The greening of red state America, underway in the Sun Belt, is now accelerating in the Midwest. Ohio and Indiana – two Republican-led US states long dependent on coal power – are on the verge of going solar-farm The boom is so impressive that their respective builds between now and 2027 may match those of Nevada and trail only those of California and Texas. Developers are expected to install 15 gigawatts worth of new solar panels in the two states, enough to power about 12 million households. This is even as Ohio has moved to slow, if not prevent, renewable…
Author: Cecil Larson
DeSantis tells Iowa: 'We're going to fight the mob that woke up.'Florida Gov. Ron DeSandis is visiting Iowa to introduce himself to a Republican audience ahead of a possible 2024 presidential run. The Florida governor is a leading presidential contender who is seen as a rival to former President Donald Trump. (March 10)APA passage in Gov. Ron DeSantis' new book about his upbringing and values is drawing attention, with some mocking it as a comfort to voters in two key Midwestern states.”I grew up geographically in Tampa Bay,” DeSantis wrote. “But culturally my upbringing mirrored the working-class communities of western…
By JOEY CAPPELLETTI (Associated Press) GRAND HAVEN, Mich. (AP) – Shawn Duncan and his wife, Betty, moved to Grand Haven 14 years ago but kept their relationship under wraps for most of that year, fearing a small-town backlash to a traditionally conservative part of Michigan. “We knew if we wanted our company to thrive, we would just have to put aside the fact that we were together and married,” said Duncan, who is on a break from work. “We both had the same last name, so it was easy to say we were sisters.” But last weekend, surrounded by allies…
Standing shoulder-to-shoulder, working hard in freezing temperatures and shouting over machines contributed to high rates of COVID-19 infections in meatpacking plants, especially early in the pandemic. The federal agencies tasked with overseeing meat plants and their workers — the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of Labor — have failed to work together to protect workers' health, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Tuesday. The GAO recommended that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigate the risks associated with meat and poultry processing, particularly infectious diseases, and determine what actions are needed to better protect workers. The…
Three Oklahoma County Districts will have a new polling station next month.Those areas – all in Midwest City – are 550394, 550396 and 550406.Oklahoma County Board of Elections Clerk Doug Sanderson says the permanent change was made after a school district was no longer available to host an election.Sanderson said signs are pointing voters to the new The location will be visible in the old ones. The county will go one step further by issuing new voter ID cards to direct the approximately 6,000 registered voters to their new polling places.The new locations are as follows:Precinct 550394 will vote at…
While all attention is focused on the various rings in the national political Cirque du Folie, conditions in the country they keep going crazy. For example, the drought in the midwest is becoming something almost permanent, From the Missouri Independent:This part of Kansas is suffering from what the US Drought Observatory calls an extreme drought, its most severe category. While droughts often wreak havoc on agriculture here, residents face unprecedented challenges with drinking water supplies. Lacking the vast groundwater aquifers that lie beneath much of Kansas, this corner of the state relies heavily on surface water such as lakes and…
A conservative billionaire from Illinois with a history of funding candidates and groups seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election spent $450,000 on ads supporting Republican Attorney General Jeff Landry in the Louisiana gubernatorial race, state campaign records show. Richard “Dick” Uihlein is the financial backer of Iowa-based Americas PAC, which paid Kansas-based advertising firm VCreek $450,000 on Sept. 18 to produce and distribute media content supporting Landry, according to the political action committee campaign finance report. Landry is one of six major candidates and among four Republicans running in Saturday's primary for governor. “We believe Jeff Landry is the…
HARTFORD, SD — For more than a decade, the Midwest has been the site of bitter conflict over plans for thousands of miles of pipelines meant to carry crude oil under cornfields and cattle ranches.Now the high-dollar pipeline fights are happening again, but with a twist.Instead of oil, these projects would transport millions of tons of carbon dioxide from ethanol plants to be injected into underground rock formations instead of being dispersed as pollutants into the air.What's playing out is a very different kind of environmental battle, a huge test not just for farmers and landowners, but also for emerging…
CHICAGO (AP) — Donald Trump won the White House in 2016 by dismantling the famous electoral “blue wall”, wresting the Midwestern battleground states of Michigan and Wisconsin, along with Pennsylvania, from the Democrats. He lost the White House four years later when those same states turned to Joe Biden.Both parties have already reached out to the Midwest ahead of next year's presidential election, each choosing to hold their national conventions in the region. The Republicans will hold their event in July 2024 in Milwaukee, the largest city in the state of Wisconsin. Democrats announced Tuesday that they would be holding…
Several key COVID-19 trends that authorities are monitoring are now accelerating across the country, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Friday. It is the first major national increase in the spread of the virus seen in months.The biggest increases are in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic, the agency said in its weekly report. UPDATED Friday, although nearly all areas of the country are now seeing acceleration. Data reported by the agency from emergency rooms and effluent Sampling has seen some of the steepest increases so far this season in the area that covers Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and…