Idaho Pride event: 31 men with ties to Patriot Front were arrested ...

(CNN) After an alarmed 911 caller reported a group dressed like a "little army" getting into a moving truck, police in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, arrested 31 men believed to be linked to a White nationalist group, who had plans to riot at a weekend Pride event, authorities said.

The large group -- which police believe was affiliated with Patriot Front -- was seen at a hotel piling into a U-Haul with riot gear, the caller told a 911 dispatcher. They were later pulled over and arrested, Coeur d'Alene Police Chief Lee White said.

The group was headed to a Pride in the Park event at Coeur d'Alene City Park, police said. The event included a Pride walk and performances by local musicians, dancers and drag artists.

Local and state police were plentiful and on high alert Saturday because they wanted "to make sure this event went off safely," Mayor Jim Hammond said. They'd also received threats about a separate group meeting in another city park; threats that turned out to be unfounded, he said.

Hammond referred to those arrested as young men who "seem to not have a purpose." Asked what he thought the group might have done had police not thwarted their alleged plans, he said, "I have not seen that these people had any firearms, so I think it would've been mostly just disruption and trying to cause fear."

Police found at least one smoke grenade, White said.

All 31 individuals were from outside the local area, Hammond said previously. Just two are from Idaho, according to a booking summary from the Kootenai County Sheriff's Office.

It's unclear why they picked Coeur d'Alene's out of all the Pride events going on in the nation, but Hammond said perhaps they thought they could "get away with more" in a smaller community like Coeur d'Alene, a city of about 56,000 residents located just over the Washington border from Spokane.

The North Idaho Pride Alliance, which organized the event, released a statement Sunday saying its members were resting "after successfully organizing a momentous, joyful, and SAFE Pride in the Park community celebration under the most challenging of circumstances. ... We are deeply grateful to law enforcement agencies who were present and professionally responded."

Here's what we know about the arrests:

Police received report of a group dressed like 'a little army'

There was a large police presence at the Pride event after authorities received information "there were a number of groups" planing to disrupt Saturday's activities, White said.

Police did not have information that Patriot Front members were coming, White said Monday.

"We had some information that there might be some, some individuals who are loosely affiliated with the some of the groups who were planning to protest the Pride event that day, and so we were adequately staffed for it, but we didn't have any intelligence that there was going to be a riotous group coming to this event prior to the 911 call that we received," he said.

A concerned citizen called police Saturday afternoon to report "approximately 20 people jumped into a U-Haul" in a local hotel parking lot, the chief said.

Police arrested 31 men near a Pride event in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, on Saturday.

The group was equipped with shields and masks and "looked like a little army," the caller said, according to White.

About 10 minutes after the call, officers stopped the U-Haul and detained 31 people, White said. They were charged with misdemeanor conspiracy to riot, he said.

The group was dressed similarly, wearing khaki pants, blue shirts and hats with plastic inside them, the chief said. They were also equipped with "shields, shin guards and other riot gear," along with papers White described as "similar to an operations plan that a police or military group would put together for an event."

"It is clear to us, based on the gear that the individuals had with them, the stuff they had in their possession in the U-Haul with them, along with paperwork that was seized from them, that they came to riot downtown," White said.

"I think some of us were a bit surprised by not only the level of preparation that we saw, but the equipment that was carried and worn by those individuals, along with the large amount of equipment that was left in the van when the stop happened," White said at a news conference Monday.

"That level of preparation is not something you see every day," the chief said.

City, state and Kootenai County police responded with two SWAT teams, White said.

"I don't think this would have been as successful had we not had one extremely astute citizen who saw something that was very concerning to them and reported it to us," he said.

Officials aren't releasing the identity of the caller to protect that person, White said.

"Since myself and other members of our agency have been receiving threats, including death threats, I think it is appropriate that we withhold that person's information at this time," the chief said.

The men were released after posting bond, the Kootenai County Sheriff's Office said. They're due back in court at a later date.

The individuals came from a dozen states, according to a booking summary from the sheriff's office. Seven are from Texas, six from Utah, five from Washington and three from Colorado. One was from as far away as Alabama. The youngest is 20 years old, and the oldest is 40, according to the summary.

Law enforcement arrested 31 men believed to be affiliated with a White nationalist group.

Coeur d'Alene police are leading an investigation with the FBI's assistance, FBI spokesperson Sandra Yi Barker.

Police arrested at least two other people in connection with the Pride event, authorities said. They were charged with disorderly conduct and trespassing, police said.

Men affiliated with White nationalist group, police say

In addition to the clothing associated with Patriot Front, most of the men had logos on their hats "consistent with the Patriot Front group," and some were wearing arm patches associated with the organization, White said.

The Patriot Front believes their White ancestors conquered America and "bequeathed it to them," according to the Anti-Defamation League . Members espouse fascist and anti-Semitic beliefs, which they spread through propaganda campaigns, the ADL says.

The Texas-based group was formed following the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, when members of the White supremacist group, Vanguard America, split off to form their own organization, the ADL says.

Thomas Ryan Rousseau

Among those arrested Saturday was Patriot Front leader Thomas Ryan Rousseau, Kootenai County sheriff's Sgt. Shane Moline said.

Rousseau led several dozen members of Vanguard America Texas during the Unite the Right rally and later led a contingent of VA members to create Patriot Front.

CNN has reached out to the Patriot Front and people believed to be associated with Rousseau but did not immediately hear back.

Coeur d'Alene residents and businesses have long made it clear the city is "too great to hate," going back to the early aughts, when the Southern Poverty Law Center helped the city shut down an Aryan Nations group with a compound north of the city, Hammond told CNN.

"We are not going to back to the days of the Aryan Nations," Hammond said at the news conference Monday.

"We are past that and we will do everything we can to make sure that we continue to stay past those kinds of problems," the mayor said. "We are a culture of love and kindness, and we will continue to be."

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that CNN had reached out to Thomas Ryan Rousseau's legal representative. It's unclear if he has legal representation yet.

Coeur D'Alene: 31 people arrested for conspiracy to riot near Pride ...

(CNN) Idaho police officers arrested 31 people Saturday who are believed to be affiliated with the White nationalist group Patriot Front, after they were seen gathering near a Pride parade in the city of Coeur d'Alene, authorities said.

"It is clear to us based on the gear that the individuals had with them, the stuff they had in their possession, the U-Haul with them along with paperwork that was seized from them, that they came to riot downtown," Coeur d'Alene Police Chief Lee White said during a news conference.

The FBI is assisting local police in its investigation, according to FBI Public Affairs Specialist Sandra Yi Barker. Barker said Coeur d'Alene police are the lead law enforcement agency investigating the situation.

The FBI is assisting Coeur d'Alene police in their investigation of the incident.

The people who were arrested were all wearing similar clothing associated with Patriot Front, including identical insignia, and there was at least one smoke grenade in their possession, police said.

According to the Anti-Defamation League , Patriot Front is a white supremacist group whose members maintain their ancestors conquered America and left it to them. The group split from another white supremacist group, Vanguard America, in late August 2017, per the ADL.

Read More

Group allegedly affiliated with Patriot Front had protective gear ...

CNN —

The people believed to be affiliated with White nationalist group Patriot Front arrested in Idaho over the weekend appear to have been well-prepared with detailed plans and protective gear to “antagonize and cause disorder” at the Coeur d’Alene Pride event on Saturday, according to a new court filing.

Among the items seized in the arrests of 31 men who piled into a U-Haul box truck, were documents taken from the group leader, Thomas Rousseau, outlining the hate group’s moral intentions, and an operational plan, as detailed in an affidavit of probable cause filed Monday in Kootenai County District Court.

“(One) document was typed and discussed the group being there to raise a voice against the moral depravity which permits events such as this to take place,” writes Coeur d’Alene Police Officer Alan Gilbert. “There was also a typed organizational document outlining call locations, primary checkpoints, drill times, prep times and observation windows. There were also GPS coordinates for a drop point with two backup plans.”

According to Gilbert’s probable cause declaration, the group’s plan was intended to “antagonize and cause disorder” and outlines an exit strategy to be implemented “once an appropriate amount of time and confrontational dynamic has been established.”

Only two men questioned by police openly admitted to being part of the Patriot Front, an officer stated.

Thomas Rousseau is the leader of the group, officials say Kootenai County Sheriff

Items taken into evidence from the box truck and one other vehicle believed to be associated with the group included “fashioned metal shields, flags on abnormally long metal poles and voice amplification type devices,” according to the affidavit. A smoke bomb/grenade was also recovered.

In addition to being dressed similarly in khaki cargo pants, navy blue T-shirts adorned with Patriot Front patches, and face masks, hats, and sunglasses, several of the men tucked “a hard plastic type insert, inside the hat, similar to a hard hat worn by constructions workers,” the declaration states. Several men wore plastic shin guards and other protective gear and others carried tactical medical kits, radios, and cameras and digital recording devices on their persons.

“The adorned equipment was similar in nature to our law enforcement riot control equipment utilized when we are anticipating a physical altercation,” Gilbert writes in the court document.

CNN has reached out to the Patriot Front and people believed to be associated with Rousseau but has not heard back. CNN has also not been able to identify legal representation for Rousseau at this time.

The men were released after posting bail, online court records and inmate rosters show, and are due back in court at a later date. Most are from out of state, including Rousseau, who is from Texas, according to the affidavit.

His next court date has been scheduled for August 1, according to online court records.

Group split from another after Charlottesville rally

The Patriot Front believes their White ancestors conquered America and “bequeathed it to them,” according to the Anti-Defamation League. Members espouse fascist and anti-Semitic beliefs, which they spread through propaganda campaigns, the ADL says.

The Texas-based group was formed following the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, when members of the White supremacist group, Vanguard America, split off to form their own organization, the ADL says.

The 31 men were arrested after someone saw them gathering near a Pride parade and called 911 to report a group dressed like a “little army” getting into a moving truck.

The group was headed to a Pride in the Park event at Coeur d’Alene City Park, police have said. The event included a Pride walk and performances by local musicians, dancers and drag artists.

Local and state police were plentiful and on high alert Saturday because they wanted “to make sure this event went off safely,” Mayor Jim Hammond told CNN’s New Day on Monday.

How Pride events nationally are responding after a White ...

(CNN) With Pride celebrations scheduled throughout the month in cities big and small across the country, organizers and police departments are taking a close look at their safety plans.

Over two dozen men were arrested after an alarmed 911 caller reported a group dressed like a "little army" getting into a moving truck. The group was headed to a Pride in the Park event at Coeur d'Alene City Park and had plans to riot, police said.

When Debra Porta, executive director of Pride Northwest Inc., heard about what happened in Idaho, she felt "disappointment that we still face this kind of thing and reminded that our communities are stronger together than they are apart," she told CNN in a statement.

Porta has been volunteering with Pride Northwest since 2006 and said safety has always been a top priority at the annual event and this year is no different.

Their security strategy entails a combination of local law enforcement, private security, de-escalation teams and infrastructure support from several local jurisdictions, she said. Portland Pride Waterfront Festival in Oregon is scheduled for this weekend.

Over 2,000 miles away, Chicago will also be celebrating this weekend and David O'Neal Brown, Chicago's superintendent of police, said during a Monday news conference he wanted "to put those who might be planning something on notice that we are going to be vigilant to ensure that this event, as well as others, go off safely."

Threats to the city's celebrations will not be tolerated, Brown said.

In San Francisco, the city's Pride parade is scheduled for June 26.

"This week marks six years since the Pulse tragedy, and we commemorate the loss of so many lives taken from us, Carolyn Wysinger, board president of San Francisco Pride told CNN in a statement. Forty-nine people were killed at the gay nightclub in Orlando by an American-born man who'd pledged allegiance to ISIS.

"We have always been vigilant when it comes to safety and are working on a very coordinated basis with local law enforcement, city and community leaders to ensure this year's Pride is safe and people can enjoy themselves knowing we are taking every precaution possible," Wysinger said.

It's not just bigger cities giving their security measures a second look. Oklahomans for Equality, the organizers of Tulsa Pride, said it had increased security measures following a mass shooting at a Tulsa hospital this month.

"We have heightened our security measures with bag checks at every entrance, increased security personnel throughout the festival grounds, and, as always, no weapons will be allowed at Tulsa Pride," Alex Wade, deputy director of Oklahomans for Equality, said in a Monday statement. "We ask that festivalgoers not engage with antagonistic protestors. Proving a point is not worth risking your safety."

His message for attendees: Stay together, stay safe, go with someone you trust and remain alert.

At a time where many communities are ramping up their safety protocols, organizers in New York City said they're not making any changes to protocols or event schedules as a result of the incident in Idaho.

Last month, NYC Pride announced a new set of policies around safety, wellness, accessibility, sustainability and efforts to reinforce its commitment to ensuring the safety of festivalgoers, the organization said. "Based on our existing safety plans we are not making any changes in response to this particular incident," NYC Pride spokesperson Dan Dimant told CNN in a statement.

Participation by uniformed law enforcement at Pride events can seem threatening or dangerous to an LGBTQ+ community that over decades has been targeted with excessive force, even if their presence is intended to foster a sense of community and safety, advocacy groups have said.

Additionally, NYC Pride staff and executive board go through active shooter training annually, he said.

Mirroring San Francisco's plan to work closely with law enforcement, organizers from Denver PrideFest and Seattle Pride say they are doing the same for their celebrations scheduled for the end of the month.

