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Maryland residents are worried about data centers.

In Prince George’s County, primary candidates with little statewide name recognition are drawing crowds to town halls. In Montgomery County, the data center debate divides the three leading candidates for county executive. The windowless buildings powering digital infrastructure and artificial intelligence have become central to the political debate in both counties and across Maryland, shaping the primaries in a way they hadn’t before. 

Across the country the proliferation of hyperscale data centers — often as large as a shopping mall — in local communities has led to mounting resistance. A recent Gallup poll showed that seven in ten Americans oppose AI data centers being constructed in their communities. The issue has become so resonant that President Donald Trump, who initially passed executive orders to remove barriers to federal permitting, recently convened leaders in tech and politics to sign a pledge to not pass certain data center costs to local residents. 

But the issue is fundamentally local, and resonates in the D.C. region — Northern Virginia is said to have the largest concentration of data centers in the world. And though Montgomery and Prince George’s counties don’t currently host any large data centers, the prospect of hyperscale development combined with rising electricity bills and concerns about environmental impacts, has turned the industry into a top voting issue.

Maryland’s candidates now regularly point to the “irresponsible” buildout of data centers across the Potomac as part of their stump speeches on the issue. 

Residents’ concerns fall into roughly three categories:

The first is environmental. Data centers consume enormous amounts of water and electricity, and proposed projects near the Potomac River, which supplies the bulk of the region’s drinking water, have drawn warnings from ecologists about heated discharge, algae blooms, and increasing pressure on already stressed habitats.

The second is economic. Energy bills are climbing across the region, and voters are increasingly vocal about the fear that residential ratepayers will end up subsidizing the grid upgrades needed to serve hyperscale industrial customers.

The third is more ideological. A growing subset of left-leaning voters in Prince George’s County view AI data centers as the physical infrastructure that supports a surveillance economy and unchecked tech billionaire wealth. The Party for Socialism and Liberation, which is active in the county, has gained membership specifically around opposition to the facilities.

Most sitting officials have stopped short of fully opposing data centers. But several newer candidates have built their platforms on opposition. Laura Gilchrest and Noah Waters, both running for at-large seats on the Prince George’s County Council, are among them. 

The topic has become so sticky that some candidates are hosting events and town halls around the issue of data centers and people, who normally would not come out just to meet the candidate, are coming out to meet them because of the issue. For example, Quincy Bareebe who is running for Congress in Maryland’s 5th District, is using that strategy. Her team boasts about hosting a data center town hall and strategy session that brought out more than 100 residents.

Even candidates who support data center development are treading carefully on the issue.

The Montgomery County executive race features a spectrum of data center opinions among established candidates. At-Large Councilmember Evan Glass has introduced legislation for a six-month pause; meanwhile At-Large Councilmember Will Jawando has introduced legislation for a two-year pause. District 1 Councilmember Andrew Friedson does not believe a development pause is needed, and instead emphasizes the importance of safeguards.

Many residents are also calling for a moratorium, saying they want transparency and binding protections.

Prince George’s and Montgomery Counties both have existing proposals for large-scale data centers going through the permitting process. Some residents have objected to the centers, saying the deals were struck with little to no community input. They also lament the prospect that public dollars or ratepayer subsidies could underwrite some of the world’s largest companies.

Stacey Hartwell, an advisor for the South County Environmental Justice Coalition who served on the Prince George’s County data center task force, said the politics of the issue have shifted as those frustrations have compounded.

“We are connecting data centers to these bigger concerns about accountability, governance, and environmental justice,” Hartwell said. “And people are starting to say that the only way to address these issues with data centers now is with our vote, about who is representing us in office.”

The pull in the other direction is budget pressure. Multiple Maryland jurisdictions are facing budget deficits. Montgomery County raised taxes during an election cycle, with some cuts to funding for building upgrades. Prince George’s County has proposed cuts to some specialized programs.

Compounding the squeeze is the loss of thousands of federal jobs and grants across the region, a major hit to local tax bases.

Officials say that the tens of millions of dollars in potential tax revenue from data center development could be a way to offset some of that lost revenue, if they negotiate properly.

