Latest news with #Midwestern
Washington Post
8 minutes ago
- Politics
- Washington Post
Supreme Court justice pauses ruling weakening Voting Rights Act
Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh on Wednesday paused a ruling by a federal appeals court that bars individuals in some Midwestern states from filing lawsuits claiming that voting laws discriminate on the basis of race under a provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act. The administrative stay will allow the Supreme Court more time to consider whether to take up an appeal by Native American tribes in North Dakota who claim the ruling endangers a powerful tool to ensure equitable voting laws. It's unclear when the high court might issue a decision to hear the case. 'They knee-cap Congress's most important civil rights statute,' the tribes wrote in their application asking the high court to intervene. 'That blow is especially harmful to Native Americans and these Plaintiffs in particular. North Dakota — like many states — has a long and sad history of official discrimination against Native Americans that persists to this day.' The Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians and Spirit Lake Tribe filed suit in 2022 under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, claiming a new North Dakota voting map diluted the power of indigenous voters by reducing from three to one the number of seats they had 'an equal opportunity to elect.' A federal judge ruled for the tribes, but a divided Eighth Circuit overturned that decision. The panel did not rule on the substance of the tribes' arguments, but instead found that individuals had no right to bring challenges under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act that bars racially discriminatory voting laws. The panel found only the Justice Department can bring such suits. The tribes said individuals have brought more than 400 challenges to voting laws under the provision since 1982. The Eighth Circuit, which covers North Dakota, South Dakota, Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri and Nebraska, is the only one in the nation that has found individuals cannot sue under Section 2. The Eighth Circuit's ruling could force a Native American woman serving in North Dakota's House of Representatives to lose her seat. Collette Brown, the legislator, is also a plaintiff in the lawsuit brought by the tribes.
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Slain Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman, husband and dog to lie in state
Rep. Melissa Hortman, her husband Mark and their golden retriever Gilbert will lie in state at the Minnesota State Capitol on June 27 after they were killed in what officials have called a 'politically motivated assassination.' Hortman and her husband were shot and killed inside their home on June 14. After what has been described as the largest manhunt in Minnesota history, Vance Luther Boelter, 57, was arrested and charged in state and federal court in connection with the shooting. Prosecutors say Boelter also went to the home of Minnesota Sen. John Hoffman disguised as a law enforcement officer and wounded Hoffman and his wife, Yvette. He then traveled to two other unnamed lawmakers' homes before entering the Hortmans' home and killing them, according to a federal affidavit. The affidavit says Boelter wanted to 'kill, injure, harass and intimidate'' more than 45 Minnesota state and federal officials and prosecutors say he also intended to target several other Midwestern lawmakers. Hortman will be the first woman and one of fewer than 20 Minnesotans to lie in state at the Capitol, according to a release from the state's House of Representatives. Members of the public will be able to pay their respects from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. local time. The tribute will come on the same day Boelter is expected to appear in federal court, where he faces half a dozen charges, including multiple counts of murder and stalking. A private funeral for the Hortmans, which will be livestreamed, will follow on June 28, officials said. The couple had two children and lived in Brooklyn Park, a suburban city about 10 miles north of Minneapolis, according to Hortman's profile. Hoffman and Hortman are both members of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL), a political party exclusive to the state. Hortman was elected in 2004 and was speaker-emerita of the House of Representatives, which is narrowly controlled by Republicans. Police: Break-in at home of slain Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman Hortman served the people of Minnesota with compassion and grace, Gov. Tim Walz previously said. 'Our state lost a great leader and I lost the dearest of friends," Walz said. "She woke up every day determined to make this state a better place.' Contributing: Jeanine Santucci, Eduardo Cuevas, Christopher Cann, Terry Collins and Jorge L. Ortiz, USA TODAY This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Slain Minnesota Rep. Melissa Hortman, husband and dog to lie in state
Boston Globe
7 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Are they panic attacks, or visitations from an ancient Greek God?
