Dave Carlson of Eau Claire served two combat tours in Iraq with the Wisconsin National Guard. After returning, he ended up in prison and experienced PTSD.
The post Eau Claire war veteran tells his story of redemption on new NPR podcast appeared first on WPR.
Ice cover on the Great Lakes has often been thought to cap evaporation that can influence water levels and regional weather. But a new study finds ice doesn’t play as big a role in blocking evaporation as once thought, which could prove vital for predicting future climate conditions and lake levels.
The post Great Lakes ice is thought to block evaporation. A new study says weather plays a bigger role. appeared first on WPR.
Wisconsin lawmakers want to provide fire departments access to grants for a new type of firefighting foam derived from soybeans that could provide an alternative to PFAS-based foams.
The post Wisconsin bill promotes soybean-based firefighting foam to replace PFAS appeared first on WPR.
A Kenosha charter school has found its new home — an old Pick 'n Save grocery.
The post Kenosha Charter School finds permanent campus at closed Pick ‘n Save appeared first on WPR.
In early November, the South Carolina Department of Public Health opened a pop-up mobile vaccine clinic in a library parking lot in Boiling Springs. Dozens of people in South Carolina’s Upstate region have been diagnosed with measles this fall. (Photo by Lauren Sausser/KFF Health News)
This article first appeared on KFF Health News.
BOILING SPRINGS, S.C. — Near the back corner of the local library’s parking lot, largely out of view from the main road, the South Carolina Department of Public Health opened a pop-up clinic in early November, offering free measles vaccines to adults and children.
Spartanburg County, in South Carolina’s Upstate region, has been fighting a measles outbreak since early October, with more than 50 cases identified. Health officials have encouraged people who are unvaccinated to get a shot by visiting its mobile vaccine clinic at any of its several stops throughout the county.
But on a Monday afternoon in Boiling Springs, only one person showed up.
“It’s progress. That progress is slow,” Linda Bell, the state epidemiologist with the Department of Public Health, said during a recent press briefing. “We had hoped to see a more robust uptake than that in our mobile health units.”
As South Carolina tries to contain its measles outbreak, public health officials across the nation are concerned that the highly contagious virus is making a major comeback. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has tallied more than 1,700 measles cases and 45 outbreaks in 2025. The largest started in Texas, where hundreds of people were infected and two children died.
For the first time in more than two decades, the United States is poised to lose its measles elimination status, a designation indicating that outbreaks are rare and rapidly contained.
South Carolina’s measles outbreak isn’t yet as large as those in other states, such as New Mexico, Arizona and Kansas. But it shows how a confluence of larger national trends — including historically low vaccination rates, skepticism fueled by the pandemic, misinformation and “health freedom” ideologies promoted by conservative politicians — have put some communities at risk for the reemergence of a preventable, potentially deadly virus.
“Everyone talks about it being the canary in the coal mine because it’s the most contagious infectious disease out there,” said Josh Michaud, associate director for global and public health policy at KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News. “The logic is indisputable that we’re likely to see more outbreaks.”
Spartanburg’s vaccination rate is among the lowest of South Carolina’s 46 counties. And that was true “even before COVID,” said Chris Lombardozzi, a senior vice president with the Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System.
Nearly 6,000 children in Spartanburg County schools last year — 10% of the total enrollment — either received an exemption allowing them to forgo required vaccinations or did not meet vaccine requirements, according to data published by the state.
Lombardozzi said the county’s low vaccination rate is tied to misinformation not only published on social media but also spread by “a variety of nonmedical leaders over the years.”
The pandemic made things worse. Michaud said that fear and misinformation surrounding COVID-19 vaccines “threw gasoline on the fire of people’s vaccine skepticism.” In some cases, that skepticism transferred to childhood vaccines, which historically have been less controversial, he said.
This made communities like Spartanburg County with low vaccination rates more vulnerable. “Which is why we’re seeing constant, small brush fires of measles outbreaks,” Michaud said.