After two years of postponed Denver PrideFest events due to the pandemic, the organization said it's excited for this year's festivities.

As a direct result of what happened in Idaho, the Seattle Police Department and Iron Oak Security, Seattle Pride's privately contracted security company, will increase the number of Seattle police officers at the parade to a "couple hundred" in addition to roughly 80 Iron Oaks officers, Krystal Marx, the executive director of Seattle Pride, told CNN.

White supremacist group Patriot Front charged with planning 'riot' at ...

Thirty-one members of the national white supremacist group Patriot Front were arrested Saturday in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, and charged with conspiracy to riot, a misdemeanor, according to police.

In a news conference Saturday, Police Chief Lee White said a concerned citizen reported "a little army" of about 20 people wearing masks and holding shields loading into a U-Haul truck. Police pulled over the truck about 10 minutes later, White said.

Police received reports that groups planned to disrupt LGBTQ Pride activities planned for the weekend, White said, leading to a heavy police presence in downtown Coeur d'Alene, about 30 miles east of Spokane, Washington.

Experts on extremism identified the suspects as members of Patriot Front, which often engages in propaganda efforts, such as putting up posters and making videos, and "flash mob" events, where identically dressed members march around shouting slogans and waving flags.

Here's what we know:

Who was arrested in Idaho?

Within hours of the arrests, the Kootenai County Sheriff's Office released booking photos and names for 31 men from Texas, Wyoming, South Dakota, Washington, Colorado, Arkansas and other states. Most of them appeared to be white men in their 20s and 30s.

Each man was charged with one count of conspiracy to riot, White said, stressing more charges could come.

“They came to riot downtown,” White said at the news conference.

The founder of Patriot Front, Thomas Rousseau, 23, of Texas, was among the 31 arrested.

All of the suspects bonded out of jail and were scheduled to be arraigned in the coming weeks, Kootenai County 1st District Trial Court Administrator Karlene Behringer told USA TODAY.

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What is Patriot Front?

According to the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism, Patriot Front is responsible for approximately 80% of white supremacist propaganda across the USA. Members put up flyers and hang banners.

"Patriot Front espouses racism, antisemitism and intolerance under the guise of preserving the ethnic and cultural origins of their European ancestors," ADL Vice President Oren Segal said. "They essentially believe that this is their country and they need to fight for the perception of what it was."

The group, founded in 2017 by Rousseau, regularly produces videos with a distinctive red-white-and-blue aesthetic that are posted to its various social media platforms. The videos often feature men marching, training, putting up stickers and hanging flags.

When the group appears in public, members wear identical uniforms of khaki slacks and baseball caps, blue jackets and white face masks.

In January, the journalism collective Unicorn Riot published archives of hundreds of pages of Patriot Front's private chats. The leak revealed the group has a rigorous recruitment process, said Megan Squire, a research fellow with the Southern Poverty Law Center.

In February, Squire and other researchers with the SPLC reported that one in five applicants to Patriot Front claimed to hold current or former military status.

"They want to appear as strong and organized and orderly in their appearance," Squire said. "But they're fine as coming across as white nationalists and fascists, they just want to be more disciplined about it."

She said, "They want to come across more like the Hitler Youth."

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Was Patriot Front ramping up?

Experts on extremism noted that it would be fairly unusual for Patriot Front to deliberately get involved in a violent confrontation. Usually, the group tends toward "flash mob" events, where they suddenly appear in a public space, march for a short time, chanting and waving flags, then get in a U-Haul and disappear.

The group received media attention when it held a rally in December in Washington.

Squire said it's hard to tell whether Saturday's arrests resulted from a propaganda stunt that turned sour, or if the group planned to violently confront people perceived as their enemies who were attending Pride events.

"They were either continuing what they have already been doing, or they were ramping up. I can see either of those being the case," Squire said. "We'll have to see some chats or testimony from informants to know."

How embarrassing is this for Patriot Front?

The arrests are an embarrassment for Patriot Front, experts told USA TODAY.

The group prides itself on discipline, secrecy and, above all, carefully curating its public image, Squire said. Social media teemed with videos of Patriot Front members kneeling on the ground with their hands zip-tied behind their backs. Onlookers jeered as Rousseau was arrested.

"They looked very weak, kneeling on the ground instead of putting on this show of strength," Squire said.

Squire noted that for a group that is very careful about not revealing members' identities or being "doxxed," Saturday's arrests and the subsequent release of their names represented a misstep.

"Thomas (Rousseau) is obsessed with them not being doxxed, and now 31 of them have been doxxed," she said. "He’s basically exposed all of them."

Contributing: N'Dea Yancey-Bragg

Opinion: Arrests at Idaho Pride event could be a harbinger of things ...

(CNN) A Pride event in Coeur d'Alene, a small city in Idaho's panhandle, might seem like an odd target for one of the country's most active White supremacist groups . But on Saturday, 31 White men believed by authorities to be affiliated with the group Patriot Front huddled in the back of a U-Haul, allegedly planning to disrupt the gathering of LGBTQ people and allies in the city. (The men were charged with misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to riot.)

But both the place and the event make sense in the context of a White nationalist movement that combines spectacles of deadly terrorism with efforts to integrate itself into the mainstream right in the US. Those two strands of the movement may seem to be at odds -- the lethal violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, for instance, helped trigger the collapse of several far-right and neo-Nazi organizations and largely sidelined its organizers -- but they have in fact proven to be a potent pairing.

Not only have far-right activists become far more intertwined with the Republican Party, but as the January 6 insurrection and subsequent attempts to minimize it have shown, the Republican Party has become far more tolerant of political violence.

Idaho has been on the leading edge of this alliance. Which makes sense: fordecades, the state has attracted far-right groups . Militias, White separatists, Christian nationalists, Aryan Nations and others have viewed the state as a safe haven. It was the state where, a few hours north of Coeur d'Alene, Randy and Vicky Weaver hid out from a federal warrant in 1992, leading to the deadly siege at Ruby Ridge

And it is the state whose current lieutenant governor, Janice McGeachin, has repeatedly aligned with anti-government militias and White nationalist groups. (As an added bonus, she attempted to usurp the governor's powers in October 2021 by issuing an executive order while he was out of state, which he immediately rescinded.)

That blurred space between the state GOP and far-right extremists makes Idaho the ideal spot for the Patriot Front, the group formed out of Vanguard America, a neo-Nazi group that largely disbanded in the aftermath of the deadly Charlottesville riot in 2017.

Thomas Rousseau, the founder of Patriot Front, was in Charlottesville as a member of Vanguard America ; James Alex Fields, Jr., who murdered Heather Heyer and injured scores more when he rammed his car into a gathering of antiracist activists, had hoisted a Vanguard America shield at the riot earlier that day (though Vanguard America claimed he was never a member).

Patriot Front emerged after Charlottesville because Rousseau believed, having been tarnished by both lethal violence and Nazi iconography, White nationalists needed to rehabilitate their image if they were going to grow the movement. A manifesto for the group leans heavily on patriotic language and old-fashioned Americana, sprinkled with quotes from former presidents and White supremacist heroes like General Robert E. Lee and automaker-and-antisemite Henry Ford.

The group's symbols are rendered in red, white, and blue, with only small tells that the message is darker than run-of-the-mill patriotism: fasces -- the symbol of fascism -- embedded in an image of an eagle surrounded by stars, different symbols replacing the 50 stars on the American flags they carry at their rallies.

In that sense, Patriot Front is carrying on the work of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, which sold itself as an effort to bring together different right-wing factions under the banner of free speech. That gathering was billed as a free speech rally aimed at the protection of Confederate monuments.

Richard Spencer, one of the main organizers of the White nationalist event in Charlottesville, understood the real potency of embracing a set of issues that appealed to right-wing Republicans. For the Patriot Front, attacking a Pride event is less about the group's radicalism than about its efforts to align with the mainstream right, coming as it does at the same moment that right-wing media personalities and politicians are backing anti-gay legislation and carrying out a campaign to demonize trans people . Notably, the Patriot Front has also repeatedly marched alongside anti-abortion activists since 2018.

Nor is Idaho the only place where far-right groups are attempting to work their way into the Republican Party. In Miami-Dade County, the New York Times reports, the local Republican Party is now riddled with Proud Boys, members of a far-right group connected to both Charlottesville in 2017 and the Capitol insurrection in 2021.

That law enforcement was able to disrupt the planned riot in Idaho offers a slim ray of hope. Local police are working with the FBI , taking seriously the types of coordinated conspiracies that constitute a major form of far-right intimidation and violence (see the recent seditious conspiracy charges against Proud Boy members allegedly involved in the attack on the Capitol).

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Federal agencies are taking far-right terrorism more seriously, as the recent warning about the potential for increased political violence from the Department of Homeland Security shows, and groups like the January 6 select committee are connecting the dots for the American public between far-right violence and antidemocratic procedural extremism.

Still, those measures are reactions to the growing success of White nationalist and far-right groups in not only engaging in acts of political intimidation and violence but in efforts to embed themselves in the political mechanisms of states like Idaho and Florida. What is happening in Idaho may be a far more advanced version of the far-right Republican alliance, but it is not an aberration -- it may be a harbinger of things to come.

Tibetan monks at turtle release, puppy rescue 911: News from ...

From USA TODAY Network and wire reports

Alabama

Scottsboro: Jackson County plans to reopen the park where a deadly fire at a marina killed eight people a week ago. Most of Jackson County Park will reopen Monday, officials said, but the part of the marina where fire occurred will still be off-limits. Paul Smith, the county emergency management director, said crews would be cleaning up the site through the weekend. Environmental damage from the blaze didn’t get outside the immediate area around the marina, he told a news conference Friday. A fire broke out on a dock at the marina Jan. 27, destroying about three dozen boats and claiming eight lives. Officials have not determined the cause of the fire, but they said investigators are looking at one boat in particular. Most burned boats that sunk in the wide creek where the marina is located off the Tennessee River have been removed, Smith said, but some remain. Salvage work will take “quite a while,” he said.

Alaska

Juneau: Gov. Mike Dunleavy is planning town hall meetings centered on the state’s fiscal situation and future. Events are planned for Petersburg on Monday and Wrangell on Tuesday. Dunleavy’s office said the town halls will be open to the public. Additional public events will be announced later as part of a town hall series, his office said. Dunleavy has said he plans to more directly communicate with Alaskans. His first year in office was marked by an ongoing recall effort, which was fueled by anger over budget cuts he proposed last year. Dunleavy has called the recall effort political. Besides the town halls, Dunleavy plans to meet with school and community leaders, tribes, business groups and nonprofits across the state, according to his office. Dunleavy told reporters Friday that the state is paying for the upcoming trips. He faced criticism last year for holding town halls hosted by Americans for Prosperity-Alaska.

Arizona

Flagstaff: The City Council drew an overflow crowd as it moved toward declaring a climate emergency to address climate change and achieve carbon neutrality by 2030. With more than 250 people present for the council’s consideration of the issue at a meeting last week, dozens had to sit on folding chairs in the lobby of City Hall to watch a livestream, the Arizona Daily Sun reports. The council is now poised to officially adopt the resolution following a legal review. “We have seen and felt the sense of emergency,” Councilwoman Regina Salas said after numerous members of the public spoke. The measure would be nonbinding. But activist Sara Kubisty said declaring a climate emergency sets a standard that residents and voters can cite during future policy discussions. Mayor Coral Evans said she supported the resolution but warned that further climate action will take real effort and won’t always be popular.

Arkansas

Jacksonville: The City Council voted Friday to allow new tests on fingerprints and DNA evidence relating to the case of a man the state put to death in 2017. The council voted to allow the tests that Ledell Lee’s family contends could exonerate him of the 1993 slaying of Debra Reese. Patricia Young, Lee’s sister, had sued the city to allow the new tests. Representing the family were the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Arkansas and the Innocence Project. The groups said they plan to have the DNA evidence tested at a nationally accredited laboratory at Young’s expense and to upload the fingerprints to a national database. Lee was the first of four inmates Arkansas executed in April 2017 before its supply of a lethal injection drug expired. The state had originally planned to execute eight inmates, but four were spared by court rulings.

California

San Francisco: A conservation group has reached an agreement to buy a canyon in the Santa Cruz Mountains that includes 100 acres of ancient redwood trees, a purchase that will help create a continuous corridor of protected redwood habitat stretching to the Pacific Ocean. Save the Redwoods League reached an agreement Thursday to buy the 564-acre Cascade Creek, nestled between Big Basin Redwoods and Ano Nuevo state parks, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The towering redwoods have never felt the blade of a saw, the kind to which conservationists reverently refer as “old-growth.” “We got here just in time,” said Sam Hodder, president and CEO of Save the Redwoods League, gesturing toward blue paint marks, which indicate they were once the target of loggers. The league has so far raised $8.6 million of the $9.6 million needed to complete the transaction, which is expected to close May 30.

Colorado

Denver: The state Senate formally approved a death penalty repeal bill Friday and sent it to the House, where prospects for passage are favorable. Gov. Jared Polis has said he will sign a repeal bill. The 19-13 vote came in the seventh effort in recent years to repeal the state’s death penalty. The bill would apply to offenses charged on or after July 1. It would not apply to the three men on Colorado’s death row. That provision was added to the bill at the conclusion of an hourslong Senate floor debate Thursday. Democratic Sen. Rhonda Fields of Aurora again urged her colleagues to keep capital punishment – or at least refer the question to voters. Colorado’s last execution came in 1997. Twenty-one U.S. states have abolished capital punishment. Other states are currently considering action.

