News from around the nation.

Trump dismisses the notion that Musk is in charge; KY public schools: Large employers who help meet community needs; A giant policy question mark lies before smaller, independent farms; Historic Iowa gravesites at risk of being forgotten.

Transcript

The Public News Service Wednesday afternoon update.

I'm Mike Clifford.

President-elect Donald Trump dismissed any suggestion that he's being usurped by his ally Elon Musk after a week in which the tech billionaire helped derail an emergency spending measure to avert a government shutdown.

That from NBC News.

The report Musk who owns the social media site X posted more than 100 times about his objections to the original spending bill.

Mockingly, Democrats have taken to calling him President Musk.

Trump spoke for more than an hour at Turning Point USA's America Fest conference.

Trump said the notion that he has ceded the presidency to Musk is untrue.

And on the heels of voters' overwhelming rejection of Amendment 2 in November, Kentucky public school employees are urging lawmakers to double down on funding for public education.

Custodial supervisor and bus driver in Mayfield, Matthew Powell, says well-funded public schools are the backbones of communities, especially in the aftermath of natural disasters.

Here in western Kentucky, we experienced a devastating tornado and it was our public schools that opened our doors to our families to come in and get their needs met.

A recent Kentucky Center for Economic Policy map shows 63 percent of the state's counties lack certified private schools.

Most are located in just 8 percent of the state's wealthiest zip codes.

Nadia Ramligan reporting.

According to data from the Pew Research Center, traditional public school enrollment across the nation has dipped slightly to about 45 million students in 2021, down from 47 million in 2011.

Next, from declining commodity prices to unpredictable weather, American farmers are at a crossroads, especially smaller operations.

And they're wondering what things will be like after President-elect Trump takes office.

Like it did in Trump's first term, the incoming administration is poised to revive trade disputes by implementing tariffs.

Analysts say the first go-round had a negative effect on farmers with agricultural exports suffering $27 billion in losses.

Emergency aid was approved, but observers say larger agribusinesses were prioritized too much.

Ben Lilliston of the Minnesota-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy wonders if similar patterns will emerge.

That definitely is a concern because we've seen consolidation in farmland.

We're losing farmers, particularly losing small and mid-sized farmers.

And this would be just another advantage for the largest operators.

I'm Mike Mowen.

And some 1,300 gravesites at southwest Iowa's Glenwood Resource Center are at risk of becoming victims of history.

Amid mounting abuse obligations, the state closed the facility last year.

Former residents worry the tombstones.

Former resident Brady Werger says losing track of the gravesites is losing an important link to Iowa's past and the people who lived and died there.

You know, why can't we pull those records on who's buried here and get them tombstones with their names on it?

According to a report from KFF Health News, some of the gravesites at risk date back to the 1800s.

This is Public News Service.

We head next to Arizona, a state that could be doing more to improve conservation policy.

That's according to a new report by the Center for Western Priorities.

The center's Rachel Hamby says its latest scorecard looks at three categories, land protection and access, responsible energy development, and land use and planning for growth.

She says Arizona fares well on protecting public land access, but should do better in growing support for public land conservation and foster stewardship of natural resources as the state's population grows.

In any of the benchmarks that we looked at in the scorecard, any state can find another western state that's doing well, that provides a successful model that they could learn from as they're trying to address a policy area where maybe they had room to improve.

Hamby says western states have a lot in common when it comes to the unique landscapes and conservation challenges they face.

But during the latest legislative session, Arizona lawmakers passed various anti-public land resolutions, which oppose the 30 by 30 initiative, which aims to protect 30 percent of the earth's lands and waters by 2030.

I'm Alex Gonzalez reporting.

And school bus transportation challenges are impacting one central Indiana community.

Bus driver shortages and late arrivals to school have also been documented by the education advocacy group Rise Indy.

The organization says data show a correlation between these transportation hiccups and student outcomes and educational equity.

Catherine Shee with Rise Indy says some Indianapolis public school students are facing, quote, a literacy crisis. 71 percent of Marion County students, grades three through eight, are performing below grade level in literacy.

If there was an innovative way for them to get to school, then they can attend school regularly and gain the skills they need to succeed, including learning to read.

I'm Terry Dee reporting.

Meantime, Dallas is one of a handful of cities across the U.S. with an ordinance to protect renters from extreme summer heat caused by climate change.

In 2017, the city passed an ordinance requiring landlords to provide air conditioning to their tenants.

The city's Rosanna Sochik says while the move is rare, it's gaining momentum.

It is becoming more and more popular, especially in the bigger cities.

And, you know, with these recent heat waves, I have had people even like reaching out from even as far as like London, England, who are just now trying to implement that same policy in their city because they have people dying, you know, during the heat waves.

She says the ordinance requires landlords to provide A.C. units that keep apartments 15 degrees cooler than the outside temperature.

I'm Freda Ross reporting.

This story was produced with original reporting from Isabel Kemp for Smart Cities Dive.

This is Mike Clifford.

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