Joeniece Jackson surveys food available at the Elver Park Neighborhood Center food pantry on Tuesday, Nov. 25. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

The Elver Park Neighborhood Center on the far southwest side of Madison has long been a familiar and welcome source of help for Joeniece Jackson and her four children.

Her oldest, now 14, attended the center’s after-school programs from an early age, as have her other three kids. And Joeniece says she’s enjoyed volunteering as well, or bringing the children of friends who may need child care unexpectedly.

But in the last few years, the center has served another purpose as well — as a food pantry for families who need to stretch their family meal budgets.

“The food pantry has gotten us through some of our hard times,” Jackson says.

The Elver Park after-school program isn’t the only one doing double duty. Across Wisconsin, other after-school programs have added food pantry services to their offerings for families who may not be able to afford to keep their cupboards full.

“After-school programs have long been doing after-school meals and snacks for kids,” says Daniel Gage of the Wisconsin Out of School Time Alliance, a nonprofit that advocates on behalf of after-school programs. Food pantry programs are a newer addition to that work. “After-school programs tend to be a place where people come together as parents are coming to pick up their kids.”

The recent federal shutdown, when federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Payments were halted Nov. 1, exacerbated the need. With the shutdown finished and SNAP funds flowing again, that has eased off, but only slightly.

The Elver Park Neighborhood Center and its after-school program are run by the Wisconsin Youth Company. The agency operates two neighborhood centers in Madison along with school-based after-school programs in Dane County and  Waukesha County.

Elver Park’s food pantry began operating during the COVID-19 pandemic, when schools were closed and, for a time, the center’s after-school programs were on hold as well, according to Takela Harper, the assistant director of centers for Wisconsin Youth Company.

Originally the center partnered with the Madison Metropolitan School District to deliver food to school district families who needed it, Harper said. When schools and after-school programs reopened, the program converted to a store-style food pantry, where families come on Tuesdays and Thursdays to pick up donations of packaged as well as fresh foods.

At Elver Park, there’s been “a consistent flow” in traffic for the last couple of years, Harper says. But that doubled in October from the previous month, with about 30 to 50 families a week coming in for assistance.

In Nekoosa, located in Wood County in North Central Wisconsin, the Nekoosa School District launched a food pantry a year ago. The city has a population of about 2,500 and the school district an enrollment of just over 1,200.

Nikki Stearns organized the Nekoosa program while serving in Americorps with the local YMCA. Her Americorps assignment had her working with elementary school-age children, and she soon learned the extent of hunger in some of those kids.

“So many of my kids are hungry,” Stearns said. “I started bringing in snacks, and other teachers started bringing in snacks for students, too.”

A 2023 United Way report on ALICE families in the community — families on the edge and vulnerable to falling into poverty — documented how pervasive families are who cannot count on regular meals or an adequate supply of food .  

“In Nekoosa, 53% of our community is either living in poverty or one paycheck away,” Stearns says.

In the Nekoosa program, families who sign up receive a box of food each month. Some are also enrolled in FoodShare — Wisconsin’s name for the state’s SNAP benefits program. When SNAP payments stopped Nov. 1, however, the food pantry’s signups shot up.

Through September and October, the Nekoosa program served 38 people — eight to 10 families, Stearns said. That jumped to more than 50 in November after SNAP benefits stopped.

“The first day when SNAP benefits weren’t uploaded to people’s [electronic benefits] cards, I think I had 35 applications come in in one day,” Stearns said.
“Now we’re serving about 200 people.” Even with the resumption of SNAP after the end of the shutdown, the demand has not diminished significantly, she added.

The Nekoosa food pantry program had been housed with the YMCA after-school program, based at a middle school. In June, the school transferred the food pantry program to the operation of the YMCA, which moved it to share space with the Y’s child care program, where recipients pick up their monthly boxes of food.

Providing a monthly allotment of food proved to be the most practical way for the Nekoosa program to operate, Stearns said, because “I don’t always know what [food] donations we’ll get or how much funding we’ll have to support people.”

The Nekoosa program was launched as part of a Wisconsin Partnership Program grant that the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health made to the Marshfield Clinic. With the $500,000 grant, the clinic was able to fund seven projects across the state’s northern half to address food insecurity.

“When students are fed and have those basic needs met, with food as one of those basic needs, they certainly can learn and focus so much more,” says Jill Niemczyk, a health educator with the Marshfield Clinic’s Center for Community Health Advancement who has been coordinating the program.

Other projects included a food pantry expansion, a teen meal program, gardening projects and a variety of nutrition education and community engagement programs.

“Each one of our seven sites is doing something a little bit different,” Niemczyk says.

The grant is now in its second year. In the third and final year, she says, attention will turn to assisting the various recipients as they look at how to establish ongoing community support and build on what they have been doing.

Even with SNAP benefits restored with temporary legislation to fund the federal government through January, Stearns expects the need to address hunger and food insecurity to persist.