Connecticut

Hartford: The state is giving $1.3 million to help house victims of domestic violence and human trafficking, advocates say. The state’s Department of Housing and Coalition Against Domestic Violence announced a new round of funding Thursday, the Hartford Courant reports. The coalition said the money will allow the two state agencies continue to find safe housing for victims who are fleeing intimate partner violence and human trafficking. The new funding followed an initial $1.7 million received last year when the two agencies began to collaborate in their effort to house victims of abuse and human trafficking. Gov. Ned Lamont commended the agencies’ efforts and said the state has been a leader “on issues pertaining to domestic and family violence and providing protections for survivors, and enhancing these services remains a priority.”

Delaware

Dover: Democratic Gov. John Carney is proposing to increase the state’s operating budget by almost 4% next fiscal year, boosting spending to more than $4.6 billion. The budget proposal unveiled Thursday for the fiscal year starting July 1 includes a 2% pay raise for state employees, who also received pay raises last year and the year before, at a $29.3 million cost to taxpayers. Carney’s proposed operating budget includes $36.5 million in new spending to address school enrollment growth. He’s also proposing a record capital budget of $892.8 million for construction, maintenance, technology, equipment, economic development and environmental projects. The proposal includes $50 million in new spending for clean water initiatives, $50 million for economic development, and $50 million to build and renovate schools in Wilmington.

District of Columbia

Washington: A new study has been granted $1 million to determine who would qualify for free or discounted fares on Metro, officials say. The district’s social science center called The Lab received $1 million in grant funding to run the study, WUSA-TV reports. The city says 18% of all Metrorail riders are considered low-income, and that number jumps to 48% on Metrobus. City Administrator Rashad Young says the study ensures the city does not waste its money, as it could ultimately pay Metro for revenue it loses. Researchers say they want the system to be seamless with SmarTrip cards, perhaps linked to databases of other social services, like food stamps. Young also says the idea will not be a handout in a city where getting around can bankrupt those trying to make ends meet. Officials say 2,500 adults will be asked to participate in the study starting this summer.

Florida

Islamorada: Visiting Tibetan monks helped release a rehabilitated sea turtle in the Florida Keys. Hundreds of spectators witnessed the release Thursday of “Drifter,” a 170-pound female adult loggerhead sea turtle who was rehabilitated at the Keys-based Turtle Hospital after she was found floating offshore of the Lower Keys last November. The monks hail from the Drepung Gomang Monastery in India. “Drifter” was released into the Atlantic Ocean off an Islamorada resort after an hourlong ceremony performed by the monks, each an ordained student of the Dalai Lama. Ritual chants aspired that the turtle and other animals enjoy long lives. Minyak Rinpoche, the group’s leader, said the key to ultimate happiness is compassion for all living things and loving kindness. Staff at the Turtle Hospital have been rescuing, rehabilitating and returning turtles to the wild for almost 35 years.

Georgia

Atlanta: Anne Cox Chambers, a newspaper heiress, diplomat and philanthropist who was one of the country’s richest women, died Friday at the age of 100. Chambers’ nephew James Cox Kennedy announced her death to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, her company’s flagship newspaper. Chambers, a director of Cox Enterprises Inc., promoted Jimmy Carter’s political career and served as U.S. ambassador to Belgium during his presidency. Forbes estimated her net worth several years ago at nearly $17 billion. She was well known for her charitable giving and served on the boards of the Atlanta Arts Alliance and the High Museum of Art, among other institutions. She owned a white-columned manor across from the governor’s mansion in Atlanta, where Jimmy Carter brought his daughter, Amy, over to swim in the pool. Gov. Brian Kemp issued a statement Friday praising Chambers, saying her “contributions to the city of Atlanta and the state of Georgia will be felt for generations to come.”

Hawaii

Honolulu: Law enforcement officers from around the country gathered in the city for a ceremony to honor one of two officers killed while responding to a call in which a suspect and his landlord died and nearby homes were leveled by fire. Officer Tiffany Enriquez was memorialized Thursday by her family, members of the public, and police officers and emergency personnel who formed a “thin blue line” at the Honolulu Police Department headquarters as part of Enriquez’s “end of watch” ceremony. Enriquez, 38, was a seven-year veteran of the Honolulu police assigned to Waikiki. The Air Force veteran was the first female officer to die in the line of duty in Hawaii when she was fatally shot Jan. 19 along with Officer Kaulike Kalama. Authorities say Jaroslav Hanel, 69, shot the officers and killed landlord Lois Cain in a suspected landlord-tenant dispute.

Idaho

Boise: The state’s roads are becoming increasingly dangerous with distracted drivers and a growing number of motorists, the director of the Idaho Department of Transportation says. “Drivers are more distracted than ever before,” Brian Ness told state lawmakers on a budget-setting committee Friday. “And I think technology may be to blame for much of that.” Legislation to impose a statewide ban on handheld cellphone use while driving is pending in the Senate, and distracted driving legislation is pending in the House. Ness isn’t taking a position on the legislation, but his agency is running a campaign aimed at having people put away distractions while driving. Ness was before the committee to present his agency’s budget. Republican Gov. Brad Little has proposed a 7.9% increase from last year to $785 million. The committee won’t start setting state agency budgets for several more weeks.

Illinois

Chicago: The city is suing a coffee company for trademark infringement, saying its logo is nearly identical to the symbol for the city’s fire department. Fire Department Coffee’s logo features the letters F, D and C, intertwined in a stylized monogram, just like the one for the Chicago Fire Department, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. The design is likely used to confuse consumers into thinking the city has endorsed or sponsored the business, according to the lawsuit filed Thursday. Firefighters run the Rockford-based company, and “10% of proceeds from every order goes towards supporting ill or injured firefighters and first responders,” according to its website. “Fire Department Coffee pursued all of the correct legal channels and secured an approved, registered trademark for our current Fire Department Coffee logo,” the company said in a statement.

Indiana

Indianapolis: Four members of the Indianapolis City-County Council openly identify as members of the LGBTQ community, which is the most ever for the legislative body. Newly elected member Ali Brown, who is bisexual, says none of the candidates won in November for that reason. “None of that was part of (anything) groundbreaking or anything like that,” Brown says. “It was just something that was.” But LGBTQ advocates hope it means their concerns are better heard. “The only expectation we have is that they listen to our community and provide a voice to the issues important to our community,” says Chris Handberg, executive director of Indy Pride. “Whereas in the past, we have not had easy access to lawmakers and politicians and leaders to be able to provide some of that.” The candidates were elected as part of a Democratic wave on the council. Indiana’s legislature is overwhelmingly Republican.

Iowa

Des Moines: A divided state Supreme Court concluded Friday that a central Iowa recreational lake that owners tout as the state’s largest private lake isn’t private at all because it is accessible via a public waterway. The ruling could have ramifications for private lake developments connected to rivers that want to keep out nonmember boaters. It’s not immediately clear how many lakes in the state could be affected. The 4-2 decision came in the case of Jeffrey Alan Meyers, who was arrested by Iowa Department of Natural Resources officers for boating while intoxicated on Lake Panorama in July 2018. The DNR officers initially stopped Meyers’ pontoon boat on the lake because it was decorated with blue lights, violating an Iowa law against displaying blue lights on a boat that’s not an emergency vessel. DNR officers claimed they had jurisdiction because the lake is connected to the publicly accessible Middle Raccoon River.

Kansas

Lawrence: As the Super Bowl neared, University of Kansas students urged administrators to call off classes on the day after the big game and to provide vomit bags on campus if they didn’t. The Student Senate made the request in a resolution passed Thursday as the Kansas City Chiefs prepared to play the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday in the team’s first trip to the Super Bowl since 1970. It said Chancellor Douglas Girod should consider the “health implications of students attending classes and attempting course work less than 12 hours after the culmination of the Super Bowl and any celebrations that follow the game, should the Kansas City Chiefs emerge victorious.” The resolution also said Student Senate members don’t condone the tradition of fans mimicking tomahawk chops or “any other behavior that mocks or is offensive to Native American culture.” They urged the Chiefs to “take proactive attempts to end such traditions.”

Kentucky

Louisville: The number of travelers taking flights at the Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport last year set a record, officials said. The airport announced in a statement on Thursday that 2019 was its busiest year yet with 4.2 million passengers. That’s nearly 300,000 more than it had in 2000, when there were 3.9 million passengers. “Exceeding the 4 million mark is something we are very proud of and is a new milestone for our airport,” said Dan Mann, executive director of the Louisville Regional Airport Authority. “We know how successful 2019 was for passenger traffic, and we believe the numbers for 2020 will be even better.” Last year, the six airlines serving Louisville increased capacity on 20 different routes including the addition of nonstop flights to multiple locations. “Direct flights are essential in making us attractive for businesses and visitors,” said Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer.

Louisiana

Baton Rouge: Gov. John Bel Edwards’ administration reached another impasse Friday over the state’s income forecast, unable to strike a deal with the Legislature’s new Republican leaders about how to set the projections used to build the budget. The Democratic governor had been hopeful that a change in the House’s top leadership would break through repeated logjams over the forecast and give him the updated, larger state income forecast he wanted as he crafts his budget proposal for next year. Instead, the Edwards administration found itself at odds with both the new Republican House Speaker Clay Schexnayder and new GOP Senate President Page Cortez during the latest meeting of the Revenue Estimating Conference. Both expressed concerns about the numbers proposed by nonpartisan legislative and administrative economists that the governor’s chief budget adviser wanted to use.

Maine

Portland: Allen’s Coffee Brandy, a venerable brand of liquor beloved in Maine, is no longer the top-selling alcohol in the Pine Tree State. State alcoholic beverage records say Mainers spent $12.2 million on Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey and $11.7 million on Tito’s Handmade Vodka last year, the Bangor Daily News reports. Those sales were enough to eclipse Allen’s, which garnered $9.2 million in sales. Allen’s remains the most-purchased hard alcohol in the state in terms of volume. People purchased more than 90,000 cases of Allen’s in Maine last year, while Tito’s came in second at 71,000. Allen’s is produced by M.S. Walker of Massachusetts. Sales are trending downward, though. Revenue of Allen’s has dropped by about a sixth since 2014. Last year’s sales lagged about $400,000 behind the 2018 figure. Maine is the only significant market for Allen’s, which is especially popular in a milk-based mixed drink called a “Sombrero.”

Maryland

Bel Air: The city’s police chief has been placed on administrative leave after being accused of physical and verbal fights with his estranged wife and teenage son. Charles A. Moore Jr., chief of Bel Air police, was served a temporary protective order Tuesday, news outlets report. Deputy Chief Richard Peschek will serve as chief in Moore’s absence, town officials say. Moore and his wife separated in 2016, according to court documents obtained by The Aegis, a division of The Baltimore Sun. In December, Moore and his adult son went to his wife’s house, where Moore allegedly got into an argument with his teenage son and attempted to choke the boy after being punched by the teen, court documents state. Jason Silverstein, Moore’s attorney, said his client is the victim, the newspaper reports. Moore was also accused of sending “belittling text messages” to his wife and threatening to to “bash her head,” according to the documents.

Massachusetts

Boston: Bay State voters who can’t get to their local polling location for the upcoming presidential primaries can now pick up absentee ballots. Voters who will be out of town March 3 or have a disability or religious belief that prevents them from voting at their polling place are eligible to vote by absentee ballot. Those who need a ballot mailed to them may send an absentee ballot application to their city or town hall. Family members may also complete the application on a voter’s behalf. Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin is recommending voters submit absentee ballot applications as soon as possible to allow time for the ballot to be mailed to the voter and returned to their city or town hall. Ballots must be delivered to the local election office by the close of polls March 3 in order to be counted. Early voting will also be available Feb. 24-28 for all voters.

Michigan

St. Clair Shores: People who live along the shores of Lake St. Clair are wondering how much it will cost them to clean up a sludge-like substance that recently washed up on their properties. Tests of samples taken from one property in Macomb County, in southeastern Michigan, showed the substance to be decaying algae containing E. coli bacteria, the county health department said in a release. Health officials have said the algae presents “no imminent public health hazard.” But to vacuum the material up using a sanitary truck and then dispose it could cost about $10,000 per home, according to Ryan Siarkowski, the owner of Synergy Development Specialist. It will cost more if a homeowner also removes the soil beneath the material, said Siarkowski, who noted that every house would be different. Lake St. Clair feeds into the Detroit River and is part of the waterway linking lakes Huron and Erie.

Minnesota

Duluth: The breathtaking ice caves along the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore will likely be inaccessible this year due to low ice coverage on Lake Superior. On Friday, less than 5% of Lake Superior was covered by ice; ice coverage is typically 25% at the end of January. The Star Tribune reports the last time the ice caves were accessible by foot was in 2015. While ice coverage on Superior usually peaks in February or March, data shows most winters with this level of ice Jan. 31 don’t accumulate much more. A University of Michigan study last year said tracking ice on the Great Lakes is an ideal case study for climate research. Ice surrounding the Bayfield Peninsula was more consistent before the late 1990s, when “all of a sudden we saw years in which there was no safe ice cover,” said Andrew Gronewold, a study author. Apostle Islands National Lakeshore is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.