The industry has also become a significant force in Maryland political fundraising. Developers, utility companies and Amazon, one of the most aggressive data center operators in the region, are among the top business donors to political candidates in the state, giving hundreds of thousands of dollars in this election cycle alone. 

How these races turn out will offer an early signal of whether data center opposition can move from organizing energy into electoral results, and how much room elected officials still have to court an industry that voters view with increasing skepticism.

The post Maryland voters view massive data centers with skepticism. Candidates are taking notice appeared first on WAMU.

Here are some of the stories WAMU is following this week:

Public safety and crime will be at the top of many D.C. voters’ concerns as they head to the ballot box next month for the mayoral primary election. Frontrunners Kenyan McDuffie, a former at-large councilmember, and Ward 4 Councilmember Janeese Lewis George appear to be at odds when it comes to the issue of policing. At a debate last month, McDuffie proposed hiring 1,000 more officers to the ranks of the Metropolitan Police Department. He also challenged Lewis George’s record on crime, noting she did not vote for the major crime packages in 2023 and 2024. Lewis George has advocated for more progressive approaches to police reform, like moving funding away from MPD and calling for other agencies to pick up work like traffic enforcement.

However, activists and politicos say that there’s less distance between them on the issue than would appear. Markus Batchelor, an activist based in Ward 8, says the distance between them is “inches” and not miles. 

“I think you see in both Janeese and Kenyon, kind of a deep penchant for reform when it comes to the public safety perspective,” he explains.

WAMU’s D.C. politics reporter Alex Koma will present a fuller review of the role conversations around public safety are playing in the last stretch of the mayor’s race. His voter guide on the race will also be popping up on WAMU.org later this week, so keep an eye out for that. Plus, WAMU’s Sarah Y. Kim is covering another aspect of public safety in the city this week. While many D.C. residents are calling for youth curfews, she was wondering how kids 18 and under in Wards 7 and 8, some of the more heavily policed areas of the region, are feeling. They’ll tell their side of the story on “Voices of Wards 7 and 8.”

On an adjacent public policy front, Virginia has been pushing different ways of addressing the opioid crisis and overdose deaths. There was a 50% decrease in opioid overdose deaths in the commonwealth between October 2024 and October 2025, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Public health experts say this is thanks to a confluence of different approaches to treatment and care. One major factor is the wider availability of overdose reversal medicines like Naloxone — especially in schools. Another is the expansion of substance abuse treatment options.

Daryl Washington, the Commissioner of the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services, saw the impact of the opioid crisis firsthand. 

“I lived in Fairfax County and my daughter went to Fairfax County public schools and one of her classmates died of an opioid overdose. So it happens everywhere in our communities.”

He argues that kind of awareness has helped push policy forward. He’ll break down the numbers and the impact more on this week’s Health Hub.

Finally, as the Memorial Day long weekend approaches, WAMU wants to share recommendations on how to spend these last weekends of spring. WAMU’s Matt Blitz will run through a list of recommended day trips — most around 90 minutes by car from D.C. —  to quirky museums and dinosaur-themed parks to fill your agenda, as part of Get Out There.

The post WAMU’s Week Ahead: Public safety in the D.C. mayor’s race, Virginia’s push to lower opioid overdoses and Memorial Day day trips appeared first on WAMU.

It’s been more than two weeks since the Supreme Court made the decision to weaken a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. That piece of the legislation protected minority voters from discrimination in elections. Now, that ruling has invoked a new wave of calls to reform the court.

In the last installment of our “If You Can Keep It” series, we discussed what those reforms might look like, from expanding the size of the bench, to restricting the shadow docket.

Our listeners had so many thoughts on whether and how to reform the court that we decided to return to that conversation to talk more about what’s possible and answer more questions.

So, what happens when the Supreme Court loses credibility among a large swath of the country? And how can the court get it back when partisanship on the bench has become the expectation?

The post If You Can Keep It: Reforming the Supreme Court, part 2 appeared first on WAMU.

For years, cybersecurity advice focused on the same basic defenses. Use strong passwords. Don’t click suspicious links. Enable two-factor authentication.

But what happens when the threat no longer looks suspicious? When the attack is built not around malicious code, but around ordinary human interaction? The routines we trust. The prompts we click through. The video calls and digital workflows that now shape modern life. 

