Six minutes of news from around the nation.

President Joe Biden considers 'pre-emptive' pardons for staff; SD libraries face stricter policies; GA trans activists face post-election struggles; AL taskforce tackles obesity crisis; MD fossil-fuel lobbyists fail to disclose activities; Midwest prime for wetlands loss; and ID joins lawsuit that could threaten access to public lands, critics say.

Transcript

The Public News Service Daily Newscast for December 9th.

I'm Edwin J. Vieira.

President Joe Biden is considering pardons for members of his staff and others who've been prominent critics of President-elect Donald Trump.

Trump is vowing revenge prosecution on people he feels have persecuted him.

Meanwhile, South Dakota librarians are implementing new policies for young readers in the new year, and they're expecting future challenges with the governor's proposed funding cuts for 2026.

Kathleen Shannon has more.

Both school and public libraries across the state are required to roll out new policies January 1st to restrict the access of obscene materials by minors, online and in print, with a new law passed this year.

On a South Dakota Humanities Council panel, Vermilion Public Library Director Dan Bernistin said, "Filters can be challenging, both because coders and programmers can get around them, and useful information can be filtered out."

If your filters are turned up high enough, when you aggressively filter, you can filter perfectly legitimate content too.

According to a 1973 US Supreme Court case, something legally obscene must meet three criteria.

It encourages excessive interest in sex, is patently offensive, and lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

The issue of transgender rights is back in the news after a recent Supreme Court hearing, and Donald Trump's re-election as president returns those legal and cultural issues to the national conversation.

Mark Richardson reports.

One Georgia-based transgender activist says she fears a new generation of Americans will have to join many of the same battles fought to gain LGBTQ rights.

Monica Helms transitioned to live as a woman in the 1990s, and says despite many victories over the years, she fears people who are different may always have to fight for acceptance.

It's always gonna be a battle.

They figure out one thing or another.

Trans people have targets on their back, and we've been around since the Roman times.

Helms says she knew as young as age six that she was a girl, but did not act on making a change in her life until after eight years in the US Navy.

Soon after, she formed the Transgender American Veterans Association.

She's also been an author and activist in the civil rights movement.

Alabama leaders are zeroing in on the state's obesity crisis, which now ranks seventh highest in the US, according to the CDC.

At a recent meeting, the Alabama Chronic Weight Management and Type 2 Diabetes Task Force reviewed decades of data showing obesity rates climbing from just 5 percent in the 1970s to over 35 percent today.

William Ashmore is CEO of the Alabama State Employees Insurance Board.

He says the state employee population is seeing even higher rates, around 40 percent.

We're an older population than the average group that's in the CDC information.

Also, just simply the type of jobs that we do as state employees, sitting behind a desk, it certainly leads to more problems with obesity, overweight, and so forth.

He says obesity is affecting not just individual health, but also straining Alabama's economy with rising healthcare costs, adding pressure to public budgets.

Shantia Hudson reporting.

This is Public News Service.

A new report says fossil fuel lobbyists in two states with strong transparency and disclosure laws are not making full disclosures, including in Maryland.

Simone Perez has that story.

Maryland ranks seventh in the country and gets a grade of C+ in the report from a group called F-Minus that tracks fossil fuel lobbying efforts across the US.

James Browning with F-Minus says Maryland has strong laws requiring lobbyists to disclose their salaries and the bills they're working on, but its audit found these disclosures are being made less than 50 percent of the time.

Browning says some lobbyists also appear to have major conflicts of interest.

What we also found is this rampant culture of lobbyists being sort of double agents for oil and gas companies at the same time they're working for climate-conscious institutions.

Browning points to Johns Hopkins University's lobbying firm actively opposing a climate bill on behalf of the American Petroleum Institute.

The lobbying firm did not disclose that conflict.

Minnesota is credited for having strong wetland protections, but the research community warns the growing presence of factory farms in the Midwest makes it harder to shield these natural resources.

Mike Mowen reports.

A new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists says 30 million acres of wetlands in the upper Midwest are at risk of destruction by industrial agriculture and other heavy industries.

The authors say the US Supreme Court's recent decision to strip some federal protections from wetlands accelerates the potential loss.

The union, Stacey Wood, says because of the role wetlands play in flood mitigation, states in this region are likely to have a harder time limiting damage from a major rain event.

We know that flooding is a significant issue.

It's expensive and it's getting worse as the climate warms.

While Minnesota's laws might help offset some of the federal impact, courts says neighboring states like South Dakota and Iowa are more vulnerable to wetland loss.

Advocates for public lands access are raising alarms about a lawsuit that could be heard by the US Supreme Court.

Eric Tegedorf has more.

Utah has filed a suit arguing the US Bureau of Land Management is holding about 18.5 million acres of land in the state unconstitutionally, saying it can't keep unappropriated land in perpetuity.

Idaho and 12 other states have joined the suit.

They say federally controlled land should be transferred to states, but head of the Idaho Wildlife Federation, Nick Fasciano, says that would be disastrous for public lands and the people who use them.

State ownership of land at this scale is a direct path of privatization.

State budgets do not have the capacity to manage land at enormous scale like this without selling it off.

Idaho has a constitutional mandate to maximize the financial return of the land under its management.

The US Justice Department said Utah's claims are without merit in a brief filed with the Supreme Court.

The BLM manages nearly 12 million acres of land in Idaho.

In total, there are more than 53 million acres of federally managed public land in the state.

The New York City Police Department is still searching for evidence in UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson's murder.

As police scour what clues they've gathered, it has been considered the suspect has fled the city.

I'm Edwin J. Vieira for Public News Service, member and listener supported.

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