All of this makes Clune sound like Jonathan Franzen, a cartographer of Midwestern schools and suburbs. But if 'Pan' is a work of realism — and that's an open and interesting question — then it's interested primarily not in the realities of social existence (what it's like to live in a particular time and place) but in the realities of consciousness (what it's like to think in a particular way). Early in 'Pan,' Nick starts having what he comes to understand are panic attacks. Sitting in geometry class, he realizes that his hand is a thing, just like the textbook and eraser he sees in front of him: 'That's when I forgot how to breathe.' Soon after, he's watching 'The Godfather III' when he forgets 'how to move blood through [his] body.' He begins worrying that, if he stares at something or someone too long, his 'looking,' or his 'thinking,' or his very self (it's hard to tell them apart), will escape from his head and stick to what he's staring at. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up How does subjectivity, the ineffable feeling of being a person, arise from the material brain and its measurable neural firings? How is it that thinking takes place within time and yet seems to remove us from time? (There's Augustine again.) Think too much about thinking and these questions, and you, start falling apart. Nick is 'a pragmatist' (there's William James again), and 'Pan' follows the strategies he develops to deal with his panic and insomnia: note the symptoms that precipitate an attack; breathe into a paper bag; meditate. Advertisement Interwoven with this rather straightforward, if effective, story of mental health and its treatment is a wilder, stronger strand. Nick hooks up with a group of cool — read: trouble-maker — friends. They start hanging out in a family barn they call, with equal parts irony and mythic seriousness, the Barn. There, they do drugs (Nick doesn't; he's read they can trigger panic attacks), listen to music, engage in rituals (dancing, more drugs, sex), and decide that Nick has been inhabited by the Greek god Pan. As Ian, the group's ringleader, declares, 'When you are aware of the panic, you are seeing the truth of ordinary life' with 'absolute clarity.' Panic isn't a condition to be managed; it's a divine possession to be embraced. It shows us the truths — the subject is an object; selves are porous to one another; 'time was part of the body after all' — that we normally refuse to see. Advertisement Nick is regularly described as being 'loose,' ready at any moment to drift from his mind and the world. 'Pan' is, in many ways, a loose novel. It refuses to be one thing or the other; its plot moves — Nick tries out new ways of controlling panic; his friends come up with wilder theories about panic's sacredness — but at its own strange pace. Is the claim that Pan is real and within Nick meant to be taken literally? Or is it a metaphor to describe how we are visited by thoughts that seem beyond us? Yes and yes. Clune doesn't choose between what we might describe as the poetic and the novelistic, the mystic and the naturalistic, explanations of Nick's experience. When it comes to time and consciousness, Clune's perennial topics, visionary perception is perhaps just a deeper form of realism. Advertisement Anthony Domestico is an associate professor of literature at Purchase College, SUNY, and the books columnist for Commonweal. His reviews have appeared in The Atlantic, The Baffler, The Washington Post, and elsewhere. PAN By Michael Clune Penguin Press, 336 pages, $29
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Health
- Yahoo
IndyGo's riders with disabilities, low incomes protest 57% fare hike as final vote nears
Diagnosed with the immune system disorder multiple sclerosis a decade ago, Ryan Malone uses an IndyGo program for people with disabilities to schedule a private cab to and from work every weekday. Before his diagnosis, he relied on a typical bus for his daily commute because he's legally blind. "I use the paratransit services really for the MS more than the vision, just because with MS, you really need to have a steady, predictable environment," Malone said, referring to the bus system's paratransit program, IndyGo Access. His symptoms, mainly neuropathy that makes him lose feeling in his hands, legs and feet, "get worse if (I) get too hot or too cold or even too stressed." If IndyGo passes a 57% fare increase next month for all routes, Malone will be among the riders facing the largest new costs when the policy takes effect in January 2026. He expects to pay roughly $80 more a month for IndyGo Access services — similar to adding a new utility bill to his monthly budget. Under the new policy, the typical bus fare would increase from $1.75 to $2.75 per trip, while the starting IndyGo Access fare paid by riders like Malone would rise from $3.50 to $5.50 per trip. The price is higher for paratransit service, which picks up people from the door of their home and drops them off at their destination, because it costs more per rider than a fixed-route bus, IndyGo says. While Malone earns a good wage in his role at the Indiana School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, he worries about other riders with disabilities who are on fixed incomes. Their struggle to make ends meet is similar to that of the typical IndyGo rider, who has no car, lives in a household earning less than $25,000 a year, and rides IndyGo to and from work every weekday, according to a 2022 rider survey. 