abortion rights. If it receives 60% of the vote, Amendment 4 would legalize abortion until fetal viability, and after for fetal and maternal health issues.

But if it fails, advocates predict reproductive health access will further decline throughout the Southeast, which depended on Florida for access after Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. The solid wall of abortion bans in the South includes near-total bans in Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia; six-week bans in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina; and a 12-week ban in North Carolina.

“I’m hopeful that it passes — 60% is a lot to hope for, but I think the alternative is scarier,” Felix said. “If you allow government interference into your exam room, it’s not just going to stop with this one thing. … It starts creeping into those people who never thought they’d be at Planned Parenthood … but it starts to spread into other areas of health care.”

How reproductive access has already changed in Florida and beyond

OB-GYNs and hospitals remain confused and scared about Florida’s abortion ban, despite guidelines from the health department saying it does not preclude miscarriage management or the treatment of specific conditions.

On a recent press call organized by Floridians Protecting Freedom, which is leading the Yes on 4 campaign, Miami-based OB-GYN Dr. Chelsea Daniels said she recently saw a patient who was eight weeks pregnant and had four ultrasounds from four different doctors all showing her pregnancy was not growing, but they still wouldn’t perform the abortion.

“She needed an abortion because each passing day put her at increased risk of infection and bleeding,” said Daniels, who works for Planned Parenthood of South, East and North Florida. “I understand why these four other doctors turned her away. They were afraid. The exception criteria are so narrow that they can’t possibly address every single case. So if a doctor gets audited and the state challenges their judgment, they could be fined, lose their license, and sent to jail. This case was medically very clear, but legally murky.”

Felix came to work for the same affiliate as Daniels from Tennessee, which banned abortion in 2022. She told States Newsroom it’s been a full-circle career moment, having slowly watched the politicization of routine miscarriage procedures like dilation and curettage, a common method of clearing a patient’s uterus when the body has not expelled all the fetal tissue. She said that when she first became an OB-GYN and was working at a hospital, miscarriage management was provided in the hospital, then with ethics committee support, then referred out to high-risk specialists, and, in her recent experience, sequestered to abortion clinics.

“Miscarriage management is still management of abortion,” Felix said. “It’s just a spontaneous abortion. So that code gets submitted to insurance companies; it raises flags.”

Providers told States Newsroom they are also turning away many patients who are seeking to end their pregnancies after six weeks, which is before many people realize they are pregnant. Planned Parenthood and independent abortion clinics in Florida have developed systems to help coordinate patients with clinics in other states, which typically involves complex variables that lead patients to all corners of the U.S.

Daniels told States Newsroom she travels to Virginia and Maryland most weekends to perform abortions, where many of her patients end up being from Florida.

“I was just there over the weekend, and the number of Floridians I saw, where I’m here in Miami, and they’re coming from Fort Lauderdale, and we both had to travel 1,200 miles to be able to both provide and receive care, when in reality we live and work down the road from each other,” Daniels said. “It feels like a farce, like it’s hard to believe that this is the world that we live in.”

Daniels believes many people are continuing pregnancies they wanted to end, and says no single state would be able to accommodate the nearly 100,000 patients that had abortions in Florida in 2023. Many people can’t travel because they lack time off, child care, and money, and abortion funds have been drying up. Some people turn to online abortion-pill websites, like Aid Access, whose founder, Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, told States Newsroom they have been averaging 700 medication abortion regimens sent to Floridians each month since the ban went into effect, a slight decline from prior months.

Planned Parenthood clinics have so far been able to stay open in Florida, pivoting to other essential reproductive health care. But some independent abortion clinics hanging on until November say they might have to shutter, which would likely further reduce access to the limited types of abortion care that are still permitted under Florida law.

Amber Gavin, vice president of advocacy and operations at A Woman’s Choice clinics, said their Jacksonville clinic has been seeing only about a third of the patients they were seeing before the ban and that they’ve been referring many Florida patients to their North Carolina and Virginia locations. Before the ban, she said the clinic was seeing patients from all over, but especially Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.

She told States Newsroom A Woman’s Choice has been encouraging patients to vote for Amendment 4 because she’s not sure the clinic can stay open if it fails, given their declining revenue.

“Our staff is doing everything they can, but it’s really taxing and demoralizing to have to turn patients away or tell them that we don’t have funding,” Gavin said.

Hurdles to restoring abortion access

To succeed, Florida’s Amendment 4 will need to clear a super-majority of the vote, the highest threshold for an abortion-rights ballot measure to date. Floridians Protecting Freedom additionally faces mounting opposition from Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration that includes trying to force a terminal cancer patient’s story off the airwaves and launching a voter-fraud investigation that has fueled a lawsuit from anti-abortion advocates to kick the amendment off the ballot, even as Floridians have already begun casting votes. Recent surveys have found the amendment polling at 60%, but others have it falling short.

The leaders of the abortion-rights ballot effort — who say they’ve so far raised $90 million — see a path to victory despite these many obstacles, which also include two recent hurricanes. The campaign has intentionally made its messaging nonpartisan, acknowledging the need to win over supporters of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in order to get the necessary 60% of the vote. At a recent press conference sponsored by the Fairness Project, which committed $30 million this cycle to support abortion-rights ballot measure campaigns across the nation, Floridians Protecting Freedom campaign director Lauren Brenzel objected to the idea of the state’s amendment being a turnout mechanism for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and down-ballot campaigns.

“We have an abortion ban that will stay in effect for decades to come if we don’t end it this November,” Brenzel said. “[The amendment] has no relation to any other race. It’s because policy is failing the people of Florida right now.”

Anti-abortion advocates leading the vastly outspent Vote No on 4 campaign have tried to mobilize religious Floridians against the proposed amendment, which would limit abortion at viability, the imprecise moment when a growing fetus can survive outside the uterus, estimated at 24 weeks. The anti-abortion campaign argues that the amendment’s unspecified cutoff and broad health exceptions could lead to “unlimited” abortions.

In full, the amendment reads: “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.”

The Vote No on 4 campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Soon after Yes on 4’s “Caroline” ad first aired on Oct. 1, the Florida Department of Health sent cease-and-desist letters to local television stations, calling it “categorically false” and threatening to criminally charge broadcasters who continued playing the ad. In it, a 40-year-old Tampa mom of a 4-year-old recounts discovering late-stage brain cancer while about 17 weeks pregnant with her second child in April 2022. Doctors gave her a year to live with aggressive treatment but very little time if she remained pregnant. Caroline, who asked not to use her last name to protect her privacy, credits surpassing her one-year prognosis with the abortion she says she wouldn’t have been able to get today.

“When I had mine, I said to my husband, ‘Could you imagine if we lived in a state that didn’t offer this?’” Caroline told States Newsroom. “I was in the ICU. I wasn’t able to fly; I wasn’t able to drive. And then after that is when everything fell apart in Florida. It’s just been very eye-opening for me that it could be that cruel.”

The state has argued that Caroline’s situation would not have been precluded under the ban. But doctors have reported that the law is difficult for hospitals to interpret and requires extra consultations that take time patients might not have. The state surgeon general’s cease-and-desist letters asserted that the two-physician requirement “is waived in the case of an emergency medical procedure.” But many doctors say it’s unclear what would count as an emergency medical procedure. The federal lawsuit that the abortion-rights ballot organizers filed against the state health department to stop threatening broadcasters includes an affidavit from an OB-GYN and maternal health specialist who says she wouldn’t have given Caroline the abortion in Florida.

“While the termination was medically necessary because the cancer was terminal, the abortion would not have saved the patient’s life and therefore could be illegal under Florida law,” wrote Dr. Shelly Hsiao-Ying Tien, who practices at Planned Parenthood of South, East and North Florida and at Genesis Maternal-Fetal Medicine in Tucson, Arizona.

A federal judge last week temporarily barred the DeSantis administration from coercing television stations to stop airing the ads. Court records show that the DeSantis administration was directly behind the effort threatening the broadcasters with criminal charges. Caroline told States Newsroom she wants to “use my voice while I have it,” noting she temporarily lost the ability to speak when she was first diagnosed with brain cancer.

“That was one of the first things that I lost in this diagnosis, and luckily I have it again, for now,” Caroline said. “I want to do this for my daughter, so that she can have the same rights as me and my mother, and for all the cancer patients that are diagnosed. For everyone.”

Pershlie Ami, a citizen of the Hopi tribe, shares her experience of attending Phoenix Indian School when she was a kid during the Road to Healing tour hosted by the U.S. Department of Interior at the Gila Crossing Community School on Jan. 20, 2023. (Photo by Shondiin Silversmith | Arizona Mirror)

For the first time in history, a sitting U.S. president is set to apologize to Indigenous communities for the role the federal government played in the atrocities Indigenous children faced in the federal Native American Boarding School system.

The apology, which President Joe Biden will deliver Friday when he speaks at the Gila River Crossing School on the Gila River Indian Community near Phoenix, comes three years after Interior Secretary Deb Haaland launched the first-ever investigation into Native American Boarding Schools.

The final boarding school report provided eight recommendations from the Department of Indian Affairs for the federal government that would support a path to healing for tribal communities.

At the top of that list was a call for the United States to acknowledge and apologize for its role in the federal Indian boarding school policies that have harmed — and continue to harm — Indigenous peoples across the country.

“The president is taking that to heart, and he plans on making an apology to Indian Country for the boarding school era,” Haaland said in an Oct. 23 interview with the Arizona Mirror.

Haaland said she has been pinching herself since she got the news that Biden planned on issuing an apology because of the work put in by so many people to shed light on Native American boarding schools and the lasting impacts it has had on Indigenous communities.

“It’s incredibly meaningful,” Haaland said, because, as part of the boarding school initiative, their department organized the Road to Healing tour, where they visited several Indigenous communities to hear stories about boarding schools.

“They were all heart-wrenching,” Haaland said of stories that were shared by victims and their families. “We sat through so many testimonies from survivors and descendants, and I have a deep understanding of what so many people went through and what our community suffered from.”

The Department of the Interior investigated the federal Indian boarding school system across the United States, identifying more than 400 schools and over 70 burial sites.

Arizona was home to 47 of those schools, which were attended by Indigenous children who were taken away from their families and attempted to assimilate them through education — and, often, physical punishment.

The legacy of the federal Indian boarding school system is not new to Indigenous people. For centuries, Indigenous people across the country have experienced the loss of their culture, traditions, language and land.

“This is an incredibly suppressed history that so many people didn’t know about and now it’s seeing the light of day,” Haaland said. “I have to believe that people will heal from what we’ve been able to do, and certainly hearing from President Biden, who has been the best president for Indian Country in my lifetime, say that he’s sorry, it’s beyond words.”

Biden plans to visit Indian Country for the first time on Oct. 25, where he will issue that apology alongside Haaland at the Gila River Crossing School.

“Some of our elders who are boarding school survivors have been waiting all of their lives for this moment,” Gila River Indian Community Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis said in a statement to the Arizona Mirror.

“It’s going to be incredibly powerful and redemptive when the president issues this apology on Indian land,” he added. “If only for a moment on Friday, this will rise to the top and the most powerful person in the world, our president, is shining a light on this dark history that’s been hidden.”

Haaland said Biden, being the first sitting president willing to apologize, helps Indian Country feel seen because the “horrible history” of Native American Boarding Schools and assimilation policies aimed at pushing Indigenous people out of their communities has been ignored “for so long.”

“It was an outright assault and genocide that our communities went through for centuries, and we’re still here,” Haaland said. “None of anything that the federal government or anyone did throughout those centuries managed to eradicate us.”

“We have persevered,” she added. “I feel so proud the sitting president is acknowledging that. It’s amazing, and I am deeply appreciative.”

The night the Greyhounds came

Learning that the president is willing to issue an apology, Indivisible Tohono Co-founder April Ignacio said that it is a historic event because they finally acknowledge the government’s role in a national policy of forced assimilation against the first peoples of this land.

“Never in my life did I think we would be here,” Ignacio said. “This apology is long overdue, and the impact the Boarding School era had on our loss of culture and language must be tied to immediate action through reparations.”

In 2023, Ignacio said, Indivisible Tohono organized a caravan of 18 Tohono O’odham elders who were boarding school survivors and attendees to testify during the Road to Healing Tour organized by the Department of Interior.

Ignacio said she has five generations of boarding school survivors and attendees in her family. She shared her story during the Road to Healing tour.

“As a co-founder of Indivisible Tohono, I thank President Biden for his willingness to address the historical and ongoing impact of Indian Boarding School policies,” Ignacio said. “This apology is consistent with President Biden’s promise to honor sovereignty, and this historical acknowledgment will be a part of his legacy.”

This story is republished from the Arizona Mirror, a sister publication to the Kentucky Lantern and part of the States Newsroom nonprofit network.

Annar Parikh, a field manager with the civic engagement group North Carolina Asian Americans Together, knocks on a door of a residence in Wake County, North Carolina, on Sept. 28, 2024. No one answers, so she leaves voting information by the door. (Photo by Ariana Figueroa/States Newsroom)

DURHAM, N.C. — As a weekend morning in late September dips into the afternoon, Annar Parikh finally gets an eligible voter to answer the door.

After Parikh gives a rundown of some of the local candidates in North Carolina’s election, she asks the woman if she plans to vote in the presidential election.

“It’s personal,” the woman says before closing the door.

The 26-year-old marks the house in a voter database for North Carolina Asian Americans Together, a nonpartisan organization that focuses on voter registration in the Asian American community.

“This is typical for our community,” Parikh, a field manager for NCAAT, says while peeling a clementine, recounting how difficult it can be sometimes to reach voters in the swing state.

There are more than 360,000 Asian Americans in North Carolina. Indian Americans are the fastest growing ethnic group in the state, with a population of nearly 110,000.

The voters Parikh is trying to reach are prized by the presidential campaigns. In an election that is virtually a dead heat, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris is working to tap into the two of the fastest-growing voting blocs in the United States — Asian Americans and Latinos, especially in the seven swing states.

Asian Americans have gotten relatively little attention in the presidential campaign and Harris herself has not greatly emphasized her South Asian background — her mother was an Indian immigrant and Harris if elected would be the first president of South Asian descent.

“My challenge is the challenge of making sure I can talk with and listen to as many voters as possible and earn their vote, and I will never assume that anyone in our country should elect a leader based on their gender or their race,” Harris said in a Monday night interview with NBC News, when asked if sexism is a factor in the race.

While Republican nominee Donald Trump has held events with Latino voters, one of his first big appeals to Asian American voters will be Thursday in a Turning Point PAC event with former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii in Nevada.

Targeting communities

Also Thursday, the Democratic National Committee launched a voting media campaign across the country to engage with Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities. The campaign will provide information about polling locations and multilingual advertisements in Florida, Texas and New York.

About 15 million Asian Americans are eligible to vote in this presidential election, a 15% increase in eligible voters from 2020, according to the Pew Research Center.?

An estimated 36.2 million Latinos are eligible to vote this year, a 12% increase in eligible voters from 2020, according to the Pew Research Center.?

The Harris campaign has launched targeted ads for Asian American voters in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin that focus on her economic proposals.

The campaign also released an ad specific to the battleground state of Nevada featuring Asian American small business owners. Nevada is a swing state with one of the largest shares of the Asian American population in the country, at 11%. President Joe Biden won the state in 2020 with a little over 33,000 votes.

The Harris campaign has also launched a WhatsApp outreach effort in the Latino community and on Tuesday unveiled an “opportunity agenda for Latino men.”

Grassroot campaigns reflecting Asian American voting blocs have also emerged on behalf of Harris, such as South Asians for Harris, Chinese Americans for Harris, Korean Americans for Harris, Latinas for Harris and Latino Men for Harris.

Getting voters to the polls

On-the-ground efforts like voter registration and voter mobilization can be a huge effort in a tight presidential race.

“The cause of the low rate of voter registration is the same cause of the low level of information around voting, so we want to make sure we’re not just registering people, we’re also talking to them about how the process of voting works, where they can vote, how they can vote early,” said Jack Golub, the North Carolina community engagement program manager for the Hispanic Federation, a group that does civic engagement in the Latino community.

Nationally, the voting registration gap for Latinos — the difference between those eligible to vote who have registered and those who have not registered — is about 13.2 million, which is based on the most recent data from 2022 from UNIDOS, a Latino advocacy organization.?

The Trump campaign has largely focused on trying to make inroads with Latino voters through roundtable discussions with leaders as well as a town hall hosted by Univision for undecided Latino voters. Separately, Harris also took part in a Univision town hall with undecided Latino voters.

A Monday poll showed that Harris continues to outperform Trump among Latino voters in the battlegrounds of Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

When it comes to Asian American voters and Trump, his rhetoric during his first term around the coronavirus and linking it to China could have fueled anti-Asian sentiment among Trump voters, a study shows.?

But Steven Cheung, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, said in a statement to States Newsroom that the former president is an advocate for the Asian American and Pacific Islander community and has “created an environment where diversity, equal opportunity, and prosperity were afforded to everybody.”

“Anyone who says otherwise is disgustingly using the AAPI community to play political games for their own benefit,” Cheung said. “The 2024 campaign is poised to build upon the strength and successes of Asian Americans during President Trump’s first term to propel him to a … second term victory.”

It comes down to policy

With Harris at the top of the Democratic presidential ticket after Biden’s withdrawal last summer, more Asian American voters are planning to support her compared to when Biden was in the race, according to a comprehensive survey by AAPIVote and AAPI Data.?

The late September survey also said 66% of Asian American voters said they plan on voting for Harris, compared to 28% of Asian American voters who said they would vote for Trump. About 6% were undecided.

Chintan Patel, the executive director of Indian American Impact, said that while he has noticed an enthusiasm for Harris leading the presidential ticket, it still comes down to policy, specifically the economy, for the South Asian community.

“Yes, the community is excited about the opportunity to elect a South Asian president, there’s no question, but we’re also looking for, what are her plans?” he said.

His organization focuses on electing Indian Americans and has backed Harris.

“One of the things that I think is really resonating with the community is her plans around the economy, creating an opportunity economy, particularly helping small businesses,” Patel said. “Small businesses have been such a vital, important part of mobility for South Asian Americans, particularly the immigrant story, the first generation story, that is how we have seen mobility.”

Harris often talks of her late mother’s roots. But that seems to have little sway in some parts of North Carolina’s South Asian community — a surprise to Eva Eapen, an 18-year-old canvasser for NCAAT.

Eapen, a sophomore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said she expected to see more excitement in the South Asian community when Harris picked up the torch for Democrats as the presidential nominee.

“I don’t know if it’s lack of engagement. I don’t know if it’s lack of information. I don’t know if it’s lack of mobilization, but they don’t really care,” she said. “Maybe it’s more policy over nationality as Hindi?”

Several South Asian voters who States Newsroom spoke with in North Carolina made similar remarks. The fact that the Democratic presidential nominee was South Asian didn’t guarantee their vote and they instead expressed concern over the cost of living and the economy.

Ikamjit Gill, 28, said the biggest issues getting him to the polls are inflation and the economy.

“It’s not a big thing for me,” Gill said of Harris’ background.

Gill said he’s a registered Democrat and voted for Biden in 2020, but this year he’s considering voting for Trump. He said he was laid off from his tech job under the Biden administration and got his first job under the Trump administration.

“I’ve been out of a job for a while,” he said. “I just want some change.”

Vishal Ohir, 47, of Wake County, North Carolina, said he was initially leaning toward voting for Trump, but was impressed by Harris during the presidential debate in September. He liked her detailed plans around housing and the economy.

Ohir said he’s still undecided but in the end, he wants a presidential candidate who can tackle the cost of living because “everything has gone up.”

Arvind Balaraman, 53, of Wake County, North Carolina, said he’s frustrated that wages have not kept up with the cost of living. He said he’s not particularly excited there’s a South Asian candidate running for president. He just wants his grocery bill lowered.

“Everything has doubled, tripled,” he said of prices. “You had two different parties in the last two terms and the prices are still going up.”

Balaraman said he’s undecided, but still plans to vote in the presidential election.

Katelyn Foust traveled from her Oldham County home to a birthing center in Indiana to give birth to baby Jude. (Photo provided)

After compromises from lawmakers, St. Elizabeth Healthcare in Northern Kentucky is now neutral on legislation to clear the way for freestanding birth centers in the state.?

Representatives for the health system have previously voiced some opposition, saying hospitals are best equipped to handle the unpredictability of birth.?

Marc Wilson with Top Shelf Lobby spoke on behalf of St. Elizabeth Healthcare during Thursday’s meeting of the legislature’s Interim Joint Committee on Licensing, Occupations, and Administrative Regulations.?

“I’m happy to report that St. Elizabeth Healthcare is neutral on this legislation as presented to us in the most recent draft, and thank you for allowing us to have a voice,” said Wilson.?

What to know about the certificate of need debate in Kentucky

He then joked: “I had to read that statement, because I’ve been told if I misspeak, that world markets will crash.”??

Freestanding birth centers are health care facilities that are meant to feel like a home. They do not offer c-sections or anesthesia. They are for low-risk pregnancies, and not every pregnancy will qualify for such a birth.?

Neutrality ‘a big deal’?

St. Elizabeth’s new position removes a political obstacle and is expected to help win some lawmakers’ votes for birthing centers.

Sen. Shelley Funke Frommeyer, an Alexandria Republican who’s sponsored bills on this issue the last two years, told the Lantern St. Elizabeth’s neutrality is a “big deal.”

“They’ve also been a good steward alongside me to convene stakeholders and really listen to: ‘What do the doctors acknowledge are a concern?’ so they have been able to bring together the community that really is only accustomed to hospital-based births, to recognize that there are alternatives, and to acknowledge that this is a very good alternative, or to stay neutral, is an acknowledgement, and I’m very appreciative of that.”?

Funke Frommeyer believes several changes in the draft bill helped turn the tide — specifically, requirements that freestanding birth centers have medical malpractice insurance, are located within 30 miles of a hospital that provides obstetric care and have a licensed physician in oversight. The new version will also allow hospitals to own freestanding birth centers.?

The bill she will file in 2025 — a sister bill to the one Louisville Rep. Jason Nemes will file in the House — notably removes the certificate of need process for freestanding birth centers that have? no more than four beds.

Nemes, who’s repeatedly sponsored freestanding birth center legislation, told colleagues in the committee that 2025 is the year it will pass: “It’s a better bill than it’s been,” he said, “and it’s ready to roll.”?

“St. Elizabeth has a very important voice, both in Frankfort and a big footprint …. in Northern Kentucky,” Nemes told the Lantern after the meeting.?

The Kentucky Hospital Association — a potent force with lawmakers — has opposed making it easier to open birthing centers in Kentucky. A spokeswoman has not yet returned a Lantern email asking whether the organization’s opposition has softened in response to the recent changes in the draft legislation. The hospital association has voiced support for reforming the certificate of need process, but not an outright repeal. KHA president and CEO Nancy Galvagni has also said removing birthing centers from the CON process “would put women and babies at risk” and “roll back decades of progress in maternal care.”

‘Challenging compromises’?

Mary Kathryn DeLodder, the director of the Kentucky Birth Coalition, said she hopes the new St. Elizabeth stance is “meaningful” to the legislators who represent the area.?

But it didn’t come without a price.?

“When it comes to legislation, sometimes you have to make compromise, and sometimes compromise is hard,” she told the Lantern. “This was a time that we … felt we had to make some challenging compromises in order, for the greater good, to get birth centers, because we would rather have birth centers than not have birth centers.”?

Among those compromises, she said, is the point requiring licensed physician oversight.?

“We feel that there are lots of midwives, different types, who are very qualified to serve in that capacity,” she said.

She also cited the worsening physician shortage as a concern.?

“I hope that there will be physicians in Kentucky who want to serve in this role for birth centers,” DeLodder said. “We don’t want it to be a barrier for birth centers. We don’t want it to be something that has an additional cost for centers if they have to pay a position to fill that role.”?

She added: “If you trade one barrier for another, you haven’t really gained anything.”?

Nemes acknowledged this issue is “a concern.”

“We want to get them, first off, that’s the most important thing, and then we’ll see how they work out,” he said. “I think that might be a problem in some places, and in some places it won’t be. So, we’ll just see what happens. But … obviously it’s a concern because there’s a physician shortage.”

Background?

Advocates have iterated that people who want a low-intervention birth will do everything they can to get it. Every year, Kentucky babies are born in neighboring states after their parents traveled for the care they can’t get in the commonwealth.?

In 2022, 110 Kentuckians traveled to Tree of Life, the freestanding birthing center in Jeffersonville, Indiana. That is an increase from 107 in 2021 and 71 in 2020.

And around 60% of the Clarksville Midwifery practice in Tennessee are people who come from Kentucky, the Lantern has reported. That means about 25-30 Kentucky babies every year are being born just beyond the border in the Volunteer State.?

Just between those two practices, hundreds of Kentuckians are leaving the commonwealth to deliver in neighboring states.

In the past advocates have said having freestanding birth centers would offer a middle ground for people who will choose a home birth. Kentucky recorded 177 home births in 1988 and 900 in 2021. Home birth is legal in all 50 states.?

This story may be updated.??

Rep. Nima Kulkarni, D-Louisville, asks a question during the June meeting of the Commission on Race and Access to Opportunity. (LRC Public Information)

The Kentucky Supreme Court denied a challenge that sought to disqualify Louisville Rep. Nima Kulkarni from seeking reelection this fall.

In an unpublished opinion released Thursday, the state’s highest court unanimously denied a motion from Kulkarni’s primary challenger, William Zeitz, and previous opponent, former Rep. Dennis Horlander. Zeitz and Horlander sought an appeal of a Franklin County Circuit Court decision that allowed a vacancy in the 40th House District primary election to stand.?

“Because the Democratic primary election was a nullity, a vacancy was created that needed to be filled,” the court’s opinion said. “No candidate emerged from the primary for either party. The Democratic candidates both were undone by Kulkarni’s victory and subsequent disqualification.”?

James Craig, Kulkarni’s attorney, called the court’s decision “a big and final win” for the representative.?

“This case has finally ended where we knew it would from the start,” Craig said. “The Kentucky House District 40 voters chose her by a wide margin in the primary, and we’ve been to two circuit courts and the Kentucky Supreme Court to save their voice. Today’s unanimous decision protects the voices of the voters. The Democratic nominating process was done correctly and with integrity. This is a big win for my client Rep. Kulkarni, but it is a bigger win for democracy.”?

For months, Horlander has sought to legally bar Kulkarni from the ballot after challenging the validity of her candidacy papers. One of her two signatories was not a registered Democrat, as required by state law, at the time of signing. In that case, the Supreme Court disqualified Kulkarni, effectively nullifying the primary election in the 40th House District.?

Subsequently, Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams permitted the local political parties to nominate candidates for the general election. Democrats selected Kulkarni. Republicans did not nominate a candidate.?

Kulkarni defeated Horlander in the 2018 and 2020 Democratic primaries for the 40th House District. In an unofficial vote count, Kulkarni received 78% of ballots cast in the May primary election. Zeitz received the remaining 22%.

In September, Zeitz and Horlander previously appealed to the Kentucky Court of Appeals, but a panel of judges denied that motion after requesting the Supreme Court review the matter. The Supreme Court denied that transfer.?

Zeitz and Horlander’s attorney, Steven Megerle, said in a statement that Adams’ interpretation of the law “is now confirmed to be correct.”?

“The result is Nirupama Kulkarni has no opponent and will be elected with these quirky facts. William Zeitz, an Army tank veteran, who served overseas and here who did nothing wrong is out,” Megerle said. “Politics often benefits the privileged like Ms. Kulkarni, not asphalt truck drivers like Bill Zeitz. But our Commonwealth’s compact gives the final say to the collective body of the General Assembly to determine qualifications of its members. And I hope there might just be a robust discussion by that branch to finally determine whether Nirupama Kulkarni or William Zeitz should be seated for the people of House District 40. “

Kentucky’s general election ends Tuesday, Nov. 5.?

Vice President Kamala Harris participates in a CNN Presidential Town Hall moderated by CNN’s Anderson Cooper in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday, October 23, 2024. (Rebecca Wright/CNN)

ASTON, Pa. —? With less than two weeks to go before the general election, Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, said Wednesday during a town hall in Delaware County she believes her GOP opponent, former President Donald Trump, is a fascist who is “increasingly unstable and unfit to serve” another term as president.

People who served under Trump during his term, she said, have said he has “contempt” for the Constitution.

“And then today, we learned that John Kelly, a four-star Marine general who is his longest serving Chief of Staff, gave an interview recently in the last two weeks of this election, talking about how dangerous Donald Trump is,” Harris said. “Frankly, I think he’s putting out a 911 call to the American people to understand what could happen if Donald Trump were back in the White House.”

Harris answered questions from undecided voters for just over an hour in what was supposed to be a second debate with Trump on CNN, but he declined to appear. Trump was in Georgia on Wednesday, speaking at a Turning Point Action rally.

CNN host Anderson Cooper served as moderator for the conversations. The questions, he said, came from voters and were not provided or edited by CNN.

The audience included Democrats, Republicans and independents who were undecided and “persuadable,” Cooper said. According to the network, town hall participants were selected by a nonpartisan research organization and CNN producers “working with local and state business groups, civic organizations, religious groups and universities.”

The first question came from a Bryn Mawr College student who said she was an anti-Trump Republican. She asked how Harris planned to “bridge the political divide” among voters who feel left out of the polarized political landscape.

Harris said people are “exhausted” by the current political environment “that is suggesting that America should be pointing fingers at one another, that we are divided as a nation.” She said she would be a president for all Americans.

“I have never in my career as a prosecutor asked a victim or witness of a crime, are you a Democrat or a Republican? The only thing I’ve ever asked is, ‘Are you OK?’” Harris said. “And I do believe that is what the American people deserve in their president, and not someone who makes decisions based on who voted for them or what is in their personal interest.”

The vice president pointed to reports that Trump considered whether people in California had voted for him when deciding whether to send aid during wildfires in 2018.

“I believe the American people deserve better, and they deserve a president who is focused on solutions, not sitting in the Oval Office plotting their revenge and retribution,” Harris said.

Another audience member asked Harris what she would do about the high cost of groceries. Harris replied that hers would be a “new approach,” grounded in her experience as attorney general of California.

“We will have a national ban on price gouging, which is companies taking advantage of the desperation and need of the American consumer and jacking up prices without any consequence or accountability,” she said, adding that addressing the shortage of affordable housing was also key.

“Democrats and Republicans haven’t done enough to deal with the issue of housing, and we need a new approach that includes working with the private sector … to cut through the red tape, working with homebuilders, working with developers to create tax incentives so that we can create more housing supply and bring down the prices.”

Cooper asked Harris how she would go about codifying Roe v. Wade in the Constitution, which requires 60 votes in the Senate, where Democrats currently hold a 51-49 majority.

“I mean, we need to take a look at the filibuster,” Harris replied, echoing comments she made last month, about doing away with the filibuster to restore abortion rights. She noted Trump’s appointment of three Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe in 2022 and said she believed many people who are anti-abortion “didn’t intend that this would happen,” and have been dismayed by the consequences of total abortion bans in more than a dozen states.

“On some issues, I think we’ve got to agree that partisanship should be put aside,” Harris said. “I know it is possible because when you look at the midterms in so-called red states and so-called blue states, when this issue of freedom was on the ballot, the American people voted for freedom.”

On the issue of immigration, Harris referred to the bipartisan bill that failed to pass the U.S. House of Representatives.

“Donald Trump got wind of the bill and told them, ‘don’t put it forward, kill the bill,’ because he prefers to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem,” Harris said. “We have to have a secure border, and we have to have a comprehensive pathway for citizenship, and that includes requiring people, hard working people, to earn citizenship and do it in a comprehensive, humane and orderly manner.”

Cooper pressed her on the issue, asking why the Biden administration has not managed the flow of migrants across the southern border via executive action. Harris said that ultimately the problem needs to be fixed through congressional action.

“I think we did the right thing, but the best thing that can happen for the American people is that we have bipartisan work happening, and I pledge to you that I will work across the aisle to fix this long standing problem,” she said.

Asked what she would do “to ensure not another Palestinian dies due to bombs being funded by US tax dollars,” Harris did not directly answer but said “far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. It’s unconscionable.” She added that, with the recent death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, “We have an opportunity to end this war, bring the hostages home, bring relief to the Palestinian people, and work toward a two-state solution.”

The Trump campaign criticized Harris for her performance during the town hall, calling it “a clinic in lies, smears, and radical leftism cloaked in word salad. It was meant to rehabilitate her image with the friendliest possible host on the friendliest possible network — but instead, it was her biggest implosion to date.”

One audience member asked Harris to provide “more nuts and bolts” about her economic plan. She responded with some of the highlights of her plan, including tax deductions for small businesses and a $6,000 tax credit for parents.

“And part of the issue here is this, we cannot, and I will not, raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 a year, but we do need to take seriously the system that benefits the richest and does not help out working middle class Americans,” she said.

Harris was also asked how her administration would be different from that of President Joe Biden. Her administration “will not be a continuation of the Biden administration,” Harris said. “I bring to this role, my own ideas and my own experience. I represent a new generation of leadership on a number of issues, and believe that we have to actually take new approaches.”

The vice president spoke about the sandwich generation, those caring for children and elderly parents, and how she cared for her mother when she was dying of cancer.

Cooper pressed her on why she had not enacted the policies already, as vice president. “There was a lot that was done,” she said, “but there’s more to do, Anderson.”

Asked whether she would expand the Supreme Court to 12 justices, Harris did not directly answer yes or no, but said Americans “increasingly are losing confidence in the Supreme Court, and in large part because of the behavior of certain members of that court and because of certain rulings, including the Dobbs decision,” she said. “So I do believe that there should be some kind of reform of the court, and we can study what that actually looks like.”

Another audience member asked Harris to explain why some of her positions had shifted, noting that “in Delco, we pride ourselves on being authentic.” Harris said she would not ban natural gas fracking, adding that her experience as vice president has shown her “that we can invest in a clean energy economy and still not ban fracking and still work toward what we need to do to create more jobs and create U.S.- based jobs in a way that will be globally competitive.”

Some of the perception of her shifting policy positions “is a whole lot of misinformation, to be honest with you,” Harris said. She added that the president should not be afraid of good ideas and does not stand on pride “if a perspective needs to be informed by different points of view to build consensus and to have a common sense approach.”

Both campaigns have spent significant time and resources in Pennsylvania this election cycle, as its 19 electoral votes are key to either candidate winning the White House. Trump will be in State College on Saturday, and Harris will be in the Philadelphia area on Sunday.

This story?is republished from the?Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a sister publication to the Kentucky Lantern and part of the nonprofit States Newsroom network.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky walks to his office from the Senate chamber at the U.S. Capitol, Sept. 25, 2024. (Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)

Mitch McConnell has been the subject of four biographies: one by himself, one by a critic, one by a friend who became a critic, and now, at last, one by a top-rank Washington journalist with an objective account of “one of the most consequential senators in American history,” as the dust jacket accurately puts it.

The book’s title is a good bumper-sticker summary: “The Price of Power: How Mitch McConnell Mastered the Senate, Changed America and Lost His Party.” It’s by Michael Tackett, deputy Washington Bureau chief for The Associated Press, whose journalistic pedigree also includes stints at The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune and other major news outlets.

In revealing detail, Tackett describes how McConnell slowly earned the respect and gratitude of his fellow Republican senators to become the longest-serving Senate leader of any party; gave us the most conservative Supreme Court in almost 90 years, doing away with federal abortion rights; then put himself in the minority of a party transformed by Donald Trump, with whom he has a contradictory relationship.

Tackett tells the story with the help of oral histories that McConnell has recorded each year, one of which dominated early news reports about the book. McConnell called Trump “a despicable human being” for delaying a pandemic relief package and said the president was “stupid as well as being ill-tempered, and can’t even figure out where his own best interests lie.”

McConnell said that after the Electoral College had decided the 2020 election and before the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol, for which he later said Trump was “practically and morally responsible.” But then he voted against convicting Trump on impeachment, using the unproven legal argument that impeachment is not constitutional after the officeholder leaves office.

“There is ample debate about that point,” Tackett writes, “but for McConnell, as usual, the political rationale was sufficient.” As evidence, Tackett quotes from his interview with President Joe Biden, McConnell’s longtime Senate colleague: “I can understand the rationale – not agree with it – understand the rationale to say, ‘If I don’t do this, I may be gone’” – as the leader of Senate Republicans.