Our Cyber Monday series continues with a look at how cyberattacks aren’t just targeting our computers anymore. They’re targeting us.

The post Cyber Monday: A crypto crime case study appeared first on WAMU.

Crowds of people gathered on the National Mall on Sunday for a conservative prayer gathering as part of a commemoration of America’s 250 birthday, which included praise and worship songs, prayers by religious leaders and speeches by members of the Trump administration.

The event was promoted as a gathering to “give thanks for God’s providence, reflect on our nation’s story, and rededicate America as One Nation under God.” It was organized by Freedom 250, a public-private group working with the White House to organize the celebration of America’s 250 birthday this summer.

Of the 19 faith leaders that were scheduled to speak, 18 are Christian, and most are evangelical. White House faith office senior adviser Paula White-Cain, the Rev. Franklin Graham and Bishop Robert Barron, who leads the Diocese of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, were among the leaders. Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, who leads Congregation Shearith Israel in New York City and serves on Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission, is the only non-Christian religious leader who spoke at the gathering.

President Trump, who was golfing on Sunday afternoon, did not attend the event. Trump delivered a video message reading the Biblical scripture 2 Chronicles 7:11-22, which details God’s response to King Solomon after he completed the temple in Jerusalem.

Trump administration officials including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio also spoke in video messages.

Congressional lawmakers, including Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, also spoke at the gathering. House Speaker Mike Johnson led the crowd through a prayer, asking God for courage and favor to “preserve this republic” and saying “our rights do not derive from the government, they come from You, our Creator and heavenly Father.”

Chris Tomlin, a Grammy-winning Christian musician, performed at the event.

The event has been criticized as promoting Christian nationalism and obscuring the lines separating church and state. Interfaith Alliance, a national coalition of various faiths, on Thursday night projected messages supporting religious freedom onto the National Gallery of Art.

“Trump’s ‘Rededicate 250’ rally on the National Mall is an attempt to turn the United States into an authoritarian theocracy,” the group wrote in a social media post.

Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said it is “less a ‘Jubilee of Prayer’ than a ‘Jubilee of Christian Nationalism.'”

“If President Trump and his allies truly cared about America’s legacy of religious freedom, they would be celebrating church-state separation as the unique American invention that has allowed religious diversity to flourish in our country,” Laser said in a statement. “Instead, they continue to threaten this foundational principle by advancing a Christian Nationalist crusade to impose one narrow version of Christianity on all Americans.”

Kathryn Post and Yonat Shimron contributed to this report.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State is a financial supporter of NPR.

The post Trump and administration officials address Christian gathering on National Mall appeared first on WAMU.

Alexandria Diggs, the  former educator behind Lou’s Buns, always had big dreams for her cinnamon bun business. 

Diggs was teaching abroad in China when the COVID-19 pandemic forced her to come back home to continue teaching in Washington D.C. She began baking in her kitchen at night, crafting the distinctive flavors she’s known for such as sweet “buntato” or “bunfeti”.

Alexandria’s sister and father helped her distribute cinnamon buns throughout the community, going to barbershops, car dealerships, and HBCU homecomings. Six years later, Alexandria’s grassroots beginning has manifested into a thriving brick and mortar store in L’Enfant Plaza. 

She has also built partnerships with the Eaton Hotel and the Marion Barry Summer Youth Employment Program. And this spring, Lou’s Buns became available to suite holders at Nationals Park for this baseball season. 

WAMU’s All Things Considered host Tamika Smith sat down with Alexandria to discuss her origin story, the magic behind her recipes, and the future of Lou’s Buns. 

Alexandria, we have to start with the name. Where did Lou come from in Lou’s buns?

Since I was a baby, my mother called me Stinkaloo, and she calls me Lou for short. So when I got home from China, and I saw my mom for the first time in maybe like six months, she said, “Hey, Lou.” And I hadn’t heard her call me that in a very long time. I had a vision, and I saw Lou’s Buns. My mother’s name is Letitia, and I saw that L, and I knew I wanted to name it Lou’s buns. So the name is an homage to my mother.

Beautiful. Talk a little bit about how the community helped you get here. 