In Spartanburg, the overall percentage of students with required immunizations fell from 95.1% to 90% between the 2020-21 and 2024-25 academic years. Public health officials say a minimum of 95% is required to prevent significant spread of measles.
Children who attend public and private schools in South Carolina are required to show that they’ve received some vaccinations, including the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, but religious exemptions are relatively easy to obtain. The exemption form must be notarized, but it does not require a doctor’s note or any disclosure about the family’s religious beliefs.
The number of students in South Carolina who have been granted religious exemptions has increased dramatically over the past decade. That’s particularly true in the Upstate region, where religious exemptions have increased sixfold from a decade ago. During the 2013-14 school year, 2,044 students in the Upstate were granted a religious exemption to the vaccine requirements, according to data published by The Post and Courier. By fall 2024, that number had jumped to more than 13,000.
Some schools are more exposed than others. The beginning of the South Carolina outbreak was largely linked to one public charter school, Global Academy of South Carolina, where only 17% of the 605 students enrolled during the 2024-25 school year provided documentation showing they had received their required vaccinations, according to data published by the Department of Public Health.
No one from Global Academy responded to interview requests.
In April, after visiting a Texas family whose daughter had died from measles, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote on social media that the “most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine.” He made a similar statement during an interview on “Dr. Phil” later that month.
But these endorsements stand at odds with other statements Kennedy has made that cast doubt on vaccine safety and have falsely linked vaccines with autism. The CDC, under his authority, now claims such links “have been ignored by health authorities.”
“What would I do if I could go back in time and I could avoid giving my children the vaccines that I gave them?” he said on a podcast in 2020. “I would do anything for that. I would pay anything to be able to do that.”
Throughout 2025, he has made other misleading or unsupported statements. During a congressional hearing in September, Kennedy defended his past claims that he was not anti-vaccine but affirmed his stated position that no vaccines are safe or effective.
Emily Hilliard, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, told KFF Health News that Kennedy is “pro-safety, pro-transparency and pro-accountability.” Hilliard said HHS is working with “state and local partners in South Carolina” and in other states to provide support during the measles outbreaks.
Meanwhile, Kennedy has frequently championed the idea of health freedom, or freedom of choice, regarding vaccines, a talking point that has taken root among Republicans.
That has had a “chilling effect all the way down through state and local lawmakers,” Michaud said, making some leaders hesitant to talk about the threat that the ongoing measles outbreaks poses or the effectiveness and safety of the MMR vaccine.
Brandon Charochak, a spokesperson for South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, said the governor was not available to be interviewed for this article but referenced McMaster’s comment from October that measles “is a dangerous disease, but in terms of diseases, it’s not one that we should panic about.”
On a separate occasion that month, the Republican governor said he does not support vaccine mandates. “We’re not going to have mandates,” he said, “and I think we are responding properly.”
Even though the South Carolina Department of Public Health has repeatedly encouraged measles vaccines, the push has been notably quieter than the agency’s COVID-19 vaccine outreach efforts.
In 2021, for example, the agency partnered with breweries throughout the state for a campaign called “Shot and a Chaser,” which rewarded people who got a COVID-19 vaccine with a free beer or soda. By contrast, the pop-up measles vaccine clinic at the Boiling Springs Library featured no flashy signage, no freebies, and wasn’t visible from the library’s main entrance.
Edward Simmer, interim director of the Department of Public Health, would not speak to KFF Health News about the measles outbreak. During a legislative hearing in April, Republican state lawmakers voted against his permanent confirmation because of his past support for COVID-19 vaccines and masking. One lawmaker specifically criticized the agency during that hearing for the Shot and a Chaser campaign.
Public health officials in other states also have been blocked from new roles because of their COVID-19 response. In Missouri, where MMR vaccine rates have declined among kindergartners since 2020 and measles cases have been reported this year, Republican lawmakers rejected a public health director in 2022 after vaccine opponents protested his appointment.
