Latest news with #TimHenderson
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Largest cities are growing again but getting more unaffordable
Pedestrians walk through a shopping district in Manhattan in New York City. The city grew in population for the second year in a row, but remains below pandemic levels. (Photo by) For a second year in a row, New York City and Los Angeles were among the cities with the most population growth last year as the nation's largest cities continued to recover from devastating pandemic losses. The U.S. Census Bureau released new July 2024 city population estimates Thursday. In New York City, a recent city planning report suggested that 'two consecutive years of growth suggest that pandemic-era losses were short-lived.' The city is still almost 328,000 short of its 2020 population, however. Los Angeles returned to the list of top growth cities for the first time since 2016, according to the Census Bureau. Get in touch Are you a teacher, nurse or skilled trades worker looking to buy a house or condo in today's market? We'd like to talk to you about the experience of trying to buy a home with a household income of around $75,000 a year — email Tim Henderson at thenderson@ The largest one-year population increases for mid-2023 to mid-2024 were New York City (87,184), Houston (43,217), Los Angeles (31,276), and the Texas cities of San Antonio (23,945) and Fort Worth (23,442). The same cities were in the top five the previous year, but the growth is a big turnaround from 2021-22, when New York City lost almost 100,000 people and Los Angeles gained only about 2,000. A new interest in living in big cities could be impacting rents: Zillow reported this week that there now are eight cities, double the number from 2020, where renters need more than a $100,000 annual income to afford typical rent: New York City ($145,000 needed), San Jose, California ($137,000), Boston ($127,000), San Francisco ($124,000), San Diego ($123,000), Los Angeles ($119,000), Miami ($110,000) and Riverside, California ($103,000). Homes for sale in the fastest-growing city areas also are getting further out of reach for even moderate-income buyers, according to a National Association of Realtors report also released Thursday. The New York City and Los Angeles areas were listed as 'moving in the wrong direction' on affordability, 'reflecting a growing divide between what homes actually cost and what local families can afford.' For instance, even a Los Angeles-area family with a $200,000 income can afford less than a third of the homes listed for sale, including condominiums and townhouses, according to the report. Houston, San Antonio and the Dallas-Fort Worth area were listed among three tiers as 'stuck in the middle' of affordability, 'showing signs of progress, yet still falling short of offering real affordability to most families.' For the four years combined after the COVID-19 pandemic started in 2020, both New York City and Los Angeles have not completely recovered population. New York City is down almost 328,000 people and Los Angeles is still short about 21,000 since the 2020 census, but they remain the nation's two largest cities. The largest percentage growth since 2020 was in some fast-growing suburbs: Westlake, Florida, near Palm Beach, has grown to 7,664, more than eight times its 2020 population, and Josephine, Texas, near Dallas, has quadrupled in size to 8,807. Medicine Lake, Minnesota, west of Minneapolis, also quadrupled, to 1,343. Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@ SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
New York Times
07-04-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
The N.E.H. Does What Republicans Always Wanted. DOGE Slashed It Anyway.