'You're talking about people that by and large just don't have as many options financially or practically," Malone said. "They don't have a lot of options as far as how they get places and especially what they can afford." With ridership still down at three-quarters of pre-pandemic levels, IndyGo officials say they need to increase fares for the first time since 2009 to prevent service reductions or deferred upgrades to buses and facilities. The rising costs of fuel, labor and construction are outpacing the old fares. But more than a dozen riders who spoke with IndyStar and in IndyGo public meetings throughout June said they're frustrated by the attempt to increase fares all at once after a 16-year freeze. If the IndyGo board of directors passes the policy in an Aug. 21 vote, the new standard fare of $2.75 would be higher than those in comparable Midwestern cities like Columbus, Detroit, Nashville and even Chicago, where a single bus ride costs $2.25 (or $2.50 with cash). To riders like Kimberly Eskridge who are struggling to get by, the 57% fare hike seems "outrageous." Eskridge, 56, sat with a suitcase and bags full of laundry at the Julia Carson Transit Center on a recent weekday morning. She had ridden to a laundromat on the south side before heading downtown to meet her husband at a storage unit where she keeps some of her belongings. She and her husband currently earn little to no income and have no vehicle, she said. They're staying with someone they know on the south side because they can't afford their own place. "We can barely afford to ride the bus as it is," Eskridge said. "And then you want to raise it a whole dollar? You can't do it a quarter at a time or something?" IndyGo officials say that simple math brought them to the proposed 57% increase: $1.75 in January 2009 — the last year in which fares increased — is equal to about $2.61 today, adjusting for inflation. They rounded up to $2.75. In the 2000s, IndyGo increased fares by 25 cents every few years, going from $1.00 for a fixed-route trip at the start of the decade to $1.75 by the end. It's not clear why previous leaders abandoned that strategy during the 2010s, Chief Public Affairs Officer Carrie Black told IndyStar. Black suggested they were more focused on planning major initiatives like the 2016 Marion County Transit Plan, for which transit advocates convinced voters to approve a new 0.25% income tax to fund the creation of three new bus rapid transit lines. Purple Line: IndyGo's Purple Line jumps to No. 1 in monthly ridership as Red Line, other bus routes falter While expenses have kept rising, IndyGo has dealt with dwindling ridership and shrinking fare revenue in the years following a 23-year high of 10.2 million trips in 2014 — a slow downward trend that accelerated rapidly once the pandemic hit. Money from paying passengers in 2014 hit $11.6 million. By 2024, when ridership was down by about three million trips, fare revenues were cut in half to about $6 million. To make up the difference, a growing portion of IndyGo's costs have been paid for with local property and income taxes, state sales taxes and federal grants. Facing funding shortfalls down the road, IndyGo leaders are choosing to rip off the Band-Aid now. "We cannot continue to operate (this way)," IndyGo Executive Director Jennifer Pyrz said during a June meeting. "Fuel prices are going up. We've got a new collective bargaining agreement that means that our labor costs are up, and we want to make sure that we can provide fair wages to our frontline workers. The cost of construction is up." IndyGo riders like 19-year-old Desirae Biddle, who was taking the bus to her new job at Penn Station on a recent July morning, are well aware that the cost of everything seems to be rising. They just don't want a public service known for its affordability to follow that trend. "Ubers and Lyfts, they cost so much. That's why I ride the bus," Biddle said, adding that it takes her an hour and a half on two buses to get to work using IndyGo. "It's just so hard to get around." IndyGo's main solution to save frequent riders money is a fare-capping program, introduced in 2019 with the MyKey fare system, that puts daily and weekly limits on how much a rider has to pay. But those price caps would also increase under the new proposal, which would bump up the daily limit from $4 to $6 and the weekly limit from $15.75 to $24.75. And riders have been slow to