In South Carolina, Simmer, lacking lawmakers’ confirmation, leads the public health agency in an interim capacity.
South Carolina Sen. Tom Davis of Beaufort was the only Republican on the Senate Medical Affairs Committee who voted to confirm Simmer in April. He told KFF Health News that his Republican colleagues raised valid questions about Simmer’s past support for COVID-19 vaccines.
But, Davis said, it would be “tremendously unfortunate and not beneficial from a public health perspective” if the Republican Party just took a stance against vaccines “as a matter of policy.”
The Department of Public Health had administered 44 doses of the MMR vaccine through its mobile health unit from October to mid-November. The last mobile vaccine clinic was scheduled for Nov. 24. But health officials are encouraged that patients are seeking vaccines elsewhere. The agency’s tracking system shows that providers across Spartanburg County administered more than twice as many measles vaccines in October as they did a year ago.
As of mid-November, more than 130 people remained in quarantine, most of them students at local elementary and middle schools. Cases have also been linked to a church and Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport.
“We’re reminding people that travel for the upcoming holidays increases the risk of exposures greatly,” said Bell, the state epidemiologist. “Due to that risk, we’re encouraging people to consider getting vaccinated now.”
KFF Health News correspondent Amy Maxmen contributed to this report. KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — an independent source of health policy research, polling and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
President Donald Trump speaks during an executive order signing in the Oval Office on Feb. 11, 2025. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
President Donald Trump said Friday he will try to reverse any law, pardon or still-in-effect executive order that former President Joe Biden signed with an autopen, though it wasn’t immediately clear how that would work or whether it would be legal.
Trump declared in a social media post that any documents Biden signed with the autopen are “hereby terminated, and of no further force or effect.”
“I am hereby cancelling all Executive Orders, and anything else that was not directly signed by Crooked Joe Biden, because the people who operated the Autopen did so illegally,” Trump alleged. “Joe Biden was not involved in the Autopen process and, if he says he was, he will be brought up on charges of perjury. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
The White House press office didn’t immediately respond to a request for the list of documents Trump believes he has the ability to rescind based on the manner they were signed.
States Newsroom also asked the Trump administration if officials believe the president would need to sign an executive order in order to implement his social media post.
The post was similar to one Trump published in March when he claimed any pardons Biden signed with the autopen were void, something legal experts said at the time was “absurd” and a “red herring.”
Trump brought up his frustration with autopen use again in June when he ordered the White House legal counsel and U.S. attorney general to investigate when and why Biden administration staff used an autopen.
Trump said during an Oval Office appearance at the time he hadn’t found any evidence Biden aides violated the law.
“No, but I’ve uncovered the human mind,” Trump said. “I was in a debate with the human mind and I didn’t think he knew what the hell he was doing. So it’s one of those things, one of those problems. We can’t ever allow that to happen to our country.”
Biden and spokespeople working for him have repeatedly said he knew what official documents were being signed in his name and rejected claims that White House staff used the autopen without his authorization or knowledge.
Biden released a statement in June following the Trump memorandum, saying the investigation “is nothing more than a distraction by Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans who are working to push disastrous legislation that would cut essential programs like Medicaid and raise costs on American families, all to pay for tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy and big corporations.”
“Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency. I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations,” Biden wrote at the time. “Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false.”
While presidents have regularly rescinded their predecessors executive orders, usually within their first few days or weeks in office, Congress would very likely need to act in order to alter or eliminate any laws that Biden signed with an autopen. Trump seeking to overturn a law, or part of a law, unilaterally would likely lead to a lawsuit over whether he holds that power.
It also wasn’t immediately clear what legal authority Trump believes he has as president to undo pardons if Biden used an autopen to sign the documents.