Tackett charitably attributes to McConnell an additional, broader goal, regaining the Senate majority: “He wanted the energy of Trump’s voters in Senate races, without the baggage of Trump. He gambled on his belief that Trump would fade from the political stage in the wake of the insurrection. Instead, Trump re-emerged every bit as strong among core supporters. It was likely the worst political miscalculation of McConnell’s career.”

The ultimate crucible

Seven Republicans in the 50-50 Senate voted to convict Trump; 10 more would have provided the two-thirds needed to convict — and on a second vote, to disqualify him from office. Tackett writes of McConnell, “He said he could not have persuaded enough Republicans to get the 67 votes needed. He chose not to try, and that choice meant that Trump could again become his party’s dominant and domineering force.”

That’s the closest we have come to discerning McConnell’s thinking in the ultimate crucible of his political career, when it collided with the nation’s best interests. Tackett strongly suggests that McConnell didn’t even try to persuade any of his colleagues, knowing from his years of experience with them that 10 could not be persuaded.

“He’s very fond of saying he doesn’t believe in futile gestures,” Tackett told me in an interview. “I didn’t find any evidence of direct persuasion.” But he acknowledged that closely held conversations among McConnell and his colleagues may remain so — and there’s a hint that McConnell held out hope of a conversion experience, maybe even one of his own.

Tackett reveals that as the vote neared, anti-Trump columnist George Will circulated to “a select group of conservatives” a draft column with the final sentence in brackets, pending events happening near his deadline, saying that McConnell had voted to convict. “Will had either been given an indication of McConnell’s vote,” Tackett writes, “or had made a surmise based on their long association.”

That was McConnell’s initial inclination, according to Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns’ “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America’s Future,” published in May 2022. They paraphrased McConnell as telling staffers soon after Jan. 6 that they would have to fight Trump politically, and that at least 17 Republicans would vote to convict — and suggesting he would be among them. But when it was reported that McConnell thought Trump’s offenses were impeachable, Senate Republicans told Martin that their leader hadn’t told any of them that.

It seems apparent that Republican senators saw polls, at least one of them public, that showed Trump losing little support among GOP voters after Jan. 6 while McConnell and Vice President Mike Pence, who had refused to help Trump overturn the election, lost much support.

Tackett’s treatment of this pivotal episode is less focused and dramatic than Martin’s, perhaps reflecting the understated, dispassionate approach of an expert observer who not only is objective (as Martin was) but wants to appear objective. That has become all the more difficult in political journalism, as audiences assume we write with motives other than to get at the truth and serve readers, so I salute Tackett’s approach.

The costs to McConnell?

Tackett, who had no previous dealings with McConnell, said getting his oral histories and other archives showed “He knew that for the project to be credible, it had to be objective.” We agreed that the 2010 John David Dyche biography of McConnell, “Republican Leader,” was more objective than most people thought at the time, given Dyche’s connections with the senator. Dyche has since broken publicly with McConnell over his lack of action against Trump.

Tackett said he hopes readers will “see this as an examination of how one acquires power, accumulates power and wields power, and at what consequence.”?

And what prices has McConnell paid for power? They include a reputation for being interested more in power than in policy, or even the national interest — as illustrated by his endorsement of Trump this year, something he apparently thought he had to do to maintain influence in the Senate after announcing that he would step down as leader at the end of the year.

Tackett well notes McConnell’s contradictions, such as saying in his maiden speech as leader that “I will never agree to retreat from our responsibility to confirm qualified judicial nominees,” then nine years later refusing to fill a Supreme Court vacancy in an election year, and four years later doing exactly that, both times to serve political purposes.

There is much new in the book, such as Justice Sam Alito saying he’s on “the McConnell Court;” analyses of McConnell’s style by former House speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan; how he kept a presidential debate out of Louisville to steer a spotlight away from then-Mayor Jerry Abramson, a potential opponent; and the letter he got from close friend and federal Judge John Heyburn, advising him to cooperate with new President Barack Obama, which he famously did not do.

We also read how McConnell, who is proud that emotions have not driven his decision-making and is one of the least emotional politicians in public, can express great emotion in private. One example: sobbing when he reads an email congratulating him for becoming the longest-tenured Senate leader, something Tackett and I expect to be in the first line of his obituary.

And we learn much more about McConnell’s childhood and his mother, who helped him recover from polio. That experience developed his drive and ambition; Tackett writes that they were “fueled by the hyper-competitive instincts of an elite athlete, something he hoped to be but never could.”

Beyond McConnell’s early years in Louisville and its politics, this is not a Kentucky book. It doesn’t mention that he squeezed fellow Republican Sen. Jim Bunning out of another reelection bid or explain how he saved Bunning from defeat in 2004 and how he engineered Ron Lewis’ historic 1994 victory in the 2nd Congressional District. (The book has more detail on how McConnell helped Indiana Sen. Todd Young get elected in 2016.)

But McConnell is a national and international figure, and one who is not well understood. This book adds much to our knowledge. Now let’s hope that when he steps out of the leader’s box, he will be even more forthcoming.

Al Cross helped author Michael Tackett with fact-checking and offered other advice for the first half of the book. This column mainly addresses the book’s later chapters.

Sen. Mitch McConnell is raking in less money for his reelection campaign than at this time four years ago. But he is sitting on a comfy $8 million cushion. (Getty Images)

FRANKFORT — U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell’s reelection committee raised just $76,000 between July 1 and Sept. 30 — the lowest quarterly contribution total it has reported in the four years since his 2020 reelection, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission.

The $76,000 compares to $1.7 million that Sen. Rand Paul’s reelection committee reports it raised in the same period.

And it is far less than the $325,000 that McConnell’s campaign raised during the comparable quarter during his previous term, July through September of 2018.

Follow the money

An occasional series of campaign finance notebooks

By Tom Loftus

McConnell, who is 82 and has won election to the Senate seven times, has not said whether he will seek another term in 2026. Many political analysts expect he will not run, particularly after two incidents in the summer of 2023 when he froze for several seconds during press availabilities.

McConnell allies, however, say the recent low fundraising amounts are insignificant because McConnell’s reelection committee still has a formidable balance on hand of $8 million. And at this same point in his previous term (Sept. 30, 2018) FEC records show McConnell’s committee had $3.4 million on hand.

His supporters say McConnell’s recent fundraising efforts have been focused on helping Republicans retake the U.S. Senate as well as raising money for the McConnell PAC (Bluegrass Committee) which, in turn, has given $200,000 to the campaigns of Republicans running for the Kentucky General Assembly this fall.

Yet McConnell has always been able to tend to these two other fundraising responsibilities while raising big dollars for his own reelection. And a review of past reports the McConnell reelection committee has filed with the FEC shows this downward trend:

In the first nine months of 2021 McConnell’s reelection committee reported raising $3.6 million; in the first nine months of 2022: $1 million; in the first nine months of 2023: $390,000; in the first nine months of 2024: $341,000. Not a normal trend of an incumbent looking toward the next election.

Beshear’s PAC not yet reporting much support for fellow Democrats

Gov. Andy Beshear’s In This Together PAC continues to report raising modest amounts in contributions and through September has reported giving only a small amount to help the candidates in Kentucky and around the country that Beshear supports.

The super PAC reported raising $68,000 in September and having $708,000 on hand as of Sept. 30. Its report shows it made one contribution during the month: $5,000 to a political committee of Michigan Democratic U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin, who is running for the U.S. Senate in November.

According to reports it has filed with the FEC since it was created by Beshear in January, In This Together has made $36,400 in contributions to help other candidates. That’s just 14% of its total spending of $259,394. The rest has gone to operating expenses.

Eric Hyers, who managed Beshear’s two campaigns for governor and oversees the super PAC, says In This Together decided from the start to save its money until late in the campaign season when voters are paying closer attention.

“At the end of the cycle, it will be clear that the vast majority of our funds went directly to working to elect good people and win critical elections,” Hyers said.

Donors to In This Together last month include five members of the Chavez family of Cincinnati, who together contributed $21,000. A Chavez family company owns parking garages and parking lots in Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati and has been a major donor to Andy Beshear political committees for years.

Others who donated $5,000 each to In This Together last month were:? Judith Vance, of Maysville; Robert Vance (a Beshear appointee to the University of Kentucky Board of Trustees), of Maysville; Duane Wall, New York, attorney with the firm White and Case; Myrle Wall, a store owner from New York; the Norfolk Southern PAC, of Washington; and the United Steelworkers PAC, of Pittsburgh.

The biggest expense of Hal Rogers leadership PAC?

Hal Rogers’s leadership PAC continued to pay his wife Cynthia Rogers her $4,000 monthly salary last month as the “event planner” for the Rogers’ leadership PAC called HALPAC. It was the largest expense paid by HALPAC during September.

So far in this election cycle (since Jan. 1, 2023) FEC records show HALPAC has paid $84,000 in salary to Cynthia Rogers. That’s about 22 percent of all of the PAC’s total spending and the second highest expense for the PAC during the cycle. (The PAC’s largest expense over this cycle has been $96,975 paid to Churchill Downs.)

HALPAC reported making two political contributions to Republican members of Congress seeking reelection during the month: $3,000 each to Ken Calvert for Congress (Corona, California); and Juan Ciscomani for Congress (Tucson, Arizona).

HALPAC reported $61,000 in contributions, and $12,000 in spending, during the month and as of Sept. 30 had $82,600 on hand.

The vast majority of its contributions in September came from 11 out-of-state donors who each gave $5,000. HALPAC’s report does not list the occupations or employers of those donors.

Elected in 1980, Rogers has no Democratic opponent in this year’s election as he seeks a 23rd term. He has served in Congress longer than any other Kentuckian.?

An entourage of Kentucky Democrats, including Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman, U.S. Rep. Morgan McGarvey, former U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth, Kentucky Democratic Party Chair Colmon Elridge and Louisville Mayor Craig Greenburg, arrive at the airport to greet Gov. Tim Walz in Louisville. (Kentucky Lantern photo by McKenna Horsley)

LOUISVILLE — Democratic vice presidential nominee Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota made a brief fundraising stop in Louisville Wednesday evening ahead of the upcoming presidential election.?

Walz and his daughter, Hope, were greeted at the airport by top Kentucky Democrats, including Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman, U.S. Rep. Morgan McGarvey, former U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth, Kentucky Democratic Party Chair Colmon Elridge and Louisville Mayor Craig Greenburg. The entourage followed Walz’s motorcade to the fundraiser, which will support the PAC of Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris.

According to a press pool report, Walz said the Louisville fundraiser netted the Harriz-Walz campaign more than $2 million.

Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear was not in attendance. Eric Hyers, the governor’s former campaign manager, said in an email to the Kentucky Lantern that Beshear was on a long-planned trip with his kids, who are on fall break from school.?

The press pool report said Walz did acknowledge Beshear during the fundraiser Walz said that he is grateful for Beshear campaigning for Harris and Walz and making the case across the country for them and Kentucky.

Beshear was under consideration to become Harris’ running mate earlier this summer, but she ultimately selected Walz. The governors have been recent political allies, as Walz attended Beshear’s 2023 inauguration in December.?

Walz’s Louisville stop was among a flurry of events he had scheduled this week. Walz was set to travel to North Carolina after the fundraiser. He voted early in Minnesota Wednesday morning with his wife, Gwen, and son, Gus.?

Harris and Walz, as well as their opponents former Republican President Donald Trump and U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, have less than two weeks to sway voters before Election Day, Nov. 5.?

Walz is not the first candidate this cycle to make a fundraising stop in Kentucky. Vance attended a Lexington reception hosted by U.S. Rep. Andy Barr in August.?

Trump is likely to win Kentucky’s eight electoral votes this year. He won Kentucky in 2016 and 2020.?

Campaign signs for former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, the respective GOP and Democratic presidential nominees, appear Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024, on Mount Desert Island in Maine. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)

Vice President Kamala Harris faced questions about whether sexism is a factor in the presidential race during a Tuesday interview on NBC News, and said she makes no assumptions about whether voters will make their choices based on race or gender.

Polls depict Harris, the Democratic nominee, and former President Donald Trump, the Republican candidate, locked in an extremely close race that has largely been marked by a gender gap in voter preferences. Harris is winning over the votes of women, while Trump is stronger among men, polling is showing.

More than 24.5 million early votes were documented as of Wednesday afternoon, according to the University of Florida Election Lab’s early voting tracker. Among the states with party registration data, Democrats were ahead with about 5.3 million people registered with that party and voting compared to about 4.3 million for Republicans and 2.7 million with no party or another party.

Questioned by NBC News’ Hallie Jackson over whether Harris sees sexism at play in the race, the veep pointed out there are both men and women at her campaign events, “whether it be small events or events with 10,000 people.”

“So, the experience that I am having is one in which it is clear that regardless of someone’s gender, they want to know that their president has a plan to lower costs, that their president has a plan to secure America in the context of our position around the world,” Harris said.

When Jackson asked Harris if she does not see sexism as a factor in the race at all, Harris said: “I don’t think of it that way.”

“My challenge is the challenge of making sure I can talk with and listen to as many voters as possible and earn their vote, and I will never assume that anyone in our country should elect a leader based on their gender or their race,” she said.

Harris, if elected, would become the first woman president, the first Black woman president and the first president of South Asian descent.

Asked whether the country is ready now for a woman and a woman of color to be president, Harris said, “Absolutely.”

“As you know, I started as a prosecutor. I never asked a victim of crime, a witness to crime, ‘Are you a Republican or Democrat?’ The only thing I ever asked them is, ‘Are you okay?’” Harris said.

“And that’s what the American people want to know — regardless of their race, regardless of their gender, their age — they want to know that they have a president who sees them and understands their needs and focuses on their needs, understanding we all deserve to have a president who is focused on solutions and not just fanning the flames of division and hate,” she added.

Asked why she’s been reluctant to talk about the historic nature of her candidacy on the campaign trail, Harris said she’s “clearly a woman” and doesn’t “need to point that out to anyone.”

“The point that most people really care about is, can you do the job and do you have a plan to actually focus on them? That is why I spend the majority of my time listening and then addressing the concerns, the challenges, the dreams, the ambitions and the aspirations of the American people.”

Harris said the country deserves a president who’s “focused on them, as opposed to a Donald Trump who’s constantly focused on himself.”

Biden: ‘We gotta lock him up … politically lock him up’

Meanwhile, speaking at a Democratic campaign office in Concord, New Hampshire, on Tuesday, President Joe Biden sparked controversy when he said “we gotta lock him up” in reference to Trump.

Biden, who drew applause and cheers from the crowd, quickly backtracked, adding: “politically lock him up.”

“Lock him out, that’s what we have to do,” Biden said.

Trump — who was convicted on 34 felony counts in a New York state case earlier this year — has repeatedly made claims of “political persecution.”

In response, Karoline Leavitt, Trump campaign national press secretary, said in a statement Wednesday that “Joe Biden just admitted the truth: he and Kamala’s plan all along has been to politically persecute their opponent President Trump because they can’t beat him fair and square.”

Leavitt said the Biden-Harris administration is “the real threat to democracy” while also calling on Harris to “condemn Joe Biden’s disgraceful remark.”

Kelly remarks on Hitler, fascists stir controversy

In an interview with the New York Times, John F. Kelly — the former president’s longest-serving chief of staff and a former four-star Marine general — said Trump “commented more than once that, ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too.’”

Asked whether Trump is a “fascist,” Kelly said Trump “certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure,” per the Times.

The Atlantic also published a bombshell story on Tuesday, part of which reports that Trump said: “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had.”

In response to the recent reporting, Harris said Wednesday in brief remarks outside the vice president’s residence, before departing for Pennsylvania, that “it is deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous that Donald Trump would invoke Adolf Hitler, the man who is responsible for the deaths of 6 million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Americans.”

“This is a window into who Donald Trump really is, from the people who know him best, from the people who worked with him side-by-side in the Oval Office, and in the Situation Room,” she added.

In a Wednesday statement, the Trump campaign pointed to reporting on the friendship between The Atlantic’s owner and Harris, saying “it’s no surprise that The Atlantic would publish a false smear in the lead up to the election to try to help Kamala Harris’ failing campaign.”

Walz and his family cast their votes?

Harris’ running mate, Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, cast his ballot Wednesday along with his wife, Gwen, and son, Gus, at the Ramsey County elections office in St. Paul, Minnesota, according to a pool report.

Walz told a woman at the counter that it was 18-year-old Gus’ first time voting and that he’s “pretty excited about it,” per the report.

Vance on schools and immigration

At a campaign event Tuesday in Peoria, Arizona, Trump’s running mate, Ohio GOP Sen. J.D. Vance, claimed Harris “has used programs that are meant to help people who are escaping tyranny, and she’s used it to grant amnesty to millions upon millions of people who have no legal right to be in the country, and that has to stop.”

“I mean, in Arizona schools right now, we have got thousands upon thousands of children who can’t even speak the native, the local language in Arizona, sometimes they don’t even speak Spanish, of course, because we’ve got illegal immigrants coming from all over,” he added.

“What does that do to the education of American children when their teachers aren’t teaching them, but they’re focused on kids who don’t have the legal right to be here? And again, nothing against the children, but we can’t have a border policy that ruins the quality of American education.”

However, the Arizona Republic reported that children who have limited proficiency in English in Arizona are taught in separate classrooms from children who speak English, and bilingual education was eliminated in the state in 2000.

U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell speaks to reporters after an appearance in Louisville, Oct. 23, 2024. (Kentucky Lantern photo by McKenna Horsley)

LOUISVILLE — U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said the presidential election will be “a cliffhanger” when asked Wednesday if he still supports former President Donald Trump’s campaign.

The Kentucky senator fielded questions from reporters, including about his earlier endorsement of Trump, after a Kentucky Chamber of Commerce event. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrat, have 13 days left to sway voters.

“Looks like seven or eight states that are going to determine who wins, that’s where both candidates are spending all of their time, which is smart,” McConnell said. “I don’t have a clue how it’s going to turn out. I think it’s going to be really, really tight.”

McConnell was also asked about recent comments by John Kelly, a retired Marine general and Trump’s former chief of staff. Kelly said Trump’s leadership was “dictatorial,” “fascist” and lacking empathy.

“I think the election is pretty clear,” McConnell said. “If you’re satisfied with the Biden years, you’re going to vote for the Democrat. If you think we can do better, support the Republican.”

A? biography of McConnell, “The Price of Power,”? written by The Associated Press’ deputy Washington bureau chief Michael Tackett, is slated to hit shelves next week. According to early reports, McConnell called Trump “stupid as well as being ill-tempered,” a “despicable human being” and a “narcissist” following the 2020 presidential election.?

McConnell endorsed Trump’s reelection bid earlier this year following the former president’s Super Tuesday wins. At the time, McConnell said it “should come as no surprise” as he had said he would support the eventual Republican nominee.?

Trump and McConnell have often been at odds. McConnell once blamed the former president for “disgraceful” acts sparking the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. In February, Trump said he was unsure if he could work with McConnell in a second term. Days later, McConnell announced he planned to step down as the Senate Republican leader this November.?

McConnell’s remarks preceded Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s visit to Louisville Wednesday afternoon. Walz, Harris’ running mate, is scheduled to attend a fundraiser for the Harris campaign. McConnell did not respond to a question about that appearance.?

From left, Norma Hatfield, Auditor Allison Ball and Alexander Magera, the auditor's general counsel, addressed an interim legislative committee, Oct. 23, 2024. (Screenshot)

Kentucky Auditor Allison Ball has launched an inquiry into whether the Beshear administration can implement a law aimed at helping kinship care families.?

Ball’s office will look at what money, if any, the cabinet has available and if federal dollars could help with implementation, she said, and is the result of an official complaint filed by Norma Hatfield, president of the Kinship Families Coalition of Kentucky.?

This comes amid a monthslong $20 million dispute between the General Assembly and the Cabinet for Health and Family Services (CHFS) that’s kept a 2024 law from going into tangible effect and helping Kentuckians who are raising minor relatives.?

“We have a lot of reasons to be involved in this issue,” Ball told members of the Interim Joint Committee Families and Children Wednesday. “At this point, we are going to make all attempts to make this a collaborative effort with the governor and CHFS but rest assured, we’re going to do everything that we can to figure out the facts.”?

The new law, which went into effect — on paper — in July, allows relatives who take temporary custody of a child, when abuse or neglect is suspected, to later become eligible for foster care payments. This is much needed relief for the thousands of kinship care families in Kentucky, advocates have said.?

‘Flabbergasted:’ Help for kinship care families passed unanimously. $20M price tag could derail it.

Beshear alerted lawmakers to what he called a funding omission in an April letter — five days after he signed Senate Bill 151 into law. He asked them to use the final two days of the 2024 session to appropriate the $20 million for implementation.?

Cabinet officials have said they cannot implement the law without the money, while lawmakers have pressed them to apply for federal funding or use existing budget dollars.?

Hatfield thanked the auditor for getting involved.?

“There are a lot of families, the longer we wait, that are missing opportunities for more long term support that deserve it,” she said. “And I’m just very grateful.”?

A CHFS spokesman said there are no federal dollars available to implement the bill from the Administration for Children and Families.

“This administration is dedicated to the care and welfare of children in the commonwealth,” the cabinet said in a statement. “Team Kentucky is 100% focused on the children who rely on us for their safety and well-being. We’re supportive of the bill, but there is a cost that must be addressed before implementation can occur.”

Sen. Julie Raque Adams, R-Louisville, who sponsored the law, told the Lantern she is “thrilled” to have a third party looking into the issue.?

“Those kids that are in crisis and they are welcomed into the arms of family members — we owe them. We owe them some support,” she said. “And so I’m just really encouraged that somebody has heard our pleas.”?

The past few months of back and forth on the issue have been “really frustrating,” she said. And she wants to see certain parts of the bill that don’t require money implemented, including getting regulations written.?

But, said Raque Adams: “If the auditor came back, that hypothetical, and said, ‘you know, the governor is absolutely right,’ then my response would be, ‘Okay, let’s open up the budget and figure out what we can do.’”??

A panel discusses the Clean Slate initiative in Louisville. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Sarah Ladd)

LOUISVILLE — When James Sweasy was 19 years old, he was convicted of a felony related to marijuana and spent the next 20 years of his life held back by his record.?

He got a lawyer and started the “multi-months” process of expungement when he was in his early 40s, he said.??

“No taxation without representation. … I can’t go on my kid’s field trip, right?” he remembers thinking. “I can’t elect a school board member that’s overseeing my kid? I don’t get a voice in that, but you’ll happily take my tax money? I didn’t like that.”??

Sweasy was part of a five-person panel who spent nearly an hour Tuesday night at the Women’s Healing Place in West Louisville discussing Kentucky’s current process for crime expungement — and their proposal to ease and automate that process, which is expected to come before the legislature next year.

“The computer would notice that (a crime) is now eligible (for expungement) and start the process and move the process forward” without a person having to file a petition or hire a lawyer, explained Kungu Njuguna, a policy strategist with the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky.?

In 2024, a slate of bipartisan lawmakers sponsored the proposal as House Bill 569, but it failed to advance past the committee stage. It’s unclear who would sponsor an automatic expungement bill next year.

In Kentucky, about 572,000 people are eligible to have their records fully cleared, according to data from The Clean Slate Initiative. But not everyone has the means and know-how to hire a lawyer, apply for expungement and ultimately clear their records, advocates said.?

Sweasy called Kentucky’s current expungement system “archaic” and a “nightmare” full of “bureaucratic red tape” that was “not cheap.”?

Njuguna said the proposed legislation would automate the current “complex” and “expensive” expungement process.?

Crimes currently eligible for expungement would go through that process paperless and automatically. The proposal? does not expand eligibility for expungement, Njuguna said, and only covers Kentucky crimes. Sexual and other violent crimes would not be eligible for automatic expungement.

“The current expungement process is complex, costly,” said Njuguna. “If you don’t have a lawyer, you probably aren’t going to get it figured out.”??

This can hold Kentuckians back, he said, because many employers are reluctant to hire people who have been convicted of crimes.

“Having a criminal history prevents people from getting back into the workforce,” Njuguna said. “And so we’re trying to even that floor and give people clean records, get people back into the workforce to be able to reclaim their lives.”??

Sen. Johnnie Turner, R-Harlan, spoke during a meeting of the Interim Joint Committee on Transportation, July 18, 2023. (LRC Public Information)

Kentucky Sen. Johnnie Turner of Harlan has died as a result of injuries received in an accident last month.

Turner, 76, was an attorney and had served in the U.S. Army as a medic. A Republican, he had served in the state Senate since 2021, representing Bell, Floyd, Harlan, Knott and Letcher counties. He served in the House of Representatives from 1999 to 2002.

Republican Senate President Robert Stivers said in a statement that Turner died Tuesday evening.?

“Over the past weeks, his remarkable resolve and strength filled the Turner family — and all of us — with optimism, making this loss all the more difficult to bear,” Stivers said.?

Stivers said the “loss is deeply personal to me” because he also knew Turner before they were in the Senate together.?

“Johnnie spent his life lifting others—whether through his service in the U.S. Army, as a member of the State House of Representatives and State Senate, or in his private legal practice. His unwavering commitment to the people of Eastern Kentucky — his constituents, brothers and sisters in Christ, whom he so fondly referred to as ‘his people’ — was at the heart of everything he did,” Stivers said.?

“Johnnie’s deep love for his family, community, and the region he represented will be remembered and cherished by all who knew him and were fortunate enough to have felt the positive impact he made. The effects of his tireless work on behalf of Eastern Kentucky families will endure, and his legacy of service and leadership will not be forgotten.”

In a post on Facebook, Sen. Phillip Wheeler, R-Pikeville, wrote:

“Johnnie was truly one of the most fascinating people that I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing. Born on Christmas Eve of 1947 into what was even for the time an atypically large family of 11 children, Johnnie grew up in Harlan County before attending the Red Bird Mission School where he worked on the campus to pay for his books and tuition.

“Johnnie served in the U.S. Army from 1967 to 1969 in the Panama Canal Zone where he met the love of his life Maritza to whom he was married for more than 50 years. Returning to the United States, Johnnie worked in a factory to earn the money to bring Maritza to the U. S.

“He subsequently attended Union College before attending the University of Kentucky College of Law. Johnnie literally practiced law longer than I have been alive, starting his career in January 1978 with former federal District Judge Karl Forester and continuing to practice until his accident in September. Johnnie became a ‘legal legend’ in the mountains trying hundreds of cases and representing thousands of coal miners.”

Calling Turner a “fervent Christian” and a “magnificent storyteller,” Wheeler said one of Turner’s goals in the House was to mitigate the “harsh workers’ compensation law” backed by then-Gov. Paul Patton and enacted in 1996.

Turner was injured and hospitalized in September when a riding lawnmower he was driving went into an empty swimming pool.

Other Kentucky officials offered condolences to Turner’s family and friends Wednesday morning.?

U.S. Senate Republican Mitch McConnell of Kentucky issued a statement: “Elaine and I were saddened to hear of the passing of our friend, Senator Johnnie Turner. Throughout his service to Kentucky and the nation – in the U.S. Army, the State House, and the State Senate, representing Eastern Kentucky’s communities – Johnnie lived his life for others. In recent years, I remember crossing paths with Johnnie to survey the damage left by the devastating floods that hit Eastern Kentucky. Johnnie was on the scene, ankle-deep in mud, his equipment from home in tow, ready to help folks in Letcher County. That’s just who he was: a good man who loved the mountains and its people. We send our condolences to the entire Turner family, Johnnie’s colleagues in the Senate, and all those touched by his service.”

Gov. Andy Beshear said on X: “Britainy and I are saddened by the news of Sen. Johnnie Turner’s passing. We send our condolences and prayers to his family and friends during this difficult time.”

Republican Attorney General Russell Coleman wrote in a X post that Turner “was a true champion for his beloved Mountains. His steadfast leadership for our Commonwealth made a lasting impact on Eastern Kentucky.”?

Republican Speaker David Osborne offered condolences to Turner’s family on behalf of the House of Representatives in a statement.

“Johnnie will be greatly missed and his loss will be felt throughout the halls of the Kentucky State Capitol where he served his constituents and Commonwealth so well,” Osborne said. “A committed public servant, Johnnie was an ardent champion and passionate voice for Eastern Kentucky. We are saddened by his loss, but know that his legacy will live on in those he helped.”

Turner’s family includes his wife, Maritza; his children Yazmin, Susie and Johnnie; and grandchildren.

A visitation for Turner will be held Friday, Nov. 1, from 4 to 7 p.m. at the Harlan County High School Auditorium, 4000 North US Hwy. 119, in Baxter, Kentucky. Funeral services are scheduled for Saturday, Nov. 2, at 11 a.m. at the Holy Trinity Church, 2536 South US Hwy. 421, in Harlan, Kentucky. The burial site is Resthaven Cemetery in Keith, Kentucky. Donations may be made to Red Bird Mission.

Senate Budget Chair Chris McDaniel, R-Ryland Heights, capped off his tour of Northern Kentucky organizations benefiting from 2024 state budget allocations by visiting Holly Hill Family and Children Solutions. Holly Hill recently received a $6.5 million one-time allocation in fiscal year 2025 to support its infrastructure modernization program, allowing the organization to expand its essential services to vulnerable youth across northern Kentucky. (Kentucky Senate Majority Caucus)

In an op-ed released by Kentucky’s Senate Majority Caucus touting its achievements, Senate President Robert Stivers and state Sen. Chris McDaniel criticized Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear for attempting “to take credit for these improvements” when the legislature has done the work.

This is a consistent drumbeat. They are perturbed that the governor shows up in our communities and hands out checks to local officials with monies allocated by the legislative branch.

I have attended my fair share of these events in my small county. What I see are citizens across the political spectrum who are excited to see the governor. And when he is at the podium he praises our local leaders for their work — in Anderson County’s case Rep. James Tipton (a Republican), Sen. Adrienne Southworth (a Republican), Judge Executive Orbrey Gritton (a Republican), Lawrenceburg Mayor Troy Young (a Republican) etc… — and details the good the money will do.

At these local events, I have never once heard the governor take sole, personal credit for the check he is handing out. And therein lies the rub.

Republicans hold an overwhelming supermajority in Frankfort, which they run zero risk of losing in the Nov. 5 election. They control the budget; they can do virtually anything, unchecked; they can easily override gubernatorial vetoes. Why all the hand wringing about credit?

And why don’t they, if they want to stand out, be heroes, make news, get credit, take on something truly difficult. Something that would save tax dollars and save lives. Something that would require hard conversations and real work.

Something like the epidemic of gun violence.

On a Saturday night in early September — a little over one month ago —? you may recall news alerts of a sniper shooting at cars on I-75 from a remote perch, in or around Laurel County. A man had purchased an AR-style weapon and 1,000 rounds of ammunition the same day. Traffic was at a standstill. People were injured. Fear spread.

The sniper remained at large for many days in a heavily wooded, expansive area. Several law enforcement agencies were deployed. The community was on high alert. Schools in the area were closed, which made it hard for parents to go to work.?

When asked about the situation, House Speaker David Osborne told LEX18, “We have to do more to address the root cause of these issues, which is mental illness. We’ve done a lot, we’re doing a lot, but clearly, we’re not doing enough,” and “It’s always a conversation … we’re always looking for ways to close loopholes and things like that.”

Osborne’s contention that “It’s always a conversation … we’re always looking for ways to close loopholes and things like that” does not jibe with reality.

This year, during the 2024 General Assembly, the Crisis Aversion and Rights Retention bill (Senate Bill 13) was filed by state Sen. Whitney Westerfield, a Republican and chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to prevent mentally unstable people from making such a purchase.

Was that not a way to have a conversation, to close a loophole?

And yet GOP leadership — Stivers and Osborne — buried SB 13 in the Veterans, Military Affairs and Public Protection Committee where it was never seen again.

A bill that could have saved lives.?

A bill that would cost virtually nothing.

A bill that the legislature could have taken 100% credit for.?

And safety was clearly on their minds. By far the most publicly debated bill of the 2024 General Assembly was House Bill 5, the Safer Kentucky Act, which by one estimate could cost Kentucky taxpayers more than $1 billion over the next decade.?

The I-75 shooter situation pulled from multiple law enforcement resources and first responders who worked selflessly, 24/7, for several days. This is how we are spending our tax dollars, too.

On Sept. 10, I sent an email to Stivers and Osborne which read, in part, “You talk of your success in reducing taxes, yet do not consider the massive tax dollars Kentuckians expend in just one manhunt the size and duration of the one for the I-75 shooter. And all that focus on House Bill 5 was for … what, exactly? HB5 which did not, for its massive scope, address safe storage or access to guns for those with mental illness. Why? What would have been the harm?”

Neither Stivers nor Osborne responded.

As stated in the aforementioned op-ed, “Kentucky’s Constitution clarifies that the power to raise and expend revenue is exclusively that of your legislature, not the governor.”?

Fact.?

So why waste time complaining about the governor??

Is there really nothing our GOP legislative supermajority can do to keep a mentally disturbed man from the same-day-purchase of an automatic weapon and 1,000 rounds? To prevent chaos? To save tax dollars? To save lives, including our children’s lives, from senseless gun violence?

The Kentucky GOP could take all of the credit for that.

An employee adds a stack of mail-in ballots to a machine that automatically places the ballots in envelopes at Runbeck Election Services on Sept. 25, 2024 in Phoenix, Arizona. The company prints mail-in ballots for 30 states and Washington, D.C. (Photo by Rebecca Noble/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — With exactly two weeks until Election Day, millions of Americans have already cast their ballots via the mail or in person as Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump pursue voters through the battleground states.

Early in-person absentee voting kicked off Tuesday in Wisconsin, adding to the list of swing states where voters have already begun casting ballots, the Wisconsin Examiner reported.

Georgia, another battleground, saw record early voter turnout in its first week, amassing more than 1.4 million ballots cast, more than a quarter of the entire voter turnout total in the 2020 presidential election, the Georgia Recorder reported.

Two national polls released Tuesday show Harris with an edge, particularly among young voters. Reuters/Ipsos polling conducted from Oct. 16 through Monday found Harris up by a narrow 3 points, hardly a change from Ipsos’ findings the previous week.

The latest quarterly CNBC/Generation Lab survey found Harris commanding a 20-point lead among 18-to-34-year-olds.

All eyes on Latino voters

The Harris campaign early Tuesday alerted the press to an “opportunity agenda for Latino men.”

The proposal promises to provide 1 million forgivable loans up to $20,000 for Latino men “and others” in start-up funding, eliminate college degree requirements on certain jobs, and encourage first-time home ownership among Latinos by building affordable homes and offer a $25,000 tax break for new buyers — two policy ideas for all Americans she’s been touting for months.

Poll numbers released Monday showed Harris continuing to outperform Trump among Latino voters in the battlegrounds of Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

A group of Christian Latinos showered Trump with praise in Miami, Florida, on Tuesday. With hands on Trump’s shoulders, religious leaders prayed over him at a roundtable event held at the Trump National Doral Golf Club.

Guillermo Maldonado, who founded the King Jesus International Ministry, said the election is “not a war between the left and the right. This is a war between good and evil. We can fight that, and we need spiritual weapons.”

“Father, we anointed him today, we anointed him to be the 47th president of the United States to restore the Biblical values. No weapon formed against him shall prosper,” Maldonado, who goes by the title ‘apostle,’ continued in his prayer over Trump. The event streamed live on C-SPAN.

Immediately after the prayer, Trump’s signature campaign song, “YMCA” by the Village People, blared and the roundtable leaders began passing books and hats for him to sign.

During the roundtable, Trump accused Harris of “sleeping” and “taking a day off.” He also, again, accused her of having a “low I.Q.”

“There’s something wrong with her,” he told the crowd.

Liz Cheney, CNN and Springsteen

Harris campaigned Monday with former U.S. House Republican Liz Cheney in suburban areas of three states — Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Cheney is the daughter of former GOP Vice President Dick Cheney, who is also backing Harris.

“For me, every single thing in my experience and in my background has played a part in my decision to endorse Vice President Harris,” said Liz Cheney, who was once the third-highest-ranking House Republican. “That begins with the fact that I’m a conservative and I know that the most conservative of all conservative principles is being faithful to the Constitution.”

According to her publicly available schedule, the vice president was scheduled to record two interviews Tuesday afternoon with NBC and Telemundo. And on Wednesday night at 9 Eastern, she’ll participate in a CNN town hall in Pennsylvania moderated by anchor Anderson Cooper.