make use of the MyKey system, with more than half choosing to pay with cash and missing out on savings, according to IndyGo data. Six years after MyKey's implementation, only one in five IndyGo riders uses the MyKey tap card or the mobile app for rides. Throughout public meetings in June, IndyGo leaders emphasized that paying with cash or coins while boarding is the most expensive way to ride the bus. IndyGo aims to push more people toward MyKey by educating them on the potential cost savings and phasing out other common payment alternatives like the 31-day pass, Black said. IndyGo has also faced criticism about missing out on revenue when riders purposely skip or neglect to pay the fares for the Red Line and the Purple Line, its most popular routes which are easy to board without paying. IndyGo now checks thousands of riders' fares a month. Among roughly 50,000 tickets checked through May, riders hadn't paid about 10% of the time, a June report shows. Pyrz said IndyGo would be seeking a price increase even if fare evasion weren't an issue. "Even if everybody paid 100% of the fare all the time," Pyrz said, "we would still be having this conversation." Email IndyStar Reporter Jordan Smith at JTsmith@ Follow him on X: @jordantsmith09 This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IndyGo to vote in August on 57% fare hike for bus riders
Indianapolis Star
10 hours ago
- Science
- Indianapolis Star
These 5 tiny pests are creating big trouble for Indiana's environment
A few of Indiana's tiniest transplants — invasive worms, moths and beetles from overseas — have made massive changes to Indiana's ecosystems over the past several decades. Some of the creepy-crawlies currently wreaking havoc on North American ecosystems have been in the United States for over a century, lurking out of sight. But others, like spotted lanternflies, are newer threats, and they're sweeping through Midwestern forests, fields and gardens with a fury. In Indiana, some tree species have almost disappeared, vineyards are under threat and even urban gardeners are starting to see the health of their soil decline. Without natural predators, the pests are difficult to stop. But it is possible to slow them down. Scientists are quarantining infected forests, disrupting mating seasons and encouraging Hoosiers to learn how the creatures spread. Here's what you need to know about how five tiny pests are causing chaos in Indiana. At first glance, an Asian jumping worm looks like any other slimy earthworm — they're slender, squishy, and probably squirming around in your garden beds. But while most worms burrow deep into soil and poop out nutrients across the layers, Asian jumping worms stay close to the surface. Their castings, which look like used coffee grounds, is easily washed away by rainfall, and it's almost impossible to grow native plants, fruits or veggies in the low-nutrient dirt left behind. The worms were brought to North America from eastern Asia over 100 years ago, but they've only recently become a major threat. Over the last decade, their populations exploded and began to spread rapidly across the Midwest. Now, Asian jumping worms have been reported across multiple cities and counties in Indiana, including Indianapolis and Bloomington. 'We're finding them kind of everywhere,' said Robert Bruner, an entomologist at Purdue University. 'People are sitting up and paying attention a lot now because their damage to the soil structure is really hard to fix.' Stopping their spread is tricky, too. Bruner theorizes the worms and their eggs are being moved through contaminated soil, mulch and compost. His advice to gardeners: Stop sharing soil with your neighbors, leave new bags of fresh dirt to dry in the sun for a few days, which can kill worm eggs, and report any sightings of Asian jumping worms you find. Ash trees used to line the streets of Indiana cities by the tens of thousands. Their huge canopies and leafy cover provided ample shade for Hoosiers far and wide. But now, most of these native trees are dead. The tiny emerald ash borer is to blame, according to entomologists. The bright green wood beetles hail from Eastern Asia, and were first found in Indiana in 2004. They've since spread to every county in the state. Emerald ash borers can kill a healthy ash within six years of first contact. After burrowing just underneath the bark, the beetles feast on tree tissue, which eventually disrupts an ash's ability to internally transport water and nutrients. Despite killing most of their primary food source, emerald ash borers persist. The beetles survive in pockets across Indiana and neighboring states, feeding on the remaining ash living in backyards and forest groves. 