Six minutes of news from around the nation.

Blizzard Warnings Ongoing From Major Winter Storm As It Hauls Snow, Ice Toward Midwest and Mid-Atlantic; USPS could have a devastating effect on rural KY; Native health care, voting rights top issues to watch during MT's 2025 legislative session; Operation Good: Tackling violence with a community-first approach in Jackson.

Transcript

The Public News Service Daily Newscast, January the 6th, 2025.

I'm Mike Clifford.

It's called Winter Storm Blair and it's prompted blizzard and winter storm warnings for millions as it continues to spread heavy snow and ice from the plains to the Midwest and mid-Atlantic through Monday.

Travel likely will be stalled across multiple states and icing could be heavy enough to damage trees and knock out power, that for the weather channel.

They report blizzard warnings are in effect for parts of the central plains, including the Kansas City metro area and Wichita and Topeka, Kansas.

We head next to Montana where the 69th legislative session begins today.

Advocates for the state's native population will be at the Capitol tracking bills ranging from paid sick leave to Indian language in education.

Two key issues the Indigenous Advocacy Organization Western Native Voice will focus on this session are health care and voting access.

A bill to ensure every reservation has a satellite voting office failed in 2021.

Keaton Sunchild with the organization says that the Native American Voting Rights Act will be brought again this year.

He says long distances and difficulty registering with tribal IDs are some of the biggest barriers Native Americans face in voting.

For me living in Great Falls, it's a five-minute drive at most to the elections office if something went wrong.

You know, for somebody being on the Fort Peck reservation, that could be a two-hour drive one way.

In 2024, Montana's Supreme Court ruled that two voting bills were unconstitutional and disproportionately affected Native people.

One would have ended election day registration and the second would have outlawed paid third-party ballot assistance.

I'm Kathleen Shannon.

And the Trump administration and some House Republicans, including Kentucky Representative James Comer, have floated the idea of privatizing the U.S. Postal Service.

Tyler Offerman with the Kentucky Equal Justice Center says privatization would eliminate essential infrastructure in rural counties, noting 54 of the Commonwealth's 120 counties are entirely rural with no urban center.

Many parts of Kentucky are not profitable based on some of these companies' business models and they're considered expendable.

USPS saw $1.8 billion in controllable losses in fiscal year 2024, compared to more than $2 billion the prior year, according to the agency.

Supporters of privatization argue mail volume is dwindling and the agency has lost billions of dollars over the past decade.

Similar to how the decline in rural Kentucky hospitals has forced people to travel farther or skip medical care, Offerman points out the state's most vulnerable people would have to travel farther for mail service or go without timely delivery and access to information they need to make ends meet.

Nadia Ramligan reporting.

This is Public News Service.

Next to Jackson where violent crime rates have historically been high, a local organization called Operation Good is taking a proactive community-driven approach by reducing violence without relying solely on law enforcement.

Frederick Womack, better known as Gino, serves as the group's executive director, focusing on violence intervention, mediation and mentoring to address the root causes of crime in Mississippi's capital city.

In one recent case where homicide was involved, Womack intervened in a potential retaliation killing.

Personally, killing someone for revenge is a never-ending cycle.

After we talked to the people involved and the person who were involved in the homicide, I think they ended up, you know, turning stuff in.

So that pretty much stopped retaliation killing in Jackson.

Womack says violent crime in Jackson has dropped 38 percent based on early December data and reports a steady decline year over year since Operation Good began its community interventions.

I'm Tramiel Gomes.

Next up, the Biden administration is taking another step to protect Northeast Nevada's Ruby Mountains by putting them temporarily off limits to oil, gas and geothermal development.

The U.S. Forest Service submitted the petition and application to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.

If approved, it would initiate a two-year halt on new oil, gas and geothermal development on about 264,000 acres.

Mining and commercial operations would continue.

Russell Coleman with the Nevada Wildlife Federation says this mandatory pause would help researchers determine why wildlife populations like mule deer, bighorn sheep and sage grouse have been declining in the region.

That is what, in my opinion, is textbook sound scientific wildlife management.

The first step you need to do is limit variables.

And one of those variables over the last five or ten years has been the threat of oil and gas companies wanting to do exploratory drilling.

I'm Alex Gonzalez reporting.

Finally, Wisconsin is the first state in the country to run its conservation programs by county rather than by district.

Matt Kruger heads the Wisconsin Land and Water Conservation Association, which represents all 72 counties across the state.

He explains the county conservation model is unique to Wisconsin.

It allows for more diverse funding opportunities and speaks to the state's innovative DNA.

Wisconsin has a long history of being an innovator in many different topics, you know, politically, but with conservation, too.

Everybody's heard of Aldo Leopold, of course, and John Muir and Gaylord Nelson.

And we have this rich history of conservation in the state.

I'm Judith Ruiz Branch reporting.

This is Mike Clifford.

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