News from around the nation.

Mail delivery slows; plan to restructure USPS faces opposition; USDA highlights federal investments in rural VA; Debby crawls towards Georgia; California consumer groups pan bill that 'repo man' would give a rave review; Youth 'Graffiti Jam' hits 10th year on Cheyenne River Reservation.

Transcript

The Public News Service Daily Newscast, August the 6th, 2024.

I'm Mike Clifford.

Criticism of a plan to restructure U.S. mail service is mounting.

Postmaster Louis DeJoy's 10-year plan called Delivering for America was announced back in 2021, but Eric Tegethorf explains it has kicked into high gear this year.

Intended to make the U.S. Postal Service more efficient and cut spending, the plan has involved moving mail through larger processing centers rather than smaller local ones.

Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley says that's led to a slowdown in mail delivery.

He has had a plan for getting rid of our regional sorting centers, downgrading them, which means that the mail from Bend and Medford and Eugene, basically all over the state, has to go just to Portland and be sorted there and then returned.

DeJoy has paused his consolidation of USPS centers through the end of the year, but says he will continue pursuing his Delivering for America plan.

He was appointed to the position of Postmaster General in 2020 during the Trump presidency by the Board of Governors of the USPS.

Meantime, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has narrowed her search for a vice president running mate to two finalists, that according to Reuters.

They report they are Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

That's according to three sources with knowledge of the matter.

Harris is expected to announce her selection today ahead of her first scheduled public appearance with her running mate this evening at Temple University in Philadelphia.

And the US Department of Agriculture is highlighting its investments in rural America with an event this week in Western Virginia.

The gathering will feature local leaders and businesses and discussions of how the federal government has supported them through recent spending packages like the Inflation Reduction Act.

Anthony Flacco Vento is a Virginia farmer and the executive director of the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative.

He says a lot of people living in cities might look at rural areas in a negative light.

The first big goal is to say to the broader media in the country, hey, we're not dead yet.

In fact, we're fighting back and having really effective, impactful work.

The stakeholders at this week's roundtable are involved in industries like food systems management, agroforestry and affordable housing.

Flacco Vento says the federal government has rapidly improved how it connects with and invests in smaller communities in the past few years.

Rural counties have grown in population since the pandemic after a decade long trend of decline.

I'm Will Wachey.

The federal government has invested billions of dollars in trying to spur economic growth in rural America.

And Debbie made landfall as a hurricane in the Big Bend of Florida Monday morning and is now crawling toward the Georgia coast.

That from CNN.

They report for the next few days Debbie now a tropical storm will dump historic levels of rain and bring catastrophic flooding.

This is Public News Service.

Next to California, where consumer groups are speaking out against legislation proposed in the state that would make it easier to repossess a car or other property.

By exempting repo agents from trespassing laws.

Assembly Bill 2120 would allow repo agents to seize vehicles parked on private property, such as a driveway.

Attorney John Van Ost with the National Consumer Law Center opposes the bill.

We see a number of folks killed, injured every year.

We see repossession agents and consumers hurt and killed.

We see children still in the car when it's repossessed.

The California Association of Licensed Repossessors argues that it is safer to seize a car from a person's home rather than leave them stranded in public.

I'm Suzanne Potter.

Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a similar bill, citing concerns about potential for abuse or altercations.

And a rather unique Native youth art festival just celebrated its 10th anniversary on the Cheyenne River reservation.

The Red Can Graffiti Jam is an art showcase set on the Eagle Butte campus of the Cheyenne River Youth Project, a Lakota youth advocacy organization founded in 1988.

This year's event featured hoop dancing, poetry reading, community meals, skateboard painting, and a rock band from Rapid City. 14 graffiti artists from across the world made nine murals in the campus's art park and the greater community.

Given the group's mission to provide opportunities for kids, its executive director Julie Garrow says the jam is about more than art.

You know, it's community development.

It is youth development.

I would also say it's like cultural reclamation.

I think it's language revitalization because we're using Lakota language on our walls.

I think it's also healing.

Garrow says the jam was designed as a one-time event a decade ago to improve decrepit buildings in town.

This story was produced with original reporting from Kate Mothis for Arts Midwest.

I'm Kathleen Shannon.

Finally from Eric Galatas, the U.S.

Surgeon General has declared a public health crisis of loneliness and social isolation.

But new Colorado State University research suggests Americans are pretty happy with the number of friends they have.

They just want to spend more time with them.

Researcher Natalie Pennington says she was eager to learn more about how interactions across a person's social network, from Facebook acquaintances to forever besties, can impact people's lives.

Understanding how over time, how changes in our relationships might affect our well-being, things like life satisfaction, loneliness, stress, connection, disconnection.

Researchers looked at three different surveys conducted by the American Friendship Project starting in 2022 and found 98 percent of respondents said they had at least one friend.

This is Mike Clifford for Public News Service, member and list of supported.

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