Then on Thursday, Harris and former President Barack Obama will lead a “Get Out the Vote” rally, featuring a performance by Bruce Springsteen, in Georgia to encourage early voting.

On Friday the vice president will travel to Houston, Texas, to campaign on abortion rights. She will be accompanied by Democratic U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, who’s trying to unseat U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.

Trump cancels appearances, plans Georgia rallies

Trump canceled a scheduled appearance Tuesday at an event titled “Make America Healthy Again,” which was to feature guests Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former Democratic lawmaker-turned-Republican Tulsi Gabbard.

Trump’s keynote speech set for Tuesday at a National Rifle Association event in Georgia was also canceled “due to scheduling conflicts.”

The former president also scrapped a planned early October interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” and recent scheduled appearances on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” and NBC News.

Trump is scheduled to host a rally Tuesday night in Greensboro, North Carolina, and on Wednesday his schedule shows two events — a “Believers and Ballots Faith Town Hall” in Zebulon, Georgia, with the state’s Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, as well as a rally for Turning Point PAC and Turning Point Action in Duluth, Georgia.

Trump is scheduled to deliver the keynote speech Thursday night in Las Vegas, Nevada, for Turning Point’s “United for Change Rally.”

Politico reported Tuesday that the former president will record an interview Friday with popular podcast host Joe Rogan at his studio in Austin, Texas.

The logo of the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Liam Niemeyer)

FRANKFORT — The board overseeing Kentucky’s fish and wildlife agency voted Tuesday to establish a three-county surveillance zone after chronic wasting disease (CWD) was found earlier this month on a deer farm in Breckinridge County.

The Kentucky Fish and Wildlife Commission also for the second time approved a four-year contract for Commissioner Rich Storm following a complaint that the first approval had violated the state Open Meetings Act.?

Meade, Breckinridge and Hardin Counties are in the surveillance zone where the baiting and feeding of deer are now banned to prevent the animals from congregating and potentially spreading CWD. The commission also banned taking deer carcasses and high-risk parts such as heads out of the three counties and taking care of or rehabilitating injured deer in the zone.?

CWD is a fatal neurological disease that affects elk, deer and other species in the cervid family and has been found in dozens of states and a couple of Canadian provinces. The department established a surveillance zone in West Kentucky after CWD was detected in a wild deer in Ballard County last year, the first ever case in the state.?

Ben Robinson, the director of wildlife at the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources (KDFWR), told the commission at the special-called meeting the department was hoping to collect as many samples as possible from wild deer in the three-county zone given evidence that wild deer had interacted in the past with deer in the Breckinridge County deer farm where the disease was detected.?

Robinson said the department also wanted to better understand where deer on the Breckinridge County farm had been transported to other “captive cervid” facilities around the state.?

“Our main goal is to collect as many CWD samples from wild deer as possible, because our goal is to determine if this has spread outside of the fence of this facility,” Robinson said. “Deer are regularly moved around facilities within the state.”?

Unlike the surveillance zone in West Kentucky, the department will not require hunters in the new three-county zone to bring harvested deer to stations to test for CWD. Because deer hunters harvest a high number of deer in the three counties, Robinson told the commission, the department hopes to get deer samples to test for CWD through other voluntary methods.?

Board again approves contract for department chief following complaint

Before voting on the surveillance zone, the commission also unanimously voted with no discussion to approve a new four-year contract for the department’s chief executive Storm for a second time in as many meetings. The action followed a complaint from a sportsman alleging the first time the commission approved the contract in August violated the state Open Meetings Act.?

The vote to approve Storm’s personal service contract took place after the commission met for a little over 15 minutes in executive session closed to the public to discuss the contract.?

The commission during a regular meeting in August had unanimously approved a motion without mentioning Storm’s name to give him another four-year contract, sparking a complaint that the vagueness of the motion violated the state Open Meetings Act. Brian Mackey, a Hardin County farmer, sportsman and former member of the nine-member commission, alleged in his complaint to the commission that the board also erroneously used an exception in the Open Meetings Act to discuss Storm’s contract in closed session.?

An opinion from the Kentucky Attorney General’s Office said the department didn’t violate the Open Meetings Act by using the exception and that the AG had been informed the commission planned to clarify the “somewhat ambiguous” August motion in its next meeting.

KDFWR spokesperson Lisa Jackson in an email said along with making a change to the contract regarding Storm’s health insurance, the commission’s approval Tuesday “clarified their intent to approve the contract and reappoint Commissioner Storm.”?

“Some constituents were confused by the wording of the prior motion on the contract,” Jackson said.

Mackey in a Lantern interview said he was disappointed in the opinion from the attorney general’s office, arguing the department needed to be transparent “because that’s one of the issues this agency’s had for some time.”?

“And to keep all this stuff in the dark is not how you clean up transparency,” Mackey said.

Who serves on the nine-member commission, which has the power to hire or fire a KDFWR commissioner, had been a point of contention between some sportsmen and the GOP-controlled Kentucky Senate. Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear and Storm have previously clashed on a number of issues, including the length of Storm’s contract and executive branch oversight of procurement and conservation easements at the department.

Beshear told reporters in March that state senators — who can confirm or deny appointments made by the governor to the commission —? had to “stop protecting leadership of what I think is the most corrupt part of state government.”

Storm on Tuesday told the Lantern he wished Beshear “had a greater love for what we do here” but that he did not have “any ill feelings toward him.”?

“It’s a tough job that I have, and to coexist sometimes there’s difficulty, but I think we can move on. And we have,” Storm said. “I’d like to hope that in the future that you know his comments are about other entities that aren’t doing good work, because I really do believe in what we’re doing here.”?

“The department’s far bigger than any commissioner, and so a lot of times when you have a successful run, it’s because people are doing good work,” Storm said.?

A federal judge in California has ordered the EPA to consider at least requiring a warning on fluoridated water. (Photo by New Jersey Monitor)

A Republican lawmaker will once again push to end Kentucky’s requirement for certain utilities to add or adjust fluoride levels in drinking water.

Rep. Mark Hart, R-Falmouth, filed House Bill 141 in 2024, but it died without clearing either chamber.?

Speaking before the Interim Joint Committee on State Government Tuesday, Hart said he wants to “undo an unfunded mandate” and give communities choice on whether they consume water with added fluoride. The legislation he plans to introduce in the 2025 session wouldn’t? ban the use of fluoride, he said.?

Fluoride is a naturally-occuring mineral, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and can be found in most water.?

In August, the National Toxicology Program, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said “higher levels of fluoride exposure, such as drinking water containing more than 1.5 milligrams of fluoride per liter, are associated with lower IQ in children.” In September, a federal judge in California ordered the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to “engage in rulemaking regarding the chemical” ranging from “requiring a mere warning label to banning the chemical.”?

U.S. District Court Judge Edward Chen, an Obama appointee, took care to say his ruling “does not conclude with certainty that fluoridated water is injurious to public health” but that the evidence of its potential risk now warrants some kind of EPA action.

Cindi Batson, a nurse with Kentucky for Fluoride Choice, testified alongside Hart.?

“One of the things Kentucky cannot afford to do,” she said, “is to ignore this risk in our state.”?

Distrust of fluoride ‘mind-boggling’; mineral is ‘time-tested’ and a ‘good thing,’ dentists say

Health advocates sent the committee a letter asking lawmakers to keep fluoride in community water. Those who signed the letter are Delta Dental of Kentucky, Kentucky Dental Association, Kentucky Dental Hygienists’ Association, Kentucky Oral Health Coalition, Kentucky Primary Care Association, Kentucky Voices for Health and Louisville Water Company.??

“Despite our historic issues with poor oral health in Kentucky, we have made strides towards? improvement in oral health by leading the nation with 99% of Kentucky communities with water? fluoridation programs,” the letter states. “We as a Commonwealth cannot afford to move backward.”?

Kentucky water utilities could opt out of putting fluoride in drinking water under advancing bill

Hart said the federal ruling and summer report put Kentucky at risk of liability issues.?

“We mandate this be put in our water,” he said. “Now that the data and the research is showing that it does create an unreasonable health risk, when people start seeing the outcomes — or if they, unfortunately, have a health problem based on the water fluoridation in our water because we’re mandating it — at some point the state’s gonna be responsible for that.”?

The pro-fluoride advocates wrote in their Tuesday letter that they have a “unifying interest to improve the oral health for all people in the Commonwealth? of Kentucky” and “are deeply concerned about any efforts to remove water fluoridation programs in our? communities.”?

The 2025 legislative session begins Jan. 7.

Read the letter supporting fluoridation of water for dental health

Matt Nunn, left, and Kiana Fields are running for the state Senate seat being vacated by Republican Floor Leader Damon Thayer.

With Senate Republican Floor Leader Damon Thayer planning to step down from office, two candidates are seeking to replace him in the 17th Senate District.?

Matt Nunn, a veteran and executive at Toyota Tsusho America, is running to continue the district’s Republican control while Kiana Fields, who works in higher education, hopes to flip the seat blue. The 17th Senate District includes Grant and Scott counties and parts of Fayette and Kenton counties.?

In recent interviews with the Kentucky Lantern, both Nunn and Fields spoke about the importance of education to their respective campaigns. Nunn said public education was the top issue that drove him into the race, and added that “it’s very important to me that our public schools are effective” and prepare students to contribute to society and the workforce. He and his wife attended public school as their kids do now.?

This fall, Kentucky voters will decide to adopt or reject a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow the General Assembly to fund nonpublic schools, such as private or charter schools. It will be Amendment 2 on the ballot.?

Nunn predicted that if the amendment passes, the legislature would look at ways to support public charter schools and would carefully review the SEEK formula to continue supporting public schools.?

“Number one, I’ve said this many times, I’ll say it again, they’re not voting for a king, they’re voting for a representative,” he said. “And so I would let the results from my district guide how I might legislate on the issue, because that’s my job in a representative democracy.”

Fields works as a research and education coordinator at the University of Louisville to recruit future health professionals. She said she would support policies to retain and recruit teachers and incorporate the voices of students and parents and ensure curriculum meets needs of businesses and postsecondary institutions.?

“I think that we have turned critical problems into political messages instead of looking at them as problems to be solved that (would) help improve the lives of everyday Kentuckians,” Fields said.?

Fields said other policy areas she hopes to address if elected include access to quality and affordable health care, which includes making sure that insurance and Medicaid covers health care needs of Kentuckians. She also has an interest in making sure certificate of need laws “are up to date and are meeting the needs of our communities.” She said she believes CON laws should be kept on the books but supports looking for opportunities to reform.

State lawmakers have discussed CON in recent legislative sessions, and that conversation is expected to continue in the future.?

Nunn said he is supportive of CON laws but does believe there could be room for improvement. Other policies he is supportive of are lowering the state income tax to 0% and tough on crime policies. As a veteran, he also has interest in creating policies in that area as well as agriculture.?

The 17th Senate District, which includes a growing suburban region just outside of the Lexington area, has become one of the fastest growing areas in Kentucky in recent years.?

In the 2023 gubernatorial election, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear won three of the four counties in the district. Fields said the governor’s success in the district shows that approaching an election “looking at people first” is something that will help her in this race.?

“This is home for a lot of us. My family’s been in this district since the 1840s which is unique as a Black woman, and my legacy is here, and so I love this place, and I will make sure, and will always be a part of the good fight, to make sure that generations to come will be able to thrive in this district and in this commonwealth,” Fields said.?

Thayer has held the Senate seat for 21 years. Nunn said Thayer “has been a very consequential legislator” for both the district and the entire state. Thayer backed Nunn during the primary election and recently hosted a fundraiser for him.?

“I think everything I’m seeing tells me that this is a conservative-minded district,” Nunn said.?

Media arts nonprofit Appalshop is based in Southeastern Kentucky. (Appalshop)

Appalshop, the 55-year-old media arts nonprofit based in the coalfields of Southeastern Kentucky, was among 19 recipients of National Humanities Medals at a White House ceremony Monday.

Recipients included Robin Wall Kimmerer, scientist and author; Jon Meacham, historian and author; Aaron Sorkin, playwright, screenwriter and director; Lavar Burton, actor and literacy advocate. Chef and author Anthony Bourdain was honored posthumously.

The National Humanities Medal honors an individual or organization whose work has deepened the nation’s understanding of the human experience, broadened citizens’ engagement with history or literature, or helped preserve and expand Americans’ access to cultural resources, according to a news release from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Applashop said in a release that since 1969 it has “helped Appalachians tell their own stories through such media as documentary film, radio, music, theater, and more.”

Appalshop Executive Director Tiffany Sturdivant was accompanied to the ceremony by past Executive Director Alexander Gibson and long-time staff member Tommy Anderson. Sturdivant says, “It was important to me, as the new executive director, to spotlight and celebrate the hard work and dedication that made this medal possible. I am honored to bring Alex and Tommy to take part in this important moment in Appalshop history.”

Democratic vice presidential nominee Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz reacts after accepting the vice presidential nomination during the third day of the Democratic National Convention at the United Center on Aug. 21, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will make a stop in Louisville Wednesday for Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign fund.?

According to an advisory from the Harris-Walz campaign, Walz will deliver remarks at a campaign reception for the Harris Victory Fund, the campaign’s PAC.?

In recent years, Walz has been a political ally of Kentucky Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear. Walz attended Beshear’s 2023 inauguration in Frankfort. Both were considered as a possible running mate for Harris this summer.?

Walz’s Kentucky stop comes with two weeks left for the presidential candidates to campaign ahead of Election Day, Nov. 5. Meanwhile, both Harris and former Republican President Donald Trump are campaigning in battleground states to sway voters.?

Walz is not the first this cycle to make a fundraising stop in Kentucky. Trump’s running mate, U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, attended a Lexington reception hosted by U.S. Rep. Andy Barr in August.?

Kentucky’s eight electoral votes are likely Trump’s to win this November. Trump won Kentucky in 2016 and 2020.?

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, and former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, are giving voters very different answers when it comes to any changes at the U.S. Supreme Court, shown here on Oct. 9, 2024. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)

This is one in a series of States Newsroom reports on the major policy issues in the presidential race.

WASHINGTON — Democrats have increasingly cried out for new rules for the nation’s highest court, and the 2024 presidential election reflects a clear party divide over how Supreme Court justices should behave and whether they should remain on the bench for life.

The erasure of a nearly 50-year-old national right to abortion, the granting of wide latitude for former presidents to escape criminal accountability and several ethics scandals magnified these questions. Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are giving voters very different answers.

Harris’ platform calls for “common-sense” reforms that include term limits for justices and an enforceable ethics code that mirrors the rules that apply to lower federal judges.

When President Joe Biden announced his proposals for Supreme Court ethics reform roughly one week after dropping his bid for reelection, Harris issued a statement reinforcing the need to “restore confidence” in the court.

“That is why President Biden and I are calling on Congress to pass important reforms — from imposing term limits for Justices’ active service, to requiring Justices to comply with binding ethics rules just like every other federal judge. And finally, in our democracy, no one should be above the law. So we must also ensure that no former President has immunity for crimes committed while in the White House,” she said.

While Harris’ campaign did not provide additional details on her platform, Harris has a record of supporting such measures. As a senator in 2019, Harris co-sponsored a bill to enforce a uniform ethics code at every level of the federal judiciary, including the Supreme Court.

Trump position

When asked for comment about Trump’s stance on enforceable ethics rules or term limits at the Supreme Court, Trump campaign Senior Advisor Brian Hughes responded: “President Trump has said that, apart from matters of war and peace, the nomination of a Supreme Court justice is the most important decision an American President can make. As president, he appointed constitutionalist judges who interpret the law as written, and he will do so again when voters send him back to the White House.”

The former president has made his opposition to change known on social media.

Nearly two weeks before Biden’s speech in July to roll out his ideas for improving the court, Trump wrote on Truth Social that the “Radical Left Democrats are desperately trying to ‘Play the Ref’ by calling for an illegal and unConstitutional attack on our SACRED United States Supreme Court.”

“The reason that these Communists are so despondent is that their unLawful Witch Hunts are failing everywhere. The Democrats are attempting to interfere in the Presidential Election, and destroy our Justice System, by attacking their Political Opponent, ME, and our Honorable Supreme Court. We have to fight for our Fair and Independent Courts, and protect our Country. MAGA2024!” he continued, randomly capitalizing words as he often does.

The Republican National Committee stated in its platform that the party unequivocally opposes any changes to the number of Supreme Court justices.

“We will maintain the Supreme Court as it was always meant to be, at 9 Justices. We will not allow the Democrat Party to increase this number, as they would like to do, by 4, 6, 8, 10, and even 12 Justices. We will block them at every turn.”

At the Economic Club of Chicago on Oct. 15, Trump appeared to accuse Democrats of wanting to add up to 25 new justices to the Supreme Court bench.

Harris’ 2024 campaign position on the Supreme Court does not include a plan to change the number of justices. During her 2020 presidential run, Harris expressed an openness to expanding the court, according to Politico and other reports. Biden, at the time, remained opposed to changes, including justice term limits.

Immunity ruling

When Trump was charged with federal fraud and obstruction crimes for his attempts to subvert the 2020 presidential election results, he escalated his appeal for presidential immunity all the way to the Supreme Court.

On July 1, the justices issued a 6-3 opinion granting former presidents criminal immunity for “core constitutional” duties and presumptive immunity for actions on the “outer perimeter” of official duties, but none for unofficial, personal acts.

Two of the justices who joined the conservative majority ruling — Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — were Trump appointees. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, also appointed during Trump’s time in the Oval Office, joined them, concurring in part.

Trump’s case was delayed for the better part of 2024, tied up in the high court process as he campaigned for a second presidency. The delay ultimately closed the door on a trial before November’s election.

The high-profile case not only highlighted the fact that Trump was being judged by his own appointees, but also that two other justices had been recently exposed in ethics scandals involving Republican donors and appearing to show support for Trump’s false claims that he won the 2020 election.

In April 2023, ProPublica uncovered that Justice Clarence Thomas had been accepting luxury travel and other big ticket gifts from Republican billionaire donor Harlan Crow.

In May of this year, the New York Times published photos of an upside-down American flag flying outside the home of Justice Samuel Alito following the violent riot by Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The upside-down flag, a general symbol of protest, had been adopted by Trump supporters who believed the 2020 election was stolen.

All parties have denied any wrongdoing, and Alito declined to recuse himself from Trump’s 2020 election subversion case, and another case brought by a Jan. 6 defendant.

The call for a new ethics code

While the Thomas and Alito scandals attracted the most attention, observers of the court say many of the justices’ actions raise ethics questions.

Gabe Roth, founder of the nonpartisan nonprofit Fix the Court, said “no justice has totally behaved ethically.”

Roth cited transgressions by both conservative and liberal justices: socializing with litigants who argue before the court, the use of government resources to promote a personal book and instances of justices not recusing themselves from cases in which they appear to have a stake.

“It hasn’t been to the scale of the things that ProPublica uncovered, but no justice is fully pure when it comes to ethics issues, which is not to say that they’re all corrupt or they’re all compromised by any means. It’s just more, to me, a fact that the whole institution needs to focus more on ethical leadership,” Roth said.

ProPublica published numerous stories in 2023 detailing gifts Thomas never disclosed, as well as a luxury fishing expedition Alito took with a Republican billionaire who argued before the court.

The Supreme Court currently polices itself with its own code of conduct and maintains justices already follow rules that apply to lower federal judges.

Congressional Democrats have introduced several bills aiming to impose ethics rules on the justices and limit life-time appointments, for example to 18 years.

A bill led by Senate Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island passed the Democratic-led Senate Committee on the Judiciary in July 2023.

The legislation aimed to mandate an enforceable ethics code, tighten recusal and gift disclosure requirements, and establish a complaints process similar to that of the lower courts.

An attempt at unanimous consent passage on the Senate floor in June was blocked by Senate Judiciary’s top Republican, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

“Let’s be clear, this is not about improving the court, this is about undermining the court,” Graham said on the floor.

Roth said no matter who wins the presidency and which party takes control of the Senate, the longtime fight for an ethics overhaul and term limits at the high court will continue — and that it shouldn’t be partisan.

“If they’re done right, it doesn’t favor one party or another or one ideology or another. It’s a bit weird that one side is saying they don’t love ethics right now,” Roth continued. “I don’t get it.”

When you encounter stressors within your social network, your oxytocin levels rise to initiate social coping strategies. As a result, when you navigate a recreational fear experience like a haunted house with friends, you are setting the emotional stage to feel bonded with the people beside you. (Getty Images)

Fall for me as a teenager meant football games, homecoming dresses – and haunted houses. My friends organized group trips to the local fairground, where barn sheds were turned into halls of horror, and masked men nipped at our ankles with (chainless) chain saws as we waited in line, anticipating deeper frights to come once we were inside.

I’m not the only one who loves a good scare. Halloween attractions company America Haunts estimates Americans are spending upward of US$500 million annually on haunted house entrance fees simply for the privilege of being frightened. And lots of fright fans don’t limit their horror entertainment to spooky season, gorging horror movies, shows and books all year long.

To some people, this preoccupation with horror can seem tone deaf. School shootings, child abuse, war – the list of real-life horrors is endless. Why seek manufactured fear for entertainment when the world offers real terror in such large quantities?

As a developmental psychologist who writes dark thrillers on the side, I find the intersection of psychology and fear intriguing. To explain what drives this fascination with fear, I point to the theory that emotions evolved as a universal experience in humans because they help us survive. Creating fear in otherwise safe lives can be enjoyable – and is a way for people to practice and prepare for real-life dangers.

Fear can feel good

Controlled fear experiences – where you can click your remote, close the book, or walk out of the haunted house whenever you want – offer the physiological high that fear triggers, without any real risk.

When you perceive yourself under threat, adrenaline surges in your body and the evolutionary fight-or-flight response is activated. Your heart rate increases, you breathe deeper and faster, and your blood pressure goes up. Your body is preparing to defend itself against the danger or get away as fast as possible.

This physical reaction is crucial when facing a real threat. When experiencing controlled fear – like jump scares in a zombie TV show – you get to enjoy this energized sensation, similar to a runner’s high, without any risks. And then, once the threat is dealt with, your body releases the neurotransmitter dopamine, which provides sensations of pleasure and relief.

In one study, researchers found that people who visited a high-intensity haunted house as a controlled fear experience displayed less brain activity in response to stimuli and less anxiety post-exposure. This finding suggests that exposing yourself to horror films, scary stories or suspenseful video games can actually calm you afterward. The effect might also explain why my husband and I choose to relax by watching zombie shows after a busy day at work.

The ties that bind

An essential motivation for human beings is the sense of belonging to a social group. According to the surgeon general, Americans who miss those connections are caught up in an epidemic of loneliness, which leaves people at risk for mental and physical health issues.

Going through intense fear experiences together strengthens the bonds between individuals. Good examples include veterans who served together in combat, survivors of natural disasters, and the “families” created in groups of first responders.

I’m a volunteer firefighter, and the unique connection created through sharing intense threats, such as entering a burning building together, manifests in deep emotional bonds with my colleagues. After a significant fire call, we often note the improved morale and camaraderie of the firehouse. I feel a flood of positive emotions anytime I think of my firefighting partners, even when the events occurred months or years ago.

Controlled fear experiences artificially create similar opportunities for bonding. Exposure to stress triggers not only the fight-or-flight response, but in many situations it also initiates what psychologists call the “tend-and-befriend” system. A perceived threat prompts humans to tend to offspring and create social-emotional bonds for protection and comfort. This system is largely regulated by the so-called “love hormone” oxytocin.

The tend-and-befriend reaction is particularly likely when you experience stress around others with whom you have already established positive social connections. When you encounter stressors within your social network, your oxytocin levels rise to initiate social coping strategies. As a result, when you navigate a recreational fear experience like a haunted house with friends, you are setting the emotional stage to feel bonded with the people beside you.

Sitting in the dark with friends while you watch a scary movie or navigating a haunted corn maze with a date is good for your health, in that it helps you strengthen those social connections.

An ounce of prevention = a pound of cure

Controlled fear experiences can also be a way for you to prepare for the worst. Think of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the films “Contagion” and “Outbreak” trended on streaming platforms as people around the world sheltered at home. By watching threat scenarios play out in controlled ways through media, you can learn about your fears and emotionally prepare for future threats.

For example, researchers at Aarhus University’s Recreational Fear Lab in Denmark demonstrated in one study that people who regularly consumed horror media were more psychologically resilient during the COVID-19 pandemic than nonhorror fans. The scientists suggest that this resilience might be a result of a kind of training these fans went through – they practiced coping with the fear and anxiety provoked by their preferred form of entertainment. As a result, they were better prepared to manage the real fear triggered by the pandemic.

When I’m not teaching, I’m an avid reader of crime fiction. I also write psychological thrillers under the pen name Sarah K. Stephens. As both a reader and writer, I notice similar themes in the books I am drawn to, all of which tie into my own deep-rooted fears: mothers who fail their children somehow, women manipulated into subservience, lots of misogynist antagonists.

I enjoy writing and reading about my fears – and seeing the bad guys get their just desserts in the end – because it offers a way for me to control the story. Consuming these narratives lets me mentally rehearse how I would handle these kinds of circumstances if any were to manifest in my real life.

Survive and thrive

In the case of controlled fear experiences, scaring yourself is a pivotal technique to help you survive and adapt in a frightening world. By eliciting powerful, positive emotions, strengthening social networks and preparing you for your worst fears, you’re better able to embrace each day to its fullest.

So the next time you’re choosing between an upbeat comedy and a creepy thriller for your movie night, pick the dark side – it’s good for your health.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Andrew and Libby Potter look over the letter they received in October, telling them that their region’s largest hospital system would no longer be considered in-network for Libby’s Medicare Advantage policy. The Potters live in Huntsville, Ala., where Libby is a retired middle school librarian and Andrew is a professor at a state university. (Anna Claire Vollers/Stateline)

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Libby and Andrew Potter usually ignore the avalanche of Medicare Advantage ads that land in the mailbox at their home in Huntsville, Alabama, each fall as Medicare’s open enrollment period begins.

Libby, a retired middle school librarian, has what she considers good health insurance through the state employee health plan. Andrew has insurance through his job as a university professor and plans to join Libby’s insurance when he retires next year.

But this year, a few days before open enrollment began, a letter arrived from UnitedHealthcare, informing the Potters that the region’s largest hospital system would no longer be considered in-network for Libby’s Medicare Advantage plan.

The Potters spent the next couple of weeks worried and unsure what to do. It seemed incredible that 14 area hospitals, including the area’s only Level 1 trauma center, could suddenly become much, much more expensive.

“We were being very careful in how we go up and down stairs,” Libby joked.

Baptist Health, Humana restore ‘in network’ coverage for Medicare Advantage patients

Medicare is the federal health insurance program for people over 65 and those with certain disabilities. Medicare Advantage is a version of Medicare run by private insurance companies that contract with the government. These plans typically offer extra benefits, such as dental, vision and prescription drug coverage, that aren’t included with traditional Medicare. More than half of eligible Medicare beneficiaries now get their coverage through private Medicare Advantage plans.

But this year, as Medicare’s open enrollment season kicks off, more than 1 million patients will have to shop for new health insurance. Facing financial and federal regulatory pressures, many insurers are pulling their Medicare Advantage plans from counties and states they’ve deemed unprofitable. Meanwhile, large health systems in states including Alabama, Minnesota and Vermont have cut ties with some Medicare Advantage plans.

It’s a situation that’s alarmed state insurance regulators, who are fielding questions from older adults concerned about their hospitals and doctors withdrawing from their Medicare Advantage plans. Last month, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners sent a letter to the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services asking for guidance.

“Beneficiaries are faced with either paying the increased out-of-network costs or rescheduling their necessary medical services with another provider who may not have prompt availability,” the insurance commissioners’ group wrote. “A delay in access to medically necessary services is likely to result in harm.”

The Potters eventually learned that Libby’s copayments at the hospital would remain the same whether or not the hospital was in-network for the state educators’ Medicare Advantage plan. But those with other UnitedHealthcare Medicare Advantage plans will have to pay more — or find another plan.

“When a contract leaves the market, that can threaten continuity of care and access to care,” said Dr. Amal Trivedi, professor of health services, policy and practice at the Brown University School of Public Health. “The beneficiary will have to choose a new plan, and each of these plans is going to have a different benefit structure, different provider network, different prior authorization policies and different [prescription drug] formularies.

“The worry is that’s going to affect their out-of-pocket costs, expose them to catastrophic spending, or compromise their access to care.”

How we got here

Insurance giants such as UnitedHealthcare have been aggressively pushing enrollment in their Medicare Advantage plans for the past several years, luring customers with perks and bonuses not available through traditional Medicare. These plans tend to have low or even no monthly premiums and offer extra benefits such as vision and dental coverage, gym memberships, transportation to medical appointments, and even debit cards for medical supplies.

You’ve covered your copayment; now brace yourself for the ‘facility fee’

And they’re simple: They provide all of a person’s coverage in one plan, unlike traditional Medicare, under which people must get separate prescription drug coverage and supplemental coverage.

But there are trade-offs. Medicare Advantage plans often have a limited network of hospitals and physicians. And while the premiums are typically low, enrollees could end up paying more in the long run in copays and deductibles if they develop a serious illness.

Medicare Advantage programs also are more likely than traditional Medicare to require prior authorization for hospital stays and other high-cost services. The plans’ prior authorization requirements have prompted increased scrutiny in recent years. A congressional investigation by Democratic Senate staff released this month, for example, found the nation’s largest Medicare Advantage insurers denied a quarter of all prior authorization requests for post-acute care in nursing homes, rehab hospitals and long-term care.

Medicare Advantage is popular among large employers, many of which are shifting their Medicare-age retirees into these plans. And most states offer Medicare Advantage plans to retired state employees; in 13 states, it’s the only option. In some of those 13 states, retirees forfeit their health benefits in perpetuity if they choose coverage under traditional Medicare.

North Carolina Treasurer Dale Folwell, whose office administers the state health plan, said its Medicare Advantage plan is popular.

“What we hear from our retirees, is that they are grateful and happy to have such a great offering as a result of their retirement benefit,” the Republican said. “That’s why nearly 89% of our retirees over age 65 have availed themselves of the [Medicare Advantage] product we offer them.”

Insurers retreat

This year, the handful of insurance giants that dominate the Medicare Advantage market have said they’re scaling back or eliminating plans, to shed members and boost sagging profits. They blame new federal changes to their reimbursements, including a small cut to their base payments, and say patients are using more medical services and benefits than they anticipated.

Though most companies haven’t released data on specific counties where they’re making cuts, plans are reportedly shuttering in states such as Alabama, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Texas and Vermont, affecting hundreds of thousands of older adults. Experts say the reasons why a company might find certain markets unprofitable are complex, but can include demographics, availability of providers and plans that are already in the market.

“[T]he industry broadly is going to be trimming benefits and in some cases significantly, and exiting from certain counties that aren’t profitable,” Aetna’s former President Brian Kane told shareholders on an earnings call in May, before he left his position. Aetna, a subsidiary of CVS Health, is the third-largest Medicare Advantage insurer in the nation. “I think that’s an industry issue and I think it’s clearly an Aetna focus as well.”

Executives at CVS Health, Aetna’s parent company, told shareholders the priority for its Medicare Advantage program would be improving profit margins rather than increasing the number of enrollees.

They have not announced publicly which counties will lose Medicare Advantage plans, but noted their changes could push out 10% of their membership, meaning up to 420,000 patients could be forced to shop for a different plan.

Canceled plans

Even with the decline in the number of plans available next year, “there are still a lot of plans and people have a lot of options,” said Jeannie Fuglesten Biniek, associate director of the Medicare policy program at KFF, a health policy research organization. Next year, the average Medicare beneficiary will have access to 34 Medicare Advantage plans that include drug coverage, down from 36 this year, she said.

But that average masks wide variation across states and even counties in how many plans are available.

“There are a handful of counties, more than in previous years, where all Medicare Advantage plans exited and those look to be predominantly rural counties,” said Fuglesten Biniek. “We’re talking fortyish counties out of 3,000. For those people in those counties, that matters, but overall, it’s a smaller number.”

Experts say there isn’t enough data available yet to know whether the plan exits are concentrated in certain states or counties.

But research has shown that Medicare Advantage plans that enroll higher shares of Black beneficiaries are more likely to be terminated, said Trivedi, of Brown University. Black enrollees have?more lower-quality Medicare Advantage plans?available in their counties of residence than white enrollees, research shows; terminated contracts tend to?have lower-quality ratings.

“The consequence is that contract terminations in Medicare Advantage seem to have a disproportionate effect on Black beneficiaries because their contracts are more likely to be terminated,” Trivedi said.

A disproportionate share of Medicare Advantage beneficiaries are Black, Hispanic, and Asian and Pacific Islander. These patients tend to have lower incomes than white beneficiaries, and may by drawn by the lower upfront costs of Medicare Advantage plans.

“[Insurers] like to frame it as, ‘People are choosing us because we’re awesome,’” said Brandon Novick, program outreach assistant at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. “But it’s because financially it makes more sense in the short term” for people with limited incomes.

Meanwhile, at least 28 health systems in 21 states have stopped accepting some Medicare Advantage plans this year, according to an analysis from Becker’s Hospital Review, an industry publication.

Health systems have cited delayed reimbursements, cumbersome prior authorization requirements and high rates of patient claim denials for their decisions to drop Medicare Advantage plans. Nearly 1 in 5 health systems stopped accepting one or more Medicare Advantage plans last year, according to a report by the Healthcare Financial Management Association.

‘A tough ask’

For retirees like Libby and Andrew Potter, losing access to trusted doctors and hospitals can mean going longer without needed medical care. Finding a new doctor and getting an appointment can take months, particularly for specialists. And for older adults living in rural areas, losing an in-network hospital or physician can mean choosing between a long drive for care or high out-of-pocket costs.

“There are really important access-to-care issues when providers no longer contract with your Medicare Advantage plan,” Trivedi said.

He said the sheer number of plans and differences in benefits might be overwhelming for older adults.

“To sort through all of that when somebody also may have frailty or cognitive impairment, that’s a really tough ask,” Trivedi said. “I study health policy for a living and it’d be hard for me to sort through 40 different options.”

This story is republished from?Stateline, a sister publication to the Kentucky Lantern and ?part of the nonprofit States Newsroom network.?

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, which is a mega church in Stonecrest, Georgia, on Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024 as part of a “souls to the polls” push. Harris presented the stakes of the presidential race in stark terms: “And now we face this question: what kind of country do we want to live in? A country of chaos, fear and hate or a country of freedom, compassion and justice?” (Photo by Jill Nolin/Georgia Recorder)

WASHINGTON — A new poll released Monday by a civic engagement group found that Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris continues to grow her support with Latinos in critical battleground states.

In a tight presidential race, both campaigns have tried to court the Latino vote — one of the fastest-growing voting blocs.

The poll for Voto Latino by the firm GQR surveyed 2,000 Latinos registered to vote in the battleground states of Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — although not Georgia — from Sept. 25 to Oct. 2.

Vice President Harris even outperformed President Joe Biden in several swing states compared to his 2020 presidential results, according to the poll.

In August, Harris had the support of about 60% of Latino voters compared to GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s 29%, according to the poll. Both candidates increased their support of that voting bloc in October, with Harris at 64% and Trump at 31%.

The poll found that Harris’ growth has come from young Latino voters, ages 18 to 29.

In the swing states of Arizona, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, the poll found that Harris outperforms with Latino voters compared to Biden’s estimated wins among Latinos in 2020. In Arizona, Biden had 61% of the Latino vote four years ago, and Harris now polls at about 66%, the survey said.

In Pennsylvania, Biden had 69% of the Latino vote compared to Harris now polling at 77%, and in North Carolina, Biden had 57% of the Latino vote compared to Harris’ support of 67%, the poll said.

In 2020, Biden won Arizona and Pennsylvania by slim margins but lost North Carolina to Trump.

Trump visits Asheville, Harris teams up with Liz Cheney

After Hurricane Helene’s destruction in late September, campaigning in western North Carolina resumed Monday.

Trump visited Asheville, North Carolina, Monday afternoon to survey the destruction left by the aftermath of the Category 4 hurricane. While there, he stressed the importance of early voting, which is already underway in the state.

“It’s vital that we not let this hurricane that has taken so much also take your voice,” Trump said. “You must get out and vote.”

Harris on Monday blitzed around the suburban areas of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin with former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming for “moderated conversations.”