Mississippi

Oxford: Former Fox News Channel anchor Shepard Smith is set to receive a journalism award from his alma mater, the University of Mississippi. The university’s School of Journalism and New Media announced in a news release that Smith is the latest to be honored with its Silver Em award. Smith will receive the award during a ceremony April 1 in Oxford. Smith, who grew up in Holly Springs, spent more than 20 years anchoring Fox News before leaving the network last year. “Shepard Smith embodies what a journalist should be – for decades, he has reported the news without fear or favor,” said Debora Wenger, assistant dean for innovation and external partnerships and professor of journalism. “Because he got his start in journalism here at the University of Mississippi, we feel extraordinarily proud of all he has accomplished.”

Missouri

Jefferson City: Lawmakers this session are trying to make it easier for military spouses and out-of-state doctors, teachers, pharmacists and other licensed professionals to get jobs in the state. Legislation approved by the state House last week would allow those professionals to work in the state without going through its licensing process. One bill would make the exception only for military spouses, who might move frequently. That bill wouldn’t allow military spouses to transfer teaching licenses to Missouri. Another bill would apply what’s called license reciprocity to all out-of-state professionals. Republican Gov. Mike Parson called for license reciprocity for military spouses during his January State of the State address to the Republican-led Legislature. He told House and Senate sponsors of the measure that he’s counting on them to send legislation to his desk “very soon.”

Montana

Helena: The U.S. Department of Agriculture granted a secretarial natural disaster designation to 17 counties that requested federal aid after incurring losses caused by multiple disasters during the 2019 crop year, Gov. Steve Bullock said Friday. The designation will make producers eligible for certain assistance from the Farm Service Agency, including emergency loans. The farmers have eight months to apply for the loans. The counties designated are Cascade, Chouteau, Daniels, Dawson, Glacier, McCone, Pondera, Prairie, Richland, Roosevelt, Rosebud, Sheridan, Teton, Toole, Treasure, Valley and Wibaux. Bullock sent two letters to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue requesting a secretarial disaster designation for several counties that had multiple disasters, including excessive moisture and snow, freezing, frost, hail and high winds.

Nebraska

Kearney: Officials are investigating how a pair of juvenile offenders managed to escape custody twice in a 24-hour period. The incident began Tuesday night when a report of two suspicious males led the Buffalo County Sheriff’s Office to call the Youth Rehabilitation and Treatment Center in Kearney to see if it was missing any teens. The facility’s staff checked and reported two teens were missing, the Kearney Hub reports. Early the next day, deputies in neighboring Seward County found an abandoned, stolen car in a snowbank off Interstate 80. Footprints in the snow led deputies to the two escaped juveniles. By Wednesday afternoon, York County deputies received a report that a transportation company driver taking the teens back to the Kearney facility had been assaulted and the transport van stolen. York police tracked the van to Hamilton County, where the teens were again taken into custody and back to the youth center, which has been plagued by escapes and understaffing in recent years.

Nevada

Las Vegas: The city has opened a new park named for a police officer killed in the line of duty in 2014. The numerous officials and dignitaries who attended the dedication ceremony Friday for Officer Alyn Beck Memorial Park on Friday included Gov. Steve Sisolak, Mayor Carolyn Goodman and Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo, head of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Beck and another officer were killed while having lunch at a restaurant when they were shot by a couple who also killed a civilian who tried to stop them. The couple eventually died in a gunfight with other officers. The 10-acre park named after Beck features a lacrosse field, soccer fields, basketball court and a shaded playground with benches for families.

New Hampshire

Hampton Beach: The village’s annual Easter egg hunt has been moved inland out of concern that plastic eggs could end up in the ocean. The Hampton Beach Parks & Recreation Department announced on Facebook on Wednesday that the department will no longer host the Easter Egg Dig on the beach because it cannot ensure all eggs will be accounted for, the Portsmouth Herald reports. “I know there’s a lot of people that love this, and it’s been a tradition,” Recreation Director Rene Boudreau said. “I also feel that it’s a time where these kinds of decisions have to be made, and I’d rather be known for trying to help the cause as opposed to be part of the problems.” The department’s post received mixed reaction. Some parents praised the decision, while others called it “very silly.” But Blue Ocean Society Director Jen Kennedy wrote in a letter to the editor that many eggs that are not found during the hunt are discovered in beach cleanups months later.

New Jersey

Elmwood Park: A northern New Jersey paper plant is operating again, a year after a massive fire destroyed most of it. Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy was among the guests Friday at the Marcal plant in Elmwood Park for a ceremony at one of the few buildings that wasn’t leveled by the January 2019 fire. “We need to get back to work,” Marcal CEO Rob Baron said Friday. Marcal’s resumption of operations was made possible through a merger with Lewistown, Pennsylvania-based Nittany Paper Mills. Investigators conducted more than 100 interviews and concluded that the fire started in a building where large rolls of paper were stored, but they have been unable to determine the cause due to the extensive damage. The fire destroyed 30 of 36 buildings as well as Marcal’s familiar red sign visible from Interstate 80. Demolition at the site began last August. About 500 people lost their jobs.

New Mexico

Albuquerque: Police hired a convicted felon and allowed him to continue working in a high-ranking position even after officials learned he had provided a wrong birthdate and Social Security number, city records show. Documents obtained by KOAT-TV through an open records request show that Amir Chapel was hired in April as the department’s policy and compliance manager. The position, which paid $72,000 a year, was created to make sure police followed the city’s settlement agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice involving use of excessive force. A department memo and court records show Chapel had been convicted of forgery in Texas, misuse of a credit card in Illinois and robbery in California. Under Albuquerque personnel rules, applicants are ineligible for city employment if they make a false statement on applications or if they have a prior felony conviction involving “moral turpitude.”

New York

Albany: The New York State Bar Association is endorsing the legalization of recreational marijuana, as state lawmakers consider proposals this session to legalize the drug. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, has put forward legislation to legalize marijuana in the state. Under the governor’s proposal, sales to retail dispensaries would be taxed at 20%, and people could have 1 ounce of marijuana before getting in trouble. A separate proposal, backed by Democrats in the Legislature, would permit people to have to have 3 ounces of marijuana. The legislation would set one of the largest limits for legal marijuana possession in the nation. The bar association on Friday announced that it supports legalizing adult recreational marijuana. The association also said it approved a report that outlined various recommendations for how the state should address the issue.

North Carolina

Raleigh: From interstate improvements to turn lanes, the state’s Department of Transportation is asking residents to advise which projects they want funded over the next 10 years. A statewide public comment period to submit ideas continues through Feb. 28 for the 10-year transportation plan for 2023-2032. Residents can send project suggestions in a short, interactive survey found on the 2023-2032 STIP website. Projects can be for any type of transportation, including highway, aviation, bicycle, pedestrian, ferries, rail and public transportation. The comment period is not for maintenance, such as patching potholes. In addition, a three-day open house will be held Tuesday through Thursday during regular business hours at DOT’s Division Five headquarters in Durham for in-person input about potential projects in Wake, Durham, Franklin, Person, Granville, Vance and Warren counties.

North Dakota

Bismarck: A pipeline spill of oil-field wastewater in northwestern North Dakota has affected more cropland than originally reported. State environmental scientist Bill Suess said regulators were notified last month of the 8,400-gallon pipeline leak in Renville County. The pipeline is operated by Texas-based Cobra Oil and Gas. Regulators initially said about 1,000 square feet of cropland was affected. The landowner, Sherwood resident Allan Engh, said people involved in the cleanup of the site told him the brine could have contaminated as much as 400,000 square feet of soil. Suess told the Bismarck Tribune that estimate could be accurate, but the official number is not yet known. “We know it’s bigger; we know it’s impacting a very large area,” Suess said. He said the spill of produced water happened 2 miles north of Sherwood and within a mile of the U.S.-Canada border. The cause of the pipeline leak is unknown.

Ohio

Cincinnati: Fiona, the hippopotamus heartthrob at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden, apparently made a mess of her Super Bowl prediction Thursday. Zookeepers placed two “enrichment” toys in front of her, marked with the logos of the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers. While the plan called for Fiona to nudge one of the items with her snout to indicate her pick, she instead chose to lose her leafy green lunch on the Chiefs’ item, WLWT-TV reports. Fiona’s premature birth three years ago drew international attention. She has since grown to 1,200 pounds, roughly the weight of four NFL offensive linemen. It’s the third year she has handicapped the Super Bowl, correctly picking the Philadelphia Eagles to beat the New England Patriots in 2018 but missing on the Los Angeles Rams upsetting the Patriots in 2019.

Oklahoma

Norman: A judge has refused to dismiss a lawsuit accusing the University of Oklahoma’s Board of Regents of negligence in its handling of a sexual harassment case. Cleveland County District Judge Thad Balkman ruled Thursday that the case filed by Levi Hilliard involves a “mixed question of law and facts” that should be decided in future legal proceedings, The Norman Transcript reports. Balkman, however, did dismiss a portion of the lawsuit that sought punitive damages against the university. Hilliard, a former server at a university restaurant, says former OU Vice President Jim “Tripp” Hall III made sexual advances toward him on multiple occasions. He says Hall “patted him on the buttocks” during the fall 2017 semester and pinched his nipples at the university club where Hilliard worked.

Oregon

Portland: The city has agreed to pay an African American couple $120,000 to settle a discrimination lawsuit that contended a police officer pulled them over and then broke the key off in the ignition, leaving them stranded. The Oregonian/OregonLive reports city officials settled the suit Friday with Claudius and Daynelle Banks. Officer Christian Berge said he pulled the couple over in March 2015 at 2 a.m. for drifting into oncoming traffic. Attorneys for the Banks said Berge never filed a report or conducted a field sobriety test. Berge said he didn’t have time or backup support to process a drunken driving arrest, so he gave the Banks a warning and allowed them to walk home. Berge said he accidentally broke the key off not in the ignition but in the driver’s door lock. He denied searching the vehicle. Court documents say Berge had approached the vehicle and ordered, “Get your black (expletive) out of the car.”

Pennsylvania

Harrisburg: A judge put a freeze on a new state police policy regarding sales of partially manufactured gun frames that can be made into working pistols and rifles. Commonwealth Court Judge Kevin Brobson issued the preliminary injunction Friday, about three weeks after state police provided guidance to gun dealers about how to perform background checks for sales of what are often called 80% receivers or unassembled “ghost guns.” Brobson said the plaintiffs, businesses that manufacture and sell the gun frames, have raised a legitimate question about whether the state police policy is too vague. He said he would be open to revisiting the scope of his injunction, depending on what state police does in response. State police announced last month that gun dealers must call the state gun-purchase background check system for sales of the 80% receivers and are not permitted to simply use the online system.

Rhode Island

Providence: A bill would require safety barriers or netting on bridges that connect islands to the state’s mainland. If made into law, the barriers would be required for three bridges that connect Aquidneck and Conanicut islands to the Rhode Island mainland – Mount Hope Bridge, the Claiborne Pell Bridge and the Jamestown Verrazzano Bridge – by Jan. 1, 2022, in an effort to prevent suicides. Rep. Joseph J. Solomon Jr., D-Warwick, introduced the legislation. He described the problem as “frequent” and said in a statement that Portsmouth Police responded to Mount Hope Bridge 36 times last year. Between 2010 and 2018, there were 27 suicide deaths from the three bridges, according to the Rhode Island Department of Health. The Rhode Island Turnpike and Bridge Authority already has prevention measures in place, including a surveillance system that allows authorities to act quickly.

South Carolina

Columbia: The state’s military museum covers 250 years of artifacts and stories of brave soldiers fighting for their country, from the Revolutionary War to the ongoing conflict Afghanistan. But the museum’s official name – the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum – is stuck in the four years South Carolinians didn’t fight for the U.S. And when anything involving the Confederacy comes up, it drags on fundraising and admissions, Executive Director Allen Roberson says. When recently working on renewing its national accreditation, the American Alliance of Museums Accreditation said the museum could make it easier on itself by eliminating “Confederate” from its name. Roberson has his own reason for suggesting the change. “The name right now is too long. And what do you think about when you hear ‘relic’? I prefer ‘artifacts,’ ” he says, suggesting a relic would be a small bottle of sand from a desert battle, while an artifact would be the pen a president used to sign a declaration of war.

South Dakota

Rapid City: Tribal police have taken over law enforcement duties from the Bureau of Indian Affairs on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Tribal Police Chief Robert Ecoffey told the Rapid City Journal said the tribe wasn’t getting “enough resources in terms of manpower” from the BIA. The move is allowed under the 1975 Indian Self Determination and Education Assistance Act, which allows tribes to manage federal programs that affect their communities. Charles Addington, director of the BIA’s Office of Justice Services, said the agency supports the move. Tribal officers will take control of the BIA’s $1.3 million budget, property, equipment and responsibilities, which include investigating higher-level crimes on the reservation, Addington said. Ecoffey said the BIA allocates nine positions to the reservation, and nine of his officers have now been promoted to detective.

Tennessee

Nashville: The state’s Department of Environment and Conservation on Thursday announced that Dunbar Cave State Park has been selected as the 2019 Tennessee State Park of the Year. The agency says Dunbar Cave State Park – which encompasses 144 acres – is the site of significant prehistoric Mississippian Native American cave art, as well as a prehistoric site for part of the Eastern Woodlands. Over the past two years, the staff has transformed Dunbar Cave State Park by redeveloping cave tours to be more engaging. Research performed by park staffers resulted in new discoveries of Mississippian art and rare Cherokee written symbols that represent syllables. “Dunbar Cave State Park represents some of the highest qualities of our state parks system,” Deputy Commissioner Jim Bryson says. “It takes a lot to stand out among the work of our 56 state parks, and we are proud of the work that has been done at Dunbar Cave.”