“I think a lot of people are feeling like the food crisis is addressed” because the shutdown ended, Stearns says. “But a lot of us in food security are nervous about January. There’s a pretty big need to focus on people being fed — students are going to school hungry, whether there’s FoodShare or not.”

A medical worker pushes a stretcher through a hallway at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. States are passing laws to target private equity transactions of health care facilities, such as hospitals. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

As more private equity firms buy health care physician practices and facilities, states are pushing back on acquisitions that some critics say could potentially gut health care infrastructure. 

This year alone at least seven states, including California, Indiana, Massachusetts, Maine, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington, have enacted laws requiring more oversight over private equity acquisitions in health care. Private equity involves pooling resources from pension funds, endowments, sovereign wealth funds and wealthy individuals to buy controlling stakes in companies and boost their value — often with the goal of selling at a profit within a few years.

Private equity firms argue that their role in upgrading technology and increasing efficiency helps health care access, especially in rural and other underserved areas.

Private equity interest in health care has been around for a while, but really started to grow in the past decade, said John McDonough, a professor of public health practice at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Now there are private equity interests “in every imaginable iteration of medical care,” from hospitals to nursing homes, hospice care, physician practices and even veterinary care, he said. 

This year, several states have passed laws to increase oversight and transparency of private equity’s continuing acquisitions. 

Massachusetts and California enacted laws requiring more groups that were not included under previous reporting requirements, such as private equity firms, real estate investment trusts and management service organizations, to now notify the state if they make a health care acquisition and to give the attorney general more power to investigate the transactions. Indiana passed a law that gives the attorney general authority to investigate market concentration. 

Oregon passed an oversight law that not only limits how much private equity firms can buy up a health care market, but also bars private equity firms from having any control over clinical operations. The law also gives the state power to block any pending transitions that violate the law. California also enacted another law that prohibits private investors from interfering with the judgment of physicians and dentists. 

New Mexico passed a law that strengthened its 2024 Health Care Consolidation Oversight Act, which temporarily gave the state regulators more oversight over transactions. The new law makes that oversight authority permanent and more expansive, while also establishing penalties for non-compliance with reporting requirements. And Washington state passed a transparency law creating a registry of all health care entities. 

Maine passed a law to impose a one-year moratorium on all private equity or real estate investment trust purchases of hospitals. 

“The purpose of the dealmaking is to enrich the owners as quickly as possible, and then get out and move on to your next conquest,” McDonough said. “And so there’s a fundamental conflict there between duty to patients as a primary obligation and return on profits to shareholders.” 

According to researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, the number of acquisitions of physician practices rose from 816 in 2012, to 5,779 in 2021. Researchers also found that some single private equity firms captured 30-50% of specialty practices in local markets.

With limited congressional oversight on private equity actions in health care, states play a critical role in reining in predatory practices, said Michael Fenne, senior policy coordinator at the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, a watchdog group that monitors private equity activity.

“There’s not really federal law that targets private equity acquisitions in the same way [as laws] that states have been passing recently,” he said. 

Stateline reporter Shalina Chatlani can be reached at schatlani@stateline.org.

Skoda has treated us with several digital concepts inspired by past icons, but the latest example is the first to adopt a sedan bodystyle. The new creation looks like a Superb from the future, while retaining the rear-engined, RWD setup of old Skoda models.

The source of inspiration was the Skoda 100 sedan – the first “million-unit” model from the Czech automaker, with 1,079,708 units produced between 1969 and 1977. The modern reincarnation was created by Martin Paclt, a member of the company’s headlight design team who has contributed to various concept cars (Vision X, 7S and O) and production models (Enyaq, Karoq, Kamiq, and Kodiaq).

More: This Futuristic RWD Coupe Could Have Been Skoda’s Best Throwback Yet

The designer chose this particular model because of its popularity and for its “clean, timeless lines, which resonate strongly with the current Modern Solid design direction”. The sedan mirrors the proportions of the current Superb, as Paclt wanted to give it a “more premium, limousine-like character” compared to its budget-oriented predecessor from the ’70s.

References to the original include the character lines on the profile, the cooling intakes on the rear fenders, the vents under the taillights, and the main graphic on the nose enclosing the grille and headlights. The latter deviate from the round shape, although this direction was explored in early sketches.

The reborn Skoda 100 sedan rides on large-diameter alloy wheels with a futuristic design, contributing to sleek proportions in combination with the short overhang. Still, the highlight is the rear deck with a roof scoop and the absence of a rear windshield, a feature that’s becoming increasingly common in concept cars.

More: The Mazda RX-8 Spirit Lives On, But It’s Wearing A Skoda Badge

The design study is envisioned as fully electric, but stays true to the rear-engined RWD layout of the original. This means that the intakes are destined for cooling EV components rather than an ICE powertrain. According to the designer, the primary storage compartment is located at the front, with a small boot at the back.