'Emerald ash borer is a constant concern because there are still ash trees and people are still trying to preserve them,' said Bruner. He thinks the beetles have become a permanent part of the Indiana landscape. Because dying ash trees can crash to the ground and endanger their surroundings, city officials and residents have removed dead and dying trees by the thousands. But some ash trees in parks and backyards have been preserved through recurring pesticide applications, a process that can sometimes save Hoosier homeowners money in the long run compared to the hefty cost of tree removal and replacement. Spongy moths are the one of the most dangerous defoliators in the United States, meaning they can and will chew through as much foliage as they find. In 2021, the moths defoliated over nine million acres of forest across the country according to Purdue University. An amateur entomologist brought spongy moth specimens to Boston from Europe in the late 1860s — the moths escaped, obviously — and the creatures have been chewing their way through New England and further west ever since. But it isn't exactly the fuzzy, winged insect that is destroying forests. Rather, it's the larval stage of the moth's life cycle posing the threat: Caterpillars need to eat. As they prepare to metamorphose, spongy moth caterpillars devour the leaf tissue from over 300 species of trees and shrubs: preferably oaks, but tamarack, white birch, pine and spruce, too. Usually, trees can survive their first defoliation. But when their leaves are shredded up and eaten away year after year, trees quickly lose their ability to fend off disease and store energy over the winter, leading to death. In Indiana, the spongy moth outlook is 'pretty bad,' according to Bruner. Roughly three quarters of Indiana's 4.4 million acres of forested land is at risk, according to the Indiana Department of Natural Resources (DNR). The moths pose such a serious threat to Indiana's ecosystems that the DNR puts counties with large infestations into quarantine to prevent further spread. In some areas, the DNR is even spraying pheromones to confuse and disrupt mating between male and female moths, said Bruner. Right now, the moths are largely sequestered to northern Indiana, but past sightings further south, like in the Hoosier National Forest, have entomologists on high alert. Armed with piercing-sucking mouthparts and a penchant for hitchhiking, invasive spotted lanternflies found their way from the East Coast to Indiana by 2021. Every year, the bugs travel a little further into the state, jeopardizing forests, vineyards and orchards. The creatures aren't technically flies. Rather they're planthoppers, which are more closely related to cicadas and aphids. And they're destructive. By piercing into a plant's vascular tissue, spotted lanternflies suck up sap to get nutrients. Then, they excrete oodles of honeydew — a sugary, watery mess — over everything nearby, which attracts other pests and allows sooty mold to grow. Spotted lanternflies can also destroy agricultural crops. In Indiana, scientists are worried about the vineyards strewn across the state. When thousands of spotted lanternflies swarm feed on grapevines, they can weaken the plants, reduce yield and kill them off entirely. They also attack black walnut and maple trees, which could impact the local maple syrup and timber industries, said Bruner. The planthopper's path of spread across the United States has closely followed railways, and Bruner expects to see them spread even further south this year. Hoosiers can report spotted lanternfly sightings to the DNR by submitting information through the agency's online portal. Asian longhorn beetles aren't a current threat to Indiana's ecosystems, but they're still keeping some entomologists up at night. In the late 1990s, the beetles were found in Indianapolis and Porter County, according to previous reporting from IndyStar, and the threat was immediately eradicated, said Bruner. But Asian longhorn beetles still exist in Ohio forests, albeit quarantined, and Bruner is encouraging Hoosiers to stay on high alert in case the beetle finds its way back to Indiana. 'They're one of the nastiest ones,' he said. 'If you see one, it means it's already too late.' Asian longhorn beetles bore deep into tree trunks and gouge out large holes, creating chambers inside trees where young beetles feast and grow. They have a slight preference for maple trees but are happy to munch through most hardwoods, like elms, willows, birches and sycamores. As they emerge from trees, they leave behind small, perfectly circular holes — about the size of a No. 2 pencil. Dying trees are left carved up and hollowed out, lacking access to internal water or nutrients. "Trees can't survive that level of damage," said Bruner. 'Typically, you have to eradicate all the trees within that area just to guarantee they don't spread.' The DNR encourages residents not to move firewood, which can easily spread pests like the Asian longhorn beetle, and report potential sightings to (866) 663-9684. IndyStar's environmental reporting project is made possible through the generous support of the nonprofit Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust.