David Super, a constitutional and administrative law professor at Georgetown University, told States Newsroom in March that “the Constitution does not require signatures for pardons. It simply says the president has the power to pardon.”
“So if President Biden wanted to simply verbally tell someone they’re pardoned, he could do that. It wouldn’t have to be in writing at all,” he said. “Administratively, of course, we want things in writing. It makes things a lot simpler, but there’s no constitutional requirement.”
Ashley Murray contributed to this report.
A small memorial of flowers and an American flag outside the Farragut West Metro station in Washington, D.C., near where two members of the West Virginia National Guard were shot on Nov. 26. (Photo by Andrew Leyden/Getty Images)
The United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia announced Friday it has charged the man who allegedly shot two National Guard members earlier this week with first-degree murder after one of the soldiers died as a result of her injuries.
Other charges include three counts of possession of a firearm during a crime of violence and two counts of assault with intent to kill while armed.
The attack shocked the country and has led to a renewed discussion about immigration policy as well as the war in Afghanistan and how the country withdrew during the Biden administration.
President Donald Trump announced late Thursday night he intends to “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries,” though he didn’t specify which countries would be included or exactly how such an order would be implemented.
Trump wrote on social media he plans to “remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States, or is incapable of loving our Country, end all Federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens of our Country, denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility, and deport any Foreign National who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western Civilization.”
The post came just hours after U.S. Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, 20, died from injuries she sustained during a Wednesday shooting a couple of blocks from the White House. The other victim, U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, remained hospitalized in critical condition. Both were West Virginia National Guard members.
The alleged shooter, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, an Afghan national who worked with United States forces, entered the country on Sept. 8, 2021, as part of Operation Allies Welcome, according to a statement from Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
The White House press office declined to say Friday which countries would have their residents barred from entering the United States under the new order, referring back to the president’s social media posts, which did not include a list.
“Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation,” Trump wrote. “Other than that, HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL, except those that hate, steal, murder, and destroy everything that America stands for — You won’t be here for long!”
Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a Thursday afternoon statement the administration would pause immigration applications for Afghan nationals.
“Effective immediately, processing of all immigration requests relating to Afghan nationals is stopped indefinitely pending further review of security and vetting protocols,” she wrote.
The Trump administration will also review “all asylum cases approved under the Biden Administration,” McLaughlin said, saying those cases required more vetting.
In a separate post, Trump blamed former President Joe Biden for allowing the alleged shooter into the country.
McLaughlin echoed that sentiment.
Lakanwal “was paroled in by the Biden Administration. After that, Biden signed into law that parole program, and then entered into the 2023 Ahmed Court Settlement, which bound (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) to adjudicate his asylum claim on an expedited basis. Regardless if his asylum was granted or not, this monster would not have been removed because of his parole.”
The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, following two decades of war that began as a result of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, has been widely criticized.
Many of the Afghan nationals who aided the United States and allied countries were left behind as the Taliban quickly regained control.
The nonprofit #AfghanEvac, formed in August 2021 to help resettle Afghan refugees, criticized the administration’s proposal to indefinitely halt the processing of immigration requests from Afghans.
“Our allies are under attack today because of the actions of one deranged man. Those actions should not be ascribed to an entire community,” the organization posted on social media late Thursday.
In a lengthier statement issued Wednesday following the shooting of two National Guard members, the organization’s president, Shawn VanDiver, said #AfghanEvac “expects and fully supports the perpetrator facing full accountability and prosecution under the law.”
VanDiver continued: “AfghanEvac rejects any attempt to leverage this tragedy as a political ploy to isolate or harm Afghans who have resettled in the United States.”
Lakanwal had been residing in Washington state and drove across the country before the shooting, according to Jeanine Pirro, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
Officials investigating the shooting have yet to release a possible motive.
Lakanwal was granted asylum in the U.S. in April, according to reporting by many media outlets, including NPR.
The Department of Homeland Security did not confirm for States Newsroom the date Lakanwal was granted asylum.