Arnold Palmer, McDonald’s and Usher

With almost two weeks until Election Day on Nov. 5, both candidates have rolled out celebrities and political stunts in an effort to court every vote in an election that is essentially a dead heat.

That was apparent over the weekend.

In Pennsylvania, Trump ended his Saturday evening with a rally in Latrobe where for roughly 10 minutes he described the male anatomy of the late golfer Arnold Palmer.

“This is a guy that was all man,” Trump said of Palmer, “when he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there they said, ‘oh my God, that’s unbelievable.’”

On Sunday Trump visited a closed McDonald’s, where for 20 minutes he donned an apron, worked the fryers and helped put together orders. He served a few pre-screened people who won the opportunity to partake in the campaign event via a lottery.

The visit to the Golden Arches came after Harris touted her work experience at a McDonald’s in Alameda, California, while she was a college student. Trump has cast doubt, without evidence, on whether that actually happened.

On Monday afternoon, after Harris’ jet landed in Michigan, a reporter shouted a question at her as to whether she ever worked at McDonald’s.

“Did I? I did!” Harris said, smiling and putting her thumb up, according to the pool report.

Harris returned to Georgia on Saturday, where she energized her base to take advantage of early voting. More than 1.3 million people have voted in Georgia, according to the Secretary of State’s turnout datahub.

She held a campaign rally alongside R&B singer Usher and visited Sunday church services in the Atlanta area as part of a “souls to the polls” effort.

Another intense week on the way

This week, Trump will attend a roundtable with Latino leaders on Tuesday in Miami, Florida. An earlier planned event with the National Rifle Association in Savannah, Georgia, was canceled.

In the evening, Trump will then travel to Greensboro, North Carolina, for a rally. His running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance will be campaigning in Arizona.

On Tuesday, Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, will stump in Madison, Wisconsin, with former President Barack Obama to encourage early voting.

On Wednesday night, Harris will participate in a CNN town hall in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.

Trump on Wednesday will hold a faith-related town hall in Zebulon, Georgia, in the late afternoon. In the evening, he’ll head to Duluth, Georgia, to appear as a special guest at the conservative Turning Point PAC and Turning Point Action Rally.

On Thursday, Vance will partake in a town hall in Detroit, Michigan, with NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo.

Back in Georgia, Harris and Obama will headline a get-out-the-vote rally.

The 47th annual Appalachian Writers’ Workshop in July at Hindman Settlement School attracted about 100 faculty, staff, guests and students. In 2022, the workshop was interrupted by catastrophic flash flooding that damaged five buildings on campus and also inundated the school's archives. The flooding killed 45 people in Kentucky. (Hindman Settlement School)

This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Melissa Helton is the literary arts director at the Hindman Settlement School in Knott County in Southeastern Kentucky. She is the editor of “Troublesome Rising: A Thousand-Year Flood in Eastern Kentucky,” published this September by the University Press of Kentucky. “Troublesome Rising” is an anthology of poetry, essays, fiction, and photography about the catastrophic flash flood that decimated the region in July of 2022. Charles Frazier, author of “Cold Mountain,” called it a “deeply moving collective record of devastation, loss, and resilience, beautifully wrought by a remarkable ensemble of Appalachian writers.”

Many of the authors were at the Settlement School during the flood, which hit midweek during the annual Appalachian Writers Workshop. Helton helps lead the workshop along with her other duties at the settlement school.

In light of the recent devastating floods caused by Hurricane Helene in the Southeast, and Hurricane Milton’s touchdown in Florida, many communities, including rural communities, face myriad challenges in the immediate aftermath and in the years to come.

I talked to Helton about the trauma a community experiences during a massive flooding event, learning to freeze soggy archives, and how stories don’t begin, or end, “when the water crashes into the house.”

Tracy Staley, The Daily Yonder: Congratulations on this anthology. You lived this experience and you continue to live the recovery. Now you’re in a position where you’re watching these other communities – including places where friends and even contributors to this anthology live – go through these devastating floods from Hurricane Helene. What have the past few weeks been like for you?

Melissa Helton: They haven’t been very easy. Even just getting online to check in on friends or just scrolling on Facebook, seeing the flood footage and seeing that these familiar images and familiar pleas for help and calls for donations and people trying to organize action and check in on people and reports about “Do they have electric yet?” and “Has so-and-so heard from so-and-so?”

I didn’t go through the flood itself. [Melissa was at her home in Leslie County, about an hour away, on the evening of the flood.] I wasn’t on the Hindman Settlement School campus, so I didn’t experience the water, but I experienced watching it online as I’m doing now. So it’s very retraumatizing in that way. It’s several days after the flood and that rescue and recovery is what I was most involved in, and I felt really guilty not getting involved already. And even just avoiding it when I see a post about it, just flicking past it, and I know everybody would be very understanding if you’ve been through a trauma, it’s like self-care. And people have sent me messages of love and support, but it’s been hard. And to be honest, I’ve avoided most of it.

DY: Can you tell us a little bit about the Settlement School?

MH: The Hindman Settlement School is a nonprofit, and we have four main programs. We were a boarding school from 1902 until the 1970s. And now our programs are food ways, traditional arts, dyslexia, tutoring, and literary work. We have online classes. We do a creative writing summer camp for high schoolers, but the Appalachian Writers Workshop is one of our longest standing traditions. We’re approaching our 50th anniversary and writers come from all over the country and stay on campus for a week and take classes and attend readings and be in community with each other. And so we had over 60 writers who were physically on campus during the flood itself. The writers stay in different dorms and housing throughout campus. And so some were directly in the water’s path and had to flee and their rooms were destroyed, and some of them were on higher ground, but about a dozen of them lost their vehicles. Everybody has some kind of trauma from it.

DY: So tell me about how the anthology came to be. How and when did you know that you wanted to collect this writing? It includes poems, stories, photographs, nonfiction, and fiction. How did you know that you wanted to do this anthology and what went into the thinking behind what you selected?

MH: Well, the Saturday after the flood, I got on a Zoom call with a lot of our writers and we were starting that first phase of organizing volunteers and organizing donations. Somebody joked, “When is the call for submissions going to be?” Because if you’ve got 60 writers going through this, it’s going to be a well-documented event. And beyond that, we have the Appalachian Writers Workshop, a huge community. And so we were kind of lightheartedly joking about that. The University Press of Kentucky asked me if I would be interested in doing an anthology. And so I immediately said yes. I knew this was important work. And because I hadn’t gone through the flood itself, my home wasn’t destroyed, my church wasn’t destroyed, my kid’s school wasn’t destroyed, my work was, but it was a slightly isolated trauma compared to a lot of my colleagues. I was happy to stand in and do that heavy lifting for our community, and it was a great honor. And so I started with a list which was agonizing, how do you select 30, 40, 50 writers and photographers when you have such a huge talented community?

And so I made a list of people that I thought could offer different experiences and perspectives, people who are on campus, people who weren’t, people like George Ella Lyon who have published 50 books to people like G. Acres and Shelley Jones, that this anthology was one of their first few publication credits. And some people immediately said, yes, some people said yes, but then had to say no later. It was just too traumatizing to write about. So there were people who I’d asked that didn’t end up in the book.

And then once I got that first wave of submissions in, I looked at what they were writing about and looked at the gaps of what I knew we needed to discuss in the anthology. So I asked Amelia Kirby to write a piece about mental health, and she did. I asked Elizabeth Lane Glass to write specifically about how natural disasters impact people with disabilities and how they disproportionately are more among the suffering and the dead when there’s a disaster like this. And so then that kind of gave us our skeleton for how this went. And people ask, can we write about fiction? And it was like absolutely, because you can humanize a tragedy through a character.

DY: I wanted to ask you about that. I read Savannah Sipple’s short story, “Ain’t No Grave: A Story,” about a queer woman who’s considering leaving eastern Kentucky to go live more openly in a larger town. The flood comes at the end of that piece. Many pieces are written about what happened during the flood or after, but her (fictional) story added this layer of understanding of the impact of the flood and how it upended things that people were doing or going to do. I was curious what drew you to that story and if you drew new insights from the pieces in the book.

MH: I really love that piece because it shows that in all these different ways before the moment happens, we’re all living these very individualized specific lives. And then we have this joint experience as the flood hits, and then what do we do and where do we go from there?

I think one of the great things about Savannah’s piece is that it talks about these other kind of metaphoric floods, like this idea of diaspora – that if you want to live authentically, you need to leave the region or you need to leave the region for education or for employment or for a better life, or that’s also one of these kinds of floods that are talked about throughout the anthology.

Personally, the flood changed my life completely. And it’s one of those moments that make you focus on not only your physical imminent survival, but also those bigger pictures of happiness and authenticity and what kind of life do I want to leave? And maybe this character decides to stay, maybe this character decides they still need to leave. And so I love the nuance that character and the story that she’s going through helps bring to this discussion. Because like you said, it’s not just about what happens once the water crashes into the house, but how we respond to that water crashing to the house is so predicated by everything that came before it.

DY: What’s recovery like now?

MH: It’s a cliche, but it’s a cliche because it’s true: recovery is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. Two years out, the Knott County Public Library just reopened its doors two weeks ago because they were completely flooded out. So it took two years to get the library reopened. Some of the businesses in buildings downtown are still boarded up. At the Hindman Settlement School, we had damage to about five buildings, and repairs are still ongoing as budget and personnel manpower allows because it’s expensive.

“Robert Gipe’s piece says this wasn’t a flood, it was a mining disaster. And many of our pieces in here, like George Ella Lyon’s poem, call out the human influence in these matters. “

We still don’t have offices. Our offices were on the ground floor of the building that was hit hardest. So we’re in these kind of makeshift cubicles in the middle of the Great Hall, which is where we usually have square dances and poetry readings and quilting classes. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks, we’ll be able to move into our new offices. We’re waiting for carpet to be installed. So it’s just when you have the amount of repairs that need to be done, things are prioritized. Like the James Still Learning Center where we have our dyslexia tutoring, the lobby was repaired immediately so that when kids come in, they can go upstairs to the classrooms that were not damaged. But if you go beyond the lobby, it’s still torn down to the studs. So it’s slow. I imagine there’s another year or multiple years before everything is finally repaired. Some things are never going to be repaired in town and in the counties that are flood affected.

DY: I know that saving the Settlement School’s archive was a significant piece of work because it was stored in the lower offices that were flooded.

MH: The archives were on the ground floor and they were put there because that was outside of the floodplain that was supposed to be safe, and obviously it wasn’t. So in the immediate rescue, Will Anderson, our executive director, asked me if I could take the lead on that. And I’m not an archivist. I do not know any of this stuff. And so I have a high school friend who had worked for the National Archives in D.C. and I called her that first morning and I was like, what do I do?

We were able to buy some deep freezers to freeze them to stop the mold growth. (Other organizations) held our frozen archives, and we finally repatriated those things back to campus. Sarah Insalaco is [now] our flood recovery archivist, and she leads volunteer weekends and she’s been taking chunks of frozen archive materials, books and photos and folders of papers and documents out of these big chest freezers and defrosting them one chunk at a time, and then volunteers lay them out and clean them and restore them. [Before the flood] we didn’t have an archivist. We don’t even really at this point know what we have and what was lost.

DY: How is the local community?

MH: I think we still have a lot of nervousness and trauma on days of big storms. People go out more than they did before to check their creek. I know people that when it’s raining, they’ll get stuff off the floor or they fill that nervous impulse to pack a go-bag, get your documents and all your emergency stuff together, so that if you have to flee, you can.

I think if we look at Lee Smith’s piece in the collection, she talks about the flooding in Grundy, Virginia where she was growing up. You can see that legacy of how the flood affects our community, that it’s this reoccurring thing. And as we know, it’s increasing in severity here. When we look at how Mandi Fugate Sheffel’s piece asks “when is a hundred year flood not a hundred year flood, if you’ve experienced four hundred- or thousand-year floods in your lifetime?” We need to reclassify how we’re thinking about these things because they’re coming more and more frequently. And that gets ingrained. And we say it as a joke, it’s like “Oh, are you going to be on time for the party? Well, Lord willing, and the creek don’t rise.” We say it as a colloquial kind of expression of if things go according to plan, I’ll be there on time. But I think that as these get more deadly and more devastating, I think how we talk about them needs to shift and probably will.

DY: A lot of the essays in the book touch on climate change and climate justice. Have you learned anything about climate change, or climate justice, that you didn’t realize before?

MH: I don’t come from the mountains. I grew up in the Great Lakes region of Ohio where we don’t experience this kind of flooding, but my bachelor’s degree is in environmental studies, and so I’m always thinking about the context of how humans impact nature and nature impacts humans. And that’s one of the things that I wanted to say in the introduction that we can demonize nature, but it was just mathematics, how much rainfall came in how much of a timespan. And when you look at the areas that are hardest hit, there are also areas that have a lot of logging, that have a lot of strip mining, that have mountaintop removal. There was nowhere for the water to go except into these creeks. And the creeks are often very shallow because of sediment runoff, and so there’s nowhere for the water to go but up.

Robert Gipe’s piece says this wasn’t a flood, it was a mining disaster. And many of our pieces in here, like George Ella Lyon’s poem, call out the human influence in these matters.

The poem says, if you find a piece of mirror, clean the mud off it and look at yourself because this is the reason why we’ve had this terrible flood, the human influence in it. And so climate change and environmental issues, especially in regions that have made their money and made a lot of their cultural identity off of extractive industries like coal mining, it’s a very politicized, very touchy topic, but I fully let my writers in the anthology say what they needed to say.

DY: Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, who is an author who was at Hindman during the flood and also lives near Asheville, North Carolina, [has been] experiencing this current flooding. She wrote in a piece in The Atlantic about how she thought being there near Asheville meant she was out of danger for this kind of flooding because that land hasn’t been extracted in the way that the land in Eastern Kentucky has.

MH: Yeah. One of the most heartbreaking things about watching this is watching folks like Annette and Nickole Brown and some of our writers in Eastern Kentucky and Virginia who went through the flood with us. And here they are 26 months later going through it again. And it was one thing for them to go through it on campus away from home. It was a spiritual home, a creative home. A lot of people talk about it that way in the book, but now they’re going through it in their actual homes, and especially heartbroken for folks like Annette who are going through it again. And that’s that issue. So here’s a thousand year flood and here’s a 30,000 year flood and it’s 26 months apart, and they’re having to suffer it again in new and extra terrible ways in their home now.

DY: I wonder if you have any advice or anything that you would say to anyone who’s living [in other flooded areas] who is going to be in this kind of recovery mode for the next few years or longer?

MH: That’s a big question. You don’t want to give any kind of thing that would come across as being trite or flippant or dismissive. It’ll get better. I mean, it will, but in some ways it won’t. So I guess all I can say to the people and the families, the businesses, the schools, the communities, is just to say that I see you and I love you.

This interview first appeared in Path Finders, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each week, Path Finders features a Q&A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Like what you see here? You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article and receive more conversations like this in your inbox each week.

Although they have not made technology a major topic on the campaign trail, the presidential campaigns have laid out policy approaches on issues such as AI, social media, and cryptocurrency. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Though technology policy isn’t one of the main drivers getting voters out to the polls in the upcoming presidential election, the speed in which technology develops will undoubtedly impact the way everyday Americans communicate, work and interact with the world in the next four years.

Concern about artificial intelligence’s role in the election plague the majority of both Republicans and Democrats a Pew Research Center survey found last month. Those polled are concerned that AI is being used to influence the election, and a poll earlier in the year shows that people are wary of the amount of power social media and Big Tech companies have over their lives.

Several bills regulating new technologies have been introduced in congress, but no federal laws regulating artificial intelligence or data privacy have yet been passed. In October 2023, President Joe Biden signed an executive order calling for federal agencies to examine the impacts of AI, and report how they might address problems.

Though tech issues aren’t central to their platforms, candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have outlined some of how they see technology playing a role in Americans’ lives.

Harris’ policies tend to focus on inclusivity, data protection, net neutrality and expanding broadband access. One of the largest wins for the tech and science communities during the Biden-Harris administration is the CHIPS and Science Act, which in 2022, provided funding for research and development for environmental projects, clean energy and American manufacturing of semiconductors, which are the basis of most electronics.

Trump’s policies would likely roll back some protections for consumers put in place by the Biden administration, and programs like the electric vehicle challenge. His platform also places a lot of focus on what he considers “illegal censorship,” by Big Tech companies, especially X, formerly Twitter, which banned the candidate for “risk of further incitement of violence,” after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.

While Harris’ policies focus on finding a balance of innovation and overreach by Big Tech companies, Trump’s policies focus on a more free market approach.

On the topics of AI and cryptocurrency, though, Harris and Trump see somewhat similar approaches. At a fundraiser at Cipriani Wall Street earlier this week, Harris talked about the importance of these evolving technologies in the current economy, while recognizing that they need oversight.

“We will partner together to invest in America’s competitiveness, to invest in America’s future,” Harris said. ”We will encourage innovative technologies like AI and digital assets while protecting our consumers and investors.”

It’s a change from the current administration, which is more focused on protections for consumers amid the evolving market, rather than industry growth. Trump has similarly taken a lighter stance on AI and crypto, saying that the industry requires some time to work itself out, and doesn’t support tough oversight at this moment.

On antitrust issues, Harris’ administration would likely continue pursuing enforcement against large platforms and Big Tech companies that came from Biden’s administration. He signed an executive order in 2021 against companies that use monopoly techniques and gather personal data, and his Justice Department filed lawsuits against Facebook’s parent Meta and Amazon.

Trump’s administration also carried out some antitrust suits against Google and Meta toward the end of his time in office. He’s long been vocal about his distrust and dislike for major social media platforms, claiming bias against him.

Most Americans are in favor of more tech regulation than there is now. But they’re likely not too concerned with the nitty gritty details that have kept bills sitting in Congress, said Ryan Waite, VP of Public Affairs at digital advocacy firm Think Big.

Waite has spent the last two decades working in and around political campaigns, and he said emerging technologies and AI are as influential to the future internet landscape as much as the introduction of the internet itself was to everyday life 30 years ago.

He likened pending or potential AI legislation to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which promoted competition and reduced regulation in order to bring down costs for consumers as new technologies in broadcast and internet exploded.

“I think if you talked to the average American then, they wouldn’t have known what the internet was, perhaps they experienced it at some level, but probably didn’t care much about how it was legislated,” Waite said.

But the legislation revamped the communications and telecommunications frameworks for the industry and changed how we work and receive information, Waite said. In that same concept, AI and other emerging technologies are being adopted at such high rates that “We’re at an earthquake moment,” Waite said.

Both parties aim to strengthen the technology industry and America’s place in the world market, but they approach it differently, Waite said. Debates over legislation usually come down to trying to find appropriate, timely legislation that regulates these new technologies without stifling innovation and growth.

Harris’ campaign approach is viewed as “inclusive” on these issues, Waite said, with goals to provide broadband access everywhere, and a focus on getting access to these tools for small business and underserved communities.

“They’re very interested in this equality framework, of being able to say everyone should have access to these tools,” Waite said.

Trump tends to lean more toward allowing businesses to innovate and do what they do well with the belief that time will iron out problems in these technologies. These policies usually favor economic impact over safeguarding technologies.

Most Americans probably favor some middle ground legislation that allows for data and bias protections from quickly growing technologies while allowing American companies to become global leaders, he said

In the end, for most Americans, tech issues aren’t as partisan as the two-party system sets them up to be, Waite said.

“Voters might not always know the legislative details,” Waite said. “But they do care about having reliable broadband access, keeping their kids safe online and ensuring that innovation is advancing to keep pace with global competition.”

Louisville, photographed from across the Ohio River just after sunset, was in the running to host the Sundance Film Festival but did not make the most recent cut. (Getty Images)

The recent decision by Sundance to eliminate Louisville from consideration as a potential festival location is not surprising, and a good call. It was astounding that Louisville even made the short list of potential host cities given Kentucky’s numerous human rights violations, which contradict the ethos and equity values Sundance says it holds.?

Sundance’s decision to exclude Louisville from consideration as a future festival location was a necessary choice, and an unfortunate foreshadowing of Kentucky tourism.

At the heart of Sundance’s ethos is a community agreement rooted in respect, equity, and inclusion. Their mission celebrates diversity, creativity, and freedom of expression — qualities that cannot thrive in a state that has enacted draconian laws and perpetuated systemic discrimination. The reality is clear: Out of touch lawmakers have eroded the rights of Kentucky’s most vulnerable citizens. Our commonwealth is now a place where women’s reproductive autonomy has been stripped away, LGBTQ+ rights are under siege, and systemic racism runs rampant within law enforcement and other institutions.?

Kentucky’s abortion ban is a particularly glaring example of the state’s assault on fundamental freedoms. The state has enacted some of the most restrictive anti-abortion laws in the country, effectively criminalizing health care providers and making women second-class citizens. Women no longer have the right to make decisions about their own bodies, forced instead into life-altering situations dictated by political ideology. By banning abortion, Kentucky has signaled that it values control over compassion, and oppression over freedom. Sundance, with its progressive vision of inclusion, could not stand in partnership with a state that denies women the basic right to control their reproductive futures.

Additionally, the Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) has been the subject of federal investigations, revealing a disturbing pattern of excessive force and discrimination. LMPD’s practices have eroded trust and perpetuated a cycle of injustice. Breonna Taylor’s tragic murder highlighted these problems on a national scale, but the underlying systemic problems persist. How could an institution like Sundance, which celebrates stories of resistance and change, host an event in a state that has refused to address these very issues?

And this is just the beginning. Kentucky has criminalized homelessness rather than addressing the root causes of poverty. The general assembly’s attacks on LGBTQ+ rights, from trans health care bans to discriminatory legislation, are on the rise.?

These new laws are not solving any of the problems we face; they are part of a broad, coordinated agenda to marginalize and silence anyone who does not fit a narrow definition of “acceptable” in Kentucky.

?A vibrant and diverse organization like the Sundance Institute could not, in good conscience, select Louisville as a site for the festival. Members of the Institute, filmmakers, and festival attendees could not be guaranteed safety here. Louisville cannot even offer best practices in medical care for the 140,000 people who would visit for the festival, much less the highest standard of medical care.?

Sundance’s choice to exclude Louisville is a refusal to be complicit in the oppression Kentuckians face each day. If Kentucky’s leaders truly want to attract vibrant, creative industries like the film world, they need to first fix the deep-rooted problems that make this state an unwelcoming and hostile place for far too many people.

To others on the national scene scouting Kentucky: You have a message to send with your choice. World-renowned or nationally lauded institutions and programs will not choose to spend their money in states that do not embrace freedom and equality. Aim higher and select a state where leaders respect human rights. Until women are equal citizens, until Black lives matter, until LGBTQ+ individuals are free to live without fear and are treated with dignity and compassion, there is no room for a festival like Sundance in Kentucky.?

Trump speaks to the media as he arrives for his hush money trial at Manhattan Criminal Court on May 30, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Steven Hirsch-Pool/Getty Images)

Former President Donald Trump, the GOP nominee for president, has a busy schedule of events in Pennsylvania this weekend that kicked off Saturday evening with a rally in Latrobe where he approvingly described the anatomy of the late golfer Arnold Palmer.

“This is a guy that was all man,” Trump said of Palmer, “when he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there they said, ‘oh my God, that’s unbelievable.’”

It was perhaps the most surprising comment the former president made at the event where, after speaking about Latrobe native Palmer for roughly 15 minutes, he resumed talking about familiar themes and grievances. He criticized Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president; blamed President Joe Biden and Harris for inflation and a “crisis” at the southern border, and marveled at how SpaceX, whose CEO Elon Musk is a recently vocal Trump supporter, was able to fly and land a rocket booster in a recent test flight.

Trump was joined at the rally by several Republican allies including U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser (R-9th District) and GOP candidate for U.S. Senate Dave McCormick. Former Pittsburgh Steelers Le’Veon Bell and Antonio Brown appeared on stage ahead of Trump, with Brown mocking Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee, as “not a real coach,” and calling him “Tampon Tim.”

Republicans have criticized Walz for a policy he signed last year as part of Minnesota’s budget, that requires public schools to provide free menstrual products to any students who need them. Trump falsely claimed it meant Minnesota schools were being forced to put tampons in boys’ bathrooms.

On Sunday, Trump will visit a McDonald’s in Bucks County where he will reportedly work the French fry cooker, and later will hold a town hall in Lancaster — his first town hall in the state since the Oct. 14 town hall in Montgomery County that ended strangely, with the former president swaying along on stage to songs from his playlist for a half hour.

Trump is also expected to visit the Steelers game in Pittsburgh Sunday night “as a guest of an individual suite holder,” according to a team spokesperson.

Musk will hold a town hall in Pittsburgh Sunday afternoon, with McCormick announcing he would attend. It’s the latest of a series of town halls Musk has planned to support Trump ahead of Pennsylvania’s Oct. 21 voter registration deadline.

Pennsylvania Democrats have counter-programming planned outside the Steelers game Sunday, with a “Tailgate for Kamala” scheduled for 6 p.m. And the Democratic National Committee unveiled a billboard Sunday morning across from the stadium, reading “Trump was a disaster for PA.”

Harris and Trump remain in a virtual dead heat with less than three weeks to go before the general election. Both have campaigned vigorously in Pennsylvania in recent weeks. Harris will be in Chester County on Monday for a “moderated conversation” with former GOP Congresswoman Liz Cheney, with similar events planned in Wisconsin and Michigan.

On Wednesday, Harris will participate in a town hall with CNN’s Anderson Cooper in Philadelphia, on the date of a canceled debate with Trump.

This story is republished from the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a sister publication to the Kentucky Lantern and part of the nonprofit States Newsroom network.

A new best practices guide from the U.S. Department of Labor outlines how companies should develop and use AI and protect their employees while doing so. (Photo by Tierney L. Cross/Getty Images)

The U.S. Department of Labor released a list of artificial intelligence best practices for developers and employers this week, aiming to help employers benefit from potential time and cost savings of AI, while protecting workers from discrimination and job displacement.

The voluntary guidelines come about a year after President Joe Biden signed an executive order to assess the innovative potential and risks of AI across government and private sectors. The order directed the creation of the White House AI Council, the creation of a framework for federal agencies to follow relating to privacy protection and a list of guidelines for securing AI talent, for navigating the effects on the labor market and for ensuring equity in AI use, among others.

“Harnessing AI for good and realizing its myriad benefits requires mitigating its substantial risks,” Biden said of the executive order last year. “This endeavor demands a society-wide effort that includes government, the private sector, academia and civil society.”

The DOL’s guide, “Artificial Intelligence and Worker Well-being: Principles and Best Practices for Developers and Employers” was developed with input from public listening sessions and from workers, unions, researchers, academics, employers and developers. It aims to mitigate risks of discrimination, data breaches and job replacement by AI, while embracing possible innovation and production.

“Whether AI in the workplace creates harm for workers and deepens inequality or supports workers and unleashes expansive opportunity depends (in large part) on the decisions we make,” DOL Acting Secretary Julie Su said. “The stakes are high.”

The report shares eight principles and best practices, with a “north star” of centering workers. The guide says workers, especially from underserved communities, should understand and have input in the design, development, testing, training, use and oversight of the AI systems used in their workplaces. This will improve job quality and allow businesses to deliver on their outcomes. Unions should bargain in good faith on the use of AI and electronic monitoring in the workplace, it said.

Other best practices include ethically developing AI, with training that protects and takes feedback from workers. Organizations should also have a clear governance system to evaluate AI used in the workplace, and they should be transparent about the AI systems they’re using, the DOL said.

AI systems cannot violate or undermine workers’ rights to organize, or obstruct their health, safety, wage, anti-discrimination and anti-retaliation protections, the department said. Therefore, prior to deployment, employers should audit their AI systems for potential impacts of discrimination on the basis of “race, color, national origin, religion, sex, disability, age, genetic information and other protected bases,” and should make those results public.

The report also outlines how employers can and should help workers with AI. Before implementing an AI tool, employers should consider the impact it will have on job opportunities, and they should be clear about the specific tasks it will perform. Employers that experience productivity gains or increased profits, should consider sharing the benefits with their workers, like through increased wages, improved benefits or training, the DOL said.

The implementation of AI systems has the potential to displace workers, Su said in her summary. To mitigate this, employers should appropriately train their employees to use these systems, and reallocate workers who are displaced by AI to other jobs within their organization when feasible. Employers should reach out to state and local workforce programs for education and upskilling so their workforce can learn new skills, not be phased out by technology.

And lastly, employers using AI that collect workers’ data should safeguard that data, should not collect more data than is absolutely necessary and should not share that data outside the business without workers’ freely given consent.

The guidelines outlined by the DOL are not meant to be “a substitute for existing or future federal or state laws and regulations,” it said, rather a “guiding framework for businesses” that can be customized with feedback from their workers.

“We should think of AI as a potentially powerful technology for worker well-being, and we should harness our collective human talents to design and use AI with workers as its beneficiaries, not as obstacles to innovation,” Su said.

A crowd protesting anti-transgender legislation staged a "die in" on the Kentucky Capitol grounds on March 29, 2023. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Sarah Ladd)

The U.S Supreme Court has scheduled oral arguments on Dec. 4 in a challenge to state restrictions on gender-affirming medical care that has implications for Kentucky.

US Supreme Court review of gender-affirming care for youth could impact Kentucky law

The court agreed in June to take the appeal filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and others on behalf of Samantha and Brian Williams and their 15-year-old transgender child, two anonymous plaintiff families and Memphis physician Dr. Susan Lacy.

The Biden administration also asked the Supreme Court to review the law.

The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals had upheld bans enacted in Tennessee and Kentucky ending access to puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries for transgender minors. The laws were enacted by Republican-controlled legislatures in 2023.

In June, ACLU-KY Legal Director Corey Shapiro said, “Our clients and their doctors simply want to provide the best medical care that is necessary for these amazing youth. We remain optimistic that the Supreme Court will agree and ultimately strike down these bans.”

The Trevor Project, which aims to end suicide among LGBTQ+ youth, has trained counselors available around the clock. Reach them at 1-866-488-7386, via chat at https://www.thetrevorproject.org/get-help/, or by texting START to 678678.

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris arrives for a rally at the Resch Expo Center on Oct. 17, 2024 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The event was one of three Harris had scheduled in the swing state that day. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — With 18 days until Election Day, the presidential candidates and their surrogates are hitting battleground states that have begun early voting, as well as sitting down for interviews with targeted audiences.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, will be in two swing states next week with two Democratic celebrities: former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama.

Harris and Barack Obama will head to Georgia, which has already begun early voting, on Thursday. She’ll then campaign in Michigan with Michelle Obama, as early voting starts Oct. 26.

Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, appeared Friday on a popular sports podcast by NFL commentator and host Rich Eisen, where Walz — a former high school football coach — provided an analysis of the upcoming Detroit Lions-Minnesota Vikings football game on Sunday.

Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has his own surrogate in tech billionaire Elon Musk.

Musk, the Tesla CEO and owner of X, formerly Twitter, campaigned on behalf of Trump, attending rallies and holding a Thursday town hall in the battleground state of Pennsylvania. More town halls with Musk are planned in the coming days.

Musk, who is also an immigrant, complained about immigration during the town hall and said that he’s “pro-immigrant, I just want to be sure that people who come here are going to be assets to society.”

He has donated about $75 million to organizations supporting Trump’s reelection, according to recent campaign filings.

Al Smith dinner?

Trump late Thursday attended the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, a ritzy white-tie event that raises millions for Catholic charities in New York. Organizers invite the presidential candidates to share a stage before Election Day for some light comedic roasting.

Harris did not appear at the charity occasion due to campaigning in the critical battleground state of Wisconsin, but sent in a video. The Trump campaign criticized her for not attending.

“Kamala — who isn’t funny, despises Catholics, and was too afraid of being roasted by President Trump — became the first presidential nominee since 1984 to skip the event,” the campaign said in a statement. The National Catholic Reporter reports the Harris campaign says it is committed to engagement with Catholic voters.

The only presidential candidate to purposely skip the dinner was Democratic nominee Walter Mondale and presidential candidates were not invited in 1996 and 2004. In 1992, the dinner was on the same night as the presidential debate between Democrat Bill Clinton and Republican George H.W. Bush.

Pope Francis has criticized both candidates. “Both are against life, be it the one who kicks out migrants, or be it the one who kills babies,″ Francis said.

Harris campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa said in a statement that Trump’s performance at the dinner was “unstable.”

“He stumbled over his words and lashed out when the crowd wouldn’t laugh with him,” Moussa said. “The rare moments he was off script, he went on long incomprehensible rambles, reminding Americans how unstable he’s become.”

Trump in friendly environs

Trump has largely stuck to media appearances with conservative outlets and appeared on podcasts geared toward young men.

He went on a “PBD Podcast” that aired Thursday where with the host, Patrick Bet-David, Trump again questioned Harris’ race.

This is not the first time Trump has publicly commented on Harris’ race, as he did in Chicago during the National Association of Black Journalists in July. Harris is Black and Indian; her father is Jamaican, and her late mother was Indian.

“They have a woman who is Black, although you would say she’s Indian, but she is Black … a lot of people didn’t know,” Trump said on the podcast.

Trump has also backed out of several interviews with traditional media outlets like CBS’ “60 Minutes” and CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

Joe Kernen, co-host of the “Squawk Box” said Friday that Trump canceled a scheduled interview.

CNN offered to host a town hall with both candidates. Trump has not committed, but Harris will participate in the CNN town hall on Wednesday.

Trump objects to lessons on slavery

Trump appeared on “Fox & Friends” early Friday, where he called Harris a “Marxist” and pushed back against Harris’ criticism that he is “unstable.”

“I am the most stable human being,” Trump said.

On the show, viewers sent in questions. One asked how Trump would handle education policy. Trump said that he would support school choice and would get rid of the U.S. Department of Education.

He added that he would withhold federal funding from public schools that teach about slavery in U.S. history.

“If they wanna get cute, then you don’t send them the money,” Trump said, referring to public schools in states like California, which are Democratic strongholds.

One of the hosts, Brian Kilmeade, asked Trump how he plans to reach out to women in the final days of the election, as Harris is outperforming him with that voting bloc.

Trump said that he does “very well with women, and I think it’s all nonsense.”

Overall, women who are registered to vote support Harris by 52% compared to 43% for Trump, according to the Pew Research Center.?

“You have one issue, you have the issue of abortion,” Trump said. “Without abortion, the women love me. They like me anyway.”

Trump has often taken credit for ending Roe v. Wade, which granted the constitutional right to an abortion, by appointing three conservative justices to the U.S. Supreme Court.

What’s next

Both campaigns have a busy weekend.

Harris will head to Detroit, Michigan on Saturday for a campaign event and then to Atlanta, Georgia. In the Peach State she will be joined by R&B singer Usher for a campaign rally, where she will focus on the importance of early voting.

Walz will travel to Chicago on Saturday to attend a campaign reception. Walz will then head to Omaha, Nebraska, for another campaign reception and will later give remarks at a rally.

On Saturday night, Trump will energize his base at a rally in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. He’ll also hold a town hall Sunday evening in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, is heading to Waukesha, Wisconsin on Sunday for a campaign event.

Maria Figueroa, 42, and David Figueroa, 40, wait in line with their 3-year-old son, Santiago, outside a rally for Vice President Kamala Harris in their city of Erie, Pennsylvania, on Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

PITTSBURGH — The 2024 presidential contest between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump could come down to Pennsylvania, and nobody knows that more than the Pennsylvanians inundated by the campaigns.

The commonwealth, with its nearly 13 million residents and 19 Electoral College votes, carries the biggest prize for the winner among the seven swing states.

Pennsylvania’s polarized electorate is nearly equally split in its support for Democrat Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, and Republican Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance. The latest polling shows the race on a knife’s edge.

States Newsroom traveled throughout western Pennsylvania for five days in mid-October, speaking to voters from Johnstown to Erie, who shared their hopes and fears about the race. They talked about immigration and abortion access and inflation and fentanyl overdoses. Some were overcome with emotion discussing the high stakes in their decisions.

Erica Owen, an economist at the University of Pittsburgh, said Pennsylvania is a “microcosm” of U.S. political narratives.

“It is an economically diverse state. We have manufacturing, we have tech, we have agriculture, we have a whole range of economic industries that I think influence folks’ political preferences,” said Owen, with the university’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.

Globalization and technology changed the Rust Belt state and transformed some communities “in a very negative way.”

“And so a lot of what we see is both the Republican and Democratic parties trying to reach those voters and offer a path forward to a better future,” Owen said.