I would say the community has definitely supported us in an unwavering way. When I started Lou’s Buns I was still teaching. So I would go to work before-care, after-care, I did it all. Then I would take a nap for two [or] three hours, eat something and then go to the kitchen with my younger sister. We would bake cinnamon buns and then her and my father would get up the next day to go sell those cinnamon buns. It was barbershops, hair salons, and car dealerships. We also had homecoming tours. So we would drive to different homecomings in the area that we could reach. Morgan State showed us so much love. And then we did Howard University. 

So you literally went from the kitchen to the major leagues, with a partnership with the Nationals and owning a brick and mortar shop in LaFont Plaza. How challenging was that transition?  

I have always been a businesswoman. I grew up seeing entrepreneurship. I just feel like it was always in me. Of course there were challenging times, there were times that I thought I was gonna quit but my father and my mother was like, you’re not about to quit. 

Lou’s Buns has some very bold flavors outside of just cinnamon buns. You have some really unique ones like upside down pineapple or cookies and cream. How are your recipes influenced by your upbringing in DC?

I was born and raised in D.C., my dad was born and raised in D.C., but my mother, her family is from Mississippi originally. Growing up with both of my parents, they both had different styles of cooking. My mom was a baker, so people would ask her to bake red velvet cakes, which is where the red velvet cinnamon bun comes from because I’ve seen my mom make red velvet cake. The year-round flavors are the sweet bun-tato, the red-velvet classic and bun-fetti, and then we have weekly specials.

Oh my God, okay, so I feel like when I taste a chef’s food, whatever they’re making, I get to learn a little bit about them, their influences. Tell us what you want us to know about you. 

I want you to know that, number one, I’m loving, caring, and I’m gonna put that love and care into my product. I want you to know that I’m selfless. I put other people before myself, and it’s just my character. And I want you to know I love God. I would say those are the things I want people to know.

Lou’s Buns is available at L’enfant Plaza Monday through Friday from 8am to 6pm and Saturday 10am to 4pm. They are also at Old Town Farmer’s Market every Saturday from 7am to noon.

The post D.C. native behind Lou’s Buns goes from home kitchen to the major leagues appeared first on WAMU.

In the 1930s, Midge Williams was a familiar black singer on the New York club scene but is rarely recalled today. This week, on Hot Jazz Saturday Night, we feature some of her recordings including rare titles made in Japan in 1934.

The post Hot Jazz Saturday Night: May 16, 2026 appeared first on WAMU.

After months as the main roadblock, it appears Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson is softening his position on redistricting. The recent Supreme Court decision weakening the Voting Rights Act and Maryland Governor Wes Moore notably leaving Ferguson off his list of political endorsements appear to be two big factors. WAMU’s Maryland reporter Jenny Abamu gets behind the mic to tell us about what she’s hearing from lawmakers about Maryland redistricting.

Virginia Democrats are throwing a Hail Mary in hopes of saving their redistricting efforts. On Monday, they asked the U.S. Supreme Court for an emergency injunction and for an order overturning the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision to throw out redrawn congressional maps. We ask Virginia Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell where the last-ditch effort stands, what comes next, and why Democrats remain optimistic about the midterms.  Plus, we get the Virginia Democratic leader’s thoughts on Governor Abigail Spanberger’s veto of a collective bargaining bill.

Homelessness is on the rise in the District, according to a new city report, with advocates blaming human services program cuts and the aggressive clearing of encampments. Some fear that further slashing proposed in this year’s budget could lead to an even greater increase in homelessness. We ask Ward 3 D.C. Councilmember and chair of the Human Services Committee Matt Frumin what the council is doing to help city residents most at-risk. Plus, we talk with him about how his ward could decide the city’s mayoral race and the deepening crisis in the Metropolitan Police Department.

Sorting political fact from fiction, and having fun while we’re at it. Join us for our weekly review of the politics, policies, and personalities of the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia at 12 p.m. on Friday.

Produced by Matt Blitz

Tom Sherwood, Resident Analyst; Contributing Writer for Washington City Paper

Jenny Abamu, WAMU’s Maryland reporter

Scott Surovell, Virginia State Senate Majority Leader

Matt Frumin, Ward 3 D.C. Councilmember

The post The Politics Hour: VA Sen. Majority Leader Scott Surovell on redistricting Hail Mary appeared first on WAMU.