Tim Henderson was up late last Wednesday night, keeping an eye on the weather as catastrophic storms barreled across Tennessee toward Nashville. Around midnight, his email pinged. Amid overlapping National Weather Service alerts of damaging hail, tornadoes and flash floods, he read the message: Humanities Tennessee, where Mr. Henderson is the chief executive, had just lost all its federal funding. It's not as if Mr. Henderson didn't see this news coming. As with the actual tornadoes, the economic and ideological tornadoes emanating from Washington first touched down at some distance, but their destruction was always headed this way. Employees at the National Endowment for the Humanities had already learned that the so-called Department of Government Efficiency was recommending staff cuts of up to 80 percent. The N.E.H. is one of the least-known of the federal agencies, but its work reaches a huge number of Americans, including those in Republican districts. It awards grants that fund research fellowships, programs at museums and historic sites, website development and documentary filmmaking, among a host of other projects related to the public humanities. But it also disburses a great chunk of its appropriation — some $65 million of an annual budget of roughly $210 million — directly to nonprofit humanities councils in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and five territories. These independent affiliates of the N.E.H. then reallocate those funds to programming tailored to the people of their own state. Through the work of the state humanities councils, in other words, the N.E.H. is doing exactly what Republicans have always said they wanted to do with federal funds: It gives federal money back to the states. Humanities Tennessee, for example, funds traveling museum exhibitions and speaking series, neighborhood story projects, writing workshops for teenagers and a magnificent book festival, just for starters. Chapter 16, Humanities Tennessee's vibrant daily web publication about the literary life of this state, is rare among nonprofit media outlets. (I know that because for 10 years I was its editor.) Federal grants to state councils were designed to be 'seed money,' as Mr. Henderson puts it — a way to keep the lights on while the organizations seek philanthropic support from donors and corporations, and other grant funding, to expand their offerings. The federal funds are meant to create the conditions for public-private partnerships to bloom. But some states are wealthier than others, and some benefit from serving a populace that doesn't need to be persuaded of the value of the humanities. Before they can begin to make the case for supporting humanities programming, more than a few state councils must work, first, to explain what the humanities even are. Mr. Henderson has fielded calls from people looking for the Humane Society. In a university setting, the term generally refers to subjects like history, religion, philosophy, literature and art. In the context of the public humanities, the definition can be harder to pin down: 'It's how human beings understand themselves, interact with each other, come to make communities — all of those things about being human,' Mr. Henderson said in a phone interview. 'In the public humanities, we're trying to make those things immediate and relevant. But that's hard to write an elevator pitch for.' Which is why federal appropriations are so crucial. These funds are marshaled with the greatest possible care to benefit the most people. The savings achieved by cutting them 'amounts to a rounding error' in the context of the federal budget, as a statement from the National Humanities Alliance notes, but many state humanities councils would not survive without them. The N.E.H. itself may not survive. I am not, I admit, a disinterested party here. As editor of Chapter 16, I was an independent contractor, not involved in Humanities Tennessee's other operations. But I had a front-row seat to the crucial work a state humanities council does — work that most Americans never recognize. I can't even count the times that people arriving at the Southern Festival of Books, a Humanities Tennessee initiative, have asked me where the ticket booth is. They always look astonished when I tell them there isn't one. Festival events are free. In the context of other planned cuts — a far from complete list includes funding for science (including the science of storm prediction), public schools, Meals on Wheels, health care for impoverished people, the federal lands and parks that belong to all of us, protections for the air we breathe and the water we drink — losing the N.E.H. might not seem like the biggest tragedy in the world. This is exactly what the architects and enforcers of Project 2025 want us to do: They want us to fight over who deserves the biggest piece of a pie that is so diminished and distorted it doesn't even look like a pie anymore. They are leading us, willingly, into a scarcity mind-set. But these resources are not scarce. They have already been approved by Congress. Over the years, certain Republicans have attempted to generate controversy by calling the N.E.H. an expense the government could not afford. But in the past, funding has always been preserved because the humanities are not ultimately a partisan issue. Whichever party held the White House, whichever party controlled Congress, the National Endowment for the Humanities survived. That's because Americans really like book festivals and local history museums and summer writing camps for teenagers. We like seeing hometown heroes celebrated and remembered. We like hearing hometown authors read from their books. We like being invited to join a conversation in which our opinions and our experiences matter. We especially like it when such gifts are available to everyone, and not just to those who can afford the price of a ticket. We live in an age of abounding ironies, and this one is a doozy. Eliminating federal funding for the humanities saves next to no money, but it will cost the American people something precious: one of the few federal institutions whose whole purpose is to foster community and thoughtful discussion across the polarities that increasingly divide and depress us. And surely that is part of the point. Maybe it's the whole point. So long as we're busy fighting with one another, this wrecking-ball administration thinks, we won't notice that it's dismantling the protections we rely on and destroying the treasures we love. In a social media post last week, Humanities Tennessee urged Americans to call members of Congress and let them know how the public humanities matter. Which storybook characters did our children meet at the book festival? What museum exhibit taught us something we didn't know about the place where we have always lived? How does it feel to join a respectful conversation about a contentious subject? We need to tell the people who represent us a story — a true story — that reminds them of our shared humanity. Because the concept of a shared humanity is something too many of them, and too many of us, have lately all but forgotten.
