News from around the nation.

Texas League of Women Voters participates in National Voter Registration Day; Trump's golf outings have long concerned Secret Service; Palm Beach County schools tackle post-pandemic chronic absenteeism; College students press Israeli divestment campaign as the school year begins.

Transcript

The Public News Service Daily Newscast, September the 17th, 2024.

I'm Mike Clifford.

Today is National Voter Registration Day and volunteers with the Nonpartisan League of Women Voters are holding voter registration events around the states, libraries, school campuses, and churches.

League of Women Voters of Texas President, Joyce Leigh Bombard, says the organization has seen an increase in interest in the presidential race on both sides now that the Democratic ticket has changed.

She adds voters should also pay attention to other races.

In presidential race years, there is always more excitement than on non-presidential races, but I think people need to remember that all elections are important.

And what's really important is those down ballot races, those races that impact your community directly.

Leigh Bombard says if you are already registered to vote, now is a good time to check your voter registration status.

Texas has removed more than a million voters from the rolls since 2021.

I'm Freda Ross reporting.

The deadline to register to vote for the November 5th election in Texas is October the 7th.

Next, from the Washington Post, soon after Donald Trump became president, authorities tried to warn him about the risks posed by golfing at its own courses because of their proximity to public roads.

Secret service agents came armed with unusual evidence, not suspect profiles or bullet casings, but simple photographs taken by news crews of him golfing at his club in Sterling, Virginia.

The Post reports, they reasoned that if photographers with long-range lenses could get the president in their sights while he golfed, so too could a potential gunman.

But Trump insisted his clubs were safe and that he wanted to keep golfing, the former officials said.

And Palm Beach County schools are working to curb chronic absenteeism, which has surged since the pandemic.

Nearly 39 percent of Palm Beach County students missed 11 or more days of school last year.

The district's chief equity and wellness, Keith Oswald, says families often face a combination of challenges that trigger absences, so the district uses a variety of strategies, including sending notifications to parents when students hit five, 10, or 20 missed school days.

I would say the more common where we see the 10 to 20 day range, I think it's a bad habits that we picked up from COVID of not coming to school, that's stuck.

So thinking that I could just miss a day or two a month is not a big deal, but really trying to educate people that it is a big deal.

The 2024 Annie E.

Casey Foundation Kids Count Data Book revealed chronic absenteeism nearly doubled nationwide after the pandemic, with 30 percent of students missing significant amounts of school.

I'm Tramell Gomes.

According to the Florida Department of Education, the statewide average of kids missing 21 or more days of school has modestly improved.

This is Public News Service.

As college anti-war protests enter a second school year, students are maintaining pressure on administrators to cut all financial ties with the Israeli government.

Students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and an end to all weapons research funded by Israeli defense contractor, Elbit.

Recent MIT graduate, Andrew Feldman, who is Jewish, says it's important for people of conscience to speak out against the war.

We're gonna keep working, and we hope that institutions will start to recognize this terrible genocide and war crimes that Israel's committing on the Palestinians.

Feldman says MIT should also end partnerships with Maersk, a shipping and logistics company critical to the Israeli war effort.

MIT students celebrated the recent closure of an industry-backed fund for weapons research as a win, but MIT officials maintain the fund was already due to expire.

I'm Catherine Carley reporting.

Continued student protests at Brown University in neighboring Rhode Island convinced administrators to bring a divestment proposal to a vote at the Brown Corporation's board meeting next month.

And a new report shows Connecticut's post-pandemic job growth lags behind the rest of the nation.

The State of Working Connecticut report finds personal income, gross domestic product, and job growth are all falling behind the US.

Though low-wage workers saw significant wage growth that helped with their cost of living, post-pandemic inflation has eroded those gains.

Report author Patrick O'Brien with Connecticut Voices for Children says one reason for the state's slow job growth is its overall unaffordability.

You need to make the state more affordable for families to stay here and grow here and for also some families to move here and so you can think about, you know, addressing affordable housing, affordable childcare, child tax credit, those type of things that make it just more affordable for families to live in the state.

Slower economic growth can be attributed to the lagging recovery of public sector jobs, which plummeted around the start of the pandemic.

But nationwide, these jobs hit pre-pandemic levels around mid-2022.

Connecticut is close to the national average but hasn't reached pre-pandemic levels.

I'm Edwin J. Vieira.

Finally, our Eric Tegethoff lets us know that Colorado's second largest electricity provider, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, projects the new federal clean energy funding will lower cost to rate payers by $420 million over the next 20 years.

Jeremy Fisher with the Sierra Club says many urban customers are already benefiting from less costly wind and solar power that is largely generated in wide open rural spaces.

And while that can be great for jobs and has been fantastic economic development opportunities, a lot of rural customers haven't actually seen those direct benefits accrue to their bills.

Tri-State is one of 16 rural electric cooperatives selected to get a chunk of over $7 billion allocated through the Biden administration's Empowering Rural America program.

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

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