The 100 sedan follows the 110R and 1000 MBX coupes, the Favorit hatchback, and the Felicia Fun pickup studies. The entire series is not destined for production, but gives Skoda designers the freedom to explore and revive past models in the form of modern EVs incorporating the Modern Solid styling language.

Skoda

A new survey from the Canadian International Auto Show paints a more complicated picture of the country’s electric vehicle plans than policymakers might expect. While the federal government continues to push for a gradual phase-out of gas-powered vehicles, public sentiment hasn’t caught up.

More: Canada Walks Back EV Mandate Amid US Trade War

A whopping 68 percent of respondents were against the move and most people said their next vehicle would likely be a traditional combustion model.

Reading the Room

That’s probably not the news the government wants to hear, but 47 percent of respondents said their next vehicle would likely be a conventional gas model. Thirty percent are eyeing an eco-friendly hybrid, while 11 percent are thinking about getting a plug-in hybrid.

As for EVs, they’re barely a blip on the radar as just 10 percent of respondents said their next vehicle would likely be an EV. People were also split on whether EV incentives should be brought back as only 54 percent agreed or strongly agreed.

Still, there was some consensus on one key point: most respondents said a stronger public charging network would be essential to drive future EV sales.

How Much Choice Matters

The auto show said the findings reveal that “consumer choice, across a range of powertrains and price points, remains a top priority for drivers.” The government appears to be willing to listen as reports have suggested changes are in the works following a review.

While Canadians have conflicting feelings about electric cars, they’re largely united amid a trade war with America. Seventy-seven percent of people surveyed agreed or strongly agreed that Canada should protect its auto industry.

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That’s easier said than done and we’ve seen a number of high profile cancellations recently including the Chevrolet BrightDrop electric vans. Furthermore, Stellantis recently announced plans to build the Compass in Belvidere, Illinois instead of Brampton, Ontario.

Euro NCAP is sharpening its safety pencil. The organization behind the star ratings brands love to boast about is rolling out a huge shake-up of its testing program for 2026 that includes a crackdown on those annoying ADAS warnings that plague modern cars.

More: Tesla Penalized Over A Word In Driver Assistance Tests And It Could Cost Them

The reboot splits vehicle safety into four clear stages: Safe Driving, Crash Avoidance, Crash Protection and Post-Crash Safety. Each category gets its own score and star ratings will depend on strong performance across all of them.

The idea is that cars must keep you out of trouble, protect you when things go wrong, and then help rescuers get you out quickly.

What Changes on the Road?

One of the most headline-grabbing updates addresses a problem that has led to genuine tragedies. Electric vehicles with pop-out or powered door handles will now be required to keep those handles working even after a crash.

Fire crews have repeatedly complained that some EVs lock up after an impact and refuse to open, which slows rescues and in extreme cases costs lives. Euro NCAP wants that fixed – and soon.

Driver assistance systems are also getting a long overdue reality check. Until now most ADAS evaluations happened on a closed track where systems behaved like model citizens.

Out on actual roads things are rather different. Automatic lane-keeping can yank the wheel when you least expect it and constant beeps and bongs send drivers rushing for the off switch, defeating the whole point of the safety gear.

Rewards for Buttons

From 2026 cars will earn extra points for advanced driver-monitoring systems that genuinely keep tabs on a distracted driver rather than perform glorified blink detection. They can even gain credit if they can spot signs of alcohol or drug impairment and take action.

Meanwhile a long awaited change will finally reward cars that keep proper physical buttons for common controls. After years of touchscreen everything, drivers have made their frustration extremely clear.

Related: EU Regulators Say Drivers Are Dying Inside Cars With Electric Door Handles

Crash avoidance tests will expand to include more realistic scenarios that involve motorcyclists, cyclists and urban hazards.

Smoothness matters, too. Lane support that darts the wheel like a nervous cat will lose points even if it technically avoids an impact, and there will be rewards for vehicles that recognize when a driver presses the gas pedal when they meant to hit the brake.

Different Dummies

Crash protection also gets more granular. Dummies with different body shapes ages and sizes will be used to reflect the people who actually sit in cars, echoing a move happening in US crash testing.

And simulations and sled tests will support full crashes for better accuracy, giving more detail about side-impact protection and the risk to pedestrians posed by structural areas like the windshield.

Also: Senators Want Cheaper Cars, Even If It Means Getting Rid Of Automatic Braking

Finally, the post-crash stage receives a modern boost with new rules for EV battery isolation, those flush handles rules we mentioned earlier, and automated SOS functions that must tell first responders how many people were in the car, even if seatbelts were not buckled.

Electric cars must also be able to warn drivers about battery-fire risks even after a crash.

The new protocols represent the biggest overhaul of NCAP testing since 2009, but we won’t have to wait another 17 years for the next big refresh. The organization says it will update its protocols every three years from 2026, a decision that reflects just how quickly assistance tech is evolving on new cars.

India's olive ridley turtle numbers appear to have rebounded after years of patchwork efforts to stem their decline. Can it last?

(Image credit: Diaa Hadid)