FBI Director Kash Patel, left, at a press conference on Nov. 27, 2025, looks at photos of the two West Virginia National Guard soldiers shot in Washington, D.C., the previous day. They were identified as Andrew Wolfe, 24, and Sarah Beckstrom, 20. (Photo by Andrew Leyden/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — West Virginia National Guard member U.S. Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, 20, one of the victims of a shooting near the White House, died Thursday, President Donald Trump said.
“She’s just passed away,” Trump said. “She’s no longer with us. She’s looking down at us.”
Trump, who was speaking with members of the military via video, said she was “magnificent in every way.”
A White House official said Trump spoke with Beckstrom’s parents on Thursday night.
The other victim, U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, underwent surgery and remained hospitalized in Washington, D.C., in critical condition.
“The other young man is fighting for his life,” Trump said.
Earlier Thursday, federal law enforcement officials examined evidence collected from the home of the alleged lone gunman, who drove to the nation’s capital from Washington state to target the troops, officials said.
They did not disclose a motive for the attack in a busy area of offices and retail just blocks from the White House, the day before Thanksgiving.
Beckstrom and Wolfe underwent surgery and were hospitalized after the suspect allegedly shot them in broad daylight Wednesday, according to Jeanine Pirro, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
A military press release said Beckstrom, of Summersville, was assigned to the 863rd Military Police Company, 111th Engineer Brigade. Wolfe, of Martinsburg, was assigned to the Force Support Squadron, 167th Airlift Wing.
Wolfe entered service on Feb. 5, 2019 and had been on orders in the district since the beginning of the mission in August. Beckstrom entered service on June 26, 2023 and also had been in the district since August.
“Their families are with them now. They are critical. I think you understand the meaning of that,” Pirro told reporters at a Thursday morning briefing.
The suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a 29-year-old Afghan refugee who worked with U.S. forces in Afghanistan, is currently facing three counts of assault with intent to kill while armed and possession of a firearm during a crime of violence, Pirro said, adding the charges are “appropriate” for now.
“It’s not clear, you know, how this is going to end up. But let me be perfectly clear about how it will end up in this office if one of them is to pass. And God forbid that happens, this is a murder one (charge). Period. End of the story,” Pirro said.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News Thursday morning the Department of Justice will seek the death penalty if either of the guard members succumbs to their injuries.
Bondi said Beckstrom had volunteered to work over the holiday.
Brig. Gen. Leland Blanchard, commanding general of the National Guard in the District of Columbia, told reporters, “Regardless of the outcome, we know that their lives, their family life, their families’ lives are all changed forever because one person decided to do this horrific and evil thing.”
Pirro said the suspect “drove his vehicle across the country from the state of Washington with the intended target of coming to our nation’s capital.”
Trump mobilized 800 National Guard members to the district in August, on the grounds of a “crime emergency,” despite a nearly 30-year low in violent crime in the city.
Some of the guard troops were instructed they would be carrying service weapons while deployed in the district, according to an Aug. 17 report in the Wall Street Journal.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told reporters Wednesday the administration will send an additional 500 National Guard troops to the district.
Shortly after 2 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, at 17th and I streets NW, near the Farragut West Metro station, Lakanwal allegedly shot the first guard member, then “leans over and strikes the guardsman again,” Pirro said, not identifying which member was initially struck.
Lakanwal then struck the second guard member “several times,” she said.
“Fellow guardsmen who were there responded immediately, engaging the suspect, neutralizing the threat, and subduing him at the scene. He was transported to a local hospital, where he remains as we speak, under heavy guard. Thanks to the swift and coordinated response of the National Guard and the Metropolitan Police Department, no additional victims were harmed, and the scene was secured within minutes,” Pirro said.
Kash Patel, director of the FBI, said the agency searched Lakanwal’s home last night in Bellingham, Washington, seizing multiple electronic devices and interviewing family members. Patel said the suspect is believed to have five children.