Texas

Dallas: More than a dozen police officers have been disciplined for making offensive statements on social media, including posts that were bigoted or made light of police violence. The city’s police department announced Thursday that 13 officers whose posts violated department policy would receive punishments ranging from a written reprimand to unpaid suspension. Two more cases are still being reviewed, and one officer resigned, the department said in a statement and memo on the disciplinary measures. The officers can appeal their punishments. “It is imperative that we operate with the highest level of ethics and integrity to ensure that the public is confident in the legitimacy of who we are as a law enforcement agency,” Dallas Police Chief U. Renee Hall said. The officer’s posts were among thousands identified by researchers with the Plain View Project as potentially undermining public confidence in police departments around the country.

Utah

Brigham City: A 9-year-old boy is in stable condition after accidentally shooting himself in the head, authorities say. Brigham City Police Department responded to the call Thursday just after 5 p.m., authorities said. The boy was taken to Brigham City Community Hospital but was later transferred to Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City, authorities said. An investigation is ongoing. The accidental shooting occurred just hours after a 3-year-old boy accidentally shot himself in the head while playing with a gun in his home in Murray, about 65 miles south of Brigham City, authorities say. Police believe the 3-year-old boy was awake before his parents and another sibling and used a chair to reach a handgun that was sitting on a kitchen cabinet, officer Kenny Bass told the Deseret News.

Vermont

Montpelier: Republican Gov. Phil Scott has vetoed a paid family and medical leave bill, saying it would have worsened economic inequity in the state. Scott said Friday that he will move forward with a voluntary program that doesn’t rely on a mandatory $29 million payroll tax. “For years, Vermonters have made it clear they don’t want, nor can they afford, new broad-based taxes,” he said in a statement. “We cannot continue to make the state less affordable for working Vermonters and more difficult for employers to employ them – even for well-intentioned programs like this one.” Democratic legislative leaders expressed disappointment about the veto. House Speaker Mitzi Johnson said the bill represented significant movement toward Scott’s position, but the governor was unwilling to compromise.

Virginia

Tazewell: A rescued puppy is helping lighten the stressful days of the dispatchers at a 911 center. The puppy’s former owners surrendered the 8-week-old lab mix to the Tazewell County Sheriff’s Office, and dispatchers fell in love, WVNS-TV reports. “A lot of people don’t realize how stressful this job can be,” Edwinna Cecil told the station. “If we have a bad call, you can’t be upset when you see something this precious. It helps calm everybody down. The whole atmosphere has changed since he’s been here.” As the official 911 dispatcher service dog, he will not only provide emotional support but also be an ambassador for 911, attending events and visiting schools. Dispatchers are asking the public to help name the puppy. People can vote on the sheriff’s office Facebook page for their favorite or four proposed names – Mischief, Rookie, Taser or Creed. Votes will be counted Monday afternoon.

Washington

Richland: Energy Northwest is considering whether there is a need and regional interest for adding a small modular nuclear reactor system near the Tri-Cities – Kennewick, Pasco and Richland. Energy Northwest already operates the only commercial nuclear power reactor in the Northwest, Columbia Generating Station near Richland, in addition to small solar and hydroelectric projects and a wind farm. The public agency currently generates the electricity for more than 1.5 million customers in Washington state. Now it plans to spend up to $2 million to look at the feasibility of small modular reactors that might be added near its existing reactor. The study will look at the electricity that will be needed in the Northwest in coming decades and where it will come from.

West Virginia

Charleston: The state may soon require the speedy testing and collection of rape kits under a bill passed by the House of Delegates on Friday. Lawmakers approved the proposal by a unanimous vote of 96-0 without debate. It now moves to the Senate for consideration. The bill comes amid a national push to clear backlogs of the kits. More than 20 states have approved bills to require submission guidelines or kit audits in the past two years, according to the advocacy group End The Backlog. The measure would require the kits to be submitted to the state police’s forensic lab within 30 days or as soon as possible after collection. It would also allow for the creation of a tracking process of the kits and would require a court order before law enforcement could dispose of the examinations.

Wisconsin

Milwaukee: The city’s first brewery since Prohibition, Sprecher Brewing, was sold Friday to a group of local investors. Sprecher Brewing is credited with jump-starting the craft beer age in Milwaukee when Randy Sprecher and business partner James Bubolz opened shop in 1985, with $40,000 and a hand-built brew kettle. Sprecher Brewing is metro Milwaukee’s longest-running craft brewery. Sharad Chadha, former vice president for GE Medical and an executive with Samsung, will be the brewery’s CEO. Milwaukee native and entrepreneur Andy Nunemaker will be chairman of the board, and Jim Kanter, the former general manager for MilllerCoors, will also be on the leadership team. “Nothing is really going to change for our partners and suppliers and things like that,” brewery president Jeff Hamilton said Friday. Chadha said the goal is to make Sprecher a national craft beverage producer.

Wyoming

Casper: The headdress worn by a Native leader is returning to the tribe after he gave it to a non-Native dentist living in the state, tribal leaders said. The Northern Arapaho Tribe held a ceremony Saturday to welcome the headdress of Chief Black Coal, who guided many to the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming in the 19th century, the Casper Star-Tribune reports. Coal gave his headdress to a dentist who would often travel to the reservation to provide dental care, officials said. The great-grandson of that dentist contacted the tribe last year asking if the tribe wanted the headdress back, tribal leaders said. The Tribal Historic Preservation office accepted the offer, and descendants of Coal traveled to Massachusetts to retrieve the 140-year-old headdress, officials said.

From USA TODAY Network and wire reports

Tuskegee monument, sugar water, potato problems: News from ...

From USA TODAY Network and wire reports

Alabama

Montgomery: The Alabama Shakespeare Festival, which began in a high school auditorium in 1972, is undergoing a $1.6million renovation in advance of its 50th season. Located in east Montgomery, the theater is upgrading an entrance lobby and enclosing an outdoor area. It also is adding restrooms, constructing a new gift shop and making other additions. While the theater received $1.18 million in federal pandemic aid as part of the American Rescue Plan Act, spokeswoman Layne Holley said the renovations will not use that money, and officials have yet to decide how to use the funding. Indoor shows are scheduled to resume Nov. 27 with a production of “Cinderella.” Executive director Todd Schmidt said the theater has survived the pandemic and made plans for a return in part because of strong community backing. “We had to reduce our staff and our overhead,” Schmidt said. “It’s been a tough time, but luckily we’ve had great support.” Initially staged at Anniston High School, the company relocated to Montgomery and is housed in a theater constructed in 1985.

Alaska

Anchorage: The Alaska Federation of Natives has postponed its annual convention because of a rise in COVID-19 cases in the state, officials said in a statement. The convention has traditionally been the largest gathering of Alaska Natives in the state. It had been scheduled for Oct. 21-23 but is now delayed until mid-December in Anchorage, the organization said in a statement. Organizers said they will continue planning for an in-person convention at the Dena’ina Convention Center in downtown Anchorage with a virtual option. However, the statement said the board will make a decision by mid-October on whether to maintain the in-person part. Organizers encouraged Alaskans to get vaccinated and wear masks so the convention can be held. One notable celebration this year will be the observation of the 50th anniversary of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. The act was the largest land settlement in the nation’s history when President Richard Nixon signed it into law Dec. 18, 1971, and settled Indigenous land claims in Alaska. “Postponing until December provides us an opportunity to gather in person on the 50th anniversary of ANCSA, but it all hinges on everyone’s willingness and ability to get vaccinated,” said Sealaska chairman and Alaska Federation of Natives co-chair Joe Nelson.

Arizona

Phoenix: A tribe that didn’t sign a revised gambling compact with the state earlier this year has filed a lawsuit alleging that a new law is unconstitutional and left some rural tribes in the cold by excluding them from negotiations hamming out the legislation. The suit filed by the Yavapai-Prescott Indian Tribe on Thursday asks the court to prevent the Department of Gaming from issuing sportsbook licenses and allowing sports betting. The lawsuit said the state presented the tribe with an amended compact “as a non-negotiable, ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ proposition.” The lawmaker who sponsored the gambling legislation defended it as fair and equitable. The legislation signed by Republican Gov. Doug Ducey last spring expands the types of gambling allowed at tribal casinos, lets tribes and pro sports teams take bets on sport evenings, and licenses six operators to sign up players for betting on fantasy virtual games. A judge scheduled an emergency hearing for next Friday on the suit.

Arkansas

Little Rock: A federal judge has scheduled the retrial of a former state senator on bribery and fraud charges for the first week of October. Court records, first reported by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, show U.S. District Judge Judge Price Marshall on Friday scheduled the trial for Gilbert Baker, a Republican former senator and one-time state GOP chairman, to begin Oct. 4. A federal jury earlier this month acquitted Baker of conspiracy in the case in which he allegedly conspired to bribe an ex-judge who admitted to lowering a jury’s award in a negligence lawsuit in exchange for campaign contributions. The jury, however, deadlocked on charges of bribery and wire fraud against Baker, and prosecutors on Thursday filed notice of their intent to retry those counts. Baker was accused of conspiring with former state Judge Michael Maggio, who admitted to accepting campaign donations from a nursing home operator, then reducing a judgment against that company by $4.2 million. Michael Morton, the nursing home operator, has not been charged with any crimes and has denied wrongdoing. Maggio was sentenced in 2015 to 10 years in prison.

California

Blythe: California farmers near the Arizona border with the oldest rights to Colorado River water will reap $38million over three years to not plant some of their fields and leave extra water in the rapidly declining Lake Mead reservoir. Located roughly halfway between Los Angeles and Phoenix, growers near the city of Blythe in Riverside County have first priority to the river water. They hold rights that stretch back to 1877, superseding 40 million customers in eight states who also depend on it. But with continued drought and overuse, a first-ever shortage in the river system was declared in recent weeks by federal authorities, triggering cuts to Arizona, Nevada and Mexico’s supplies next year. In response, farmers who control the Palo Verde Irrigation District voted unanimously this month to agree to cancel planting some of their crops for three years. They will be paid about $925 per acre this year via federal drought response funds and water ratepayers in Arizona, Nevada and Southern California, with 2% increases each year after that. Bart Fisher, a PVID trustee whose family owns the 11,500-acre Fisher Ranch, said he and others were acting not because they want the money but because they want to help others and try to guarantee continued water supply for all.

Colorado

Denver: Colorado’s secretary of state filed a lawsuit Monday to remove a rural county’s election clerk who is accused of allowing a security breach of the county’s voting equipment that is currently being investigated by the FBI. The lawsuit filed in Mesa County district court by Secretary of State Jena Griswold seeks to formally remove Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters as the designated election official. The suit also calls for the appointment of former Secretary of State Wayne Williams to replace Peters and Sheila Reiner, former Mesa county clerk and recorder, to serve as the elections supervisor for the county’s upcoming November elections. The Board of County Commissioners praised the changes in a statement Monday, saying Mesa County will have “arguably the most secure and transparent election system in the United States.” Peters has claimed that the investigation led by Griswold – who is a Democrat – is an attempt to take over one of the few remaining conservative counties in Colorado. Griswold said initial investigation findings show images of election management software used by the county’s elections equipment were obtained by conspiracy theorists and posted on far-right blogs. Griswold’s office also said it believes one of the images was taken from a secure room.

Connecticut

Hartford: Schools around the state looking to upgrade aging ventilation systems to improve air quality and help fight the airborne spread of the coronavirus may find themselves short on funds, even with federal pandemic aid. The Connecticut Mirror reports a state policy restricts aid for heating, air conditioning and air quality control projects. The policy could be reviewed again by legislators, but likely not before the 2022 General Assembly session in February. “There are some districts that haven’t touched their schools in 40 years,” said Kostantinos Diamantis, the state’s budget director who also has overseen the state’s school construction program for the past six years. “The local level needs to belly up to the bar. The cities have an obligation to maintain those buildings.” Connecticut reimburses communities for between 10% and 71% of new construction and large renovation projects designed to last 20 years or longer, the Mirror reports. But the cost of smaller projects such as replacing or upgrading a heating and ventilation system must be absorbed by the town. For the town of Coventry, which wants to replace ventilators in its middle and high schools and make roof repairs, that would mean a bill of more than $2 million even after unused federal pandemic aid is applied.

Delaware

Lewes: Preliminary necropsy results show that a young fin whale that beached itself and died at Cape Henlopen State Park last week was riddled with parasites. “There was a lot going on,” said Marine Education, Research and Rehabilitation Institute Executive Director Suzanne Thurman. Measured by MERR to be 57 feet long, the whale first showed up in Lewes on Thursday, stuck on a sandbar in the Harbor of Refuge. It was able to free itself when the tide came in, but a short time later it beached itself again on the oceanside of The Point. Around noon Aug. 27, after many onlookers had come to catch a glimpse of its tail flapping in the surf, and just moments after Virginia Aquarium representatives had arrived to provide palliative care and possible euthanasia, the whale stopped breathing, according to a MERR Facebook post. The whale had to be cut into several pieces to move it out of the water for necropsy.

