News from around the nation.

Trump to hold bilateral talks with President Xi Jinping on AI, Iran War, and more; Alabama voter: Supreme Court ruling 'devastating' for Black representation; California bills aim to protect Medi-Cal recipients from federal cuts; Water affordability concerns in Michigan fuel national policy push.

Transcript

The Public News Service Wednesday afternoon update.

I'm Mike Clifford.

President Donald Trump starts the day in Beijing with ceremony and then gets down to business with the first bilateral meeting with President Xi Jinping.

CNBC notes the high-stakes talks between the two leaders expected to cover tariffs, rare earths, AI, the Iran War, and Taiwan.

Experts are anticipating Trump and Xi may announce large Chinese orders of American planes and soybeans when the meetings are concluded.

Next, a plaintiff in the landmark Alabama redistricting case says she's devastated after the U.S.

Supreme Court cleared the way for the state to redraw congressional maps just days before the May 19th primary.

Archibald Gomes reports the Supreme Court's 63 order cited its recent ruling weakening the Voting Rights Act and vacated a lower court injunction that had blocked Alabama from changing the maps until the year 2030.

Letitia Daniels Jackson, one of the plaintiffs in Allen v.

Milligan, says the ruling interferes with an election already underway.

We're seeing in real time an interference with the current execution of a primary election, and I'm devastated by that because it seems that new rules are being written that actually overturns decades of precedent.

Jackson notes that military and absentee voters have already cast ballots. state officials defend the new map as lawful.

I'm Tramiel Gomes.

And health care advocates spoke out Tuesday in support of a series of bills designed to help people on Medi-Cal.

Nearly a trillion dollars in Medicaid cuts are expected over the next decade from the Trump administration's One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

The state estimates 1.4 million Californians will lose coverage by 2028, mostly due to increased work requirements and eligibility checks.

Assemblymember Lachey Sharp-Collins said the system is designed to save money by dropping Medi-Cal members tripped up by the paperwork.

So let's just call it what it is, a selfish, evil political choice.

They are choosing to strip health care away from millions of people to benefit the wealthy and the powerful.

Supporters of the cuts say they're necessary to fund other administration priorities like lower taxes for corporations and increased funding for immigration enforcement.

I'm Suzanne Potter.

In more than a decade after Detroit's water shutoff crisis left thousands of families without running water, Michigan lawmakers and advocates are again pushing for stronger affordability protections.

A new federal proposal backed by Michigan Congressman Rashida Tlaib would create a permanent water assistance program.

Zazmin Zarapur with PolicyLink, an organization working with Tlaib, shares findings from the EPA's latest report on water affordability.

Estimated that 30 to 48 million people in the United States live in households that face unaffordable water bills and we know that these numbers will increase for a variety of factors.

The proposal would create permanent water assistance through the Environmental Protection Agency for Struggling Households Nationwide.

This is Public News Service.

The Trump administration has finalized its rescission of the Bureau of Land Management's public lands rule.

Critics say the change weakens protections while prioritizing resource extraction from the country's public lands.

More than 130,000 comments were submitted during the comment period for rescinding the rule, of which nearly 98 percent were opposed to the change.

Alice Weston with the Oregon chapter of the Sierra Club says the BLM is ignoring the broad opposition.

People are saying they want their children to be able to recreate in these places to hunt, to fish, to go out on their bike, hike, camp, and enjoy clean water and clean air.

So these rules and these protections are something that help preserve our wild places for future generations.

The BLM manages more than 250 million acres of public land across the country, including nearly 25% of the total land in Oregon, largely east of the Cascades.

The Bureau states revoking the rule will restore balance to land management practices.

I'm Isobel Charle.

And a new analysis shows nearly half of young kids in the U.S. live in child care deserts.

In North Dakota, at least 14 counties meet less than 60 percent of the demand for child care.

The Center for American Progress says the gap is even higher in remote communities, creating a stark urban-rural divide.

Casey Peaks with the center says policymakers are rightfully focused on affordability issues, given child care costs are out of reach for most American families, but adds that's only part of the problem.

You can make child care free for every family living in a rural community tomorrow, but that's not going to solve the access piece.

We need to bring down the costs for families, but we also need to think about supply solutions.

Peek says inadequate staffing leads to program closures and results in less options and higher costs for families.

I'm Judith Ruiz-Branch reporting.

Finally, Connecticut ratepayers could lose out on major savings due to what some affordability advocates call a miscalculation by power provider Eversource.

An Acadia Center report finds the company is abandoning a multi-state 54-megawatt solar procurement plan, citing high development costs.

It also finds those contracts would potentially save ratepayers $80 million over the next 20 years.

Kate McAuliffe with the Acadia Center says Eversource has a double standard for solar projects, but not for its asset condition projects.

Those can amount to as much as $300 million in spending annually.

When you compare that to the annual cost of the solar project, it's pretty small.

And yet we're not hearing the same level of objections from the companies when they look to recover a cost of those asset condition projects.

These projects are mostly rebuilds of existing assets, making them a factor in Connecticut's high utility bills.

I'm Edwin J. Vieia.

This is Mike Clifford for Public News Service.

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