News from around the nation.

Special Counsel report: Trump would have been convicted in election case; Dangerous winds return to Los Angeles area, threatening to fan deadly flames; Georgia church creates solar-powered emergency hub with federal climate funds; Environmental groups call for vinyl chloride ban; Tipped wages to be phased out in MI next month, but not without a fight.

Transcript

The Public News Service Tuesday afternoon update.

I'm Mike Clifford.

Jack Smith, the special counsel who indicted President-elect Donald J. Trump on charges of illegally seeking to cling to power after losing the 2020 election, said in a final report released early today the evidence would have been sufficient to convict Trump in a trial had his 2024 election victory not made it impossible for the prosecution to continue.

That's the New York Times.

The Times notes that in his report, Smith took Trump to task not only for his efforts to reverse the results of a free and fair election, but also for consistently encouraging violence against his perceived opponents.

Next from CNN, firefighters are facing challenging conditions in their battle against the Los Angeles wildfires, with powerful winds forecast over the next 24 hours that could cause extreme fire behavior in the blazes or turn any new spark into a raging inferno.

Next to Atlanta, where a local church is stepping up to keep the lights on and support its community during climate emergencies.

The Community Church of Atlanta has been serving its neighbors through weekly food pantries, blood drives and low-cost health checks.

Now with the new Vickers Community Center, Pastor Kevin Early says they'll be able to provide critical emergency services for those without a backup plan when disaster strikes.

We will be able to keep that building open for several weeks, even if it's out in the homes of our neighbors, giving them a chance to come and charge their cell phones, receive communications from the city and abroad, refrigerate breast milk and medication food and water.

Shantia Hudson reporting.

This story was produced with original reporting from Yesenia Funes with NextCity and Yale Climate Connections.

Meantime, environmental groups are calling for a ban on vinyl chloride, just one of more than 16,000 toxic chemicals used to manufacture plastic.

The EPA is currently considering tightening regulations on the chemical, but the president of the non-profit Beyond Plastics, Judith Ink, says there is no safe level of exposure to vinyl chloride, which has been linked to various cancers.

Chemicals like PFAS, the whole family, vinyl chloride, heavy metals should not be in packaging, particularly food and beverage packaging and baby food packaging.

I'm Catherine Carley.

And Michigan's tipped wage system is on the brink of extinction, with changes set to take effect next month after a state Supreme Court ruling last year mandated higher wages for tip-reliant workers.

Justin Winslow, president and CEO of the Michigan Restaurant Launching Association, says this almost 250 percent increase in the wages of tipped workers would be catastrophic.

You add that difficult environment to this new policy and you have a recipe for the loss of 60,000 restaurant jobs in Michigan and the closure of one in five full-service sit-down restaurants in Michigan.

The ruling will eliminate tipped wages below minimum wage and raise the state's minimum wage to more than $12 per hour.

This is public news service.

Next, a California non-profit dedicated to helping transgender and gender non-conforming people find good jobs is looking to expand its mission in 2025, back from the brink of closure last year.

Trans Can Work, based in Los Angeles, shut down last January when its funding fell through and reopened in June thanks to a three-year grant from the James Irvine Foundation.

Board Chair Tony Newman says the trans community suffers from extremely high rates of unemployment.

Every American, regardless of who they are, race, age and gender, should be able to get a job in America that they're qualified for and have some type of economic security.

Why are our numbers so high at 65 percent, living at the poverty level or below?

Just because we're different, that's un-American and it's wrong.

A 2021 study from the McKinsey Company found that transgender adults are twice as likely as their cisgender peers to be unemployed.

I'm Suzanne Potter.

And as the popular role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons turns 50, one Colorado State University instructor suggests today's political leaders could learn a lot by rolling the dice.

James Fielder calls the game a master class in political strategy, covering everything from diplomacy to alliance forming to conflict resolution.

Fielder says players have to work together to achieve a goal.

If you're at odds with each other, you don't achieve anything.

So the lesson is that we're learning to negotiate in order to overcome a challenge.

And that lesson sticks.

You come out of the table, "Oh, I learned how to negotiate with other people and we overcame a challenge."

It worked.

A former Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, Fielder has more than two decades of experience designing war games and training exercises.

He says role-playing is not just child's play.

I'm Eric Galatas.

Finally, a coalition of Montana groups will rally at the Capitol on Wednesday to advocate for the protection of Medicaid expansion, which legislators will debate this session before the program scheduled expiration in June.

The state's 10-year-old Medicaid expansion program covers 75,000 low-income Montanans at an annual cost of about $1 billion, according to KFF Health News.

The state picks up about 10 percent of the tap.

Kristen Stewart is an organizer for the advocacy group Big Sky 55 Plus and a caregiver who is enrolled in Medicaid herself.

Many Medicaid enrollees do work, but Stewart says that work is often undervalued.

Medicaid supports a lot of people who are doing unpaid work, things that were to monetize, you would see an economic boost from their production level, often more than the cost of their care.

The Gianforte administration already tightened eligibility for the program, cutting the number of enrollees by nearly 40 percent between May 2023 and October 2024.

I'm Kathleen Shannon.

This is Mike Clifford for Public News Service, remember endlessly supported.

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