District of Columbia

Washington: Dozens of people marched to the White House on Sunday calling for support of Afghan women. Organized by the nonprofit Vital Voices Global Partnership, the group is calling on President Joe Biden and other U.S. leaders to prioritize the evacuation of women out of Afghanistan and to help permanently protect women’s rights inside the country following the crisis inside the country and the Taliban takeover, WUSA-TV reports. Protesters wore shirts and held signs emblazoned with “I stand with Afghan women” as they marched from the Vital Voices headquarters on 16th Street through Black Lives Matter Plaza and to Lafayette Square, eventually gathering in front of the White House. The deadline to evacuate U.S. citizens from Afghanistan is Tuesday. Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said Sunday that for those U.S. citizens seeking immediately to leave Afghanistan by the looming deadline, “we have the capacity to have 300 Americans, which is roughly the number we think are remaining, come to the airport and get on planes in the time that is remaining.”

Florida

West Palm Beach: Sugar growers are suing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over proposed reservoir water levels they say will be far too low. The federal lawsuits filed last week by Florida Crystals’ Okeelanta Corp., U.S. Sugar and the Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative say the current Corps plan won’t supply enough water for their fields. “Farmers need a secure supply of water, and all farmers need certainty as we plan and manage our planting schedules and crop rotation,” said Jaime Vega, vice president of agriculture at Florida Crystals. Jacksonville Commander Col. Andrew Kelly defended the Corps’ work, saying the agency will balance water supply for both the environment and farmers. The project in question is the Everglades Agricultural Area reservoir intended to cleanse tainted water so more can flow south as crucially needed toward Everglades National Park and Florida Bay. In the lawsuits, Sugar Growers say the still-under-construction reservoir should be kept at higher water levels than what is currently envisioned in a Corps of Engineers plan. Everglades restoration advocates say the growers are simply putting their priorities ahead of others.

Georgia

Atlanta: Atlanta Black Pride organizers say the annual celebration will happen Labor Day weekend as planned with some precautions to protect against the spread of COVID-19. The larger Atlanta Pride festival and parade planned for October were canceled Wednesday because of concerns about the pandemic. But leaders of Atlanta Black Pride, which celebrates the African American LGBTQ community, say they plan to go forward, with fewer indoor gatherings, while encouraging people to wear masks and maintain social distance. Amber Moore, COO and vice president of Atlanta Black Pride, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that COVID-19 vaccines and coronavirus testing will be offered. The celebration, marking its 25th anniversary this year, is to feature events around the city. In addition to parties, that includes a fashion show, a session on empowering women, an awards ceremony for the transgender community, a virtual film festival and a health expo. Vaughn Alvarez, who is helping to promote some of the events at Piedmont Park, told the newspaper that Atlanta rapper and radio host Da Brat and fiancee Jesseca “Judy” Dupart, CEO of Kaleidoscope Hair Products, will be honored for “bravery and courage with their love story.” The two star in “Brat loves Judy” on WE-TV.

Hawaii

Wailuku: A county affordable housing committee has voted to recommend approval of a rental project on Lanai, where no new affordable homes have been built in 30 years. The Hokuao 201H Housing Project, proposed by billionaire Larry Ellison’s company Pulama Lanai, includes the development of 150 two-bedroom rental homes on former pineapple fields. About half of the units will be market-rate priced. The project will be developed under the state’s fast-track approval process for affordable housing. The Maui County Council’s Affordable Housing Committee voted 8-0 to recommend giving the project the green light after multiple meetings packed with public testimony and hours of discussion over concern about the project’s number of market-rate homes, The Maui News reports. Council Chairwoman Alice Lee said the project is “desperately needed.” Pulama Lanai had sought an exemption for sidewalks in the future subdivision, saying including them would cost about $2 million. Sharon Thom, senior vice president of development and construction for Pulama Lanai, said the sidewalks would change the “look and feel” of Lanai City. But Committee Chairman Gabe Johnson argued to include sidewalks, saying the county needs to advocate for pedestrian safety and accessibility.

Idaho

Pocatello: The hot, dry, smoky growing season has left some potato farmers bracing for a poor crop. Randy Hardy, of Oakley, told the Idaho State Journal that his harvest will likely be the worst of his career. Statewide, spud farmers conducting test digs or early harvests are uprooting plants supporting no tubers. Where there are potatoes, there are fewer than normal, and most of the tubers are undersized and misshapen. “I’ve never had this happen before, and I’ve got an agronomist who works with me on potatoes, and he’s been doing it for over 20 years, and he said he’s never seen a worse crop than this,” said Hardy, who raises spuds for the fresh market and is chairman of the board of Sun Valley Potatoes. Hardy isn’t scheduled to harvest until Sept. 20, and he’s hoping the extra time will allow his tubers to add a bit more bulk. United Potato Growers of Idaho asked growers to submit results from Aug. 1 test digs and will gather follow-up data in person during harvest. Hardy said the average number of tubers in the test digs was down 30% from last year. Weight was also down substantially, he said. Many fields lacked deep soil moisture when the potatoes were planted. Then the state was hit with record-high heat in June, contributing to fewer potatoes growing beneath each plant, and smoke-filled air from Western wildfires.

Illinois

Chicago: From a waterpark resort to a public school, seven finalists have been named in a design competition to repurpose a much-maligned state government building downtown. State officials are trying to sell the James R. Thompson Center, which was designed by famed architect Helmet Jahn. They say the 17-story curved-glass structure that opened in 1985 is inefficient and requires hundreds of millions of dollars worth of repairs and updates to keep it running. The building houses offices for the governor and employees of state agencies, who are scheduled to move next year to another building on the city’s Near West Side. Illinois officials are seeking bids for a developer and have not committed to any preservation ideas. Officials have said they want to sell the building by February 2022. Architecture buffs have pushed for preservation, an effort that’s been renewed in the wake of Jahn’s death in May. The finalists were named last week. A group of design and preservation experts picked the finalists from 59 entries. A winner will be chosen Sept. 14.

Indiana

Indianapolis: A coalition of voting rights groups is sponsoring a contest for Hoosiers to draw new maps for congressional and legislative election districts. The group All IN for Democracy said the contest is aimed at finding “fair” proposed election maps to present to legislators before they vote in late September on the once-a-decade redistricting based on population shifts from the U.S. census. Voting rights activists have complained that the GOP-dominated Legislature isn’t involving the public enough in the redistricting work and that partisan gerrymandering has helped Indiana Republicans gain outsized power in state government. The organization is providing an online site where residents can compile maps based on the 2020 census data. Proposals submitted by Sept. 13 will be judged, with the winning map for Indiana’s nine congressional districts getting $1,000, with $2,000 for the best districts for the 50 Indiana Senate seats and $3,000 for the fairest map of the 100 Indiana House districts. The group said its judging will be based on how well the maps keep communities of interest together, maintain whole cities and counties in the same district, and maximize the number of politically competitive districts.

Iowa

Des Moines: Black applicants are 2.6 times more likely to be denied a conventional home loan than similarly qualified white applicants in the Des Moines/West Des Moines metro, according to an analysis of 2019 data by The Markup, a nonprofit newsroom. Des Moines has the fifth-greatest likelihood of denial for Black applicants out of 71 U.S. metro areas that The Markup found had statistically significant disparities in home loan approvals. The newsroom found that nationally, mortgage lenders are 80% more likely to reject Black applicants; 70% more likely to deny Native American applicants; 50% more likely to turn down Asian/Pacific Islander applicants; and 40% more likely to reject Latino applicants. For its analysis, The Markup examined more than 2 million conventional mortgage applications, accounting for 17 independent variables, including debt-to-income ratio and combined loan-to-value ratio. It did not take into account credit scores, which are not publicly available through Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data. John Sorensen, president and CEO of the Iowa Bankers Association, said in a statement that while the organization “firmly believes that discrimination has no place in the mortgage market,” the data used by The Markup doesn’t give a full picture as to why these disparities exist.

Kansas

Wichita: One of the biggest gun dealers in south-central Kansas is the city of Wichita, but it actually received less than half the proceeds from the sales because it works with several online companies to auction off the firearms. Since a new state law allowing the gun sales was passed in 2015, Wichita has sold 2,082 guns that were seized during crimes for which the criminal cases were complete. The city generated $196,000 on the gun sales that went into a fund that pays for miscellaneous police equipment. But The Wichita Eagle learned the city received less than half of the $425,000 in total sales generated because the companies that handle the sales take a significant chunk of the proceeds. The city contracts with Propertyroom.com, which sells the guns through a partnership with a major gun retailer that operates an online auction site. The city finance director said officials last took proposals for the gun contract two years ago and got no better offer. Sedgwick County Commissioner Jim Howell, who wrote the law, said it’s no different from police departments selling off other seized property, and any gun purchases require background checks. Former Rep. Jim Ward, who also used to work as a city prosecutor, said he knows it’s impossible to keep all the guns off the street, but he never wanted the government in the gun business.

Kentucky

Frankfort: An instructional assistant at an eastern Kentucky elementary school died from COVID-19 as the fast-spreading delta variant has sparked coronavirus outbreaks in several school districts. Heather Antle, an aide at Lee County Elementary, died Sunday. Antle was an involved member of the school community who “brought great joy to the students and staff that she worked with,” Lee County Superintendent Sarah Wasson said in a statement posted to social media. The Lee County district canceled in-person classes until Sept. 7 in response to coronavirus cases among students and teachers. Virus outbreaks have caused disruptions since the school year began. Several other districts have shut down classes for multiple days due to outbreaks. Gov. Andy Beshear, while expressing condolences to Antle’s family, urged Kentuckians to get vaccinated and wear masks to prevent the virus’s spread in schools. “There was a time when some argued COVID did not spread in schools,” the governor said on social media. “That time should be over. ... We must do everything in our power to prevent the spread of this virus in our schools, and vaccinations and masks are our greatest tools. Let’s do what’s right for our teachers.”

Louisiana

New Orleans: A couple who met in a gross anatomy class as Tulane University undergraduates have given Tulane Medical School $5 million for an endowed professorship. Drs. Philip and Cheryl Leone, of Naples, Florida, are now retired pathologists and current members of the School of Medicine Board of Governors, a university news release said Wednesday. Their endowment will support a medical school professor who will also hold a joint appointment in another school or unit and will focus on areas such as public health, immunology, parasitology or anthropology, the university said. The Leones have worked in both academia and private practice. “Tulane University has played a major role in our lives and the lives of our family members,” Phil Leone said. “Our son graduated from Tulane, and Cheryl’s siblings earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from the university.” “Endowing a Presidential Chair with an emphasis on interdisciplinary academic study allows us to contribute to the university in these challenging times,” Cheryl Leone said. “We hope our gift will strengthen the medical school and help train future physicians who can significantly advance the field of medicine.”

Maine

Bar Harbor: More than 125 boats participated in a weekend protest against plans for an aquaculture operation in waters near Acadia National Park. Commercial and recreational vessels comprised the “Save the Bay” flotilla that motored around Frenchman Bay on Sunday. Some people on land also participated by holding signs stating their opposition. American Aquafarms has proposed raising 66 million pounds of Atlantic salmon annually at a pair of 15-pen sites off the coast of Gouldsboro in Frenchman Bay. The company didn’t immediately return a telephone message. Ted O’Meara of Frenchman’s Bay United likened the scope of the project to ”some huge hog farm from the Midwest and plucking it right in the middle of one of the most beautiful parts of Maine.” He said that “our first goal is to stop this project, and our second goal is to look at changing some of the rules that allow people like this to think they can just come here and plug something like this down in our waters.”

Maryland

Baltimore: The first new Catholic school built in the city in roughly 60 years opened its doors Monday to hundreds of youngsters, who entered the gleaming new building with a mix of enthusiasm and first-day-back jitters. The state-of-the-art Mother Mary Lange Catholic School was built on the site where a notoriously rough public housing high-rise once stood. In a U.S. city steeped in Catholicism like few others, the new 65,000-square-foot building near downtown Baltimore is somewhat of an anomaly in the national education landscape as the COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to the shuttering of many Catholic schools. It’s named after Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange, a Haitian American who started a Catholic school for Black children in 1828 – the first U.S. Catholic school for African American youth. She co-founded the Oblate Sisters of Providence in Baltimore in 1829. The Vatican is reviewing Lange for possible canonization. Archbishop of Baltimore William E. Lori said the new school, which goes from preschool to eighth grade, is not only a benefit to the students and their families but also an asset to the surrounding neighborhood. The school’s playing fields and gym will be accessible, as appropriate, to the city community. “They say a rising tide lifts all boats. And I think the opening of this school has put a spring in the step of all of our Catholic educators,” Lori said in a phone interview.

Massachusetts

Boston: A public marker to remember the enslaved Africans forced to journey across the ocean to toil in the Americas was formally dedicated Sunday on the downtown waterfront. The Middle Passage Port Marker was installed last October at the end of Long Wharf looking out onto Boston Harbor. It is meant to acknowledge Boston’s history of slavery and honor the Africans who were forced into the the trans-Atlantic voyage known as the Middle Passage. The Sunday ceremony included remarks from Michael Creasey, superintendent of the National Parks of Boston, and officials from the downtown Museum of African American History. Names of enslaved members of Boston’s oldest churches were read aloud, and there was a traditional balafon performance by Balla Kouyate as well as a land acknowledgement statement delivered by Elizabeth Solomon, a member of the Massachusett Tribe at Ponkapoag. Millions of Africans were sold in the Caribbean and in American cities such as Boston and Newport, Rhode Island, from 1619 to 1865, according to event organizers. Native Americans from local tribes, including the Massachusett, Wampanoag and Nipmuc, were also enslaved after being taken as prisoners of war, the organizations said.