Here’s what Pennsylvania voters said in interviews:

‘Divisive and full of hate’

Maria Figueroa waited in line with her family for hours Monday to see Harris speak at the Erie Insurance Arena on Oct. 14. The daughter of Mexican immigrants, Figueroa, 42, said she would vote based on immigration reform and women’s rights, particularly reproductive health care.

“I’m the daughter of an immigrant. I’m a female, and my son is an IVF baby,” said Figueroa, whose family recently moved to Erie from northern Virginia.

In vitro fertilization has become politically hazardous for Republicans who court extreme anti-abortion voters.

Her 3-year-old son Santiago wore a t-shirt that read “IVF Babies for Harris 2024.” He clung to Figueroa and her husband, David Figueroa, whose parents immigrated to the United States from Ecuador.

Figueroa criticized Trump and Republicans as “very divisive, very full of hate, and they like to instill fear.”

“They make immigrants seem like this evil group of people that are here to take over the U.S. And I mean, all the immigrants I know are hardworking people that work in the restaurant industry, construction, and in California picking the vegetables,” Figueroa said.

Trump and Vance notoriously spread false accounts of legal Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, stealing and eating pets, and of Venezuelan immigrants overrunning Aurora, Colorado — thrusting both localities in the national spotlight for weeks.

Trump also blamed Haitian migrants for problems in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, a Rust Belt town that has long been struggling with blight and population loss since the collapse of the steel industry and other manufacturing.

‘We live for our kids and our grandkids’

Tony and Karri Reda walked out feeling impressed after a Vance appearance in Johnstown. Vance spoke to a crowd of a couple hundred supporters Oct. 12 at JWF Industries, a manufacturer of tactical military vehicles and fuel storage tanks.

The married couple, both 60, who live just outside Pittsburgh in Collier Township, said “all the rhetoric about J.D. Vance and Donald Trump being weird” frustrates them.

“I was so impressed with him that if he were president I would be fine with it. I watched him in the debate. He blew me away,” Tony said. “I wasn’t real excited when Trump chose him. I thought he could have taken Nikki Haley and done something to bridge the female gap that he suffers with. But this guy’s as impressive as it comes.”

The couple — simply wearing red, no campaign gear — described themselves as “not crazy Trumpers.” They’re voting for the former president based on concerns over border security, fentanyl overdose deaths and inflation.

“We’ve seen so many people that we know, our friends’ kids that have passed away, we have family members that have passed away from fentanyl, and I think that’s a huge issue,” Karri said.

The drug overdose epidemic, driven by synthetic opioids like fentanyl, has afflicted the U.S. for years. Overdose deaths decreased in 2023 for the first time since 2018.

Tony added that concern about fentanyl overdose deaths “goes along with the border.” Chemicals to make illicit fentanyl follow the path from China to Mexico, where they are processed into the drug and then smuggled over the U.S. southern border.

“And the single biggest issue for me is keeping the border secure. I think there was a total lack of focus from this current administration with the border,” Tony said.

Choking up with emotion, Tony added “We want our grandkids to have what we had growing up.”

“We didn’t have all of this crazy rhetoric, with all the hatred back and forth, and inflationary cost and the border. We grew up in a great country, and I believe it’s gonna be a great country. I worry about our grandkids. We’re 60 years old. We’re not going to be here forever.”

‘All the good Republicans are gone’

Robin Kemling was headed into the Harris rally in Erie when she told States Newsroom she’s voting for the vice president to protect abortion access, and because she’s tired of “mean” rhetoric from Trump and his supporters.

“It’s us who care, I feel especially now, against those that just feel that they have a right to be oppressing. They’re mean. They’re mean-spirited people,” Kemling, 60, said.

“I’ve driven by a house since 2020, it has a huge sign up — It says ‘F,’ then has an American flag before ‘K,’ then ‘Biden.’ I mean, our kids ride them school buses by it,” she said.

“All the good Republicans are gone.”

She and her husband Greg Kemling, 68, who accompanied her to the rally, live in the Butler area. Greg criticized Trump as “just no good.”

“He’s useless, a liar, and lies about everything,” said Greg, a retired union worker at Hammermill Paper in Erie.

‘God knows he’s the best’

Debbie Cragle, 57, of Johnstown, said she believes a higher power has chosen Trump to lead the U.S.

“He’s going to be our president,” said Cragle, who attended Vance’s rally.

“What happened to Trump in Butler, thank God he survived. But it happened for a reason because God knows he’s the best man for the job, and he’s going to put him in office.” A gunman attempted to assassinate Trump on July 13 at a rally in Butler.

Cragle said she’s voting for Trump based on border policy, the economy and health care for veterans “first and foremost, because they are the heart of this country, and they are why we’re here.”

“We need to get Kamala out of office. We need to secure our borders, lower our taxes, lower inflation. We need to get this country back on the track that it was four years ago. And I believe that Donald Trump will definitely do it. He is the best man for the job,” she said.

Cragle said she’s “thinking about” voting by mail but prefers to vote in person because she believes the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.

Though Trump regularly repeats that he won the 2020 presidential election over Biden, there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud.

Early voting has been underway in Pennsylvania for several weeks. The commonwealth’s 67 counties began distributing mail-in ballots after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court finalized which candidates could appear on the ballot.

‘No business in the bedrooms’

Theresa Zoky and Cindy Hoover were also waiting in a long line to enter the Harris rally on Oct. 14.

The two Benedictine Sisters of Erie said they’re voting for Harris for numerous reasons — protecting U.S. democracy, privacy rights and concern over Trump’s age.

“She will honor the Constitution. That’s basically what my whole thing is, because our government needs somebody that will know what the Constitution is about and follow it,” 82-year-old Zoky said, adding that Trump “breeds negativity.”

“He’s just not fit for office, simple as that.”

Hoover said she believes Harris “will take us forward instead of taking us backwards.”

“She will spread hope for our country, for our world, and I think she is very supportive of women, especially women to have a right to their own bodies. Men have no business, the government has no business in the bedrooms. It is a family issue,” Hoover said.

“I don’t believe Trump can run this country,” she continued. “I think he’s an old man. He’s ready to retire. If you talk about Biden being old, he’s worse.”

Jan. 6 ‘means nothing’

Walking out of Vance’s rally Saturday, Missy Brodt told States Newsroom that she’s over what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, when a violent mob of Trump supporters breached the U.S. Capitol.

The rioters injured about 140 police officers and delayed by several hours the certification of the 2020 presidential victory for President Joe Biden. More than 1,500 defendants have been charged with crimes associated with the attack.

“The Democrats, they just keep bringing up the same stuff over and over again with January 6th. It means nothing. You know what, it happened. As a human you’re allowed to protest. Okay, some things went out of the way, but leave it alone,” Brodt said.

“The Democrats still haven’t told me what they’re gonna do when they get in the office, all I hear is all joy and happy, happy,” Brodt said.

When asked by States Newsroom during his Johnstown rally if he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power no matter who wins in November, Vance said, “Look, this is very simple. Yes, there was a riot at the Capitol on January 6, but there was still a peaceful transfer of power in this country, and that is always going to happen.”

Ed Sedei, a 56-year-old Trump voter in Johnstown, criticized the multiple journalists, including States Newsroom’s, who asked Vance questions about the 2020 election.

“They had some valuable time to ask some good questions today, but they asked the same old tired questions about if you think the election was rigged and whatnot,” said Sedei, who wore a t-shirt bearing the words “F- -k Harris & Walz.”

Traveling to Pennsylvania to see Harris

Renetta Johnson, 63, and her 88-year-old mother, Dorothy, will not be able to sway the Pennsylvania contest for Harris. The pair viewed themselves as lucky to live close enough to a swing state to see the vice president in person. They drove the nearly two hours from Buffalo, New York, to the Harris event in Erie.

Harris has been campaigning pretty much exclusively in the battlegrounds of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

“(My mother) was born in 1936 in Gadsden, Alabama, and so in her lifetime? she’s seen the colored-only fountains, the white-only fountains. She’s seen someone hanging from a tree. And to come from that in her lifetime to come see the first woman vice president, and first woman vice president of color,” said Johnson, a Desert Storm veteran.

“So I brought her for all that she’s done, and to remind people that, you know, in her lifetime, those terrible things happened. And now look where we are today.”

about 15,000 former inmates reenter Kentucky society annually, said Kerry Harvey, an advisor to the governor. (Getty Images)

Gov. Andy Beshear has established a council aimed at promoting employment of Kentuckians reentering society after incarceration.?

Beshear signed an executive order Thursday to establish the Governor’s Council of Second Chance Employers. The 15-member council will “educate employers and local communities on the benefits of second-chance hiring,” according to Beshear’s office.?

The council will also “advocate for laws and investments to improve reentry outcomes and develop best practices for effective reentry programming,” Beshear said.?

Members are to meet quarterly and provide an annual report to the governor’s office including their findings and recommendations.?

“Investing in second chances makes us safer and addresses some workforce challenges that we’re seeing all across the country,” Beshear said during a Thursday press conference.?

The initial council will have these members, with two-year terms, according to the executive order:?

• Tyler Stegall with BlueOval S
• Barbara Aker with More than a Bakery
• Steve Powless with Lifeline Recovery Center
• Rob Perez with DV8 Kitchen
• Stephen Johnson with Martin Contracting?
• Nick D’Andrea with UPS?
• John Estus with Amazon?
• Chad Mills with Kentucky State Building and Construction Trades Council
• Ryan Quarles, president of the Kentucky Community and Technical College System
• Tami Wilson with Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce
• LaKisha Miller with Kentucky Chamber of Commerce?

The remaining four members will be the governor and the secretaries or designees of three cabinets — Health and Family Services, Education and Labor, and Justice and Public Safety.

The council will “give us folks that not only can communicate the success that they have had with second chance employment, but they also can provide feedback for us and our programs to make sure we’re doing it right, to make sure that the skills that we’re providing while someone is incarcerated match up with the jobs that are on the other end and to create a flow of communication where we can try to do better and better and better in real time getting that feedback,” Beshear said.?

Kerry Harvey, special advisor for reentry programs, said about 15,000 former inmates reenter Kentucky society annually. And, he said, “successful reentry programming offers an enormous return on investment to taxpayers” and can help prevent recidivism.?

“Everybody wins if those who reenter society from prison succeed,” he said. “And in this context, success means that our reentering inmate does not commit a new crime, does not reoffend.”?

“It means that our reentering inmate obtains meaningful employment at a living wage and can support their families, both financially and emotionally,” Harvey said. “It means that they become role models for their children and their grandchildren.”???

Morning commuter traffic waits to cross into the United States from Tijuana, Mexico, in March. South of San Diego, the San Ysidro Port of Entry is the largest land crossing between the two countries and the most transited in the Western Hemisphere. Some 70,000 vehicles and 20,000 pedestrians pass through there daily. Border and immigration issues have become dominant themes in the 2024 presidential election. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

MYTH: Immigrants increase crime rates

Among the most persistent political talking points raised by opponents of immigration is that migrants bring crime with them into the U.S.

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” former President Donald Trump famously said on the campaign trail in 2016.

Amendment 1: ‘Proactive’ or ploy to stir up anti-immigrant vote?

“Has anybody ever seen the movie ‘Gangs of New York’?” Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance asked during a meeting with the Milwaukee Police Association in August. “We know that when you have these massive ethnic enclaves forming in our country, it can sometimes lead to higher crime rates.”

In reality, the opposite is true. Immigrants are far less likely than U.S.-born citizens to commit crimes, numerous studies show. One study of incarceration rates going back over 150 years — between 1870 and 2020 — found that U.S.-born citizens were consistently more likely to end up in prison than immigrants. And the gap between the two groups has only increased in recent years, with immigrants 60% less likely to be incarcerated than U.S.-born citizens today, according to the nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research.

Assertions that immigrants have caused spikes in crime in the areas where they settle have also been proven false. Overall, incidents of crime, including violent crime, have fallen in cities across the country since peaking during the pandemic, FBI data shows. And while politicians have claimed that border cities have been overwhelmed by lawlessness and chaos, the data shows that crime rates, including for homicide, are far lower than the national average.

The equation of immigrants with criminals is exhausting to hear for Irayda Flores, a businesswoman in Phoenix, Arizona. Flores moved to the Grand Canyon State from Sonora, Mexico, in 2004, hoping to make her entrepreneurial dreams a reality. Since then, her seafood wholesale business, El Mar de Cortez Corp, has thrived, serving restaurants across the city and employing more than a dozen people. But despite the example she and other immigrants provide, politicians continue to frame them as villains.

The rhetoric is the same every election year, she said, and it ignores the positive contributions of many of the immigrants who left their home countries to seek a better future.

“Politicians talk about the migrant community like they’re criminals, like they are really awful people,” Flores said. “But when migrants leave their country — their culture and the land that they were born and grew up in — they do it because they’re searching for opportunity. And searching for a new opportunity means they come here with the intention to work and get ahead.”

Dismissing all immigrants as criminals is harmful, she added, and unfair to the work many immigrants have put in to make a difference in their host communities.

“You can’t generalize or treat an entire immigrant group as criminals because there are people who’ve lived in the country for decades, and they bring benefits to the table,” Flores said. “They benefit the economy, they benefit their communities, and they deserve to be treated with respect.”

[subhed]MYTH: There’s an invasion at the U.S.-Mexico border

While the campaign season has prompted politicians to stir up voters about an “invasion” at the country’s southern border, the situation is more complex. In late 2023, the number of migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border hit record highs. In December 2023, more than 300,000 encounters between border officials and migrants occurred at the country’s southern border — an all-time high. Experts believe the surge was, in part, the result of a global spike in migration patterns caused by economic strains during the pandemic.

In January 2024 the record high set in December plummeted to about 176,000 encounters. The number eventually fell to a three-year low not seen since before the pandemic. In August, the month for which the most recent data is available, encounters increased slightly from to 107,503 from 104,101 in July.

MYTH: Fentanyl is smuggled into the country by migrants

The U.S.-Mexico border stretches across nearly 2,000 miles and includes 26 land ports of entry. U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents monitor both ports and the spaces in between. The vast majority of fentanyl is smuggled into the U.S. via legal routes by citizens, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security reports. More than 90% of interdicted fentanyl is confiscated by border officials at land ports of entry, according to DHS, and cartels mainly seek to move the drug across the border with the help of U.S. citizens. In fiscal year 2023, the latest year for which there is data, 86.4% of fentanyl trafficking convictions were citizens.

MYTH: Immigrants take advantage of public benefits?

In most cases, immigrants who aren’t citizens of the United States are ineligible for public benefits. Federal programs like Section 8 housing aid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicaid and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)? are all strictly reserved for U.S. citizens.

Immigrants who aren’t citizens also can’t receive subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, and they can’t apply for federal health insurance coverage through the marketplace.

People with legal permanent residency status, however, may be able to access some public benefits after reaching the five-year residency mark.

Some federal protections are in place to ensure that migrants have access to care if they are facing life-threatening circumstances. Emergency Medicaid helps migrants without legal status receive urgent medical treatment, and some benefits are available to migrant women under the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program.

Eligibility for state public benefit programs varies across the country and can range from access to driver’s licenses to in-state tuition rates and scholarships.

MYTH: It’s easy to gain U.S. citizenship?

Gaining citizenship is a costly, multistep and complicated process. And backlogged naturalization and asylum systems mean long wait times for hopeful migrants.

Those seeking to achieve legal status through marriage must pass a number of hurdles meant to verify that the marriage is genuine, including periodic interviews with immigration officials. Couples often spend hundreds or thousands of dollars and years in the application process.

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals grants people without legal status who were brought to the country as minors protection from deportation and a temporary work permit, but recipients must meet strict criteria to qualify. That includes living in the U.S. since 2007, having arrived in the country before turning 16, no significant criminal convictions and either current enrollment in a high school, a diploma or a GED.

DACA recipients who were accepted into the program must reapply for a renewal every two years. And while recipients can apply for legal residency status if they are eligible through their family or via employment-based immigration, the DACA program is currently frozen. Though applications are still being accepted, they aren’t being processed while the program is under ongoing litigation that threatens to end it altogether.

Asylum seekers must undergo fear screenings with immigration officials to determine if their concerns about persecution or threats to their lives warrant being granted protection in the U.S. New guidance issued by the Biden administration barring the consideration of asylum claims when high numbers of migrant encounters occur has made it more difficult for people to request asylum.

Those hoping for a resolution in their asylum or refugee cases might wait years. In 2019, the immigration backlog ballooned to more than 1 million cases, a number that only doubled in the following years. As of September, the number of pending immigration cases exceeded 3 million. The average time it takes to close a case is four years, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, an organization that compiles and analyzes federal immigration data.

MYTH: Immigrants don’t pay taxes

Roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants live in the United States, and all of them pay some form of taxes. An analysis of the 2022 American Community Survey, an annual demographics survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, estimated that immigrants contributed $383 billion in federal taxes, and $196 billion in state and local taxes. And while people without legal status can’t benefit from Social Security, the administration receives about $13 billion from the paychecks of workers without citizenship status every year.

Saúl Rascón moved to the U.S. with his family when he was 5-years-old. He became a DACA recipient in high school and has been employed ever since. Today, he works with Aliento Votes, a pro-immigrant voter outreach campaign. Accusations that immigrants don’t pay their taxes irritate Rascón, who views it as a way to diminish the demographic group’s contributions.

“It’s particularly frustrating when immigrants are pinned as this economic deficit and harm when it’s been proven time and time again that they’re not,” he said.

The problem, Rascón said, is that the claim is believable to the average voter who doesn’t do additional research. And that claim is dangerous for all immigrants, including himself, because it could engender hostility towards the community as a whole.

The spread of disinformation about immigrants is harmful, he added, not just because it fosters anti-immigrant sentiment, but also because it makes it more difficult to find common ground when it comes to changing the country’s immigration system. While Republican politicians have focused on riling up their base against immigrants, Democrats have shifted to the right on the issue, increasingly spotlighting enforcement policy to capture as many votes as possible.

“We’re no longer focusing our energy on our Dreamers and DACA, on undocumented people who’ve been here, and contributing taxes,” Rascón said. “We’ve seen a shift towards border security, which isn’t unproductive but it’s not the best use of our time and resources.”

Guns are shown at Caso’s Gun-A-Rama in Jersey City, New Jersey, which has been open since 1967. (Photo by Aristide Economopoulos/NJ Monitor)

This is one in a series of States Newsroom reports on the major policy issues in the presidential race.

WASHINGTON — A mass shooting at a Georgia high school in September thrust the issue of gun violence to the forefront of the presidential race.

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump agree that gun violence is a major problem, but they offer strikingly different views on how to address it.

Two 14-year-old students and two math teachers were killed at Apalachee High School.

While at a campaign rally in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, shortly after the Apalachee shooting, Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, renewed calls for an assault weapons ban, universal background checks and red flag laws.

Students should not have to be frightened of school shootings, she said. “They are sitting in a classroom where they should be fulfilling their God-given potential, yet some part of their big, beautiful minds is worried about a shooter breaking through the door,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”

Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, expressed his condolences.

“Our hearts are with the victims and loved ones of those affected by the tragic event in Winder, GA,” Trump wrote on his social media site Truth Social. “These cherished children were taken from us far too soon by a sick and deranged monster.”

Trump has survived two assassination attempts, one where he was injured in the ear, but has not changed his stance on guns.

After the first assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita said at the Republican National Convention that the party won’t back away from its support of Second Amendment rights.

During a Univision town hall with undecided Latino voters that aired Wednesday night, an audience member asked Trump how he would explain his gun policy to “parents of the victims of school shootings.”

“We have a Second Amendment and a right to bear arms,” Trump said. “I’m very strongly an advocate of that. I think that if you ever tried to get rid of it, you wouldn’t be able to do it. You wouldn’t be able to take away the guns, because people need that for security, they need it for entertainment and for sport, and other things. But they also, in many cases, need it for protection.”

A majority of Americans view gun violence as a problem — about 60% — and they expect it to only get worse over the next five years, according to a Pew Research Center study.

This year there have been 421 mass shootings, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which tracks gun violence in the U.S.

For a third year in a row, in 2022 — the most recent year of finalized data — firearms were the leading cause of death for children and teens ages 1 to 17, according to a report from the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions.

Harris’ record

In the aftermath of two mass shootings in 2022, Congress passed the most comprehensive bipartisan gun safety legislation in decades.

In Uvalde, Texas, 19 children and two teachers were murdered, making it the second-deadliest mass shooting since the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in 2012. In Buffalo, a white supremacist targeted a Black neighborhood and killed 10 Black people in a grocery store.

The package that Congress passed and President Joe Biden signed into law provided $11 billion in mental health funds and $750 million for states to enact red flag laws. It also closed loopholes and established a White House Office for Gun Violence Prevention, among other provisions.

Red flag laws allow courts to temporarily remove a firearm from an individual who is a threat to themselves or others, among other provisions.

Biden tasked Harris with leading the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which helps local communities implement that 2022 bipartisan gun legislation and aids communities impacted by gun violence.

Trump’s record

During Trump’s first presidency, he had a mixed record on gun policy.

After a mass shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada, the Trump administration moved to ban bump stocks, which allow a semi-automatic rifle to quickly fire bullets.

However, the U.S. Supreme Court, to which Trump appointed three conservative justices, struck down the ban on bump stocks.?

Trump also threatened to veto legislation from Congress that would have enhanced background checks on guns.

Promise: a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines

Democrats have long called for a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, which are typically used in mass shootings.

The U.S. used to have a ban on assault weapons, but it expired in 2004 and Congress failed to renew the ban.

“I am in favor of the Second Amendment, and I believe we need to reinstate the assault weapons ban,” Harris said at the White House in late September.

Fulfilling this promise would come down to the makeup in Congress and overcoming the Senate’s 60-vote threshold to advance legislation.

Promise: a rollback of Biden regulations

During a forum with the National Rifle Association in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in February, Trump promised to roll back all gun-related regulations that the Biden administration has implemented.

“Every single Biden attack on gun owners and manufacturers will be terminated on my very first week back in office, perhaps my first day,” Trump said.

Trump specifically said he would cancel the Biden administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy, which revokes federal licenses from gun dealers who violate firearm laws.

Brian Hughes, a Trump campaign senior adviser, said in a statement to States Newsroom that if Trump wins a second term, “he will terminate every single one of the Harris-Biden’s attacks on law-abiding gun owners his first week in office and stand up for our constitutionally enshrined right to bear arms.”

Promise: tax credits, no gun-free zones

During an NRA event in April 2023, Trump said that he was supportive of a tax credit for teachers who wanted to carry a firearm in schools.

Trump has also previously voiced his disapproval of schools being gun-free zones. Days after the Uvalde school shooting, Trump attended another NRA event in Houston, Texas, where he argued that a gun-free zone does not allow people to protect themselves.

“As the age-old saying goes, the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” Trump said. “The existence of evil is one of the very best reasons to arm law-abiding citizens.”

He argued that schools should have metal detectors, fencing and an armed police officer.

A student works on a computer at a K-12 school in Provo, Utah. School districts across the country have adopted computer monitoring platforms that analyze what students are doing on school-issued devices and flag activities that may signal a risk of self-harm or threats to others. (George Frey/Getty Images)

Whether it’s a research project on the Civil War or a science experiment on volcano eruptions, students in the Colonial School District near Wilmington, Delaware, can look up just about anything on their school-provided laptops.

But in one instance, an elementary school student searched “how to die.”

In that case, Meghan Feby, an elementary school counselor in the district, got a phone call through a platform called GoGuardian Beacon, whose algorithm flagged the phrase. The system sold by educational software company GoGuardian allows schools to monitor and analyze what students are doing on school-issued devices and flag any activities that signal a risk of self-harm or threats to others.

The student who had searched “how to die” did not want to die and showed no indicators of distress, Feby said — the student was looking for information but in no danger. Still, she values the program.

“I’ve gotten into some situations with GoGuardian where I’m really happy that they came to us and we were able to intervene,” Feby said.

School districts across the country have widely adopted such computer monitoring platforms. With the youth mental health crisis worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic and school violence affecting more K-12 students nationwide, teachers are desperate for a solution, experts say.

But critics worry about the lack of transparency from companies that have the power to monitor students and choose when to alert school personnel. Constant student surveillance also raises concerns regarding student data, privacy and free speech.

While available for more than a decade, the programs?saw a surge in use?during the pandemic as students transitioned to online learning from home, said Jennifer Jones, a staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute.

“I think because there are all kinds of issues that school districts have to contend with — like student mental health issues and the dangers of school shootings — I think they [school districts] just view these as cheap, quick ways to address the problem without interrogating the free speech and privacy implications in a more thoughtful way,” Jones said.

According to the most recent youth risk behavior survey from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly all indicators of poor mental health, suicidal thoughts and suicidal behaviors increased from 2013 to 2023. During the same period, the percentage of high school students who were threatened or injured at school, missed school because of safety concerns or experienced forced sex increased, according to the CDC report.

And the threat of school shootings remains on many educators’ minds. Since the Columbine High School shooting in 1999, more than 383,000 students have experienced gun violence at school, according to The Washington Post’s count.

GoGuardian CEO Rich Preece told Stateline that about half of the K-12 public schools in the United States have installed the company’s platforms.

As her school’s designee, Feby gets an alert when a student uses certain search terms or combinations of words on their school-issued laptops. “It will either come to me as an email, or, if it is very high risk, it comes as a phone call.”

Once she’s notified, Feby will decide whether to meet with the student or call the child’s home. If the system flags troubling activity outside of school hours, GoGuardian Beacon contacts another person in the county — including law enforcement, in some school districts.

Feby said she’s had some false alarms. One student was flagged because of the song lyrics she had looked up. Another one had searched for something related to anime.

About a third of the students in Feby’s school come from a home where English isn’t their first language, so students often use worrisome English terms inadvertently. Kids can also be curious, she said.

Still, having GoGuardian in the classroom is important, Feby said. Before she became a counselor 10 years ago, she was a school teacher. And after the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting, she realized school safety was more important than ever.

Data and privacy

Teddy Hartman, GoGuardian’s head of privacy, taught high school English literature in East Los Angeles and was a school administrator before joining the technology company about four years ago.

Hartman was brought to GoGuardian to help with creating a robust privacy program, he said, including guardrails on its use of artificial intelligence.

“We thought, ‘How can we co-create with educators, the best of the data scientists, the best of the technologists, while also remembering that students and our educators are first and foremost?’” Hartman said.

GoGuardian isn’t using any student data outside of the agreements that school districts have allowed, and that data isn’t used to train the company’s AI, Hartman said. Companies that regulate what children can do online are also required to adhere to federal laws regarding the safety and privacy of minors, including the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule.

But privacy experts are still concerned about just how much access these types of companies should have to student data.

In 2021, while many schools were just beginning to see the effects of online learning, The 74, a nonprofit news outlet covering education, published an investigation into how Gaggle was operating in Minneapolis schools. Hundreds of documents revealed how students at one school system were subject to constant digital surveillance long after the school day was over, including at home, the outlet reported.

That level of pervasive surveillance can have far-reaching implications, Okoh said. For one, in jurisdictions where legislators have expanded censorship of “divisive concepts” in schools, including critical race theory and LGBTQ+ themes, the ability for schools to monitor conversations including those terms is concerning, he said.

A report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital rights group based in San Francisco, illustrates what kinds of keyword triggers are blocked or flagged for administrators. In one example, GoGuardian had flagged a student for visiting the text of a Bible verse including the word “naked,” the report said. In another instance, a Texas House of Representatives site with information regarding “cannabis” bills was flagged.

GoGuardian and Gaggle both also dropped LGBTQ+ terms?from their keyword lists after the foundation’s initial records request, the group said.

But getting a full understanding of the way these companies monitor students is challenging because of a lack of transparency, Jones said. It’s difficult to get information from private tech companies, and the majority of their data isn’t made public, she said.

Do they work?

Years before the 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, the school district purchased a technology service to monitor what students were doing on social media, according to The Dallas Morning News. The district sent two payments to the Social Sentinel company totaling more than $9,900, according to the paper.

While the cost varies, some school districts are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on online monitoring programs. Muscogee County School District in Georgia paid $137,829 in initial costs to install GoGuardian on the district’s Chromebooks, according to the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer. In Maryland, Montgomery County Public Schools eliminated GoGuardian from its budget for the 2024-2025 school year after spending $230,000 annually on it, later switching to Lightspeed, according to the Wootton Common Sense.

Despite the spending, there’s no way to prove that these technologies work, said Chad Marlow, a senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union who authored a report on education surveillance programs.

In 2019, Bark, a content monitoring platform, claimed to have helped prevent 16 school shootings in a blog post describing their Bark for Schools program. The Gaggle company website says it saved 5,790 lives between 2018 and 2023.

These data points are measured by the number of alerts the systems generate that indicate a student may be very close to harming themselves or others. But there is little evidence that this kind of school safety technology is effective, according to the ACLU report.

“You cannot use data to say that, if there wasn’t an intervention, something would have happened,” Marlow said.

Computer monitoring programs are just one example of an overall increase in school surveillance nationwide, including cameras, facial recognition technology and more. And increased surveillance does not necessarily deter harmful conduct, Marlow said.

“A lot of schools are saying, ‘You know what, we’ve $50,000 to spend, I’m going to spend it on a student surveillance product that doesn’t work, instead of a door that locks or a mental health counselor,’” Marlow said.

Some experts are advocating for more mental health resources, including hiring more guidance counselors, and school policies that support mental health, which could prevent violence or suicide, Jones said. Community engagement programs, including volunteer work or community events, also can contribute to emotional and mental well-being.

But that’s in an ideal world, GoGuardian’s Hartman said. Computer monitoring platforms aren’t the only solution for solving the youth mental health and violence epidemic, but they aim to help, he said.

“We were founded by engineers,” Hartman said. “So, in our slice of this world, is there something we can do, from a school technology perspective that can help by being a tool in the toolbox? It’s not an end-all, be-all.”

This story is republished from Stateline, a sister publication to the Kentucky Lantern and part of the nonprofit States Newsroom network.

The Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, takes questions from Latino voters at a town hall hosted by Univision on Oct. 16, 2024. (Photo by Felipe Cuevas/TelevisaUnivision)

WASHINGTON — With less than three weeks to Election Day, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump spent Wednesday evening zeroing in on undecided voters, in a race that polls have in a dead heat.

In Doral, Florida, Trump made his pitch to undecided Latino voters for an hour-long Univision town hall and Vice President Harris waded into? conservative waters in a 30-minute Fox News interview with news anchor Bret Baier.

Undecided Latino voters from across the country asked Trump 12 questions focused on the economy, immigration and reproductive rights, among other issues. Trump rarely answered the questions, often meandering off topic and joking that the hardest question he was asked was to list three virtues he admired of his opponent.

“She seems to have an ability to survive,” Trump said of Harris.

In an effort to reach moderate and undecided Republicans, Harris engaged in a somewhat testy interview with Baier that focused on the Biden administration’s immigration policies and Trump’s rhetoric.

The interview also provided Harris with a rare opportunity to distinguish herself from President Joe Biden, a question that she faltered with when asked earlier on the daytime show “The View.”

“My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency, and like every new president that comes into office, I will bring my life experiences, my professional experiences, and fresh and new ideas,” she said. “I represent a new generation of leadership.”

Harris spars with Baier

The start of the interview with Baier brought a barrage of questions about migration at the southern border, and he often interrupted Harris during her answers. He pressed her on why the Biden administration rolled back Trump-era immigration policies.

Immigration has become a top issue for voters and one that Trump has centered in his reelection campaign.

Harris focused on how U.S. immigration needs to be fixed and how the White House brokered a border security deal with the U.S. Senate that was bipartisan until Trump instructed GOP lawmakers to walk back on the deal.

Harris said that Americans “want solutions and they want a president of the United States who’s not playing political games with the issue.”

She also tried to emphasize how she would unite the country, touting endorsements from Republicans.

The Harris campaign has aligned with Republicans who have rebuked Trump, such as launching Republicans for Harris and having former GOP U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming serve as a campaign surrogate to court moderate Republicans.

The Harris campaign has also often pointed to the dozens of Trump administration officials who no longer support the former president.

‘The enemy within’

Harris also blasted Trump’s recent remarks that referred to Democrats as “the enemy within.”

The most combative part of the interview came when Baier played a clip from a Fox News town hall that Trump held with women where the host Harris Faulkner asked him about those comments about “the enemy within.”

In the town hall, Trump said “it is the enemy from within, and they are very dangerous; they are Marxists and communists and fascists and they’re sick.”

But the clip Baier played showed a different response from Trump, and in which he was not making threats.

“I’m not threatening anyone,” Trump said in the clip that Baier played for Harris. “They’re the ones doing the threatening. They do phony investigations. I’ve been investigated more than Alphonse Capone was.”

Harris pointed out that the clip “was not what he has been saying about the enemy within.”

“You and I both know that he has talked about turning the American military on the American people. He has talked about going after people who are engaged in peaceful protest,” Harris said.

“He has talked about locking people up because they disagree with him. This is a democracy and in a democracy, the president of the United States, in the United States of America, should be willing to be able to handle criticism without saying he would lock people up for doing it.”

Latino voters question Trump

Both campaigns have tried to attract Latino voters, the second-largest group of eligible voters.

Before the Univision town hall started, Trump said that he was making inroads with Latinos.

Latino voter preferences still largely resemble the 2020 presidential election, when Biden defeated Trump 61% to 36% in earning the Latino vote, according to the Pew Research Center.?

Harris currently has a smaller lead over Trump with Latinos, 57% to 39%, according to the Pew Research Center.

Harris already had a Univision town hall with the undecided voters, but Trump’s was postponed due to Hurricane Milton.

One of the audience members, Carlos Aguilera, who works as a public utilities manager in Florida, said he’s seen climate change affect his industry and asked Trump if he still thinks climate change is a hoax.

Trump didn’t answer the question, and said he’s not concerned about weather but instead about nuclear weapons. He said if Harris wins, the U.S. will end up in another world war.

Several voters asked Trump about his plan for bringing down inflation and for job creation.

Trump mainly blamed the Biden administration for inflation. He said he would drill for oil, in order to bring down the cost of living. Trump also said he would implement a mix of tax breaks and tariffs to bring companies to the U.S. to create jobs.

“Under this administration, we are going to bring companies in through a system of taxes — positive we call it — positive taxation,” Trump said. “We are going to bring companies in at a level that you’ve never seen in this country before.”

Mass deportations

Several voters asked Trump questions relating to immigration.

A former farmworker, Jorge Valazquez, from California, said that for many years he picked strawberries and cut broccoli in the fields. He said many of those workers are undocumented and he asked Trump what his plans for mass deportations of those workers would mean, especially for food prices.

Trump said he backs legal migration and those jobs would be available for Black and Hispanic workers. In addition to promising a mass deportation of millions of immigrants in the country without authorization, Trump has proposed ending several legal pathways for immigrants such as humanitarian parole and Temporary Protected Status.

“A lot of the jobs that you have, and that other people have, are being taken by these people that are coming in,” Trump said of immigrants. “And the African American population and the Hispanic population in particular are losing jobs now because millions of people are coming in.”

Another audience member, Guadalupe Ramirez from Illinois, asked Trump what his plan is to fix the U.S. immigration system. She asked why he did not support the bipartisan border security deal the Senate and White House struck.

Trump praised his previous immigration policies and then criticized cities with Democratic leadership like Chicago.

“The Democrats are weak,” Trump said. “Don’t forget, the Democrats run Chicago.”

Trump did not answer the question as to why he instructed congressional GOP lawmakers to walk away from the border deal.

The last question on immigration came from Jose Saralegui of Arizona, who said he’s a registered Republican but undecided. He asked about Trump’s comments about Springfield, Ohio, where not only Trump, but several GOP lawmakers have falsely claimed that legal Haitian immigrants were eating people’s pets.

Saralegui said that he’s concerned that Trump has called for revoking those immigrants’ legal status — as many have TPS due to unstable conditions in Haiti — and asked Trump, “Do you really believe that these people are eating the people’s pets?”

Trump didn’t answer as to whether he believed that claim, but said he’s just “saying what was reported,” and that Haitians are “eating other things too, that they’re not supposed to be, but this is all I do, is report.”

These claims have been widely debunked. The Wall Street Journal found the Ohio woman who filed a police report for her missing cat and accused Haitian immigrants in the neighborhood of stealing people’s pets and eating them. The woman later found her cat, but the Trump campaign ran with the rumor even though it was found to be baseless.