The gun Lakanwal used in the attack, a .357 Smith & Wesson revolver, is being analyzed at the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia, Patel said.
Patel said the FBI is also interviewing interested parties in San Diego but would not provide further details on the “ongoing investigation.”
Patel told reporters that he spoke to CIA Director John Ratcliffe Wednesday night and obtained “confirmation now that the subject had a relationship in Afghanistan with partner forces.”
“We are fully investigating that aspect of his background as well, to include any known associates that are either overseas or here in the United States of America,” Patel said.
Patel would not answer reporters’ questions about whether and when Lakanwal had been granted asylum in the U.S.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to States Newsroom’s request for a timeline.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem issued a statement Wednesday night confirming Lakanwal arrived in the U.S. on Sept. 8, 2021, as part of the Operation Allies Welcome.
The program was established after the U.S. military’s withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan “to support vulnerable Afghans, including those who worked alongside us in Afghanistan for the past two decades, as they safely resettle in the United States,” according to Department of Homeland archived information.
Noem did not provide any further information on Lakanwal’s asylum process.
The administration announced Wednesday night it will immediately halt any immigration requests from Afghan nationals.
Lakanwal had worked with a CIA-backed military unit in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar, Fox News reported Wednesday night. The CIA did not immediately respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment.
Last week, a District of Columbia federal judge found the Trump administration’s deployment of the National Guard in the city illegal. However, Judge Jia Cobb paused her order for three weeks to give the Trump administration time to remove the guard members along with appealing her ruling.
More than 2,000 members of the guard have remained in the district, and are expected to stay until the end of February, according to Cobb’s order.
The Trump administration on Wednesday asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in an emergency motion to intervene.
A pedestrian lifts his bike over snow piles after a storm in Buffalo, New York. Buffalo is among the older industrial cities where residential properties have drawn interest from corporate investors. (Photo by John Normile/Getty Images)
As corporate ownership of residential property across the country rises nationwide, researchers from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and the Center for Geospatial Solutions, which is housed at the institute, warn this rising trend has complicated the housing market for first-time buyers.
According to a joint “Who Owns America” report, nearly 9% of residential parcels in 500 U.S. counties are owned by a corporation. The concentrations exceed 20% in some cities, including St. Louis, Missouri; Harrisonburg, Virginia; and Franklin, Ohio.
Researchers told Stateline they define “corporate ownership” as any rental property held under a formal business entity, whether a single-property LLC or large institutional investors such as Blackstone. They also track three factors: whether the owner is a business entity, whether it is based in- or out-of-state, and the size of its housing portfolio.
Roughly 2% of residential lots are owned by out-of-state investors. Investors have shifted their capital to older industrial metros such as St. Louis, along with Buffalo, New York, and Akron and Toledo in Ohio, where rents are rising and vacancy rates are extremely tight.
Although corporate owners currently hold a modest share of all residential parcels nationwide, their footprint is expanding steadily, said Reina Chano Murray, associate director at the Center for Geospatial Solutions.
“Corporate ownership may look small on paper, around nearly 9% across the counties we studied, but that share is steadily increasing,” said Chano Murray. “Even if corporate owners don’t make up a huge percentage right now, the trend line is clear. They’re growing.”
This past year, states took a major step in attempting to use legislation to rein in corporate ownership of rental homes. According to an August report by the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute, lawmakers in 22 states have introduced such legislation in 2025, including in California, New York and Texas. Cities in Indiana have capped the percentage of single family homes that can be rented in a neighborhood.
AEI, however, believes the issue of corporate land ownership is a “narrative [that] is not supported by empirical evidence,” highlighting that less than 1% of institutional investorship is in residential property, according to its report.
Earlier this year, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, proposed a 75-day moratorium on institutional or corporate investors buying single- and two-family homes to disincentivize those groups from buying up housing stock at the cost of individual buyers.
