News
Stewart McLaurin, president of the White House Historical Association, regarding an identical replica of the White House’s Oval Office in a new Washington, D.C., tourist stop that opens on Monday, Sept. 23. Admission into The People’s House: A White House Experience is free, but visitors will need to request timed tickets. (Associated Press — Sept. 20, 2024)
Regional library systems provide vital services for small and under-resourced communities. But what happens when political divisions threaten to dismantle them?
Innovative wage subsidy programs and other services can help workers without college degrees demonstrate their skills to the employers who need them.
The state’s Election Board will consider 11 rule changes, from hand counting ballots to ballot tracking fees, that could significantly impact the election landscape with less than a month left before early voting begins.
The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that California could lose up to 75 percent of its beaches in the next 75 years. The changes have sparked multimillion-dollar restoration projects and lawsuits along the state’s coast.
Ed Jacobs, the attorney for Atlantic City, N.J., Mayor Marty Small Sr., regarding the indictment of the public official and his wife, La’Quetta, the city’s superintendent of schools, for allegedly beating their teenage daughter on numerous occasions. Small has also been charged with assault and making terroristic threats. (Associated Press — Sept. 18, 2024)
Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party is zooming in on just over a dozen House races to try to keep its control of the state government. Also: Young women are more liberal than ever.
Tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act were designed to drive private-sector investments in clean energy. Where are investments and jobs landing?
Turning some of it into fuel, as a Michigan facility plans to do, is labeled as “recycling,” but it may be worse for the environment than dumping the waste into a landfill.
It could be a very different landscape than the one that will decide this year’s election. Will North Carolina be the next Pennsylvania?
HUD’s Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing program had over 85,000 participants nationwide as of June. Since the program began in 2008, homelessness among veterans in Illinois has decreased by half.
The oil major’s U.S. onshore wind energy business, based in Houston, is valued at about $2 billion and has interests in 10 wind farms across seven states.
A former cellmate of Patrick Womack, who was found dead in a hot Texas prison cell in August 2023 a day after Womack asked a correctional officer to let him take a cold shower so he could cool down, a request that was denied because there weren't enough guards to watch him. Attorneys for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice are trying to dissuade a federal judge from forcing the state to cool its un-air-conditioned prisons, arguing in an ongoing lawsuit that the state already provides incarcerated people with unlimited access to cold showers, ice water and air-conditioned respite areas. From 2001 to 2019, as many as 271 Texas prison inmates may have died because of extreme heat, according to a 2022 study. (The Texas Tribune — Sept. 11, 2024)
Michigan appointed a chief infrastructure officer to help localities apply for federal dollars and meet statewide infrastructure goals. What can other states learn from this approach?
We need more welcoming public places where people can connect in person — high-quality, well-maintained parks, trails, libraries and community centers. Investing in them is good for us and good for democracy.
They do better in school, parents have to spend less money on food and all households benefit from lower grocery prices.
The emergency declaration would kick off a “public education” campaign about road safety for drivers and pedestrians and would jumpstart the implementation of “quick-build” safety projects.
The Community Outreach and Stabilization Unit began in 2018 and put behavioral health practitioners with police officers to assist with mental health and/or chemical dependency calls. The city plans to launch a new program next year.
U.S. Sen. JD Vance regarding his false claim that Haitian migrants were eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. (NPR — Sept. 15, 2024)
Nine towns are suing New Jersey over a law implementing aspects of the state’s affordable housing requirements. The rules have pushed states to produce more multifamily and low-income housing.
The public likes what lawmakers around the country are doing, but the industry’s lobbyists are working hard to embed provisions into trade deals that would undermine much of the progress states have made.
Future in Context
The organization that popularized civic hackathons is now taking on the responsible use of AI in government. Code for America draws on the collective expertise of the public, tech and nonprofit sectors to tackle societal challenges.
Sonoma County officials hope the new policy will act as a guide for how to appropriately use AI technology for emails, reports, job descriptions, spreadsheet calculations and more. But the policy prohibits using confidential or specific county information.
The state’s Industrial Commission, made up of the governor, attorney general and agricultural commissioner, has approved a project to expand education about carbon dioxide capture and storage, which includes a newly debuted website.
In the past year, 83 percent of Georgia’s corporate recruitment has landed outside of the 10-county Atlanta area. A new program, Georgia Match, sent more than 132,000 letters to high school seniors to highlight technical college programs across the state.
Danny McCormick, a Republican state representative in Louisiana, on a bill enacted by the Legislature repealing a ban on the sale of raw milk. Driven by increasing demand for the product, a number of states have moved to remove bans despite public health officials' warnings that drinking unpasteurized milk could lead to a spike in potentially deadly bacterial and viral infections. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says that 143 deaths from various illnesses in the U.S. have been linked to raw milk since 1987. (Yahoo News — June 22, 2024)
Most Read