Michigan

Port Huron: A monument dedicated to Tuskegee Airmen who died in Michigan during World War II training was unveiled Saturday near the international Blue Water Bridge. Michigan served as an advanced training ground for many graduates of the Tuskegee University pilot training program in Alabama. Surviving Tuskegee airmen and their descendants attended the event in Port Huron, part of a three-day celebration that recognized the accomplishments of America’s first Black military pilots. Fifteen Tuskegee airmen were killed while training in Michigan, including five pilots lost in Lake Huron and one in the St. Clair River, according to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. Wreckages from two planes have been found in the river and the lake. In 2014, the remains of a P-39 aircraft were found in Lake Huron, 70 years after it crashed. The body of 2nd Lt. Frank Moody washed ashore a few months after the April 1944 crash. A dive team spent a week in Lake Huron in 2015 surveying the wreckage. The plane’s wing, landing gear, engine block, tail, propeller, cockpit door, instrument panel, .50-caliber machine guns and ammunition are being restored and will become an exhibit sponsored by the National Tuskegee Airmen Museum in Detroit.

Minnesota

St. Paul: A write-in campaign for a prehistoric giant beaver that weighed more than 200 pounds has secured it a spot on a list of possible candidates for state fossil. The write-in campaign has been so successful that the beaver, or Castoroides ohioensis, is now in the lead among possible state-fossil candidates proposed by the Science Museum of Minnesota. The fossil, found in St. Paul, dates back to the Pleistocene epoch and is estimated to be anywhere from 2.58 million years to 10,150 years old, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reports. Minnesota is one of just seven states without a state fossil, said Alex Hastings, the Phillip W. Fitzpatrick Chair of Paleontology at the Science Museum of Minnesota, who is leading an effort to designate one. Hastings put together a list of eight candidates – representing different creatures, different parts of the state and different geologic times – for consideration. As of last Tuesday, more than 2,100 people had voted, he said. The entry for Castoroides ohioensis notes that it had “buck teeth and aquatic lifestyle” and “was the size of a small bear,” according to officials with the St. Paul museum. It almost became Minnesota’s state fossil back in 1988, but the measure failed in the Legislature. Voting ends Oct. 1, after which legislators will get involved.

Mississippi

Yazoo City: A white father and son have each been sentenced to four years in prison for convictions related to chasing and shooting at two Black teenagers who were riding all-terrain vehicles on a country road. Some of the charges were prosecuted as hate crimes, which strengthened the punishment. Wade Oscar Twiner, 49, of Yazoo City, and his son, Lane Irvine Twiner, 23, of Jackson, were sentenced Friday in Yazoo County. Jurors on Wednesday convicted each man of two counts of simple assault and one count of malicious mischief. The district attorney’s office said the penalty for each simple assault conviction was increased because the men’s actions were deemed hate crimes under Mississippi law, which allows stronger penalties for crimes motivated by the victim’s actual or perceived race, color, ancestry, ethnicity, religion, national origin or gender. The men were arrested after the Sept. 27 chase in rural Yazoo County. The two teenagers were not injured, but they told investigators they were frightened for their lives. The teenagers were riding ATVs on a country road close to Wade Twiner’s home, said Chief Deputy Joseph Head of the Yazoo County Sheriff’s Office. The father and son got in a pickup and chased the teens, firing several shots and bumping into one of the ATVs with the truck.

Missouri

St. Louis: Officials face a tall order to get all the state’s nursing home workers vaccinated because fewer than half of them have received the shots. By that metric, Missouri’s 48% ranks third-lowest in the nation, trailed only by Florida and Louisiana, both at 47%. Yet some 82% of Missouri’s nursing home residents have been vaccinated, which is just behind the national average of 83%. That worries residents like Michael Williams, who has diabetes and is on kidney dialysis at the Crestwood Health Care Center in St. Louis. “It’s fine if they (staff) don’t want to take it, but then don’t work around us. We all have underlying conditions here,” Williams told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “They are out in the casino, and they are rolling the dice, but the sad thing about it is it’s other people’s lives they are playing with.” Some workers have already quit rather than face a mandate. Earlier this month, the Biden administration said it would require nursing home staff be vaccinated against COVID-19 as a condition for those facilities to continue receiving Medicare and Medicaid payments – revenue on which nearly all skilled nursing facilities depend. But details of that plan still haven’t been released. Data analyzed by the Post-Dispatch shows 20 facilities statewide had staff vaccination rates of 20% or less as of Aug. 15.

Montana

Bozeman: Montana State University has announced a $101 million donation to its College of Nursing, believed to be the largest donation ever given to a college of nursing in the United States, school officials said. The donation, announced Monday, comes from Mark and Robyn Jones, founders of Goosehead Insurance, based in Westlake, Texas. “It is hard to put into words how moved and excited all of us are at Montana State University by the generosity of the Joneses, who are helping to address some of the most critical health care disparity issues in Montana, particularly in the state’s rural areas,” MSU President Waded Cruzado said in a statement. The money will be used to fund new facilities and state-of-the-art simulation labs at MSU College of Nursing campuses in Bozeman, Billings, Great Falls, Kalispell and Missoula. The donation will also create five faculty professorships, helping MSU attract top faculty talent as the nation faces a nursing faculty shortage. MSU’s College of Nursing will also create an endowed scholarship fund and a nurse midwifery program for doctoral-level nurses to provide maternal health in rural and remote communities.

Nebraska

Omaha: The bones of the city’s next outdoor performance space have risen in the Gene Leahy Mall downtown. Metal arches that will one day form a performance pavilion have gone up in the mall in recent weeks, part of a $400 million public-private renovation of the mall, Heartland of America Park and Lewis & Clark Landing. When the pavilion is finished – likely sometime next spring – three white arches cascading in size will cover a stage. The Omaha World-Herald reports the space will be used for all manner of performances, from concerts, symphony performances and music festivals to movie nights and dance competitions. “It’s exciting seeing it start to come out of the ground,” said Katie Bassett, vice president of parks for the Metropolitan Entertainment & Convention Authority, which is managing the park renovations for the city. Stretching out from the pavilion to the west will be a 42,000-square-foot green lawn that will be able to host thousands of people for shows and offer a recreation space the rest of the time. Officials say the venue will be reminiscent of the iconic Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, which has a similar arch-shaped covering over the stage. At night, the pavilion will be lit from underneath to create a glow effect, which Bassett said will offer “an iconic” addition to Omaha’s downtown.

Nevada

Las Vegas: The nation’s fifth-largest school system has begun using ultraviolet light as a classroom germ-killer in a bid to stop the spread of COVID-19. “This doesn’t have any chemicals. It’s just light,” said Grant Morgan, chief executive and co-founder of Utah biosafety startup R-Zero, during a demonstration of the disinfection system at an elementary school in suburban Henderson. The blue-light-emitting tower can disinfect a 1,000-square-foot indoor space in seven minutes, destroying more than 99.99% of surface and airborne pathogens, Morgan told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. It is designed to be used while a space is unoccupied but has no lingering effects when people enter a room after treatment, he said. The Clark County School District bought one Arc unit for each of its 372 campuses using $7.4 million in federal coronavirus relief money to cover the $20,000 per-unit cost, the Review-Journal said. The district has more than 310,000 students. Classes began Aug. 9.

New Hampshire

Hanover: Dartmouth College is asking employees who have not yet returned to campus to keep working remotely until Oct. 4. The previous plan was for workers to return at the start of September, but the college is adjusting its plans as COVID-19 cases increase regionally and nationally, said Scott Bemis, chief human resources officer. Many of those who have already returned “can continue to work on-site,” Bemis said in an email to the community Friday. He said the date is being pushed back a month “to help slow the increase in the density of people on campus, with the goal of interrupting COVID-19 transmission wherever possible.” Bemis also said that weekly coronavirus surveillance testing will be conducted for vaccinated employees, instead of every 30 days. Unvaccinated employees who are coming to campus are still required to test twice a week.

New Jersey

Trenton: About half a million residents stand to lose a $300 federal unemployment benefit when it expires Saturday. Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy said Monday during a COVID-19 news conference that it would cost the state more than $1 billion a month to pick up the unemployment insurance tab from the federal government. “The proper way to extend federal UI benefits is through federal action, not a patchwork of state ones,” he said. “The reality is that continuing the $300-per-week benefit through state resources would be cost-prohibitive.” The expiration will affect about 500,000 people, according to the New Jersey Department of Labor. Federal jobless aid was first approved in 2020 when COVID-19 outbreak hit, sending jobless to record highs amid pandemic-related shutdowns. The state has administered $33.7 billion directly to 1.6 million residents since the start of the pandemic, the governor said. The lion’s share – $25 billion – has come from the federal government. To those unemployed residents affected by the expiration of the federal benefit, Murphy pointed to the state’s minimum wage, which will rise to $13 an hour in the new year from $12. He also pointed to the state’s paid sick and family leave programs, along with other social safety net aids.

New Mexico

Albuquerque: U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland married her longtime partner, Skip Sayre, on Saturday night in her home state. Haaland wore a dress designed and sewn by her sister, said Interior Department spokeswoman Melissa Schwartz. The ceremony incorporated elements honoring her Native American ancestry. The former New Mexico congresswoman is a member of the Laguna Pueblo. According to Schwartz, guests had to be vaccinated against COVID-19 to attend and wear masks per U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and New Mexico guidelines. But pictures on social media that show some people, including Haaland, not wearing masks indoors the whole time have drawn criticism. Her office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

New York

New York: A “sequence of failures” in the city’s subway system following a brief power outage disrupted half of the system for several hours and stranded hundreds of passengers, Gov. Kathy Hochul said Monday. Hochul said in a statement that a Metropolitan Transportation Authority review of Sunday night’s subway breakdown “uncovered a sequence of failures that resulted in some backup systems not providing power as designed last night, including an additional failure to quickly diagnose the underlying cause.” The unprecedented breakdown affected more than 80 trains on the subway system’s numbered lines plus the L train from shortly after 9 p.m. Sunday to about 1:30 a.m. Monday, Hochul said at an earlier news conference. The restoration of service was delayed because passengers on two of the stuck trains walked out onto the tracks by themselves rather than waiting for rescuers from agencies including the police and fire departments to help them, Hochul said. “We never, ever want riders to do that,” she said. “It is dangerous, and it caused a delay in the restoration of power.” Speaking outside a lower Manhattan subway system, Hochul promised a thorough investigation. “Let me be very clear,” she said. “Last night was unacceptable.”

North Carolina

Fayetteville: State environmental regulators say a plant that for years discharged so-called forever chemicals into the air and water is not currently in compliance with its air permit. In its letter to Chemours, the Department of Environmental Quality warned that it is preparing an enforcement action against the company’s Fayetteville Works plant in Bladen County, which has been exceeding its GenX air pollution limits for much of 2021. Officials said the company could be facing up to a $25,000 fine per day. In a statement, Chemours said the site experienced a temporary increase in air emissions this year from one of its carbon adsorption units. “The issue was quickly resolved when the carbon was replaced in this unit, and emissions returned to their usual low levels,” the statement said. “However, the data results from that one emissions sampling caused an exceedance of the site’s calculated 12-month rolling air emission allowance.” Chemours, a spinoff of DuPont Co., plans to take corrective action to fix the issue in the long term, according to its statement. GenX, a type of PFAS, has been found in drinking water wells near the plant and also the municipal utility serving the city of Wilmington, about 100 miles downstream.

North Dakota

Bismarck: A new quarterly report from North Dakota State University says the state’s economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic has slowed a bit. The outlook predicts declines in the gross state product, which is the measurement of the state’s output, labor force participation, and total wages and salaries. “The overall economic outlook for the state had been improving amidst the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, but the most recent data shows a state economy that is at risk of declining economic growth and a shrinking labor force,” said NDSU economics professor Jeremy Jackson, director of the Center for the Study of Public Choice and Private Enterprise. Total wages and salaries are expected to hold steady with a slight decline in the third quarter of this year, the Bismarck Tribune reports. The labor force is predicted to decline in the third quarter, with that trend continuing into next year. The unemployment rate is projected to have a slight increase in the third quarter and then return to its declining trend. North Dakota’s gross state product grew 1.8% in the first quarter of 2021, up from 1.3% in the previous quarter, but gross state product is forecast to decline heading into 2022. Despite the forecast decline, the model predicts relative stability in total tax collections.

Ohio

Columbus: Supporters of a proposal to legalize marijuana got the green light Monday to collect signatures to place the measure before state lawmakers. The Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol’s proposed statute was approved as a single issue by the Ohio Ballot Board, a panel of legislative appointees led by Secretary of State Frank LaRose. The group will soon begin collecting the 132,887 signatures of registered Ohio voters needed to submit the proposed law to the Legislature. If the Legislature doesn’t pass or passes an amended version of the bill, supporters can collect another 132,887 signatures to put the proposal before voters, likely in November 2022. The proposal would allow adults age 21 and older to buy, grow, possess and consume marijuana. Proceeds of a 10% tax on marijuana would go to education, addiction treatment and municipalities with marijuana businesses. Municipalities could limit or ban marijuana businesses within their borders. Ohio’s medical marijuana businesses, several of which are backing the plan, could automatically get licenses for the recreational side. The bill establishes 40 new cultivation licenses and 50 additional dispensary licenses for economically and socially disadvantaged “social equity” applicants. Additional licenses could be granted two years later.