“You have a town, a beautiful little town with no problems, all of a sudden they have 30 or 32,000 people dropped into the town, most of whom don’t speak the language, and what they’re doing is they’re looking all over for interpreters,” Trump said. “Well, I mean, I think you can’t just destroy our country.”

Saralegui, and many of the audience members who asked questions, had interpreters.

Reproductive rights

Trump was asked about reproductive rights by Yaritza Kuhn of North Carolina. Kuhn said that Trump’s wife, Melania Trump, wrote about her support of abortion and reproductive rights in her recent book. Kuhn asked Trump if he agreed with his wife.

Trump did not answer whether he agreed with his wife, but said, “I told Melania that she has to go with her heart.”

“I want her to do what she wants to do,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to oppose what I think.”

Donald Trump supporters clash with police and security forces as people try to storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Brent Stirton/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The threat of political violence will likely hang over the nation’s capital in the weeks following Election Day, security experts say, despite intensive preparations by law enforcement officials determined to avoid another Jan. 6 insurrection.

The 2,000-plus officers who make up the U.S. Capitol Police, as well as other federal law enforcement agencies like the Secret Service, have responded to a surge in threats against elected officials during the last few years, including two assassination attempts against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump just this year.

But the threats, attacks and shooting have led to questions about whether the two agencies are truly prepared for the presidential transition, especially after a report released this week said the Secret Service “requires fundamental reform to carry out its mission.”

The agency is tasked with planning and coordinating security for Congress’ certification of the Electoral College on Jan. 6 —the first time it’s been designated a National Special Security Event — and Inauguration Day on Jan. 20.

Experts interviewed by States Newsroom said there is a very real chance of political violence in the weeks and months ahead, though they said law enforcement agencies have learned from recent events. The unrest could build after what is expected to be a very close presidential election, with results possibly delayed for days or longer or even litigated in the courts.

“Unfortunately, you can never have 100% security,” said Javed Ali, associate professor of practice at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan.

“It’s nice to think that would exist. But, if you’re trying to consider all the different kinds of variables that you have to plan for, there’s always going to be a gap or vulnerability — now what you try to do is kind of minimize the big one and hope that the small ones don’t get exploited.”

Darrell M. West, the Douglas Dillon Chair in Governmental Studies at the Brookings Institution, said the risk of political violence could increase following Election Day if one or more political leaders object to the outcome.

“For months, we’ve been hearing extreme and sometimes violent rhetoric,” West said. “And rhetoric has consequences — it can encourage some people to take action.”

Trump has refused to accept the 2020 election results, and his running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, declined to say Trump lost the election. Vance on Oct. 12 said there was a “peaceful transfer of power” in January 2021.

Trump has repeatedly recycled false claims he made following his loss that the system is rigged — a talking point he’s likely to use to rile up supporters should he lose this year’s election. Trump has been charged by special counsel Jack Smith with four felony counts in connection with 2020 election interference, in a complex case that will continue after the election.

Threats against lawmakers

Members of Congress are more vulnerable than presidential candidates, in part because most lawmakers live in normal houses and don’t have security details anywhere close to the kind the Secret Service provides for high-ranking officials.

And unlike the presidency, which has a long line of succession to avoid gaps in authority following a death or a crisis, Congress has been criticized for not having better plans in place to address continuity of government following a mass casualty or similar event.

U.S. Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas Manger testified in April the agency was looking for ways to bolster protection for lawmakers in the line of presidential succession, like the speaker of the House and Senate president pro tempore.

Manger told the panel that security for those two officials was substandard to that provided for the Secretary of State, who sits below them in the line of succession.

“We can’t just go back to the days when we said, ‘Well, we’ll just follow them around and we’ll make sure they’re well protected wherever they are,’ because their homes, their families are at risk,” he testified.

Members of Congress who haven’t risen to the ranks of leadership don’t get security details unless there are specific threats to their safety. And those aren’t permanent.

That could present challenges for lawmakers who have higher profiles or who regularly receive threats, especially if people respond violently to the election results and encourage their supporters to take matters into their own hands.

Trump assassination attempts

Making the situation more complicated, this year has shown that substantial levels of security aren’t a guarantee of safety.

Trump has some of the highest levels of protection in the country, if not the world, but that did not stop a man from shooting at the former president during a rally in Pennsylvania this summer. A separate would-be gunman was spotted and apprehended just off Trump’s Florida golf course with a semi-automatic weapon in September.

Both instances raised questions about the Secret Service’s ability to protect Trump as well as others, though agency leaders maintain they’re up to the task.

Trump’s experiences, as the subject of political violence, haven’t deterred him from spreading disinformation about Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris as well as other lawmakers who disagree with him on policy issues.

Trump’s comments about immigrants have also led to threats against everyday people, including Haitian immigrants in Ohio, who are in the country legally.

During an interview with Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures” on Fox News earlier this month, Trump said he may use the National Guard or the military against his political opponents should he win reelection, calling them “the enemy from within.”

“We have some very bad people,” Trump said. “We have some sick people. Radical left lunatics. And it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”

The military and National Guard have significantly different training programs and missions than local, state, or federal law enforcement, making Trump’s comments somewhat darker than previous claims he’d try to put his political opponents in prison if reelected.

Trump hasn’t committed to respecting the results of the election or supporting a peaceful transition in power should he lose his bid for the White House.

Trump’s comments could indicate that violence is likely following the election, if he loses, or after he regains the powers of the presidency, if he wins.

Delayed election results predicted

West from the Brookings Institution said violence isn’t likely to take place in the days immediately following the end of voting on Nov. 5, since it’s unlikely anyone learns the results of the presidential election for a few days.

The Associated Press didn’t call the race for President Joe Biden until the Saturday after the election in 2020, following days of speculation and ballot counting.

Mail-in ballots, which Democrats tend to submit in larger numbers than Republicans, could lead to confusion in swing states, especially if people don’t understand they tend to boost numbers for Democratic candidates over GOP politicians as they’re counted, he said.

“We could end up in a situation where on election night, Trump is ahead, because we know Republicans tend to vote in person on Election Day, and Democrats often vote via mail ballots,” West said. “And then as the mail ballots get counted on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, the numbers may shift from Trump to Harris.

“And I think that’s a very bad combination, because it will look to some individuals like voter fraud, even though there’s a perfectly logical explanation for the change. But that’s a scenario that could lead to violence, because it’ll look like the election is being stolen from Trump.”

While the presidential candidates will play a significant role in stirring up or calming down their supporters, members of Congress, many of whom sought to legitimize misinformation and disinformation four years ago, have responsibilities as well.

“We need leaders who act responsibly, but unfortunately, in the last few months, we have not seen that,” West said. “We’ve seen members of Congress who have promoted misinformation. There’s been a lot of it surrounding the hurricane, and so the fear is that there will be blatant lies that then will incite people to take action.”

Learning from 2020

Ali, from the University of Michigan, said he expects federal law enforcement will be better prepared for post-election violence than they were four years ago, though there are still chances for violent people to slip through the cracks.

The most likely scenario, Ali said, is a single actor or “lone wolf” attack and not a mob marching to the Capitol, the way Trump supporters did on Jan. 6.

“I still think it’s relatively low,” Ali said of the likelihood of violence. “But as we’ve seen, all it takes is one person to really shake up the perception of security. And if they’re aiming at President Trump or Vice President Harris, well then, you know the stakes are even higher.”

Ali said he’s confident that the Secret Service, U.S. Capitol Police and other law enforcement agencies in the Washington, D.C., area are preparing for various scenarios, though he’s less sure about what would happen if there’s violence at state capitals.

“There might be a little more vulnerability there,” Ali said. “But I still think, at least when we’re getting to the Electoral College (certification) day, that January 6th-type insurrection will be almost impossible to pull off.”

When it comes to spreading disinformation, Ali said, he expects there will be a combination of foreign adversaries, including Iran and Russia, as well as domestic actors.

“You’ll probably see a lot of disinformation, especially if Vice President Harris wins, sort of casting doubt on the integrity of the voting, the credibility of the process, maybe going after specific individuals and key swing states, or even counties,” Ali said.

“All those things that were happening in 2020. But there were also costs to doing that, as we’ve seen too, with the civil charges and some of the potential criminal ones as well,” he added. “So I think that’s also an area domestically, where people will have to tread very cautiously. That doesn’t mean that you won’t see it, but again, there might be a line that gets crossed where people will be held accountable for that.”

‘More prepared than ever before’

U.S. Capitol Police Inspector General David T. Harper said USCP leadership has implemented the 100-plus recommendations put forward by his predecessor following the Jan. 6 attack, closing gaps that existed that day.

“I think they’ve made a lot of improvements, and I think that they’re more prepared than ever before,” Harper said, though he later added he couldn’t “say for certain that they are prepared to handle anything that can come up” due to the unpredictable nature of domestic terrorism and political violence.

The OIG is also “prepared to be all hands on deck” in the event of another attack on the Capitol or lawmakers takes place, to analyze what went wrong and make recommendations for USCP to implement, he said.

Harper, whose tenure as inspector general began earlier this year, noted during the interview that much of what he can publicly discuss is restricted by national security concerns.

The U.S. Capitol Police declined an interview request from States Newsroom, but provided written information about changes that it’s implemented during the last few years.

Among those is a law approved by Congress that allows the USCP chief to request the National Guard without the approval of the three-member Capitol Police board.

USCP has also overhauled its intelligence-gathering activities and established partnerships with other law enforcement agencies to bolster its ranks ahead of major events.

Secret Service planning for Jan. 6

The Secret Service is one of those partners and it will take the lead this year planning security for major events during the presidential transition, even those undertaken by Congress inside the Capitol.

While Inauguration Day has traditionally been categorized as a National Special Security Event, the Department of Homeland Security has extended that classification for the first time for Congress certifying the winner of the presidential race on Jan. 6.

Nate Herring, spokesperson for the United States Secret Service, said part of the process includes planning with other law enforcement agencies for “various scenarios” that could take place, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Metropolitan Police Department.

“We work very closely with our partners throughout the whole planning process,” Herring said. “And D.C. is especially unique because National Special Security Events occur fairly frequently.”

But the Secret Service’s leadership and structure have come under scrutiny during the last few months.

The four-member panel tasked with investigating the Pennsylvania assassination attempt against Trump wrote in the 52-page report released in mid-October that the Secret Service “has become bureaucratic, complacent, and static even though risks have multiplied and technology has evolved.”

“This is a zero-fail mission, for any failure endangers not only the life of the protectee, but also the fundamentals of our government itself,” they wrote.

Without substantial changes to the Secret Service, the independent review panel wrote, it believes the type of deadly attack that took place in Butler, Pennsylvania, “can and will happen again.”

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas released a written statement after the report’s release, saying the department had begun “taking the actions needed to advance the Secret Service’s protection mission,” including addressing the “systemic and foundational issues” described by the review panel.

D.C. planning

District of Columbia Assistant City Administrator Chris Rodriguez said that city officials will be watching for any indications people intent on violence begin traveling or gathering inside the city following Election Day.

“We are obviously attuned to what happened last time. I mean, I don’t think we can ignore that, and we’re not,” Rodriguez said, referring to the Jan. 6 attack. “But we also are in a place where we have great relationships among our agencies within the region, with the federal government in terms of coordination, and we will be prepared to adapt our operational posture in any way that we need to.”

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser originally requested the NSSE designation for Jan. 6, which Rodriguez said has increased planning and coordination, in hopes of avoiding any violence.

Rodriguez also stressed D.C. officials and the city’s police department are used to planning for the large crowds and protests that tend to take place whenever there’s a presidential transition.

“We are a city that prides itself, as the nation’s capital, to ensuring that there is a peaceful transition of power,” he said. “And we will do our part to ensure that.”

The reimagined Brent Spence companion bridge. (Photo provided by brentspencebridgecorridor.com)

A coalition of transportation and environmental nonprofits have sued the Brent Spence Corridor project in federal court over its potential environmental impacts, especially as they relate to non-white communities around the bridge.?

Filed on Tuesday, the suit’s plaintiffs include the Devou Good Foundation, Civic Cincinnati, Ride the Cov and Queen City Bike. The group’s complaint alleges that the project has inadequately explored the potential environmental impact of the construction and demands that work on the project cease until their concerns are redressed.?

Construction for the estimated $3.6 billion corridor project, which includes a new companion bridge slated for construction next to the existing bridge, is scheduled to begin next year and continue through 2029. This conceivably would bring the number of traffic lanes up from the existing bridge’s eight lanes to 16. The project also entails the widening of I-75.

Specifically, the suit calls for the project to engage in and produce an Environmental Impact Statement, or EIS. Large federal projects are required to assess their potential impacts on the local environment. The project first completed an environmental assessment in 2012, which found no significant impact.?

The project floundered for years due to lack of funding, but following an injection of federal money in late 2022, the project went about updating its initial assessment. The federal government approved a second finding of no significant impact in May, following months of public input. Projects whose assessments find no significant impact are not required to produce an environmental impact statement, much to the protestations of the plaintiffs.

“By refusing to acknowledge that the Project will have significant impacts on the human environment, Defendants have arbitrarily and capriciously refused to prepare an EIS, which would require them to meaningfully consider reasonable alternatives, including ones that would include substantial investment in public transportation as part of the Project, or to consider charging tolls on the Ohio River bridges, which would reduce the demand for the Project’s dramatic increase in the number of travel lanes,” the suit alleges.?

“Defendants also have failed to adequately consider or mitigate adverse effects on the predominantly non-white residents located near the highway in the project area, including effects on air quality, noise, health and mobility caused by the anticipated 6 years-long construction of the project,” the suit continues. “They have also failed to adequately consider or mitigate long term effects of expanding these highways, including greatly increased vehicle traffic; water quality and quantity impacts from increased emissions and from the additional acres of highway right of way and impermeable pavement; increased urban sprawl and associated segregation; and the unequal distribution of the benefits and burdens of these transportation system investments.”

The suit demands the court nullify the federal government’s finding of significant impact, issue a court order voiding any agreement using federal funds on the project, prevent any additional work on the project until the environmental assessment issues can be redressed and pay for the plaintiffs’ legal fees.?

This story is republished from LINK nky.

How to address projected shortfalls for both the Social Security and Medicare trust funds will become an increasingly important topic for the president and Congress during the next decade.?(Photo by Getty Images)

This is one in a series of States Newsroom reports on the major policy issues in the presidential race.

WASHINGTON — The presidential debate in early September included just one mention of Social Security and three references to Medicare, making the safety net programs a minuscule part of the policy discussion, despite their importance to tens of millions of Americans.

Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and Republican candidate Donald Trump have both mentioned the programs numerous times during appearances, though neither campaign has sought to elevate the financial stability of the two programs as a core issue.

More often than not, Harris and Trump rebuke their opponent, while committing to “save” Social Security and Medicare — skipping over the details or the role Congress must play in the discussion.

How to address projected shortfalls for both the Social Security and Medicare trust funds will become an increasingly important topic for the president and Congress during the next decade.

The latest Social Security trustees report expects the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and the Disability Insurance trust funds will be able to pay full benefits until 2035, after which, without action by lawmakers, benefits would drop to about 83%.

The trustee report for Medicare shows the funding stream for the hospital insurance trust fund can cover all of its bills through 2036 before it would only be able to cover 89% of costs.

There are currently 67.5 million people enrolled in Medicare, which provides health insurance and prescription drug coverage for people over the age of 65 as well as younger people who have certain severe illnesses or disabilities.

Nearly 68 million people receive some level of benefit from Social Security each month, accounting for about $1.5 trillion in spending by the federal government annually, according to a fact sheet.

While the issue is somewhat less pressing for Trump, who would be term limited to another four years, Harris could theoretically spend the next eight years in the Oval Office, making the solvency of the trust funds an issue she would likely need to address with Congress.

Protecting seniors

During the September debate, Harris brought up Social Security and Medicare following a question about how her policy beliefs on fracking, assault weapons and border security have changed over time.

“My work that is about protecting Social Security and Medicare is based on long-standing work that I have done. Protecting seniors from scams,” Harris said as part of a longer answer. “My values have not changed. And what is important is that there is a president who actually brings values and a perspective that is about lifting people up and not beating people down and name-calling.”

Harris later brought up Medicare again, noting that legislation Congress approved during Biden’s term in office allowed program administrators to negotiate certain prescription drug prices for the first time. That law, known as the Inflation Reduction Act, also capped the cost of insulin for Medicare enrollees at $35 per month.

Trump didn’t broach the subject of Social Security or Medicare during the September debate with Harris, but he did speak about the two programs during an earlier summer debate with President Joe Biden, before he stepped aside as the Democratic nominee.

During that debate, Trump claimed the Biden administration was going to “destroy” the two programs by allowing noncitizens to draw down benefits.

FactCheck notes on its website that comments and viral posts about noncitizens receiving Social Security benefits don’t always represent reality and sometimes confuse different programs.

“Immigrants who are lawfully living or authorized to work in the U.S. are eligible for a Social Security number and, in some cases, Social Security benefits. But viral posts make the false claim that ‘illegal immigrants’ can receive Social Security numbers and retirement benefits, and they confuse two programs managed by the Social Security Administration.”

KFF writes on its website that whether legal immigrants are eligible for Medicare depends on several factors, including how long they’ve paid into the system.

“New immigrants are not eligible for Medicare regardless of their age. Once immigrants meet the residency requirements, eligibility and enrollment work the same as they do for others.”

Trump on entitlement programs

Trump’s comments on entitlement programs haven’t always been consistent or entirely clear, but his campaign and he both maintain they will “save” the program.

During an interview with CNBC in March, Trump said that there are numerous things lawmakers could do to address solvency.

“There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements,” Trump said, declining to list any of those policy proposals.

Trump’s campaign website posted a video of him back in January 2023, saying Republicans “should not cut a penny” from Medicare or Social Security to pay for other legislation.

The problems facing Social Security and Medicare aren’t related to Congress reducing the amount of tax dollars flowing into the programs. Rather it is the structure for the programs lawmakers set up previously.

Without action by Congress, the trust funds won’t be able to account for benefit payments in the long term.

So the challenge for the next president won’t be preventing lawmakers from taking action related to Social Security and Medicare, but helping find a bipartisan path forward on legislation to change revenue, spending, or both.

Trump does want to end taxes on Social Security benefits, writing on social media in July that “SENIORS SHOULD NOT PAY TAX ON SOCIAL SECURITY!”

Henry Aaron, the Bruce and Virginia MacLaury Chair and senior fellow in the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution, wrote in a detailed analysis of the platform that Trump’s proposal to end income tax on Social Security benefits “would accelerate trust fund depletion by about two years and deepen the long-run funding gap by more than 7%.”

Harris policies

Harris’ campaign website says she would “protect Social Security and Medicare against relentless attacks from Donald Trump and his extreme allies.”

“She will strengthen Social Security and Medicare for the long haul by making millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share in taxes,” the policy page states. “She will always fight to ensure that Americans can count on getting the benefits they earned.”

Harris announced in early October during an appearance on “The View” that if elected she would work toward including long-term home care for seniors enrolled in Medicare.

“There are so many people in our country who are right in the middle: They’re taking care of their kids and they’re taking care of their aging parents, and it’s just almost impossible to do it all, especially if they work,” Harris said during the live interview. “We’re finding that so many are then having to leave their job, which means losing a source of income, not to mention the emotional stress.”

The proposals would likely need partial, if not complete, buy-in from Congress to move forward and could come with a $40 billion annual price tag, though the campaign noted in a fact sheet that there are pay-fors.

“These new benefits will be fully paid for and extend the life of the Medicare Trust Fund by expanding Medicare drug price negotiations, increasing the discounts drug manufacturers cover for certain brand-name drugs in Medicare and addressing Medicare fraud,” it states.

A Harris administration would also “crack down on pharmaceutical benefit managers (PBMs) to increase transparency, disclose more information on cost, and regulate other practices that raise prices” and “implement international tax reform” to pay for the changes.

The Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, attends a Fox News town hall with women voters hosted by Harris Faulkner and taped on Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024 in Cumming, Georgia. (Photo by Megan Varner/Getty Images)

Former President Donald Trump fielded questions from women voters during a Fox News town hall in Georgia that aired Wednesday, and dubbed himself “the father of IVF” while discussing the fertility treatment that grabbed the spotlight after an Alabama court’s ruling earlier this year.

The GOP presidential nominee — who’s also called himself a “protector” of women — has sought to win over the critical voting bloc as he and Vice President Kamala Harris poll neck and neck in a race that’s largely been marked by a gender gap.

Trump faced a friendly crowd in Cumming, Georgia, an exurb of Atlanta, during the event that Fox News billed as centered on “women’s issues.”

The former president made multiple false claims throughout the town hall hosted by Fox News’ Harris Faulkner and often responded with long-winded answers to questions surrounding the economy, immigration and abortion.

On abortion and IVF

Trump has walked a fine line on abortion in recent months, often zigzagging on his positions, though he currently maintains he would veto a federal abortion ban.

During his administration, Trump nominated three U.S. Supreme Court justices who all voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, ending nearly half a century of the constitutional right to an abortion.

Asked by an audience member why the government is “involved in women’s basic rights,” Trump said that abortion is now “back in the states.” The conservative justices actually wrote that ending Roe v. Wade meant the “authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives,” which includes Congress and the president.

Trump noted that some states’ abortion restrictions are “too tough” and predicted that those measures “are going to be redone because already there’s a movement in those states.”

He said he believes in “exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother.”

Trump, in claiming his leadership on IVF, also said “we really are the party for IVF.” Republicans in Congress, however, have prevented the advancement of legislation on in vitro fertilization, including an attempt by U.S. Senate Democrats in March to expand access for military service members and veterans.

In September, Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic bill that could have prevented states from enacting “harmful or unwarranted limitations” on the fertility procedure and bolstered access for military members and veterans.

But Trump insisted at the town hall his party backs IVF. “We want fertilization, and it’s all the way, and the Democrats tried to attack us on it, and we’re out there on IVF, even more than them, so we’re totally in favor,” he said.

Contrary to Trump’s assertion he is the “father of IVF,” it was pioneered in 1978 by a gynecologist and scientist, one of whom who received the Nobel Prize.

Alabama ruling

The debate over IVF erupted in Alabama earlier this year after the Alabama state Supreme Court issued an opinion in February that frozen embryos constitute children under state law.

That ruling forced the state’s IVF clinics to halt their work until the state legislature passed a bill providing criminal and civil protections for those clinics.

Trump, a few days after the ruling, called on Alabama lawmakers to “find an immediate solution,” and national Republicans running for Congress sought to distance themselves from the controversial Alabama decision as well.

Trump, replaying the timeline of events at the town hall, said: “So I got a call from Katie Britt, a young, just a fantastically attractive person from Alabama. She’s a senator, and she called me up like ‘emergency, emergency’ because an Alabama judge had ruled that the IVF clinics were illegal and they have to be closed.” Britt, a Republican and member of the U.S. Senate from Alabama, was also picked to deliver the State of the Union response to President Joe Biden.

Trump continued, “And I said, ‘explain IVF very quickly,’ and within about two minutes, I understood it. I said, ‘No, no, we’re totally in favor of IVF.’ I came out with a statement within an hour, a really powerful statement, with some experts, really powerful. And we went totally in favor, the Republican Party, the whole party. (The) Alabama Legislature, a day later, overturned, meaning approved it … the judge essentially approved it.”

Harris clapped back at Trump’s description of himself as the “father of IVF” later Wednesday, saying she found it “quite bizarre.”

“And if what he meant is taking responsibility, well then, yeah, he should take responsibility for the fact that 1 in 3 women in America lives in a Trump abortion ban state,” she said.

On immigration and border security?

Immigration was a central topic during the town hall, and Trump repeated several false claims on the issue, including that Harris was made “border czar.”

Though President Joe Biden tasked Harris with addressing the “root causes” of migration in Central America in 2021, he did not give her the title of “border czar.” The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is in charge of border security.

Trump also reiterated his promise to ban all sanctuary cities, saying they’re “really meant for one thing: to protect criminals” and “that’s what they’ve become.” Such cities have declared their resistance to cooperating with federal immigration authorities.

“We’re going to end all sanctuary cities in the United States, and we’re going to go back to normalcy, and we’re going to have law and order … we have to reinvigorate our police,” he said.

On the economy and energy

Trump also said that under his administration, the U.S. had “the greatest economy in the history of our country.”

This claim has been proven false when evaluating factors such as the unemployment rate, annual gross domestic product increases and wage growth during his presidency compared to other administrations, per PolitiFact.

He also reiterated his plans to end taxes on Social Security benefits and to cut energy costs in half if reelected.

Harris campaign pre-buttal?

Ahead of Trump’s town hall, the Harris campaign hosted a press call Tuesday that featured Georgia’s Democratic Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, and the family members of Amber Thurman. A ProPublica investigation linked Georgia’s restrictive abortion law to Thurman’s death.

Ossoff said that in Trump, “you have the architect of the nationwide campaign to overturn Roe v. Wade and end decades of protection for the privacy of women’s health care and the ability of doctors to provide necessary care — and in Vice President Harris, you have a clear and leading commitment to stand up for the health of pregnant women and to empower physicians to provide necessary care.”

Harris was set to deliver remarks at a campaign event Wednesday in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. She was also set to appear in a sit-down interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier, airing Wednesday.

People demonstrate and call out words of encouragement to detainees held inside the Metropolitan Detention Center after marching to decry Trump administration immigration and refugee policies on June 30, 2018 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON —Top advisers to the Kamala Harris presidential campaign held a Wednesday press conference including children who were separated from their parents under the highly criticized Trump administration immigration policy, as a warning of what a second term under the former president could bring for the Latino community.

The press conference in Doral, Florida, came ahead of a late Wednesday Univision town hall at which GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump will talk with undecided Latino voters.

Four children at the press conference recounted stories of being separated from a parent by immigration officials during the Trump administration and the lasting trauma it caused. Their full names and ages were not provided by the campaign.

With 20 days until Nov. 5 and early voting underway in many states, both campaigns have tried to court Latino voters, as they are the second-largest group of eligible voters.

“The Latino vote will decide this election,” Democratic Texas U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, who serves as co-chair for the Harris campaign, said at the press conference.

Harris campaign spokesperson Kevin Munoz said that for the next 20 days, Democrats will continue to reach out to Latinos and stress “the threat that Donald Trump is to Latino communities everywhere.”

Harris looks for Latino support

The 2024 presidential election is essentially a dead heat between Harris and Trump. Latino voter preferences largely resemble the 2020 presidential election, when President Joe Biden defeated Trump 61% to 36% in earning the Latino vote, according to the Pew Research Center.?

Harris, the Democratic nominee, currently has a smaller lead over Trump with Latinos, 57% to 39%, according to the Pew Research Center.

Escobar warned what a second Trump administration could bring to the Latino community.

“I hear a lot of Latinos who say that they want to vote for Donald Trump, that they appreciate some of his policies,” she said.

Escobar said that Trump has not only promised to carry out mass deportations, but go after pathways to legal immigration. She argued that architects of some of the former president’s harshest immigration policies are top level advisers, like Stephen Miller, who has proposed eliminating legal immigration like humanitarian parole programs and Temporary Protected Status.

Miller has also proposed a program to strip naturalized citizens of their U.S. citizenship — an initiative that Miller said would be “turbocharged” under a second Trump administration.

“For Latinos who think that when Donald Trump insults immigrants, or when he talks about mass deportation that you’re thinking he’s talking about somebody else, oh no, no, he’s talking about you,” Escobar, who represents the border town of El Paso, said.

Escobar said there would be no guardrails for a second Trump administration and programs like family separation could be implemented. The separation occurred at the border as asylum-seeking parents were put into criminal detention and sometimes deported.

“These kids who have lived through horrific trauma, through the pain of being separated from their parents, what you heard from them moments ago will be far worse if Trump gets a second term,” she said. “In Donald Trump’s first term, he had people around him who actually tried to stop him. In a second term, not only will those guardrails not exist, but those people who were there to stop him in the first place are long gone.”

Trump has declined to say whether he would resume family separations if given a second term, also known as the zero-tolerance policy.

“Well, when you have that policy, people don’t come. If a family hears that they’re going to be separated, they love their family. They don’t come. So I know it sounds harsh,” Trump said during a CNN town hall in May 2023.?

Escobar said that she is hoping that at Wednesday night’s town hall, Trump will be pressed on whether he would reimplement his family separation policy.

The Biden administration established a task force to reunite the 3,881 children who were separated from their families from 2017 to 2021.

The Department of Homeland Security has reunited about 74% of those families, but there are still 998 children who have not been reunited.

Cuts in Medicaid payments to behavioral health providers are forcing cuts at Kentucky's largest provider of treatment for addiction. (Getty Images)

The state’s largest provider of drug and alcohol treatment is making further cuts in staff and facilities as it faces steep cuts in Medicaid payments from the government health plan that covers nearly all its clients.

Addiction Recovery Care, or ARC, based in Louisa, said it will temporarily close four programs and reduce staff as it plans for cuts of 20% or more from some of the private insurance companies that process and pay most of the state’s Medicaid claims.

The cuts to ARC programs in Boyd, Jackson, Fleming and Pulaski counties follow ARC’s announcement last month it was restructuring some programs and laying off staff after the insurance companies, known as managed care organizations, or MCOs, first notified ARC of the pending cuts.

In a statement, ARC said it remains committed to providing substance use disorder treatment across Kentucky.

“These decisions were not made lightly, and we are dedicated to supporting our team members and communities affected by these changes,” said Vanessa Keeton, ARC vice president of marketing. “Above all, the safety and care of our clients remains our top priority. We are still available 24/7/365 for patients and families in need.”

The cuts come as the MCOs, including Wellcare of Kentucky Inc., are announcing broader reductions in Medicaid reimbursement to other addiction and behavioral health programs that will limit their ability to provide care, said Frankfort lawyer Anna Stewart Whites, who represents about 20 smaller treatment providers.

For example, one of her clients, a small children’s therapy program in Berea, was recently notified of cuts, she said.

“It appears to be very much across the board,” she said.

Wellcare is the largest of six MCOs that manage Medicaid claims for Kentucky, with about 418,000 enrollees.

It did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

ARC’s cuts are the latest setback for the fast-growing, for-profit company that last year took in $130 million in state Medicaid funds and has expanded from a single halfway house to a statewide network of recovery programs and residential centers in 24 counties across Kentucky.

In July, the FBI announced it was?investigating ARC?for possible health care fraud and asking anyone with information to contact the federal agency. ARC said it stands by its services and is cooperating with the investigation.

Kentucky lawyer climbed out of alcoholism, launched a recovery boom

ARC and its founder and CEO Tim Robinson have emerged as prolific political donors in recent years.

A?Lantern analysis?by Tom Loftus showed that Robinson, his corporations and employees have made at least $570,000 in contributions to Kentucky political causes and candidates over the past decade as his company grew from a single halfway house to about 1,800 residential beds and outpatient care for hundreds more clients.?

ARC said it has provided treatment for 75,000 people over the past 15 years.

‘Set back addiction treatment?’

The MCOs contract with the state to manage most of its $1.5 billion a year Medicaid program and have broad latitude in setting rates with providers. They are? paid a fixed rate per member and reimburse providers for care.

In July, ARC was among providers who testified before a legislative committee, warning that cuts by MCOs in payments for addiction treatment could hamper progress Kentucky has made in treatment for several decades of widespread addiction and overdose deaths.

An expansion of treatment services was fueled by expanded Medicaid payments in 2014 for substance use disorder under the Affordable Care Act.

“Kentucky has made significant strides in access to treatment,” Matt Brown, chief administrative officer for?Addiction Recovery Care, or ARC, told the interim Health Services Committee. “With these cuts, it could completely set back addiction treatment in our state 20 years.”

Last month, Frontier Behavioral Health, based in Prestonsburg, filed suit against Wellcare over rate cuts of 20% and a new requirement that it review all services before agreeing to pay for them. That lawsuit is pending.

Its lawsuit said that when Frontier tried to follow up with Wellcare over an August letter notifying it of cuts, the number provided in the letter for questions had been disconnected.

‘Booting’ out clients

Whites said some providers she represents have had similar experiences — or worse.

When some providers tried to contact Wellcare about rate cuts, it responded by canceling their contract altogether.

That forced clients in the midst of treatment to find another provider or switch to another MCO, both of which mean delays in care. Some providers have continued to offer treatment without reimbursement until clients can make the necessary changes, she said.

“The risk of booting someone out of your program and finding someone who can take them is just too much of a risk,” Whites said.

ARC’s Brown didn’t immediately identify how many employees will be affected by the reductions announced Wednesday. Prior to the staff cuts last month, it employed 1,350 people.

Programs to be closed temporarily are: Sanibel House in Bloyd County; Beth’s Blessings in Jackson County; Belle Grove Springs in Fleming County, and Lake Hills Oasis in Pulaski County.

Brown said clients will be offered placement in other ARC programs or the option to change to a different provider to continue treatment.

Meanwhile, he said ARC continues to negotiate over the pending rate cuts.

“We are very hopeful to have these negotiations done soon,” he said.

He said lawmakers, state officials and providers are working “to create a solution that preserves access to treatment and long-term recovery.”

Amendment 2 would change Kentucky's Constitution to allow the General Assembly to spend tax dollars for educating students at private schools. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Austin Anthony)

FRANKFORT — A multimillion-dollar television advertising campaign supporting the so-called “school choice” amendment on the November ballot is being single-handedly funded by Jeff Yass, a Pennsylvania billionaire and Republican mega donor.

In early September a political action committee called Protect Freedom began running television ads advocating passage of Amendment 2 which would change Kentucky’s Constitution to allow the General Assembly to spend tax dollars for educating students at private schools. One of those ads features Republican U.S. Sen. Rand Paul making the pitch for the amendment.

Protect Freedom is a national PAC closely affiliated with Paul and largely funded by Yass since it was formed by Paul’s political associates in 2017.

A report filed by Protect Freedom with the Federal Election Commission on Wednesday shows that it got $5,000,250 in total contributions during the period between July 1 and Sept. 30. Of that total, $5 million (99.99 percent) was donated by Yass on Sept. 6.

The report also shows that it paid $2,031,418 in September to Strategic Media Placement, an Ohio media company that has placed Protect Freedom’s ads advocating for the school choice amendment with Kentucky television stations.

Protect Freedom as of Wednesday morning has bought $4.1 million in ads promoting the amendment, according to a representative of Protect Our Schools, a group opposing the amendment that has been tracking advertising buys in the race.

Yass is managing director and co-founder of the Philadelphia-based trading firm Susquehanna International Group. He is worth $44.3 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. His holdings include a major investment in the China-based ByteDance, the parent company of the hugely popular social media site TikTok.

Yass also is the country’s second largest political donor, having made $79.7 million in political contributions since Jan. 1, 2023 — nearly all of that to Republican causes, according to Open Secrets, a website that tracks political contributions. (That total does not include the $5 million he gave in September to Protect Freedom.)

And for many years Yass has made big contributions to political committees — particularly in Pennsylvania but also in many other states — advocating school choice.

He is no stranger to donating in Kentucky.?

Last year he donated millions to PACs that unsuccessfully supported Republican Daniel Cameron’s campaign for governor.

And he has long been a massive donor to PACs affiliated with Paul. The $5 million he gave to Protect Freedom in September brings his total contributed to Protect Freedom to $34 million since 2017. In? 2021 he gave $5 million to a PAC that successfully supported Paul’s reelection in 2022.

Advocates for Amendment 2 say it will improve education by making it possible for more parents to have a choice in deciding where to send their children to school.?

Another pro-amendment group called Kentucky Students First recently reported that it had raised about $1.5 million to promote the amendment. Kevin Broghamer, who is treasurer? of Kentucky Students First, declined to immediately answer questions from Kentucky Lantern Wednesday morning. Broghamer, who is also treasurer of Paul’s campaign committee, said someone with the group would call back if it had any comment. As of early Wednesday afternoon the group did not call Kentucky Lantern back.

Opponents of the amendment say that it would divert tax dollars from already under-funded public schools to private schools.

A PAC called Protect Our Schools has recently reported raising about $3.1 million from teacher unions for its advertising campaign to defeat the amendment. Of that total $2.4 million came from the National Education Association, and $250,000 each from the Kentucky Education Association and Jefferson County Teachers Association.