Maryland Governor Wes Moore joined lawmakers from the D.C. region last week to celebrate a major milestone. He helped install the final pieces of track on the long-awaited Purple Line, the light rail that will run from Bethesda to New Carrollton through suburban Maryland.

The project is set to bring new development opportunities along the line. A bill awaiting Moore’s signature incentivizes construction of mixed-use buildings, including housing, around transit stations in the state. 

Delegate Marc Korman is Chair of the Maryland House Environment and Transportation Committee. He helped shepherd that bill through the General Assembly and joined WAMU’s Morning Edition host Esther Ciammachilli to discuss these developments.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity

Let’s start with the Purple Line celebration last week. Your district is in Montgomery County. What did laying those last pieces of track mean for you and your constituents?

Well, this has been a long time coming. It’s really important to create more suburb to suburb transit connections. Right now, most of our transit is focused on funneling people in and out of Washington, D.C. That’s important, but a majority of Montgomery County commuters actually don’t go in and out of D.C., they go to other suburbs. Obviously it’s been a challenged project and there’s still work left to do, but seeing that final rail laid down was a mark of real progress.

What construction can Montgomery County residents and Prince George’s residents expect to see along the Purple Line now that the track is complete?

So first of all, the work’s not totally done on building the rest of the train system, including some of the station work that needs to still happen, including in Bethesda where my district is. Of course the work on the Capital Crescent Trail alongside the Purple Line is not yet complete as well. But I do think there’s a lot of opportunity to have increased mixed-use development over Purple Line stations the way we do, for example, over the Metro station in Montgomery County at Bethesda, at Twinbrook, at Friendship Heights, Silver Spring, Wheaton. [There’s] lots of opportunities to put more housing and other mixed-use development around Purple Line Station.

Turning to the Transit and Housing Opportunity Act, the legislation requested by Governor Moore earlier this year – what benefits do you see the bill bringing to your district and Maryland as a whole?

Yeah, so it does two things. One, it just tries to clarify the rules around transit-oriented development to make sure that our localities are encouraging and setting the rules in place to allow more transit-oriented development. If we’re going to grow, if we’re going to have more housing — which a lot of people would like to see — the most logical, immediate place to put it is over our fixed rail transit stations where we have a regular transit service.

The other thing it does is tries to bring to bear some resources to support that development, including designating those areas as enterprise zones, which creates a tax incentive system, as well as making use of a statewide transit fund we have to prioritize investment in those areas.

What type of development would you like to see around Maryland transit stations or are there other kinds of businesses or services you’d like to see?

I think what we want is a mix of types of development. We obviously want more housing, but we need housing at different entry points, right? We need truly affordable housing, we need middle income housing, and then of course, if the market wants to bring a higher end, more luxury, that’s fine too. But we definitely need more on the affordable and and middle income side of things.

And we want a mix of businesses. Of course we want retail on the ground floor, but it would be great if we can get back to a position, especially in Montgomery County, where we have more folks to fill office towers. I suspect right now, given what’s going on economically in our region —  in large part due to the federal government — we’re going to see more housing than commercial and business development. All of it is, I think, welcome if it’s done right. I think doing it right means doing it over transit where we can really concentrate a lot of business and residential development.

OK, so, the track has been laid, but stations and other development around the Purple Line, still have yet to be completed and the line itself is already behind schedule. When do you expect the trains to be running?

So it’s not just construction that has to finish up, and they are over 90% of the way done with that; that’ll be done relatively soon. It’s testing that needs to take place. These things are big, complicated computer systems now, and so you need to test them for an extended period to make sure they’re going to run the way they have in mind.

I think right now the Maryland is saying it should be open for what they call revenue service — which is nerd talk for people paying money to ride the trains — by the end of 2027. I think the vendor is saying beginning of 2028.

Listeners can decide if they think the state is right or the vendor’s right, we’ll know soon enough.

The post Maryland lawmakers eye new development opportunities along the Purple Line appeared first on WAMU.

President Donald Trump traveled to China this week to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Taiwan, the war in Iran, and trade are all up for discussion between the two leaders of the world’s largest economies.