Washington state lawmakers have floated caps on how many units a single investor may own. In 2024, Colorado enacted a law that gave cities a right of first refusal on some multifamily property sales. Locally, some redevelopment authorities in Cincinnati and Minneapolis are using their own capital to compete, by directly acquiring and preserving single-family homes for low- and moderate-income buyers.
The impact of corporate residential ownership, researchers at the Lincoln Institute say, is most severe for first-time buyers, who are increasingly outbid by cash offers from well-endowed investors.
“For first-time homebuyers, it’s a double whammy. Units are being removed from the marketplace, and investor competition is driving up prices,” said George McCarthy, president and CEO of the Lincoln Institute. “Cash-only transactions make up nearly a third of single-family sales this year, and those aren’t families with briefcases full of cash.”
Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
As red sand filled the cracks along the sidewalks in front of the Electa Quinney Institute for American Indian Education on the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee campus, community members stood in quiet solidarity as drums beat.
The pouring of red sand marked another year of remembrance and healing for missing and murdered Indigenous women and relatives, referred to as MMIWR.
The symbolic act of pouring sand was part of the HIR Wellness Institute’s ninth annual Community Activated Medicine & Red Sand Events on Nov. 14.
The Electa Quinney Institute was founded in 2010 to support the Native American community on campus.
Started in 2017, the event has provided a sacred space for community grief and collective healing in honor of MMIWR through art, storytelling and community care.
Each year, the HIR Wellness Institute collaborates with the Red Sand Project to host the event. The Red Sand Project was designed to raise public awareness about human trafficking and modern slavery, using the red sand to represent those who have fallen through systemic cracks.
“Trauma is not a life sentence.”
Marla Mahkimetas
“We got to cry and say her name.”
Malia Chow
Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.
A sacred space for healing: Event honors missing and murdered Indigenous women and relatives is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
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.”
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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.
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.
– John McDonough, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
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.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
Tim Scott was shocked when he was laid off in May as the executive director of Nearby Nature, an organization that works to reconnect Black people to nature by offering nature education classes and introducing residents to new outdoor experiences.
Instead of letting the sudden change deter him, he doubled down on his commitment to help Milwaukee residents experience the outdoors.
Scott is opening Urban Nature Connection, a community-based nonprofit dedicated to reconnecting Black and Brown communities with nature.
The organization’s mission is to promote the physical, spiritual and mental health of outdoor activities such as birding, gardening, biking, hiking and fishing.
According to Scott’s wife, Theresa Scott, he has always been an outdoorsman.
“He has always enjoyed walking or spending time in the park or outdoors,” Theresa Scott said.
Tim Scott spent most of his career in construction work.
He’s also done some coaching and marriage counseling but said he found a new purpose when he took the role at Nearby Nature.
“This is my passion, this is my healer, I owe nature my life to tell you the truth,” Scott said.
His wife agrees.
“I think this is a great second career for him,” she said. “It’s better for his mind and his body.”
Scott said he now knows the importance of pushing nature as a healing mechanism, especially for those who don’t have access to mental health services.
“We all experience trauma in different ways,” Scott said. “But we don’t all have access to the same mental health services. Being out in nature really saved me when I was experiencing my own crisis.”
By connecting people with nature, Scott hopes to help others find their own healing.
In addition to outdoor activities, the organization will focus on indoor gardening, programming and advocacy of green space.
Over the next few months, the focus will be on getting people outside even during the colder months.
“A lot of our work will be advocacy,” he said. “So, we will center advocacy through every season.”
Scott says he plans to partner with other agencies to host wellness events, community discussions and group walks.
To keep up with Urban Nature Connection, you can follow its Facebook page here.
“What he wants to do here is truly a movement,” Theresa Scott said.
Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.
‘I owe nature my life’: Milwaukee nonprofit aims to connect Black and Brown people to nature is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
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