Oklahoma

Oklahoma City: Hospitals are again overwhelmed as the spread of COVID-19 is surging through the state, but this time, they’re facing the wave with even further strain on health care workers. The state has dealt with a nursing shortage for at least two decades, Oklahoma nursing leaders said. But the pandemic has worsened it, with the stresses driving some burned-out nurses out of the industry or to other states, amid greater demands on the health care system. “The pandemic has brought on some extra stresses that we had no way of predicting, and that has impacted our retention rates enormously,” said Shelly Wells, president of the Oklahoma Nurses Association. “For example, I don’t think that humans were meant to see as much death as our nurses have seen, personally, in the last 16 months.” A nurse working in a hospital in normal times might expect to care for a dying patient once a week, Wells said. “These patients are dying much more frequently,” she said. “There’s no family support, so the nurses are having to double as family and offer that support” on top of caring for the patients themselves. And it can be especially troubling to care for someone your age or younger “that you know is probably not going to live,” said Elain Richardson, regional chief nursing officer with SSM Health St. Anthony.

Oregon

Portland: Record-low numbers of steelhead are returning to the Columbia River this year, prompting conservationists and anglers alike to call for a halt to recreational fishing for the sea-run fish. As of last week, just 29,000 steelhead passed the Bonneville Dam since July 1 – the fewest ever recorded, less than half the average of the past five years, Oregon Public Broadcasting reports. A coalition of conservation and fishing groups sent a letter to the Oregon, Washington and Idaho agencies that manage fish and wildlife requesting an immediate closure of recreational steelhead fisheries on the Columbia River, the Lower Snake River and their tributaries. “This is a really, really dire year for steelhead – especially wild steelhead – in the Columbia River Basin,” said Rob Kirschner, legal and policy director for The Conservation Angler, which advocates for protection and restoration of wild fish in the Pacific Northwest and Kamchatka, Russia. “We are trying to protect every eligible spawner,” he said. “Every one of these fish counts.” Steelhead on the Columbia and Snake rivers are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Their population has been devastated by habitat destruction, including construction of hydroelectric dams, as well as overfishing and climate change. High water temperatures have also been detrimental.

Pennsylvania

Harrisburg: Hundreds of thousands of residents will lose federal pandemic unemployment benefits after this week, including an extra $300 per week, an extra 13 weeks of benefits and coverage for the self-employed. Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration said Monday that there are sources of help for people who need it once their jobless aid runs out, including federal rental assistance through counties, Medicaid, food stamps and temporary cash-assistance for low-income families. In the first week of August, roughly 640,000 people were receiving the extra $300, according to figures from the state Department of Labor and Industry. About 388,000 of them were in the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program for freelancers or the self-employed, and almost 175,000 were receiving an extra 13 weeks of assistance through the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation program. About 78,000 people were receiving benefits through the state’s regular 26-week unemployment compensation program, which will continue running, but without the extra $300 federal benefit on top. The American Rescue Plan Act, signed by President Joe Biden in March, extended those federal benefits and set them to expire after this week.

Rhode Island

Providence: Gov. Dan McKee’s chief of staff, who is under scrutiny for whether he used his political clout to push through a development approval on some wetlands owned by his family, has stepped down, the governor’s office announced Monday. Anthony Silva maintains he did nothing wrong in the approval process, but the issue had become a distraction, the Democratic governor said in a statement. “Tony and I reached a mutual agreement that it is in the best interest of the administration for him to retire from state government effective immediately,” the statement said. “Right now, his situation is a distraction from the critical work we have ahead. I appreciate that Tony understands the need to remove the distraction to ensure we can continue serving Rhode Islanders effectively.” Silva once had an agreement to purchase the property in Cumberland – where McKee was once mayor and Silva was police chief. After the state Department of Environmental Management issued the necessary approvals, the property was purchased by Silva’s son, Ross. Town officials as well as neighbors oppose building on the land, saying developing it would exacerbate flooding problems in the area, and were concerned that Silva and his family got preferential treatment from the state environmental agency.

South Carolina

Columbia: The rapid rise in COVID-19 cases in the state has the Department of Motor Vehicles changing how it gives road tests for driver’s licenses. The agency started requiring masks for both new drivers and examiners Wednesday. As of Monday, it is again requiring appointments for driving tests, and on Sept. 7 the department will go back to how it handled testing at the start of the pandemic, with the examiner outside the car, the DMV said in a statement. The modified skills test evaluates the same abilities as the regular test, with the examiner scoring the test from outside, the DMV said. The agency is encouraging but not requiring masks inside its branches. Officials also said many basic services, like driver’s license renewal, can be done online.

South Dakota

Sioux Falls: Lawmakers tasked with redrawing the state’s political boundaries set a framework Monday that will allow them to speed through the once-in-a-decade process on a tight schedule this year. The two committees responsible for drawing the new legislative districts began their work in earnest Monday after the U.S. Census Bureau released detailed data earlier this month. Lawmakers only have about 10 weeks to propose districts before a special session of the Legislature convenes Nov. 8. The Census Bureau’s data was delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic. “We’re in for a very compact and a very intense schedule over the next two months to get all this accomplished,” Republican Sen. Jim Bolin told the committees, which met jointly Monday. Republican lawmakers cited the shortened process in setting two parameters that will guide their work: keeping new legislative districts between a lower threshold of 24,066 residents and an upper threshold of 26,600 people, and restricting access to the Legislature’s map-drawing software to committee members only. Legislative research staff said they were worried their work would get bogged down if the general public were allowed to propose maps through its software and said people could create their own proposals with other open-source applications.

Tennessee

Nashville: Cummins Falls State Park has been named state park of the year. The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation honored the Cookeville park for effectively managing an increase in visitors and overcrowding while enhancing safety measures, the department said in a news release Thursday. The 306-acre park in middle Tennessee used social media to inform people of river conditions, scheduled programs and activities. It also conducted more than 250 interpretation programs, held day camps for children and school programs, and hosted a weekly home-school group, officials said. Cummins Falls also has removed invasive plants, planted native species, built two greenhouses, and grown and processed sorghum, officials said. Cummins Falls is one of 56 state parks in Tennessee. It is one of several state parks honored with a 2021 Award of Excellence at a recent park management conference at Pickwick Landing State Park.

Texas

Austin: The Black arts community is pushing to create a cultural center at the music venue Kenny Dorham’s Backyard, amid broader work for equity in the city’s cultural arts programs and historic preservation in East Austin. “Everybody says the words equity, sustainability. But it turns out, if there’s no intention, no action behind it, it means nothing,” City Council Member Natasha Harper-Madison told a diverse crowd of arts supporters in July as they gathered to celebrate the return of Black contemporary dance company Ballet Afrique to East Austin. “We have so much work to do to make this a truly equitable and truly inclusive city that lives up to our progressive reputation.” In 2019, the city contracted with an outside consultant, MJR Partners, to conduct a review of city-allocated cultural arts and heritage funding. An interim report released in June outlines strategies to achieve greater equity, as well as some of the challenges the city will face. The report notes that “traditional and white-led institutions struggle to accept that historic inequities exist in the city.” “I think the city is really trying,” said Carl Settles, director of the nonprofit E4 Youth, which aims to build bridges between underprivileged area youths and Austin’s creative and tech industries.

Utah

Moab: Two recently married Utah women were found dead from gunshot wounds after reports of a “weirdo camping near them” and a four-day search in Moab, about an hour away from Arches National Park. On Wednesday, 38-year-old Crystal Turner and 24-year-old Kylen Schulte were found by a family friend in the South Mesa area of La Sal Loop Road, where they had been camping. Schulte and Turner went missing Aug. 14, four days before they were found dead from gunshot wounds, according to the Grand County Sheriff’s Office. Schulte’s father had posted on Facebook that they hadn’t been to work, hadn’t called, were not in the hospital and were not in jail. “Kylen and Crystal told close friends that there was a weirdo camping near them that was freaking them out !!! And that they should move campsites. Now they have been missing for over 4 days and nights!” Sean-Paul Schulte posted. The couple’s bodies were transported to the Medical Examiner’s Office, which determined the cause of death to be gunshot wounds, the Sheriff’s Office said.

Vermont

Vergennes: The city is planning to erect a monument to the state’s first known black sheriff and chief of police. The city of Vergennes is planning to unveil and dedicate the monument to former Sheriff Stephen Bates on Oct. 3. Bates was first elected sheriff and chief of police in Vergennes in 1879. Bates had been formerly enslaved in Virginia. He gained his freedom and served Union soldiers during the Civil War. He first came to Vergennes in 1866 with Vermont U.S. Rep. Frederick E. Woodbridge. Bates served as sheriff of Vergennes for 25 years. He raised a family in the city before his death in 1907, and some of his descendants will be attending the event. A local team of historians and others spent the past year researching Bates’ life and rediscovering his story in Vergennes.

Virginia

Richmond: Democrat Terry McAuliffe has asked a court to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Virginia Republicans that seeks to remove him from the ballot in this year’s closely watched race for governor over an alleged paperwork error. In a filing Friday evening, attorneys for the former governor now running for a second term against GOP nominee Glenn Youngkin said the suit was based on a “legal lie” and would effectively invalidate hundreds of thousands of votes cast in the Democratic primary. The complaint filed last week by the Republican Party of Virginia against state election officials argued that McAuliffe should be disqualified from running in the November general election because of the omission of his signature on an official form declaring his candidacy. McAuliffe argued in his filing that nothing in Virginia code requires a candidate to sign the declaration of candidacy. Further, the filing said: “Even if there were a technical defect with the declaration of candidacy – and there is not – it would provide no basis for removing McAuliffe’s name from the general election ballot and preventing Virginia’s voters from choosing him as their next Governor. The declaration of candidacy is a prerequisite for placement on the ballot in the primary election, not the general election, and the primary election has already concluded.”

Washington

Olympia: Hundreds of people gathered at the state Capitol on Saturday to protest Gov. Jay Inslee’s vaccine mandate. Announced in early August, Inslee’s order requires most state workers, health care workers and school employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Oct. 18 or face losing their jobs. Inslee has said getting people vaccinated is essential for getting Washington past the pandemic. Organizers of the rally Saturday warned that a large segment of state workers, including many firefighters, sanitation workers and bus drivers, won’t get the vaccine – as much as 30% to 40% statewide, they said. It wasn’t clear what that estimate was based on. “If the Governor refuses to rescind his mandate, it will mean that multiple areas of the state will be severely reduced or shut down completely,” Tyler Miller, of the group Liberty, At All Hazards, said in a news release. “The Governor is unnecessarily threatening the genuine safety and well-being of the citizens of Washington if he forces his mandate to stand.” Inslee spokesman Mike Faulk defended the need for the mandate. “Employees are losing their lives to COVID. Hospitals are filling up. Communities are stressed by the pandemic’s impacts. The safest and most effective way to get beyond these tragic circumstances is vaccination,” Faulk said in a statement.

West Virginia

Charleston: Residents who landscape for wildlife use can have their land designated a “wild yard.” The program already has 300 members around the state and is operated through the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources to create more natural habitat for wildlife around the state. “It’s such a wonderful program to get involved in,” Rebecca Linger, who owns a certified wild yard, said in a news release from the agency. “And you get the added benefit of creating an environment around your house where you can enjoy seeing wildlife coming and going. It really is delightful.” Jim Fregonara, a wildlife biologist with the division, said landowners who apply, provide a habitat plan and demonstrate that their property meets the needs of native wildlife will be added to a register of wild yards. They also receive a certificate for participating in the program and a sign post to display in the yard. “We want to encourage private citizens, whether they have a little bit of property or own a lot of land, to help wildlife thrive by providing them with food, water, shelter and space,” Fregonara said. More information is available at WVdnr.gov/plants-animals/conservation-education. For an information packet and application, call (304) 637-0245.

Wisconsin

Madison: Republican concerns about the screening process for thousands of Afghan refugees who stood side by side with Americans and are now being processed through Fort McCoy are unfounded “dog whistle crap,” Gov. Tony Evers said Monday. Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, have criticized the vetting process and warned about terrorists being allowed into the country. After a tour of the Wisconsin base last week, Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson questioned whether the refugees at Fort McCoy had been fully vetted and called White House assurances about the process “lipstick on a pig.” Evers also toured the base last week and met with refugees. He said Republicans criticizing the vetting of those refugees are “vastly uninformed.” “Or they like to raise that specter of maybe some of those little kids I saw at Fort McCoy are terrorists, or maybe those adults that I saw at Fort McCoy who were working hand in hand with our soldiers and airmen in Afghanistan, somehow they are terrorists even though they’ve been vetted four or five or six times even before they left Afghanistan,” Evers said. “To me, it’s dog whistle crap, and we don’t need any of that.”

Wyoming

Casper: Donations are pouring in for the widow and unborn child of a U.S. Marine killed in a bombing in Afghanistan. Rylee McCollum, 20, was among 13 service members killed by a suicide bomb attack Thursday at the Kabul airport. The troops were providing security as the airport was overwhelmed with people trying to leave the country amid the U.S. withdrawal and Taliban takeover. McCollum was from Bondurant and expecting his first child in three weeks, according to his family. Almost $687,000 had been raised through two online fundraising campaigns, one for the child’s future education costs and one for McCollum’s widow, as of Tuesday morning. McCollum was on his first deployment and manning a checkpoint at the airport when the attack happened, the Casper Star-Tribune reports. McCollum attended Jackson Hole High School and competed as a wrestler. He graduated in 2019 from Summit Innovations School in Jackson.

From USA TODAY Network and wire reports