The price tag of the war with Iran has now topped $29 billion.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said this week that he believes his country’s invasion of Ukraine is “coming to an end.”

We cover the most important stories from around the globe in the international hour of the News Roundup.

The post The News Roundup – International appeared first on WAMU.

Despite assertions by President Donald Trump to the contrary, reporting from The New York Times indicates that Iran’s military is still in fighting shape, regaining access to 30 of its 33 missile sites near the Strait of Hormuz.

The Supreme Court’s decision to strike down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act has paved the way for Alabama to use a controversial GOP-drawn electoral map in the upcoming midterms.

And FBI Director Kash Patel appeared on Capitol Hill this week to give testimony before Congress. He clashed with Democrats over reporting from The Atlantic that indicated that the Trump official’s alcohol use was impeding him from completing his duties.

We cover the most important stories from around the country in the domestic hour of the News Roundup.

The post The News Roundup – Domestic appeared first on WAMU.

More than 100 D.C. restaurants closed in 2025, according to the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington (RAMW). To put that into perspective, the previous year saw 73 restaurants close, and the year before that just 53. 

RAMW also reported that of restaurants they surveyed, a majority reported lower sales (54%) and profitability (69%). Middle-priced restaurants, at at average cost of $21-40 per person, report the steepest average decline and account for two-thirds of the closures. 

But even as closures rise, restaurant openings still outpace them. Per RAMW, last year 102 restaurants closed while 122 opened. The previous year 73 closed, but 155 opened. 

“DC’s still a hot place to open a restaurant. There’s still close to 30 million people that visit here a year. Lots of sales tax revenue is still generated from our hospitality industry,” says President and CEO of RAMW, Shawn Townsend. “So It’s strong, it’s still vibrant, it’s still thriving.”

With this picture in mind, WAMU arts and culture reporter Darryl C. Murphy tried five of the year’s new restaurants and gives us a rundown of their contributions to keeping D.C.’s dining scene alive. 

Bumblebirds

The fast casual restaurant in Capitol Hill specializes in Southern style chicken sandwiches. The new venture with celebrity chef and local resident Carla Hall offers a menu featuring eight chicken sandwiches, two served on a biscuit. Prices range from $12 to $15. There’s also a number of  other options available, ranging from deviled eggs to meyer lemon bars. Bumblebirds also serves Southern inspired cocktails, making it not only a good option for a quick bite, but also a place to linger and hang out for a bit. 

Ulivo

A casual, walk-in Italian restaurant in Northwest D.C., just outside of Columbia Heights, Ulivo maintains the presence of an Italian restaurant in the neighborhood. Its 2737 Sherman Avenue NW location was previously occupied by Capa Tosta and prior to that Napoli Pasta Bar. 

Most of the dishes are under $30, and the pasta ranges between $18 and $22. A dish to try would be the Double Cut Pork Chop ($30,) which is served on top of creamy polenta foam with thick bits of bacon. Whether it’s a date night or a hankering for the flavors of Italy, Ulivo is worth a shot. 

Peruvian Brothers (North Capitol)

Peruvian Brothers recently opened its first standalone location just a block away from Union Station at North Capitol Street NW and G Street NW. With four food trucks and locations at La Cosecha in the Union Market District and Arlington at Amazon HQ2, the District enterprise is positioned to attract lunch seekers in the area with its Peruvian cuisine. 

Rye Bunny 

Owners Jill Tyler and Jon Sybert closed their Michelin-starred Adams Morgan restaurant Tail Up Goat in December to make way for Rye Bunny, which takes a different approach to service. Guests order their food at a counter before taking a seat in the dining area, where a server tends to them for the rest of their meal. 

Most of the pricing is below $30, and plates such as the anchovy toast ($15) have already helped skyrocket the profile of the couple’s new endeavor. 

Canton Disco

The new addition to the Navy Yard brings Cantonese-inspired dishes from Chef Timothy Yu, of the now closed Hollywood East Cafe in Wheaton. The new endeavor with collaborators Brian Schram (owner of Side Door Pizza) and Brent Knoll, (Maxwell Park owner) offers an approachable menu where appetizers and several entrees, like the Golden Fried Rice ($18), are below $20.