Gulf Today
20-03-2025
- Health
- Gulf Today
Flu deaths rise as disinformation takes root
Tim Henderson, Tribune News Service Americans are facing the highest death toll from influenza since 2018, just as more people become vulnerable because of growing vaccine scepticism taking hold in statehouses and the Trump administration. Flu-related deaths hit a seven-year high in January and February, the two months that usually account for the height of flu season, according to a Stateline analysis of preliminary federal statistics. There were about 9,800 deaths across the country, up from 5,000 in the same period last year and the most since 2018, when there were about 10,800. Despite that, the US Department of Health and Human Services has canceled or postponed meetings to prepare for next fall's flu vaccine, when experts talk about what influenza strains they expect they'll be battling. The cancellations raised protests from medical professionals and state and federal officials. US Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat, said in a statement that her state is having its worst flu season in at least 15 years, with more deaths from flu and other causes as the state's health care system struggles under the strain of flu patients. Some experts say putting off vaccine planning will only feed false narratives that discourage lifesaving vaccinations. 'These delays not only weaken pandemic preparedness but also undermine public confidence in vaccination efforts,' said Dr. Akram Khan, an Oregon pulmonologist and associate professor at Oregon Health & Science University who has studied attitudes toward vaccines. US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. has expressed doubt about the need for vaccines, including flu vaccines, despite evidence that they reduce deaths and hospitalisations. Deaths fluctuate naturally from year to year depending on the severity of current flu strains and the effectiveness of that year's vaccines. But some see a hesitancy to use any vaccine, fed by misinformation and political mistrust of government, already taking a toll on lives. 'It's been a bad winter for viral respiratory infections, not just in the United States but across the Northern Hemisphere,' said Mark Doherty, a vaccine scholar and former manager for GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals, a vaccine manufacturer. 'The US does appear to be hit a bit harder, and it's possible lower vaccination coverage is contributing to that,' Doherty said. Flu vaccine distribution in the United States has been declining in recent years, and as of the first week of 2025 was down 16% from 2022, according to federal statistics. The flu was a factor in 9,800 deaths in January and February, according to the analysis, using provisional data collected by states and compiled by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The highest death rates were in Oklahoma, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and Kentucky, all at about four deaths per 100,000 population so far this year. Some counties in Florida, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, as well as Oklahoma and Kentucky, were even higher — at about six deaths per 100,000. The highest rates have been among older people. Statistics show the deaths hit white people and American Indians especially hard. Tragedies are happening across the country to people of all ages and races, however. A 43-year-old Indiana father died after a brief bout of the flu, according to family members. After two 10-year-olds died in Prince George's County, Maryland, area schools drew crowds to vaccine clinics. Doug Sides, a pastor at Yulee Baptist Church in northern Florida, has held funerals for three congregation members who died from flu — all within one month, all of them over 70 years old. That compares with only one victim of COVID-19 from his congregation during the pandemic, he said. 'Flu death is a reality,' Sides told Stateline on a phone call from a Jacksonville hospital, where he was visiting another 84-year-old congregation member who was rescued from her home with severe pneumonia from an unknown cause. 'I encourage my church members to keep their hands clean, use hand sanitizer and to stay home if they're feeling sick,' he said. He said he hasn't personally gotten a flu vaccine recently because he gets conflicting advice about it — some doctors tell him to avoid them because he and some family members have cancer, while another 'rides me all the time about getting a flu shot.' 