Eddie Campbell, president of the Kentucky Education Association and board member of Protect Our Schools, said of Yass’s donation, “A billionaire is giving our politicians in Frankfort a blank check to divert our tax dollars from public schools. … He’s flooding the airwaves with misleading ads.”

Campbell said the difference between the big contributions to each side is that Yass is just one person, while the teacher unions are made up of tens of thousands of “members of local communities who are concerned about the harmful effect this amendment will have.”

DeleteMe expands on Kentucky Safe at Home which lets victims of domestic violence hide their addresses when registering to vote and to use the state Capitol as their address on public records. (Getty Images)

Reach the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-7233 or text START to 88788.?

Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams’ office has launched a program to help domestic violence survivors delete their personal identifying information (PII) from the internet.?

Called DeleteMe, the program is a national privacy company that removes personal information from certain online sites. Eligible information includes addresses and phone numbers, said a spokesperson for the office.

The program is available only to the 125 members of the Safe at Home program, which came out of a 2023 law. Safe at Home lets victims of domestic violence hide their addresses when registering to vote without a protective order from a judge. It also allows the state Capitol to be the address on public records and lets those moving from out of state easily join the program.?

“Last year, I extended protections to domestic violence survivors to prevent their information from being displayed on government records,” Adams said in a statement, referring to the Safe at Home program. “This year, I am proud to extend those protections to information that can be found easily online.”

Since informing members about the DeleteMe program on Oct. 1, about 15 participants signed up immediately, said spokeswoman Michon Lindstrom.?

As of Wednesday, she said, “there have been about 800 total listings removed (an average of 51 a person) and 4,500 PII removed (an average of 322 a person).”?

“It works kind of like Rocket Money, where they contact places to cancel your subscription. DeleteMe contacts these data broker sites and requests to have the PII removed,” she explained. “Some (data) are instantly removed but some can take a couple of weeks depending on the site.”?

Safe at Home participants who want to opt in for the DeleteMe program should call or email the secretary of state’s office.?

The Dairy Del Ice Cream shop on 7th Street Road in Louisville that Virgil Harris owned before his murder in 1979. (Jefferson Circuit Court clerk)

Brian Keith Moore has spent most of his life in prison, serving a death sentence for the 1979 murder of Virgil Harris.?

From the beginning, Moore said he was framed by an old friend. He’s spent decades filing appeals and fighting to get out of prison.?

Over the years, judges acknowledged the delicate balance between his guilt and innocence — that the evidence he killed Harris is equal to the evidence he didn’t — and that DNA testing could tip the scales.?

Now, Moore and his defense attorneys from the Kentucky Department of Public Advocacy say they have DNA test results that show Moore did not wear the jacket prosecutors said the killer wore — a claim pinned on Moore during his initial trial in 1980 and again in a 1984 retrial.?

David Barron, Moore’s attorney, wrote in an August motion that the results “show exactly what Moore has said for more than four decades.”?

“It should therefore be a simple conclusion that Moore’s convictions should be vacated,” Barron said in the motion.?

Jefferson Circuit Court Judge Annie O’Connell will decide what happens next. She did not immediately respond to a request for comment.?

Kentucky Attorney General spokesperson Kevin Grout told the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting the office will work with the Jefferson County Commonwealth’s Attorney to oppose the motion to vacate Moore’s conviction. But in court filings, Attorney General Rusell Coleman said the state’s attorneys are juggling a heavy caseload and need time to review the case.?

O’Connell gave Coleman until February 2025 to respond.?

Every day counts for Moore, 66. He bounces between a hospital and the Kentucky State Reformatory in LaGrange. Medical records show he suffers from high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes and acute respiratory failure. He said several surgeries meant to fix degeneration in his spine have made the problem worse. He’s in constant pain, depends on a wheelchair, and he said he can’t write grievances because he can’t close his right hand around a pen.?

Moore’s attorneys said in court documents that, if released, Moore would spend his days at an assisted-living facility. He worries he could spend the rest of his life paralyzed from untreated medical ailments.?

“It’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” Moore said in an interview earlier this year over a video visit from a bed at the prison. “Even if I’m found not guilty and turned loose and get beaucoups of money and all this type shit, none of that’s no good if I’m paralyzed from my neck down.”?

Moore is one of 25 people on Kentucky’s death row. If Moore’s conviction was vacated today, his would be the 13th capital case in Kentucky overturned based on DNA evidence, according to the Kentucky Innocence Project. Nationwide, only two people to have cases overturned spent more time on death row than Moore, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit that provides data and analysis concerning capital punishment.?

Moore’s case highlights how courts and lawmakers prioritize process and finality over fairness and due process, said Robin M. Maher, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.?

“Even if you are the most ardent supporter of the use of the death penalty, nobody wants to see an innocent person executed, and we have this sort of faith in our justice system that the appellate process is going to be able to identify the mistakes and correct them before we have the ultimate injustice,” Maher said. “But the reality is, the law is not really set up to favor innocent people. It’s really set up, after conviction, to uphold that conviction.”?

This year, 19 people have been executed in the United States. Last month, prison officials in Missouri executed Marcellus Williams, despite evidence of his innocence so strong the victim’s family and prosecutors who brought the case against Williams asked the court to stop his execution.

The Williams case belies a simple fact, Maher said: As long as America punishes people by killing them, courts will get it wrong and we will execute innocent people.?

“If we are uncomfortable with that fact, then we need to rethink what we’re doing,” Maher said.?

Dana Maley, one of Virgil Harris’s granddaughters, wrestles with those same questions. Maley ran for Florida state Senate in 1994 and published campaign material with Moore’s face on it, emphasizing her belief in the death penalty and desire to limit the number of appeals convicted people could file so cases don’t drag on for decades.?

“When I did feel strongly about it, when I was running for office, I felt like, what does society owe somebody who is rightfully convicted of a heinous crime?” Maley said in an interview with KyCIR.?

Now, Maley said she’s not so sure. The death penalty has been misapplied, she said, and is prone to inconsistency and bias. Maley said she’s never doubted Moore’s guilt — he’d been convicted, after all. She’s put Moore’s fate out of her mind long ago and doesn’t know what to make of the new evidence.?

“Whatever happens to him, happens to him,” Maley said. “I wouldn’t be fighting heavy duty one way or the other at this point.”?

A birthday murder?

Maley remembers “Pa Pa Virgil” as a hard worker and tolerant man who was active in the church and community.?

He owned Dairy Del Ice Cream on 7th Street Road in Louisville, where it still stands today. Maley and her sister worked at the shop for a few summers as teenagers, taking the bus from St. Matthews.?

August 10, 1979 was Harris’s birthday. He started his day at the Dairy Del, turning on equipment and straightening things out before going to buy bananas at the old A&P Grocery. As he left the store just before noon, a witness saw someone wearing a mask kidnap Harris at gunpoint.

The kidnaper drove Harris and his red wine colored 1978 Buick Electra to a secluded spot on Jefferson Hill Road. They pushed Harris down an embankment, shot him four times in the head, stole his watch and a bag of cash meant for the bank.?

When he didn’t show up for his birthday dinner that afternoon, his family started to worry. His son Jerry Harris, a popular police officer at the training academy, reported him missing around 8 p.m. and told fellow officers to be on the lookout.?

But by then, prosecutors were already working out a deal for Moore’s arrest.?

A few hours after Virgil Harris was killed, an attorney representing a man named Kenny Blair called an assistant Jefferson Commonwealth’s Attorney looking to make a deal.?

Facing eight years in prison on robbery and burglary charges, Blair offered information about Harris’s murder in exchange for a lighter sentence.?

He pinned the killing on his then-friend, Brian Keith Moore.?

Moore met Kenny Blair in 1975. Blair was a full 10 years older and willing to buy beer for Moore and his underage friends.?

Years later, a psychologist would say a chaotic childhood left Moore searching for guidance, ready and willing to fall in line behind anyone who projected paternalistic authority.

Blair, who friends called “Big Man” or “Jesus”, offered that, in his own way. He introduced Moore to hard drugs and quick scores, showing him how to steal cars and strip them for parts.?

Police arrested Moore in the early morning hours of August 11, the day after Harris’s murder, as he and Blair pulled into a parking lot at the Shady Villa apartment complex in Newburg.?

Moore said he remembers one officer running a pistol in front of his face as he was handcuffed, telling him “you have no idea who that old man you killed was.”?

Moore said that was the first he heard of a murder.?

Did they get it right??

At trial, prosecutors had a stack of evidence they said pointed to Moore’s guilt.?

A witness said they saw Moore driving Harris’s car after the murder. Police said they saw Moore tuck a gun under the seat of Blair’s car when they pulled into the apartment complex and they found lead residue from a recently fired gun on his hands. He also had Harris’s watch and car keys.?

Three Jefferson County Police detectives testified that Moore confessed to killing Harris during an interview a few days after his arrest while a tape recorder was turned off. But Moore said he never confessed.

KyCIR requested the original investigative case file, but it’s gone. Police officials provided a check out slip showing a county police detective took the files in 2001, but they were never returned.?

The Jefferson County Police Department handled the investigation. The department merged with the Louisville Police Department in 2003.?

Moore was convicted and sentenced to death in 1980, but that verdict was overturned because of improper comments made by a prosecutor during closing arguments. A jury found him guilty again in 1984.?

But even in 1984, prosecutors Joseph Gutmann and Larry Simon acknowledged the strongest evidence against Moore was circumstantial.?

“The case came down to whose story you found more convincing, Kenny Blair’s or Brian Keith Moore’s,” Joseph Gutmann, the assistant commonwealth attorney who prosecuted Moore’s second trial, said in a recent interview with KyCIR.?

As Moore tells it, he said he woke up around noon the day of Harris’s murder to Blair walking into the apartment with some groceries and a money bag.?

Moore said Blair told him he had stolen a car — a 1978 Buick. Not surprising, Moore said, the two spent the previous week partying and committing petty crimes like stealing car radios.?

Moore said Blair gave him a watch and asked him to drive the car out to his mother’s house in Shepherdsville that afternoon to drop off the groceries.?

Moore and another witness testified that Blair borrowed Moore’s gun the night before the murder and returned it the following afternoon.?

Looking back, Moore is certain Blair set him up. But he’s not sure Blair committed the murder. The clothes prosecutors said the killer wore were too small for both men, according to Moore.?

Blair died in 1995. His side of the story is found in court transcripts reviewed by KyCIR. “I might have committed a few crimes, but I’ve never hurt nobody,” Blair testified.

Blair said Moore told him he killed a man at Jefferson Memorial Forest and took Blair to the location of the body. Blair said he called his attorney to offer information because he didn’t want to be implicated.?

But in recent court filings, Moore’s attorney said Blair’s cooperation with police and prosecutors — he arranged the arrest, led police to the body and provided the clothes allegedly worn by the murderer — left “plenty reason to believe” he set up Moore.?

Moore’s attorneys in the years after the murder found 10 people willing to testify that Blair confessed to killing Harris. But Blair denied ever confessing.?

During the trials as many as 10 uniformed police officers sat in the courtroom, something Moore’s defense argued could intimidate the jury or weaponize goodwill towards police and stack the deck against Moore.?

Gutmann and Simon both told KyCIR they felt pressure to secure another conviction and death sentence for Moore during the 1984 retrial.

“Because the family of the victim, you know they are people in law enforcement,” Simon said. “And it was sort of like the family of the victim was expecting this to happen again.”?

Gutmann and Simon said they both now oppose the death penalty.?

Gutmann thinks about Moore from time to time, and the other men he helped sentence to death. He wonders: did they get it right??

“I was naive to think that we could never get it wrong, that, in other words, somebody could never be put to death mistakenly,” Gutmann said. “And I don’t believe that anymore.”?

Harmless error?

During his 1984 closing argument, Gutmann said the prosecution’s most important witness was a clerk at a Drivers Licence Bureau who said Blair was in her office around 11 a.m. the day of the murder.?

For a moment, Blair had a rock solid alibi from a civil servant.?

But during the appeals process, Moore’s attorney Bill Yesowitch with the state’s Department of Public Advocacy found a police report in the case file that said Blair was in the office at 1 p.m., two hours later than the witness claimed.?

“When I saw that police report, I mean all kinds of bells and whistles went off,” Yesowitch said.?

Yesowitch based an appeal on this new information in 1995, arguing Moore’s previous attorneys failed to follow-up on this key piece of evidence and deprived Moore of a fair trial.?

The Kentucky Supreme Court in 1998 ruled that Moore’s defense counsel was deficient when it failed to challenge this testimony, but it did not harm Moore’s case. The court upheld the conviction.?

Yesowitch, now retired and living in Florida, is still convinced of Moore’s innocence. Yesowitch said the Kentucky Supreme Court’s ruling chalks up mistakes made by Moore’s earlier attorneys as a “harmless error.”?

“How do you have a harmless error in a death penalty case?” he said.?

An execution delayed?

David Barron calls the murder of Virgil Harris a “real life who-done-it,”one that could lead to the execution of an innocent man.

Barron took over Moore’s case in 2005 and focused on getting DNA testing on clothes the murderer was allegedly wearing — a suit jacket, floral shirt and a pair of black shoes.?

Moore said the outfit wasn’t something he’d wear. Plus, the pants, a size 34 waist, were six inches smaller than the pants Moore wore the day he was arrested.?

But days before Barron filed a motion in court for a judge’s order to do DNA tests, Kentucky Attorney General Greg Stumbo wrote a letter to Gov. Ernie Fletcher asking to schedule Moore’s execution in April 2006.?

This came after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit rejected Moore’s request for relief from a federal judge a few months earlier — exhausting his opportunities to appeal his conviction.?

“It was our office policy to try and push those death penalty cases, because they had just been in the process so long,” Stumbo said in an interview with KyCIR.?

Barron requested the execution be put on hold while the DNA testing worked its way through the court.?

Stumbo didn’t work on Moore’s case directly, he said, but he doesn’t harbor any doubts about the conviction his office secured. Two sets of jurors sentenced Moore to death, he said, and the new DNA evidence doesn’t exonerate Moore.

“This guy’s argued this DNA crap, it looks to me, to excess,” Stumbo said. “Just because the Commonwealth thought he was wearing those clothes, maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t, that doesn’t exonerate him.”?

Stumbo’s firm belief in the death penalty stems from his faith in jurors’ ability to come to the right conclusion.?

But two months after Stumbo asked to schedule Moore’s execution, Barron talked to a man who served as a juror on the 1984 trial, Geoffrey Ellis. Barron told Ellis what they’d learned since the initial trials — how Moore could be innocent.?

Ellis, a well-known preacher and community leader in Louisville until his recent death, penned a 12-page affidavit questioning the conviction.?

“Based on the evidence brought to my attention after the trail and comparing that information to the evidence presented at trial, I have doubts about Brian Keith Moore’s guilt,” Ellis wrote. “The now known contradictions on this important issue are important to this case and whether Brian Keith Moore should have been convicted.”?

KyCIR talked with Ellis by phone before his death. He declined to comment further.

Can DNA tip the scales??

Jefferson Circuit Court Judge James M. Shake ordered DNA testing a month after Stumbo tried to schedule his execution.?

“The court finds the evidence set forth above is equally consistent with Moore’s assertion that he was set up by Blair and his girlfriend,” Shake said in his ruling.?

Shake wrote that DNA testing could help shift the balance in Moore’s favor.?

Prosecutors challenged his decision, and the case went to the Kentucky Supreme Court, which upheld Shake’s order and added there was even more evidence than Shake listed to “support Appellant’s [Moore’s] theory that he had been framed.”?

The judges said if testing excluded Moore as a source of the DNA, it would demonstrate he wasn’t wearing the clothes the lower court had already decided the murderer was wearing.?

But by then, the pants and shoes had gone missing, according to a response filed in court by the state crime lab.?

Tests on the jacket and floral shirt were inconclusive because the items didn’t contain enough biological material.

Barron, Moore’s attorney, then asked for more advanced DNA testing by a private lab.?

But Judge Shake retired without scheduling a hearing on the request. There’s been little movement in the case since then, as the DNA testing hung in limbo.?

Earlier this year, Moore’s defense team obtained an order from Judge O’Connell to release the evidence to a private lab for testing.?

The results show Moore is not the source of the DNA on the suit jacket. The results did not identify who the DNA belonged to.?

In August, Barron filed the motion to vacate Moore’s conviction based on the test results. The Jefferson Circuit Court and the Kentucky Supreme Court have already ruled a DNA test that backs Moore’s claim would have likely changed the outcome of his trial, Barron argues in the motion.?

“The only missing link then was that the DNA testing had not been [completed] and thus we did not have the results,” Barron wrote.

Moore reckons the first 20of his sentence were fair game, karmic retribution for his years of lawlessness.?

But Moore said he does not want to die in prison for a crime he insists he didn’t commit.?

“Anything I’ve done wrong, it’s been well paid for,” Moore said. “I didn’t kill this guy. So, if I was to die tomorrow, I would go knowing that I didn’t do this. And if there’s a higher power, he knows I didn’t do this.”

This story?is republished from the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting and Louisville Public Media.?

Medicare open enrollment is underway until Dec. 7. (Photo by Getty Images)

As Medicare open enrollment begins on Oct. 15 (and continues through Dec. 7), millions of older Americans face the dilemma of choosing between traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage. This decision can significantly impact access to care, financial stability and overall health. Understanding these options is more important than ever, with major changes to Medicare on the horizon.

In 2025, several reforms are taking place that will make Medicare more affordable for many beneficiaries. One of the most notable is a new $2,000 annual cap on out-of-pocket prescription drug costs for those enrolled in Medicare Part D; the previous out-of-pocket limit was $8,000. This is a positive change for the many seniors who struggle to pay for their medications. Other reforms include expanded financial assistance for low-income individuals and price negotiations for some high-cost drugs, which should help lower prices across the board.

Traditional Medicare, with its nationwide network of participating providers, enables enrollees to see any doctor or specialist who accepts Medicare. It also generally avoids the hassle of pre-authorizations, simplifying access to care without associated delays. However, out-of-pocket costs can add up quickly, as there’s no cap on expenses, such as deductibles and coinsurance, for things other than medications. Many beneficiaries opt to cover these additional costs by purchasing supplemental insurance, known as Medigap policies.

Medicare Advantage, offered by private insurance carriers, bundles Medicare Parts A, B and often Part D into a single plan. Medicare Advantage plans may offer additional benefits, such as dental and vision coverage. However, they typically have restricted networks of providers. Receiving care outside of those networks can lead to higher costs or even denial of payment. Nearly all Medicare Advantage plans require pre-authorization for at least some services, which can delay or deny access to necessary care.

There are specific times when changes can be made in Medicare or Medicare Advantage coverage. The Medicare open enrollment period is the time to switch between traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage or to change to a different type of Medicare Advantage plan. There is a separate Medicare Advantage open enrollment period from Jan. 1 to March 31, when it is possible to change from Medicare Advantage to traditional Medicare or change from one Medicare Advantage plan to another. Ironically, however, it is generally NOT possible to change from traditional Medicare to Medicare Advantage during Medicare Advantage Open Enrollment. For more details, go to Medicare.gov.

In summary, while the new Medicare policy changes are positive ones, they do not necessarily make the decision-making process any easier. The choice between traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage remains complex, with each option offering distinct advantages and disadvantages. Each person should consider their particular needs and preferences, do their research, and make the best choice for their situation.

For more Medicare information, visit AsclepiusInitiative.org/medicare.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz rallied before a few hundred spectators at Pittsburgh’s Acrisure Stadium on Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024. Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, and her running mate, Walz, have been blanketing Pennsylvania, a key swing state in the 2024 presidential race. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

PITTSBURGH — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz urged a crowd of Pittsburgh Steelers fans to vote early as he rallied a few hundred of them Tuesday night at the professional football team’s home at Acrisure Stadium.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ Democratic presidential running mate campaigned in the southwestern Pennsylvania city as the campaign continues its blitz of the coveted swing state that could decide the 2024 presidential contest.

The race between Harris and former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, remains razor-thin in the Keystone State.

Former Steeler Will Allen introduced Walz to a cheering crowd dotted with Steelers hats, jerseys and Terrible Towels, the team’s official rally towel.

“Give me my moment here, yesterday I made my first trip to Lambeau Field,” Walz said, referring to his trip to Green Bay, Wisconsin, and the home of the Green Bay Packers football team. “Today, I’m making my first trip into Steeler territory, so thank you.”

The former high school football coach and teacher visited Wisconsin Monday, which is alongside Pennsylvania on the list of must-win swing states. The others include Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina.

Early mail-in ballot voting is already underway in Pennsylvania.

“If you’re voting by mail, get the damn thing in the mail as soon as possible,” Walz said.

Harris campaigned in Erie, Pennsylvania, Monday night before heading to Michigan Tuesday.

Attacks on Trump

Like Harris did in the state’s northwestern corner the previous night, Walz roused the Pittsburgh crowd by attacking Trump’s mental fitness.

“I would not usually encourage this, but go watch this guy, watch his town hall. He stopped taking questions and stood frozen on stage for 30 minutes while they played his Spotify list,” Walz said, referring to Trump’s Monday night town hall outside of Philadelphia.

“If this were your grandfather, you would take the keys away,” Walz said to laughter. “And I tell you this, look, it would be funny if this guy weren’t running for president of the United States.”

In Erie, Harris warned that Trump is “unhinged” and played video clips of the former president explaining his potential plans to use the military to silence “the enemy from within.”

Trump wrote on his social media platform Tuesday morning that Harris’ own health report is “really bad.”

“With all of the problems that she has, there is a real question as to whether or not she should be running for President!” he wrote on Truth Social.

Harris’ medical report released Saturday describes her “in excellent health.”

Walz on the farm

While Walz wore a white shirt and sports jacket when talking to the football fans, earlier in the day he donned a flannel shirt and told supporters gathered outside a barn in Lawrence County that he and Harris would fight for American farmers and resources for rural residents.

The governor also highlighted his bona fides as a veteran, hunter and gun owner. His speech can be viewed in full on C-SPAN.

The Harris-Walz campaign released a plan Tuesday for rural America that promised to shore up rural health care and support small farms.

Walz also stopped at a garden center and cafe in Butler County before heading into the city.

The pro-Democrat Rural USA political action committee highlighted economic analyses Tuesday that show Trump’s promised tariffs would cause farmers to lose business as exports would decline.

Pennsylvania farmers could lose $111 million in soy exports, $50 million in corn exports, $22 million in beef exports and $20 million in wheat exports, according to the analysis from the University of Illinois Department of Agriculture and Consumer Economics.

“These new studies literally show that Trump’s tariffs will put Pennsylvania farmers out of business,” Chris Gibbs, an Ohio corn and soybean farmer and president of Rural Voices USA, said in a statement Tuesday. “Exports are vital for Pennsylvania farmers and they cannot absorb the sharp fall in exports and prices these studies foreshadow.”

Trump defended his tariff proposals at the Economic Club of Chicago earlier Tuesday.? He told Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait during an hour-long interview that he would spur a manufacturing boom in the U.S. by making tariffs “so high, so horrible, so obnoxious” that companies would relocate.

Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio is scheduled to campaign in Pittsburgh Thursday.

he Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, right, walks into the studio with Charlamagne Tha God before “We The People: An Audio Townhall With Kamala Harris and Charlamagne Tha God” on Oct. 15, 2024 in Detroit, Michigan. (Photo by Aaron J. Thornton/Getty Images for iHeartMedia)

Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris on a popular radio show Tuesday encouraged Americans to vote this year even if they don’t believe all of the issues they’re concerned about can be fixed in the immediate future.

“The solutions are not going to happen just overnight, and the solutions that we all want are not going to happen in totality because of one election,” Harris said during a live interview in Detroit with Charlamagne Tha God, co-host of the nationally syndicated “The Breakfast Club.”

“But here’s the thing — the things that we want, and are prepared to fight for, won’t happen if we’re not active and if we don’t participate.”

Harris said she didn’t “subscribe” to the idea that just because something takes a long time that it can’t be achieved, pointing to the years of struggle before the 1965 Voting Rights Act became law.

“It took the brutality of what happened when John Lewis and all those (who) were trying to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge,” Harris said, referring to Bloody Sunday. “It took a lot of work over our history to do what we have accomplished thus far, and we have to remain committed.”

Harris, who’s targeting outreach to Black male voters, encouraged listeners who have been disillusioned or traditionally disenfranchised by politics to vote this year, arguing that if they stayed home they would send a message to “obstructionists, who are standing in the way of change, they’re winning because they’re convincing people that it can’t be done.”

“Look at that circle, look at that vicious circle,” Harris said. “So let’s not fall for it.”

Harris said during the hour-long radio town hall that while the race between her and Republican candidate Donald Trump is extremely close, she expects to win once all the ballots are counted.

She also criticized him for making false statements about her career, actions taken by the Biden administration and policy proposals she’s put forward during her bid for the Oval Office.

“One of the biggest challenges that I face is mis- and disinformation, and it’s purposeful, because it is meant to convince people that they somehow should not believe that the work that I have done has occurred and has meaning,” Harris said.

Trump and his allies, she said, are trying to “scare people away” from voting for her in the presidential race “because they know they otherwise have nothing to run on.”

Police brutality

Harris spoke in detail about her proposals to expand the child tax credit, help first-time home buyers afford a down payment, increase access to capital for startup small business owners and decriminalize cannabis.

She said that if elected she would work with Congress to address police brutality through legislation, and noted that President Joe Biden signed an executive order more than two years ago that made several changes to how federal law enforcement agencies operate.

The executive order required the Justice Department to establish a database of “official records documenting instances of law enforcement officer misconduct as well as commendations and awards.”

Harris said during her interview that, as well as other provisions in the executive order addressing how federal law enforcement can use “no-knock warrants” and language barring chokeholds, marked significant change.

“This is no small issue … because, as we know, we’ve seen plenty of examples of a police officer who committed misconduct in one jurisdiction and then goes to another jurisdiction and gets hired because there’s no place that’s tracking their misconduct,” Harris said, adding if elected she would press Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.

That bill, which passed the House in March 2021, would have made substantial changes to how law enforcement officers at the local, state and federal level operate, including to racial profiling.

‘Running to be president for everybody’

Harris was asked during the interview how her policies would affect the Black community and whether she planned to establish ways for people to access new education and career opportunities.

“I am running to be president for everybody. But I am clear eyed about the history and the disparities that exist for specific communities. And I’m not going to shy away from that,” Harris said. “It doesn’t mean that my policies aren’t going to benefit everybody, because they are. Everything I just talked about will benefit everybody.”

“Small business owners — whatever their race, their age, their gender, their geographic location — are going to benefit from the fact that I’m going to extend tax deductions to $50,000,” she added.

“Every first time homeowner — wherever they are, whatever their race — will benefit if they are a first-time home buyer with a $25,000 down payment assistance. Everyone is going to benefit from my plan to extend the child tax credit to $6,000 for the first year of their child’s life. That’s going to benefit everybody.”

The Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump, on Tuesday, Oct. 15, spoke to the Economic Club of Chicago. In this photo, he speaks to attendees during a campaign rally at the Mosack Group warehouse on Sept. 25 in Mint Hill, North Carolina. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump defended his plans for steep tariffs on Tuesday, arguing economists who say that those higher costs would get passed onto consumers are incorrect and that his proposals would benefit American manufacturing.

During an argumentative hour-long interview with Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait hosted by the Economic Club of Chicago, Trump vehemently denied tariffs on certain imported goods would lead to further spikes in inflation and sour America’s relationship with allies, including those in Europe.

“The higher the tariff, the more likely it is that the company will come into the United States, and build a factory in the United States so it doesn’t have to pay the tariff,” Trump said.

Micklethwait questioned Trump about what would happen to consumer prices during the months or even years it would take companies to build factories in the United States and hire workers.

Trump responded that he could make tariffs “so high, so horrible, so obnoxious that they’ll come right away.” Earlier during the interview, Trump mentioned placing tariffs on foreign-made products as high as 100% or 200%.

Harris-Walz 2024 spokesperson Joseph Costello wrote in a statement released following the interview that “Trump showed exactly why Americans can’t afford a second Trump presidency.”

“An angry, rambling Donald Trump couldn’t focus, had to be repeatedly reminded of the topic at hand, and whenever he did stake out a position, it was so extreme that no Americans would want it,” Costello wrote. “This was yet another reminder that a second Trump term is a risk Americans simply cannot take.”

Smoot-Hawley memories

Micklethwait noted during the interview that 40 million jobs and 27% of gross domestic product within the United States rely on trade, questioning how tariffs on those products would help the economy.

He also asked Trump if his plans for tariffs could lead the country down a similar path to the one that followed the Smoot-Hawley tariff law becoming law in June 1930. Signed by President Herbert Hoover, some historians and economists have linked the law to the beginning of the Great Depression.

Trump disagreed with Micklethwait, though he didn’t detail why his proposals to increase tariffs on goods from adversarial nations as well as U.S. allies wouldn’t begin a trade war.

The U.S. Senate’s official explainer on the Smoot-Hawley tariffs describes the law as being “among the most catastrophic acts in congressional history.” And the Congressional Research Services notes in a report on U.S. tariff policy that it was the last time lawmakers set tariff rates.

Desmond Lachman, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank, wrote last month that Trump’s proposal to implement tariffs of at least 60% on goods imported from China as well as 10 to 20% on all other imports could have severe economic consequences.

“It is difficult to see how such a unilateral trade policy in flagrant violation of World Trade Organization rules would not lead to retaliation by our trade partners with import tariff increases of their own,” Lachman wrote. “As in the 1930s, that could lead us down the destructive path of beggar-my-neighbor trade policies that could cause major disruption to the international trade system. Such an occurrence would be particularly harmful to our export industries and would heighten the chances of both a US and worldwide economic recession.”

CRS notes in its reports that while the Constitution grants Congress the authority to establish tariffs, lawmakers have given the president some authority over it as well.

The United States’ membership in the World Trade Organization and various other trade agreements also have “tariff-related commitments,” according to CRS.

“For more than 80 years, Congress has delegated extensive tariff-setting authority to the President,” the CRS report states. “This delegation insulated Congress from domestic pressures and led to an overall decline in global tariff rates. However, it has meant that the U.S. pursuit of a low-tariff, rules-based global trading system has been the product of executive discretion. While Congress has set negotiating goals, it has relied on Presidential leadership to achieve those goals.”

The presidency and the Fed

Trump said during the interview that he believes the president should have more input into whether the Federal Reserve raises or lowers interest rates, though he didn’t answer a question about keeping Jerome Powell as the chairman through the end of his term.

“I think I have the right to say I think he should go up or down a little bit,” Trump said. “I don’t think I should be allowed to order it. But I think I have the right to put in comments as to whether or not interest rates should go up or down.”

Trump declined to answer a question about whether he’s spoken with Russian leader Vladimir Putin since leaving office.

“I don’t comment on that,” Trump said. “But I will tell you that if I did, it’s a smart thing. If I’m friendly with people, if I have a relationship with people, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing.”

Journalist Bob Woodward wrote in his new book “War” that Trump and Putin have spoken at least seven times and that Trump secretly sent Putin COVID-19 tests during the pandemic, which the Kremlin later confirmed, according to several news reports.

Trump said the presidential race will likely come down to Pennsylvania, Michigan and possibly Arizona.

The Economic Club of Chicago has also invited Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris for a sit-down interview.

Gov. Andy Beshear, flanked by opponents of Amendment 2, spoke at a news conference Tuesday at Consolidated Baptist Church in Lexington. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Jamie Lucke)

LEXINGTON —? Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear joined teachers union president Randi Weingarten Tuesday to rally opponents of a constitutional amendment that they warned would defund Kentucky’s public schools.

Beshear took issue with what he called “misinformation” being spread by supporters of Amendment 2. “You don’t have to read very far to know that those trying to get you to vote ‘yes’ on Amendment 2 aren’t telling you the truth,” Beshear said — a criticism later disputed by Jim Waters of the conservative Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions, which supports the amendment.

If voters approve the measure’s changes to the state Constitution, Kentucky’s legislature would for the first time be free to put public money into private schools. Kentucky is one of three states with similar questions on the ballot this fall.

Weingarten, president of the 1.8 million-member AFT which represents teachers, nurses and other professions, stopped for a news conference at Consolidated Baptist Church as part of a pre-election bus tour through multiple states where AFT is supporting political allies including the Democratic presidential ticket.

Weingarten, an attorney and former history teacher, praised the protections for public schools in Kentucky’s Constitution. “I’m here to say to Kentucky, if we want to have that Kentucky culture of public schooling being the equalizer for all? kids, we need to vote ‘no’ on Amendment 2.”

She said that in states that have funded vouchers to help pay private school tuition, most of the parents using them were already sending their kids to private schools. “And, in fact, many private schools in the country have raised their tuition.”

Thirteen states and the District of Columbia fund some? form of vouchers that provide a set amount of money for private? school tuition, according to the Education Commission of the? States. Thirty-three states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have some form of “school choice” program, according to EdChoice, a nonprofit that advocates for the programs.

Josh Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University, told the gathering that voucher programs are failing students. He said 20 years of research led him to “call vouchers the education equivalent of predatory lending” because kids who leave public schools to attend the non-elite private schools that will accept them suffer declines in academic performance.

Cowen, formerly a professor at the University of Kentucky, is the author of “The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers” published recently by Harvard Education Press.

“When it comes to vouchers, it isn’t the school choice at all. It’s the school’s choice. The schools are doing the choosing,” Cowan said, adding that “30% of kids who do come to a voucher school from a public school end up leaving within the first couple of years … because they’re pushed out, asked to leave or they just can’t make it work.”

The movement toward school vouchers has been fueled by a network of super wealthy individuals and their nonprofit advocacy groups, most prominently Americans for Prosperity linked to Charles and David Koch. Another champion of school choice, Jeff Yass, a billionaire options? trader who lives near Philadelphia, has also put millions into a political action committee associated with Republican Kentucky U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, who is featured in television ads supporting Amendment? 2.

Saying he wanted to address “three pieces of misinformation,” Beshear ?said a pro-Amendment 2 flier had implied that he supported the measure because it would give him more options. “Let me be clear, I’m fully opposed to Amendment 2.”

Beshear also disputed assertions in advertising for Amendment 2 that its passage would raise teachers’ pay, saying “that? fails math.” Beshear also said that even though supporters ?argue that Amendment 2 in itself makes no policy changes, Republican lawmakers through their past votes for charter schools and a tax credit to support private schools have made their intentions clear, even as their commitment to further cuts in the state income tax will reduce revenue available for education.

“Amendment 2 would allow Frankfort politicians to take taxpayer money away from public schools and send it to unaccountable? private schools,” Besher said. “Let me tell you the people of Kentucky do not want that and when they are educated on what this amendment will actually do, they will vote against it as many? times as you’ll let them.”

Waters? of the Bluegrass Institute disputed Beshear’s assertion that Amendment 2 supporters are spreading misinformation.

“Voters are not voting on vouchers or any type of policy. The amendment removes barriers so legislators can create school choice policies without being struck down by the courts.”

Waters also said data show that teacher pay is “positively affected by choice policy.” The Bluegrass Institute in August published a brief by John Garren, a University of Kentucky emeritus professor of? economics, that found “increased school choice raises the demand for teachers’ services” and that “this increased? demand pushes up pay for teachers generally in public, private, and charter schools.”

Students arrive at Carter Traditional Elementary School in Louisville in January 2022. (Getty Images)

Amid calls in the Republican-controlled legislature to deconsolidate Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville, a new study found that some states that have proposed splitting up large urban districts ultimately did not put those changes into law.?

The Office of Education Accountability, an agency that researches education for the legislature, studied school governance models across the country and presented its findings to Kentucky lawmakers on the Education Assessment and Accountability Review Subcommittee Tuesday morning. Other findings in the report included that consolidating school districts can result in long-term saving costs but local communities often oppose it.

Co-chair of the subcommittee, Sen. Stephen West, R-Paris, asked OEA presenters if consolidation had a positive impact on student performance. OEA Research Division Manager Deborah Nelson said the research on the effects of consolidation were inconclusive.?

Rep. Tina Bojanowski, D-Louisville, asked if deconsolidation has an effect on student performance. Bojanowski teaches at a JCPS elementary school.?

“If you took a large urban school district and split it up, is there any evidence that you would have improved academic outcomes?” she asked. Nelson said there has not been a state deconsolidation of large districts, so it cannot be studied. Some small districts have succeeded from a larger district, but there have not been studies on student achievement in those cases.?