The post Get Out There: The state of D.C.’s restaurants and five new places to try appeared first on WAMU.

The Supreme Court decided to keep the status quo in place for medication abortion access Thursday.

The high court’s order means the abortion pill mifepristone will remain available via telehealth as a case brought by Louisiana against the Food and Drug Administration proceeds through the lower courts.

The Supreme Court stayed a May 1 ruling from the New Orleans-based, U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals which would have banned mifepristone from being mailed. The appeals court ruling would have applied to the whole country, not just states like Louisiana that have abortion bans.

Thursday’s decision came in the form of an order from the court issued around 5:30 p.m., about 30 minutes past a deadline the court set for itself.

Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented publicly and wrote about their dissents in the order.

In his dissent, Alito railed at his fellow justices calling the order “unreasoned” and “remarkable.”

“What is at stake is the perpetration of a scheme to undermine our decision in Dobbs,” Alito writes, referring to the majority opinion that he authored that overturned Roe v. Wade.

Dobbs “restored the right of each State to decide how to regulate abortions within its borders,” Alito continues.

The telehealth abortion process starts with a patient connecting with a healthcare provider on the phone or online. If the patient is eligible, the provider can prescribe two medications — mifepristone and another drug called misoprostol. Patients can pick up the medicine at a local pharmacy, or providers can mail the drugs to a patient’s home.

That access is a big part of the reason why the number of abortions nationally has actually increased since the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in 2022. Now, most abortions in the U.S. use this combination of medications, and one quarter happen via telemedicine.

After the 5th Circuit ruling on May 1, some providers said they would continue offering telemedicine access to abortion medication using a different protocol that involves higher doses of misoprostol and no mifepristone. Researchers say that method is just as safe and effective, but tends to cause more side effects for patients, like nausea and diarrhea.

Nearly two dozen Democratic-led states submitted an amicus brief in this case, writing that the appeals court decision put the policy choices of states with bans above the choices of states “that have made the different but equally sovereign determinations to promote access to abortion care.” A similar number of Republican-led states filed an amicus brief in support of Louisiana’s case.

There are also stakes related to the power of FDA and other expert agencies to set rules. While the Trump administration’s FDA did not respond to the Supreme Court’s request for briefs, a group of former leaders of the agency, who served under mainly Democratic and some Republican presidents, wrote about this in an amicus brief. They defended the FDA’s process in approving the medication and modifying the rules for prescribing it, and say the appeals court decision “would upend FDA’s gold-standard, science-based drug approval system.”

The drug industry’s trade group, PhRMA, also submitted an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court not to meddle with FDA’s rules for mifepristone. The brief says that drug makers “share a significant interest in protecting against disruptions to the stable and predictable statutory framework Congress created to govern” the FDA.

One twist in this story is the FDA, the named defendant in the lawsuit, filed no brief to the justices about this case.

“The Trump administration quite clearly hasn’t known how to deal with this issue from the beginning and has been trying to essentially kick the can down the road, at least until after the midterm [election], to avoid either angering base voters or swing voters who don’t see eye to eye on what the administration’s abortion policy should be,” Mary Ziegler, law professor at University of California Davis told NPR this week. “So I think the administration not doing anything is in some ways consistent with what we’ve seen so far, just because this is a tricky issue politically.”

This week, FDA’s commissioner Dr. Marty Makary resigned under pressure from the White House. It’s not clear if this lawsuit played a role in his ouster, but anti-abortion rights groups were vocal about their displeasure with how little he did to restrict abortion in that role.

The post The Supreme Court keeps abortion pill mifepristone available by telehealth appeared first on WAMU.

Two sites full of graves (some unmarked) were discovered last year in Cheltenham, Prince George’s County. The graves held the bodies of over 200 Black youth who had died while being held at the House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children.

Lawmakers vowed to take action. The Maryland General Assembly established a commission to study the site and Governor Wes Moore helped install a new road sign marking the site last week.

Montgomery County native Crystal Foretia was a fellow at the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services from 2023 to 2025 (she is currently a student at Yale Law), and led the department’s research for grant applications for funding to restore the gravesites. She joined WAMU’s Morning Edition host Esther Ciammachilli to discuss her work on the House of Reformation and shared her thoughts on this painful legacy.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity

So the House of Reformation was opened in 1870. Can you tell us, what was its original intended purpose?