'We're all getting conflicting advice. We're living in strange-o times,' he said. (The American Cancer Society says vaccination for people with cancer may or may not be recommended depending on individual circumstances.) Many states are relaxing vaccine requirements as public skepticism rises. But many are taking action to warn residents and reassure them that vaccinations are safe and can help prevent deaths, despite misinformation to the contrary. Burlington County, New Jersey, has had the highest flu-associated death rate of any county this year, according to the analysis, with 31 deaths among fewer than 500,000 people. The county held 30 free vaccine clinics from September to January, then extended them into February because of the severity of the flu season, said Dave Levinsky, a spokesperson for the county health department. In Oklahoma, death rates are highest in the eastern part of the state where the Cherokee Nation is centered. A state publicity campaign stresses that flu shots are safe, effective and free at many community health centers. However, vaccination rates in the state are low compared with other states as of December, according to federal statistics: Only about 16% of Oklahoma residents had gotten flu vaccinations by then. Rates were even lower in Louisiana (just under 16%), Mississippi (12%) and Texas (10%). States with the highest flu vaccination rates by December were Maine (37%), Connecticut and Vermont (33%), and Wisconsin and Minnesota (31%). But even those were down since 2022. People have become less likely to get vaccinated in recent years, a phenomenon researchers call 'vaccine hesitancy.' A report published last year in the medical journal Cureus found three-quarters of patients in a rural New York state community refused flu vaccine with comments such as 'I do not trust vaccines' or 'I do not believe in vaccines.' The most common reasons cited were that earlier vaccinations made them feel sick, that they got the flu anyway, or that they thought they shouldn't need a new shot every year. (Doctors recommend flu vaccinations annually and note that even vaccinated patients who get the flu usually face less severe forms.) And in a paper published in February in the journal Vaccine, researchers found that people refuse flu vaccinations for many of the same reasons they refused COVID-19 shots: a feeling of 'social vulnerability' that leads to distrust of government and medical guidance. One hopeful sign, the report noted, is that vaccine recommendations from trusted health care professionals can turn around such attitudes. 'Unfortunately, vaccine hesitancy is deeply entangled with misinformation, political rhetoric and public distrust,' said Khan, the Oregon pulmonologist and the study's author. 'Scientific data alone may not be enough to shift public perceptions, as many vaccine decisions are driven by gut feelings and external influences rather than evidence.'
Yahoo
06-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Meet the Jackson Mayoral Candidates: Tim Henderson
JACKSON, Miss. (WJTV) – Mississippi's Municipal Primary Election Day will be held on April 1, 2025. Tim Henderson (D) is running to be the next mayor of Jackson. Here's his message to voters: Hello, I'm Tim Henderson, and I'm your Jackson mayoral candidate. With over 24 years of service in the United States Air Force, I know what it takes to lead large organizations with integrity and accountability. I'm committed to delivering results for the citizens of Jackson. I'm the candidate with decades of experience leading organizations, solving tough problems, managing complex operations, and bringing people together across different levels of government to get things done. As mayor, my vision for Jackson is a safe, clean, vibrant city where all Jacksonians are part of a new economy. My 'Jackson 2035: Renaissance Plan' is a 10-year plan that immediately focuses on public safety, and infrastructure, which will ensure sustained economic growth. I will focus on improving the quality of life for all Jacksonians. We will make Jackson a city that is family centered with strong police, strong fire department, strong schools, strong neighborhoods, good water, good roads, and a strong economy. We will all be proud to call Jackson home. We will be a capital city that all Mississippians can be proud of. This election is about solutions. Jackson needs leadership that delivers real change. On day one, you are my priority. Let's build a stronger, safer, and more prosperous Jackson. Jackson 2035: We're looking up and moving forward together. April 1st, Vote Tim Henderson, your next mayor. Tim Henderson, (D) Jackson Mayoral Candidate Close Thanks for signing up! Watch for us in your inbox. Subscribe Now Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
19-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Jackson mayoral candidate Tim Henderson holds town hall
JACKSON, Miss. (WJTV) – One of 20 candidates for mayor of Jackson held a town hall on Tuesday to express his vision for the city, if he's elected. Tim Henderson (D) is a retired military veteran. He invited residents to the Jackson Medical Mall to hear about his 10-year plan called 'Project 2035.' Judge rules Jackson mayoral candidate does not meet requirements to run Henderson said his priorities are public safety, blight and economic development. He said one goal of the plan is to keep businesses in the capital city. 'As we develop the environment necessary in the near term, addressing public safety, addressing infrastructure, we know that it's going to stop businesses from leaving and then be able to attract new businesses and industries,' Henderson said. Henderson said he would also utilize the Jackson Police Department (JPD) in a new way, if he's elected. Close Thanks for signing up! Watch for us in your inbox. Subscribe Now Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
