Six minutes of news from around the nation.

The Trump administration proposes significant changes to the U.S. Census; experts urge faith in Washington's mail-in voting amid legal battle and Wyoming teachers are hit with 13% 'pay penalty' in 2025.

TRANSCRIPT

The Public News Service Daily Newscast, September 10, 2026.

I'm Mike Clifford.

The Trump administration is now proposing significant changes to the U.S. census that would impact millions of residents who could be left out, resulting in the loss of congressional representation.

The Washington Post notes in the proposal posted to the Federal Register Wednesday, the Census Bureau suggested adding a citizenship question to the questionnaire, which President Donald Trump has wanted since his first term.

The proposal argues the census count should exclude any undocumented immigrants and non-citizens without permanent residency because they are not true inhabitants.

Meantime, Washington voting rights experts expect this year's state midterm elections to run smoothly, despite efforts by the Trump administration to make last-minute changes to the vote-by-mail system.

Washington led 24 other states to temporarily block the rule that would give the Postal Service new authority over ballots, a move the White House is appealing.

Sawyer McCraibb, with Fix Democracy First, calls Washingtonians lucky to live in a state that enshrines mail-in voting and says people should have faith in the system.

Be prepared to vote this electoral cycle.

If you want to vote by mail, that is still a safe and secure process.

Just be conscious of the delays that are there in the Postal Service and vote as soon as you get your ballot.

Don't wait on that.

McCrabb also encourages people to use ballot drop boxes in order to bypass any possible delays in the mail.

People can find their closest drop box and track their ballots at votewa.gov.

In its latest filing to the Supreme Court, the Trump administration claimed the new rule doesn't impede state authority to run elections, but instead imposes reasonable preparation requirements.

I'm Isobel Charle.

And in 2025, public school teachers in Wyoming earned 13 percent less than other workers with college degrees.

That's according to a new report, but that pay penalty was the third lowest among all 50 states.

Colorado posted the nation's top penalty where teachers earned 60 cents on the dollar.

Report author Sylvia Allegretto with the Center for Economic and Policy Research says as teacher pay falls further and further behind, many college graduates are considering other options.

So other careers that they could choose.

And I think it has a lot of issues for teacher retention and recruitment.

It's not a new problem.

It just keeps getting worse.

The average starting salary for teachers in Wyoming is just under $52,000 a year.

That's considerably less than the $96,000 a Wyoming worker with two kids needs to earn a living wage.

The average teacher pay penalty nationwide was 25%, more than six times higher than it was in 1996.

Over the past three decades, weekly wages for other college graduates rose by 30%, but teachers' wages fell by more than 6% when adjusted for inflation.

I'm Eric Galatas.

This is Public News Service.

As artificial intelligence chatbots become more popular, advocates for teens and young adults are concerned about a growing trend where young people use them for advice instead of reaching out to friends or family.

According to a report from Hope Lab, young people surveyed said they used AI for six different reasons, including not wanting to trauma dump their problems on others and viewing AI as an unbiased third party.

Davian Bush is a policy advocate and political science student at the University of Mississippi.

He says people his age feel that AI offers concrete advice, but he believes the information could potentially be dangerous.

When it comes to the privacy part of it, it's something that definitely has to be thought out.

Are these topics safe?

If something was declared an emergency or something that needs to be shared with authorities, as a therapist would when they get sensitive information, how would AI do that?

I'm Freda Ross reporting.

Next, some New Hampshire residents have filed a formal complaint against a group of Republican state lawmakers arguing their acceptance of an all-expense-paid trip to Israel last year was a violation of the state's ethics rules.

The group attended a conference entitled 50 States, One Israel, which included chartered flights, stays in luxury hotels, and meetings with Israeli government officials.

Sharon Rekusen with the NH Coalition for a Just Peace in the Middle East says a few miles from their location, Palestinians were being killed.

For them to just go there with blinders on and not think that anybody was going to say, wait a minute, there is some genocide going on and you're having a good time eating, drinking.

It's absolutely shocking.

Public News Service reached out to those listed in the complaint, including state representatives Robert Lynn and Joe Alexander and state senators Tim Lang and Kevin Abard.

In a written statement, Senator Lang said they respect the Legislative Ethics Committee's process and are confident the allegations have no legal merit.

I'm Katherine Carley.

Finally, driven by population growth and a decline and the number of students entering the medical field, Arizona is projected to have a shortage of 2,000 primary care physicians by the year 2030.

Arizona State University's new School of Medicine and Medical Engineering is aiming to close that gap by educating physicians in both medicine and technology.

The MD and Master's in Engineering program is a four-year dual-degree focus.

ASU's Dr. Holly Lissenby says, Curriculum creators took a deep look at how medicine and technology intersect.

Take an example like learning about the cardiovascular system, how our heart and blood vessels work.

The heart is a pump, and it's also an electrical system.

I'm Mark Moran.

This is Mike Clifford for Public News Service.

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