According to the OEA study, Nevada’s legislature considered dividing the Clark County School District in Las Vegas in 1997 but no legislation to that effect was approved. In New Mexico, legislation in 2017 included a provision to deconsolidate districts with more than 40,000 students but it did not pass. In Nebraska, legislation was passed in 2006 to deconsolidate Omaha Public Schools, but the legislation was later repealed.?

“We have no data we can point to for deconsolidation,” West said in a subsequent comment. “In the case of JCPS, for us as a state, we don’t have a lot to go on, really, is what you’re telling us.”?

Last year, a group of Republican lawmakers called for exploring legislative changes to JCPS after a bus-scheduling? debacle delayed the start of the school year. Among policies they wanted to tackle was creating a commission to evaluate splitting up JCPS, the state’s largest school system.?

During the 2024 legislative session, the General Assembly approved a task force to review governance of the school system. That group has met during the legislative interim and any recommendations it will make must be submitted to the Legislative Research Commission by Dec. 1.?

Louisville residents expressed concerns about deconsolidation during two task force meetings held at local schools. A co-chair of the task force, Sen. Michael Names, R-Shepherdsville, told reporters after the first local meeting that he suspected no legislation could come from the task force next legislative session because of the amount of information the task force wants to review.

On other issues, OEA’s report found that Kentucky’s school governance laws for state and local boards of education were similar to most states in the U.S. and that state takeover of school districts can often lead to some improvements for districts’ fiscal health but “on average, does not lead to improvements in student achievement.”?

The report did study authorization models for charter schools and noted that while Kentucky law does have a governance framework for charter schools, none are currently operating in the state. States with charter schools have varying authorizers.?

In Kentucky, authorizers can be the local school board in the district where the charter school would be located or a group of local school boards formed to make a regional charter school. There are also two local government authorizer options: the mayor of a consolidated local government or the chief executive office of an urban-county government.?

Louisville has a consolidated local government plan. Lexington operates under an urban-county government model.?

Former President Donald Trump, the GOP nominee for president, holds a town hall at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center with South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem on October 14, 2024 in Oaks, Pennsylvania. His rival, Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, spoke in the Western Pennsylvania city of Erie. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

UPPER PROVIDENCE TOWNSHIP, Pa. — Former President Donald Trump planned a town hall for his first public campaign appearance in the Philadelphia suburbs of 2024. But after two apparent medical emergencies shortened the question and answer portion, Trump remained on stage for more than a half hour swaying along to some of his favorite songs.

“It’s a nice crowd,” Trump said as he took the stage shortly before 7 p.m., nearly an hour later than scheduled.

A few thousand supporters filled the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center & Fairgrounds in Montgomery County for the event moderated by South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem.

Trump answered only five questions from attendees before the two incidents with audience members requiring medical attention.

While medical professionals attended to the first person, some in the audience sang God Bless America. After a few minutes, Trump asked if they could play Ave Maria on the speakers, a song he mentioned was played at his recent rally in Butler.

Audience questions from former Democrats

If there was a theme among the audience questions, it appeared to be disgruntled former Democrats. The conversation touched on familiar Trump campaign themes of border security, inflation, and some international conflicts.

An audience member named Heather, who said she was a registered Democrat most of her life, asked Trump at 7:34 p.m. how he would handle deportations of undocumented migrants, which has become a cornerstone of his campaign.

A second person appeared to need medical attention during Trump’s answer, so he asked for the music to resume.

“Would anyone else like to faint?” Trump asked after a few minutes. This was nearly 45 minutes after Trump took the stage.

Nearly an hour into the program Trump suggested that they end the questions, and instead make the rest of the night a “music fest.”

Trump didn’t take any questions after that, but emphasized the importance of Pennsylvania in the upcoming election, saying if whoever wins the commonwealth wins the election.

Trump took jabs at Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, over a number of issues, once again claiming that she is “more dangerous” than President Joe Biden and that “she’s not a smart woman.”

By 8 p.m., Trump and Noem were still on stage as music — which included “YMCA”, “November Rain”, and “Rich Men North of Richmond” — played loudly. Some supporters towards the back made their way to the exits by this point, but many supporters near the front remained put.

“Nobody’s leaving, what’s going on,” Trump said as “Hallelujah” began playing at 8:06 PM. “There’s nobody leaving.”

“Turn that music up,” he said.

Trump and Noem remained onstage until 8:31 p.m., and even after he stepped off of the stage, Trump appeared to be conversing with supporters who were still present near the front.

Montgomery County, the third most populated county in Pennsylvania, has been a reliably blue area for decades, but it has shifted to the left during the Trump era. Barack Obama carried the county by 14 points over Republican Mitt Romney in 2012. Trump lost Montgomery County by 21 points to Hillary Clinton in 2016, and by 26 points to Joe Biden in 2020. Biden only carried Philadelphia and Delaware counties by larger margins than Montgomery County.

Democrats are counting on big numbers in Philadelphia and its collar counties to carry the state.

Former Democratic Congressman Peter Deutsch, of Florida, endorsed Trump’s candidacy on Oct. 7. He delivered brief remarks at Monday’s event citing his belief that the GOP nominee would be better suited to “keep and maintain world peace” than his Democratic opponent.

Gwen Walz, spouse of Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, was campaigning on behalf of the ticket in Pennsylvania on Monday alongside Pennsylvania first lady Lori Shapiro.

Prior to his rally, Walz criticized Trump’s record on abortion rights.

“For nine long years, Trump has been trying to divide us — pitting neighbor against neighbor, friend against friend,” Walz said according to a press release from the Harris campaign. “In fact, I hear Trump is also here in the Collar Counties today, peddling his same old gripes and grievances.”

“He may even try to rewrite history on his record of attacking our reproductive freedom,” she added. “Well, I’m a longtime teacher. And in my classroom, we believe in facts. So here are a few: Donald Trump overturned Roe — that’s a fact.”

Abortion was not mentioned once during the Trump town hall.

Polling consistently shows Harris and Trump neck and neck statewide. National ratings outlets describe the race for Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes as a “toss-up.”

While Trump’s campaign event was one of the most unusual this cycle, which includes him revealing the sale of golden sneakers on stage in Philadelphia, the town hall turned concert was not the only campaign event in Pennsylvania on Monday. Harris held a rally in Erie County in? the opposite end of the commonwealth.

Monday kicks off another busy week as the campaign enters the home stretch.

On Tuesday, Trump’s running mate, U.S. Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), will also be in Montgomery County for a town hall hosted by Moms for America, a conservative organization. Walz will be in western Pennsylvania. President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden will be in Philadelphia, as well.

Harris will be in Philadelphia on Wednesday, while Vance will hold a rally in Williamsport.

This story is republished from the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a sister publication to the Kentucky Lantern and part of the nonprofit States Newsroom network.

A federal judge found merit in a case filed by retired coal miners alleging that CONSOL Energy engaged in a decades-long scheme to rob them of lifetime health benefits that were promised as a condition of employment (Karen Kasmauski | Getty Images)

Several retired coal miners are feeling validated this month as a federal judge found merit in their case alleging that CONSOL Energy engaged in a decades-long scheme to rob them of lifetime health benefits for them and their spouses that were promised as a condition of employment.

The coal miners who brought the case all worked at CONSOL Energy mines between 1969 and 2014. Unlike many of their colleagues, they abstained from joining a union to work in the CONSOL mines, largely due to promises made by leaders at CONSOL that if the workers stayed non-union, they would earn higher wages and receive lifetime health benefits that were competitive with those offered by the United Mine Workers of America.

Thousands of miners took CONSOL operators at their word that their benefits would remain as long as they served the company for at least 10 years or worked until they were 55 years old. The promises of lifetime health benefits were repeated time and time again — at human resources fairs, informational workshops for employees, company picnics and more — to workers across different states and different mining operations.

But in 2014, as many of the miners were forced to retire in preceding years due to downsizing at the mines and a sale of some CONSOL properties to Murray Energy, those promises were proven to be false.

Miners — who were told numerous times without question that their health coverage would persist for them and their spouses into retirement — began getting letters saying that coverage was coming to an end.

Allan “A.J.” Jack, a 75-year-old former coal miner who retired in 2009 after spending 18 of his 39 year career underground for CONSOL in Pennsylvania, remembers getting the initial letter in the fall of 2014 telling him the benefits would expire in 2019. Less than a year later, he received another letter from CONSOL, this one saying both he and his wife’s medical, dental and prescription insurance coverage would end on Dec. 31, 2015.

“I was devastated. I mean, you retire and you just know that you’re going to have this,” Jack said in an interview with West Virginia Watch. “Why would anybody tell you time and time again that you were going to have these benefits and then take them away? It really is devastating.”

Jack was initially told of the lifetime health benefits in an orientation in 1991. He was working at another mine in Pennsylvania at the time but — based largely on the promises of lifetime benefits, which were already guaranteed to miners affiliated with the UMWA, and a 401(k), which union miners did not qualify for — decided to leave his job and begin work at the Enlow Fork mine in southwestern Pennsylvania.

Throughout his nearly two decades with CONSOL, not one manager mentioned to him that the company reserved the right to terminate the retiree benefits at any time.

According to the order issued on Sept. 30 by Senior U.S. District Judge John T. Copenhaver Jr., the fact that CONSOL executives repeatedly failed to tell employees working for the company in different states, at different mining operations and in different departments this fact was a clear misrepresentation of benefits and therefore a violation of the company’s fiduciary obligations.

Terry Prater, a 69-year-old who worked for CONSOL for 15 years in Kentucky, unexpectedly retired from his job on Sept. 30, 2014. He showed up to work for his evening shift that day like he usually did. In the middle of his shift, Gerald Kowzan — who worked in human resources for CONSOL — addressed employees, telling them that anyone who retired on or after Oct. 1 would not be receiving their promised lifetime health, dental and prescription insurance benefits. A coworker asked what would happen if they retired before midnight. Kowzan told them if they did, they could get the benefits for five years.

“There were six of us there on the night shift who had put the time in and were of age to retire. So at 11 o’clock, we hollered in the foreman’s radio. We told him to come and get us, we’re retiring,” Prater said. “I got my insurance and kept it for 15 months, then I got the letter that it was going to be taken away. Just like that and it was gone.”

A ‘union-busting scheme’

Sam Petsonk, a labor rights attorney who litigated the CONSOL case along with attorneys from the nonprofit legal advocacy organization Mountain State Justice, said the repeated lies told by CONSOL to its employees were clearly part of an overarching scheme to keep the mines from being unionized.

This was despite attempts at those mines by workers over decades to gain union recognition and join the UMWA.

“Anyone who’s lived in Appalachia over the last 30 years has watched this union-busting scheme unfold. I mean, many miners wanted to organize a union at these operations,” Petsonk said. “I grew up in these communities. I watched the parents of many of my friends choose to work in non-union jobs because of misrepresentations just like this. An entire generation of wealth that our miners thought they had earned is now gone because of these broken promises.”

Before beginning to offer the promise that CONSOL employees would have lifetime benefits, the company was a “wall-to-wall” union operation, Petsonk said. The misrepresentations were an attempt to compete with union operations, where workers were guaranteed more protections and legally mandated to receive those lifetime benefits through an act of congress.

“The judge found and agreed that Bobby Brown, the CEO of CONSOL [at the time] directed this scheme to defraud thousands of Appalachian coal miners out of joining the union, out of gaining those benefits,” Petsonk said. “That’s what the judge found, that is a finding of fact in this record.”

And the misrepresentations weren’t the only union-busting activities happening at the CONSOL mines. Other attempts were more direct and explicit — and they worked.

Jack remembers colleagues of his at the Enlow-Bailey mining complex beginning work to unionize around 1992. There were picket lines, walkouts and other traditional unionizing attempts. Jack said they had things thrown at them. Four of his tires were slashed. He and his colleagues were threatened and told that unionizing would lower their wages and mean worse health insurance.

“We retired thinking that way, thinking, ‘man, we did have better pay and we’re going to have all these great retirement benefits,’” Jack said. “Well, in the end we ended up with nothing. They gave us nothing they told us they would and they left us all without.”

Jack said it was clear that the attempts by CONSOL to remain non-union was a scheme because of how widespread the lies were told.

Sitting in a courtroom in 2021, when the case went to trial, he remembers looking around at other former miners he’d never met. Most worked in other states, many in different parts of the coal mining operations. All of them, however, had been fed the same lines about lifetime benefits throughout their careers, and now all of them were going without those promised benefits.

“I’m from Pennsylvania. There were some there from West Virginia, from Kentucky. And I just said to the judge, ‘isn’t it amazing that I never saw any of these people before? That we don’t know each other? But we all were told the same thing by the same people,” Jack recalls. “I mean, what are the odds of that? It was clear that it was planned to tell everybody the same thing and to just renege on the whole thing, right?”

What the case means and what’s next for the affected miners

The case brought to the federal court was not an all around win. Only two of the seven plaintiffs — including Prater — were successful in proving their cases against CONSOL, and those successes were only granted in part. Others were thrown out due to limitations with the claims process, missed deadlines and other technical reasons, as well as not enough clear evidence proving that they individually were misled by the company’s leadership.

Overall, at least 3,000 miners were affected by the misrepresentations and lies from CONSOL operators over decades. Petsonk said that while it’s good that the court saw clear merit in the case and the claims made within it, much work remains to get justice for all the miners. In last month’s order, the judge wrote that the claims would likely need to be decided on a case-by-case basis.

But that’s nearly impossible, Petsonk said.

Now, he and his colleagues are reassessing and moving forward with filing an appeal to last month’s order in the hopes that the case can turn into a class action proceeding for all those affected.

“We’re very grateful to the judge for finding merit in this case [but] we’re going to ask the appeals court to review, to see this as a class action,” Petsonk said.

In the meantime, however, those affected like Prater and Jack will remain in limbo.

While the judge ruled partially in favor of Prater, his benefits won’t kick back in until all appeals are adjudicated. And while the judge agreed that Jack proved his claims against CONSOL, his claim came too late to entitle him to a remedy.

For Jack, who was grateful to the judge for agreeing with his claims, continuing to go without the benefits is having real repercussions in his and his wife’s lives.

Throughout Jack’s last 25 years of employment, he never missed a single day of work. He took pride in what he did and believed those above him who promised his commitment would be worth it.

And coal mining, as well as aging, is hard on the body. Both Prater, Jack and their wives are paying thousands of dollars a year for out-of-pocket medical expenses that they never planned for.

In the years since their promised lifetime benefits were pulled, it’s been difficult for Jack and his wife to enjoy their retirement.

“When you’re working that long, especially for a coal mine, it’s three different shifts, it’s weekends, it’s long hours and a lot of things that you want to do in life, you sort of pull off until you retire,” Jack said. “Hopefully, at that time, your health is good enough to do those things. And so now we want to make plans to maybe travel a little bit, do the things we weren’t able to do when we were younger, but then these medical expenses come up that you never thought you’d have to pay. Those plans you have, you’re putting them aside again, and this time until when?”

This story is republished from West Virginia Watch, a sister publication to the Kentucky Lantern and part of the nonprofit States Newsroom network.

Photos of fentanyl victims are on display at a memorial at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration headquarters in Arlington, Va. Federal data shows that overdose deaths are rising in Western states even as many states in the East are seeing improvement; the spread of fentanyl may explain much of the geographic movement, experts say. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Despite an encouraging national dip in the past year, overdose deaths are still on the rise in many Western states as the epicenter of the nation’s continuing crisis shifts toward the Pacific Coast, where deadly fentanyl and also methamphetamine are finding more victims.

Overdose deaths remain sharply higher since 2019. Many states are working on “harm reduction” strategies that stress cooperation with people who use drugs; in some cases, states are getting tougher on prosecutions, with murder charges for dealers.

Alaska, Nevada, Washington and Oregon have moved into the top 10 for rate of overdose deaths since 2023, according to a Stateline analysis of federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. Meanwhile the biggest one-year improvements were in Nebraska (down 30%), North Carolina (down 23%), and Vermont, Ohio and Pennsylvania (all down 19%).

In Kentucky, overdose deaths declined 18% since 2023. But fatal overdoses remain high in Kentucky at 43 per 100,000 population, the nation’s ninth highest rate.

The spread of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that can cause overdose and death even in tiny amounts, explains much of the east-to-west movement in the number of deaths, said Daliah Heller, vice president of overdose prevention program at Vital Strategies, an international advocacy group that works on strengthening public health.

“Fentanyl really came in through the traditional drug markets in the Northeast, but you can see this steady movement westward,” Heller said. “So now we’re seeing overdoses going up on the West Coast while they’re going down dramatically on the East Coast.”

The provisional CDC data estimates drug overdose deaths in the year ending with April 2024, and nationally they decreased by 10%, with more than 11,000 fewer deaths than the year before. But they’re still rising in 10 states and the District of Columbia, including 42% in Alaska, 22% in Oregon, 18% in Nevada and 14% in Washington state. Deaths climbed by almost 1,300 in those states and others with more modest increases: Colorado, Utah and Hawaii.

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Experts are still debating why some Eastern states hit early in the overdose crisis are seeing improvements.

“There’s some kind of improvement spreading from east to west and we don’t know exactly what it is yet. Everybody sees their little piece of the elephant,” said Nabarun Dasgupta, a scientist specializing in opioid disorder and overdose at the University of North Carolina’s Injury Prevention Research Center.

In North Carolina and other states with recent improvements, “it feels like we finally got a lid on the pot, but the pot is still boiling over. Things aren’t really cooling down,” Dasgupta said.

It could be a result of better acceptance of harm reduction policies to help those who use drugs, including no-questions-asked testing of street drugs and providing naloxone to counteract overdoses. Or users may simply be getting more wary of fentanyl and its dangers and unpleasant side effects, Dasgupta said.

"It feels like we finally got a lid on the pot, but the pot is still boiling over. Things aren't really cooling down." - Nabarun Dasgupta, University of North Carolina Injury Prevention Research Center

“Fentanyl is very potent, but potency isn’t the only thing. Otherwise we’d all be drinking the highest proof IPAs (India pale ales),” Dasgupta said.Alaska now has the nation's second-highest rate of drug overdose deaths, about 53 per 100,000 population, behind only West Virginia (73 per 100,000). Other Western states that are now in the top 10: Nevada (47 per 100,000), Washington state (46 per 100,000) and Oregon (45 per 100,000).

The CDC data shows Alaska had the largest increase from 2023 — up 42%, to 390 deaths. Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy in August 2023 proposed legislation making fentanyl dealers subject to murder charges in overdose death cases, writing: “Drugs and drug overdoses have had a devastating effect on our state.” The legislation was signed into law this year.

In May, the state kicked off “One Pill Can Kill,” a national?awareness campaign?warning about the dangers of fentanyl.

Fentanyl, mostly in the form of counterfeit 30 mg oxycodone pills, has become tremendously profitable for smugglers in Alaska who make use of airline passengers and air shipments of other products to get drugs into the state, said state Department of Public Safety spokesperson Austin McDaniel. Pills that sell for less than $1 near the U.S. southern border with Mexico can fetch $20 in Alaska, McDaniel said.

“We want to make the dealers think twice about targeting Alaska,” said Alaska state Rep. Craig Johnson, an Anchorage Republican, who supported the bill signed into law July 12.

Johnson’s 23-year-old nephew died of a fentanyl overdose two years ago. “This is personal. I don’t want other Alaska families to go through what we went through. I hope we never have to use it, because that will mean nobody else died.”

Other state and federal authorities are also trying a more punitive approach to the fentanyl crisis: Under a state program in Wisconsin meant to ferret out suppliers, three people were arrested in September and charged with first-degree reckless homicide in the fentanyl overdose death of a 27-year-old man.

In Michigan, two men pleaded guilty this month to federal charges in a mass fentanyl poisoning that led to at least six deathsSuch punitive approaches can backfire, experts say, if they drive people toward more dangerous solitary drug use — where no one can see an overdose and try to help — and away from programs such as free testing to unearth fentanyl hidden in other drugs.

“It’s sort of nonsensical, like saying you can beat something out of people. People are still going to use drugs,” said Heller, of Vital Strategies. “This should be a call to action to wake up and really invest in a response to drug use as a health issue.”

In Nevada, health authorities in the Las Vegas area are stressing more cooperation with residents who use drugs, increasing naloxone distribution and encouraging people to submit their drug purchases for testing so they’re not surprised by counterfeit heroin, methamphetamine or other drugs that are increasingly cut with cheaper fentanyl, said Jessica Johnson, health education supervisor for the Southern Nevada Health District.

For second year in a row, Kentucky overdose deaths decrease?

A state office coordinates goals for county naloxone distribution based on factors such as hospital reports of overdoses. More overdoses trigger more naloxone distribution to community centers, clinics, entertainment venues and even vending machines.

One puzzle in Nevada and in other states is that increasingly, overdoses involve a combination of opioids, such as fentanyl, along with stimulants such as methamphetamine. Almost a third of overdoses in Nevada are caused by both being used together, according to a state report based on 2022 data.

It could be that some people seek the “roller coaster of effects using a stimulant like methamphetamine and a depressant like fentanyl or heroin,” Jessica Johnson said, but mostly she hears that unsuspecting users get cocaine or methamphetamine that’s been cut with cheaper fentanyl.

“We get people saying, ‘Oh I don’t need naloxone because I don’t use fentanyl,’ and our team is able to say, ‘Well, our surveillance data actually suggests there might be fentanyl in your methamphetamine’ or whatever it is.”

Nationally, both drugs are increasingly a factor in fatal overdoses: Synthetic opioids such as fentanyl contributed to 68% of overdose deaths in this year’s CDC data, up from 48% in 2019. Stimulants such as methamphetamine were factors in 35% of deaths, up from 20% in 2019.

Heroin and other partly natural opioids, such as oxycodone, have diminished as factors, together accounting for 13% of deaths in the latest data compared with 40% in 2019.

Some experts theorize that the high potency of fentanyl makes those who use drugs want to tweak or balance the effect with methamphetamine. Fentanyl itself is often cut with xylazine, a non-opioid animal tranquilizer — often known as “tranq” — that can cause unpleasant side effects, including extreme sedation and skin lesions, Dasgupta said.

“During the pandemic, there were a lot of reasons why people were using substances more. Now that things are different, people are tired of the adulteration, the sedation, the skin wounds,” Dasgupta said. “People may take lower doses, and that in itself can help lower overdoses.”

This story is republished from Stateline, a sister publication to the Kentucky Lantern and part of the nonprofit States Newsroom network.

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Congressional clerks pass the Electoral College certificate from the state of Ohio while unsealing and organizing all the votes from the 50 states in the House of Representatives chamber at the U.S. Capitol January 4, 2013 in Washington, D.C. The votes were tallied during a joint session of the 113th Congress. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The United States is the only democracy in the world where a presidential candidate can get the most popular votes and still lose the election.

Thanks to the Electoral College, that has happened five times in the country’s history. The most recent examples are from 2000, when Al Gore won the popular vote but George W. Bush won the Electoral College after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, and 2016, when Hillary Clinton got more votes nationwide than Donald Trump but lost in the Electoral College.

The Founding Fathers did not invent the idea of an electoral college. Rather, they borrowed the concept from Europe, where it had been used to pick emperors for hundreds of years.

As a scholar of presidential democracies around the world, I have studied how countries have used electoral colleges. None have been satisfied with the results. And except for the U.S., all have found other ways to choose their leaders.

The origins of the U.S. Electoral College

The Holy Roman Empire was a loose confederation of territories that existed in central Europe from 962 to 1806. The emperor was not chosen by heredity, like most other monarchies. Instead, emperors were chosen by electors, who represented both secular and religious interests.

As of 1356, there were seven electors: Four were hereditary nobles and three were chosen by the Catholic Church. By 1803, the total number of electors had increased to 10. Three years later, the empire fell.

When the Founding Fathers were drafting the U.S. Constitution in 1787, the initial draft proposal called for the “National Executive,” which we now call the president, to be elected by the “National Legislature,” which we now call Congress. However, Virginia delegate George Mason viewed “making the Executive the mere creature of the Legislature as a violation of the fundamental principle of good Government,” and so the idea was rejected.

Pennsylvania delegate James Wilson proposed that the president be elected by popular vote. However, many other delegates were adamant that there be an indirect way of electing the president to provide a buffer against what Thomas Jefferson called “well-meaning, but uninformed people.” Mason, for instance, suggested that allowing voters to pick the president would be akin to “refer(ring) a trial of colours to a blind man.”

For 21 days, the founders debated how to elect the president, and they held more than 30 separate votes on the topic – more than for any other issue they discussed. Eventually, the complicated solution that they agreed to was an early version of the electoral college system that exists today, a method where neither Congress nor the people directly elect the president. Instead, each state gets a number of electoral votes corresponding to the number of members of the U.S. House and Senate it is apportioned. When the states’ electoral votes are tallied, the candidate with the majority wins.

James Madison, who was not fond of the Holy Roman Empire’s use of an electoral college, later recalled that the final decision on how to elect a U.S. president “was produced by fatigue and impatience.”

After just two elections, in 1796 and 1800, problems with this system had become obvious. Chief among them was that electoral votes were cast only for president. The person who got the most electoral votes became president, and the person who came in second place – usually their leading opponent – became vice president. The current process of electing the president and vice president on a single ticket but with separate electoral votes was adopted in 1804 with the passage of the 12th Amendment.

Some other questions about how the electoral college system should work were clarified by federal laws through the years, including in 1887 and 1948.

After the 2020 presidential election exposed additional flaws with the system, Congress further tweaked the process by passing legislation that sought to clarify how electoral votes are counted.

Other electoral colleges

After the U.S. Constitution went into effect, the idea of using an electoral college to indirectly elect a president spread to other republics.

For example, in the Americas, Colombia adopted an electoral college in 1821. Chile adopted one in 1828. Argentina adopted one in 1853.

In Europe, Finland adopted an electoral college to elect its president in 1925, and France adopted an electoral college in 1958.

Over time, however, these countries changed their minds. All of them abandoned their electoral colleges and switched to directly electing their presidents by votes of the people. Colombia did so in 1910, Chile in 1925, France in 1965, Finland in 1994, and Argentina in 1995.

The U.S. is the only democratic presidential system left that still uses an electoral college.

The Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, speaks during a campaign rally at Erie Insurance Arena on Oct. 14, 2024 in Erie, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

ERIE, Pa. — Vice President Kamala Harris packed an arena Monday night in Erie, Pennsylvania, a swing corner of the key swing state in the 2024 presidential election.

Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, told thousands of spectators, “You are a pivot county.”

“How you all vote in presidential elections often ends up predicting the national result,” Harris said.

Harris, attacking the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump, urged the crowd to watch Trump’s recent rallies and interviews.

“Please roll the clip,” she said before compilations of Trump appearances showed on two big screens in the arena.

Several showed him talking about the “enemy from within,” including a Sunday interview on Fox News where he said “radical left lunatics” could be “very easily handled, if necessary, by the National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.”

Obama to Trump to Biden

Erie County, at the northwestern tip of Pennsylvania, with just under 270,000 residents, has been a “pivot” county in the battleground state for the last several presidential elections.

Former President Barack Obama won the majority of the lakeside county’s voters in 2012. The county turned for Trump in 2016. And, in 2020, just 1,319 voters delivered a win for President Joe Biden over Trump, turning the county blue again.

This is Harris’ seventh visit to the western side of Pennsylvania, according to her campaign.

Trump was on the other side of the state Monday night, speaking in Upper Providence Township, 18 miles northwest of Philadelphia.

Mail-in voting is already underway in the Keystone State — one of a handful that will decide who wins the Oval Office. The others include Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin.

Both the Harris and Trump campaigns are blanketing Pennsylvania — Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, Trump’s running mate, stumped in Johnstown Saturday, where in response to a question, he told States Newsroom he considered what happened in January 2021 to be a “peaceful transfer of power.”

Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, will hold a campaign rally in Pittsburgh Tuesday.

Party-like atmosphere

Long lines began to snake outside the arena as early as four-and-a-half hours before Harris’ Monday rally.

A DJ played party music inside as spectators filled the floor and the stands of the roughly 9,000-seat arena.

U.S. Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania told the loud crowd, “Erie, my God, have you showed up.”

“The national media’s here, and you want to know why?? Because you pick the next president,” Fetterman said.

“Erie is the ultimate bellwether county, not just in Pennsylvania, in the nation right now. Right now the nation is all thinking about you and wondering where you’re gonna go,” Fetterman continued, to cheering. “And we know what you’re gonna do, and you’re gonna make sure that Harris and Walz is the team that’s gonna lead our nation.”

‘Born from personal experience’

Harris spoke for just under a half hour, highlighting her usual themes of a middle-class upbringing and her vision for an “opportunity economy.”

She outlined her platform of tax cuts for new parents, first-time home buyers and entrepreneurs, and a policy plan to “take out corporate price gouging.”

Harris also laid out her plan to expand Medicare to help pay for in-home senior care so “more seniors can live at home with dignity.”

“And like so many of my priorities it is born out of a personal experience,” she said, prefacing the story of how she cared for her mother, who died of colon cancer in 2009.

“But far too many people who want and need to take care of family members — either you have to leave your job or spend down everything you have to be able to qualify for Medicaid. That’s not right.”

“I will always put middle-class and working families first. I came from the middle class, and I will never forget where I come from,” Harris said as the crowd broke into chants of “U.S.A.”

Harris also told the crowd that Trump threatens health insurance for tens of millions of Americans with his platform to overhaul the Affordable Care Act.

During the single presidential debate of the election cycle, the former president said he had “concepts of a plan” to replace the insurance program that ushered in an era of covered medical care for pre-existing conditions.

“The seriousness of this cannot be overlooked. Think about that, taking us back to a time we all remember when insurance companies could deny people with pre-existing conditions, you remember what that was? Well, we are not going back,” she said, repeating a common rally cry at her events.

‘Brutally serious’ consequences

Harris slammed Trump as an “unserious man” with a “very different plan” if he wins in November.

“But the consequences of him ever being president again are brutally serious,” she said.

The vice president highlighted the July U.S. Supreme Court opinion that granted former presidents immunity for core constitutional duties, and presumptive immunity for other actions, except for personal ones.

“Now just imagine Donald Trump with no guard rails,” she said. “He who has vowed that he would be a dictator on day one, that he would weaponize the Department of Justice against his enemies.”

Republican response

The Republican National Committee issued a statement ahead of Harris’ rally in Erie, attacking her specifically on energy policy.

“The Keystone State will reject another four years of Kamala Harris’ dangerously liberal policies because Pennsylvanians trust President Trump to unleash American energy and provide economic relief,” read a statement from RNC Chairman Michael Whatley.

The Trump campaign attacked the vice president on two fronts in its daily press release Monday. The campaign accused her of being on an “anti-fracking crusade” and of failing “to deliver to Black voters.”

Harris earlier Monday unveiled an “Opportunity Agenda for Black Men” that would legalize recreational marijuana and introduce a “regulatory framework for cryptocurrency,” according to a release from the Harris campaign.

Flash flooding inundated much of Southeastern Kentucky in July 2022, including Breathitt County, above. (Photo by Michael Swensen/Getty Images)

Researchers at public universities in Kentucky and West Virginia are planning to collaborate alongside local residents on a four-year project to better understand, predict and prepare for flash flooding in Appalachia and climate change’s impacts on it.?

Surface coal mining worsened deadly Eastern Kentucky floods in July 2022, study shows

A nearly $1.1 million award from the U.S. National Science Foundation will bring together civil engineers and scientists from environmental and social fields to study a range of topics, including soil moisture’s impact on flash flooding. Researchers also will gauge monitors installed in waterways to help tailor flooding solutions “to community goals, serving as a model for resilience planning in vulnerable communities across the U.S.,” according to the project’s description.?

Researchers will analyze decades of precipitation and streamflow data from the University of Kentucky’s Robinson Forest in Breathitt County and install soil moisture sensors throughout the research forest to better understand flooding in headwater streams.?

Christopher Barton, a University of Kentucky professor of forest hydrology and watershed management and principal investigator for the project, in a statement said researchers want to do everything they can “to build up the infrastructure to understand, predict and prepare for flash floods in this region.”?

“To best help, we also must understand how climate change and landscape alterations affect flash floods,” Barton said.?

The “novel collaboration” is also funding researchers from the University of Louisville, Eastern Kentucky University, West Virginia University and Marshall University. A main goal of the collaboration is developing improved early warning systems to alert communities when flash floods are worsening.

Eastern Kentucky University will also be using the funding to aid high school and middle school teachers develop science education programming and plant trees as a part of reforestation efforts to mitigate flash floods.

The need for a new area code isn’t necessarily driven by population but associated with the multiple numbers each person may be using.?The supply of 502 area code phone number prefixes, the three digits following an area code in a phone number, is expected to be exhausted by the end of 2027. (Getty Images)

A national organization overseeing the supply of phone numbers on behalf of phone carriers is asking a Kentucky regulator to establish a new area code in response to a dwindling supply of available 502 area code numbers covering Louisville, Frankfort and nearby counties.

The application filed with the Kentucky Public Service Commission (PSC) on Monday by the North American Numbering Plan Administrator (NANPA) states the supply of 502 area code phone number prefixes, the three digits following an area code in a phone number, is expected to be exhausted by the end of 2027. Florence Weber, a NANPA vice president, wrote in the application that representatives of the telecommunications industry consulted by NANPA decided adding a new area code would be the best way forward.

That would work by overlaying a new area code onto the geographic area serviced by the existing 502 area code. New phone numbers added in the area would have the new area code available while those with phone numbers with the previous 502 area code would be able to keep their numbers.

Heidi Wayman, a data manager for NANPA, told the Lantern the need for a new area code isn’t necessarily driven by population but associated with the multiple numbers each person may be using.?

“You may have devices as well with numbers, tablets, watches, etc. So you may have multiple phone numbers even assigned to you,” Wayman said. “We need available prefixes to assign out to the carriers.”

Weber wrote phone numbers with the new area code would be available once the supply of 502 area code numbers had been exhausted, and the supply of numbers with the new area code would last an estimated 30 years. The consensus of telecommunications providers, according to the application, is that? layering a new code onto the current 502 region would be easier to implement and reduce confusion compared to other options.

Industry representatives — which include AT&T, T-Mobile, Charter Communications, Verizon and Boost Mobile — also considered splitting the 502 area code geographic region into two distinct areas, one keeping 502 and another getting a new area code. Other options considered included eliminating the geographic boundaries for area codes in Kentucky including boundaries involving the 270 area code, 606 area code and 859 area code.?

This wouldn’t be the first time Kentucky received a new area code this century. Following a request from NANPA, the PSC in 2014 established the new area code 364 to be overlaid on the 270 area code to increase the supply of phone numbers in Western Kentucky.?

NANPA is requesting the PSC, which regulates utilities in the state, issue a decision on how to move forward by July 31, 2025. Once a decision has been issued, NANPA plans to roll out a 13-month timeline for establishing the new area code. NANPA is run by the New Jersey-based data management company SOMOS through a contract with the Federal Communications Commission.

Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams, a Republican, speaks to a crowd while accepting the 2024 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. (Screenshot via JFK Library Foundation livestream)

Kentucky Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams is mulling a run for governor, according to a recent interview with his law school’s publication.?

An alumni profile of Adams entitled “Election Defender” in the Harvard Law Bulletin says he is considering a run for governor as he is term-limited as the state’s top election official. Adams graduated from Harvard Law School in 2001. He won bids for Kentucky secretary of state in 2019 and 2023.?

In response to the Kentucky Lantern on Monday, Adams’ spokesperson Michon Lindstrom said right now Adams “is focused on running a smooth presidential election and will discuss any future plans at a later date.”?

Speculation about Adams making a future gubernatorial bid swirled after he gave a victory speech last November that focused on topics outside of the purview of the secretary’s office, including public safety, quality of life and the state’s long-term future. When asked at the time by the Lantern about his future political plans, Adams said it was too soon to say.?

“It is way too early to try to predict what I’ll be doing in four years,” Adams said. “I think I showed my party I’m a strong player on the bench. I have found a way to reach across the divide and over-perform in places Republicans generally can’t compete.”

In the 2023 general election, Adams was the top vote-getter after he gained more than 784,000 votes.?

Adams was awarded the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award earlier this year. He was selected for his work to increase voting days in Kentucky, as well as for standing up for free and fair elections despite ire from fellow Republicans and death threats from election deniers.?

The Harvard Law Bulletin interview focused on Adams’ career after graduating from Harvard Law and how he first became interested in civics. According to the article, Adams says? that state government fits his style more than more polarized national politics.