The House of Reformation was intended to reform delinquent Black youth and specifically was intended to pull Black children out of the adult prison system. Prior to the House of Reformation being open, Black children were being sent to adult jails for delinquent acts or status offenses. So in earlier records, you’ll see things like vagrancy — that really just means homelessness — loitering is another offense, and then minor without proper care, which could just be the child isn’t supervised. It doesn’t really sound like a crime, right?

And when did the House of Reformation close?

It closed in 1937.

Records about the House of Reformation and those incarcerated there are scant. How did you go about building your research?

I was very lucky in that my first source was a 2022 journal article written by Jason Mayernick, an education professor. My first inclination was, ‘go straight to the bibliography.’ So from there, I noticed that there are a lot of references to The Afro-American, which is a weekly Baltimore-based Black-run newspaper. Thankfully, The Afro-American has digitized all of its like historical issues online, for free on Google News. It was a good starting starting point for documenting the history of abuse, labor exploitation, [and] administrative mismanagement at the facility.

How far back did The Afro-American’s articles about the House of Reformation go?

Some of the earliest ones were from 1905. Yeah, I remember, yeah, 1905 because there was an article that discussed hiring discrimination, but most of my sources came from [the] 1920s, 1930s.

So still decades after the House of Reformation opened?

Yes.

Are there any stories of boys who were kept there that continue to resonate with you?

Yes, absolutely. One of the most harrowing stories has to be the story of Aubrey Bronson. He was a committed youth who was non-fatally shot by a white security guard the first week of September 1934 at the facility. The version of events are conflicting because obviously, right? And so the story somewhat goes that, Aubrey was waiting in line to get food. John Hurley, the white security guard, was drunk and he wanted Aubrey to move out of line.

Aubrey refused.

They had a scuffle and then John Hurley shot him.

Thankfully, Aubrey was taken to Freeman’s Hospital in D.C. which is now Howard University Hospital, and he was treated. He suffered from a punctured lung, but he did survive the shooting — based off of reporting from The Afro-American three months later.

What makes the incident with Aubrey so egregious and so resonant with me is the way in which… there’s so many stories of of violence against Black boys generating social movements after their like really fatal encounter in most instances, right? I think of the story of Emmett Till; I think of the story of Tamir Rice; and I look at Aubrey in that same light because what happened to him was so egregious.

Like there’s a photograph of him in his lying in his hospital room, with his punctured lung and and a bandage over it. It galvanized so much outrage in Black media spaces across the country and in particular among community organizers in Baltimore City. That was really the catalyst for the movement to abolish the conditions at Cheltenham either by eliminating the the facility in its entirety or having the state take over.

What happened to Aubrey happened the first week of September 1934. This movement galvanizes very soon after and then there’s a push in the early months of 1935 to get the legislature to pass a law that would transfer ownership of the house of information from being privately run to being state-owned.

So it was privately run, but it was receiving government money?

Yes.

You were at the ceremony last week where Governor Wes Moore unveiled the road sign. What further actions do you hope state and local governments will take to reckon with this history and the generations of Maryland families that have been impacted by it?

I really hope that the state engages with real conversations with descendants’ community and takes a lot of the time and effort to identify the family members and family members of those who were at the institution, and were deeply wronged.

There’s such a lack of closure that was caused by the harms done by this facility because there was so much lying by the administrators. So, something I was really happy to see — and part of what made the event so impactful for me — is that there were descendants that were [there and] engaged with. So, doing more of that work, letting them have a voice as to as to what happens to the cemetery and what happens with this history is something I find really important.

There’s still a juvenile detention facility on that site today. Do you have any concerns about the legacy of that kind of racism represented from the House of Reformation that carries over to the modern juvenile youth detention system in Maryland?

I do have concerns. To me, the House of Reformation is so relevant to contemporary juvenile justice policy because of the way in which Black children were adultified then and how Black children are adultified now. And really, when I say adultified, I mean treated as disposable by the state and assigned adult level culpability for their actions, which then justifies their disposability, right?

At the House of Reformation these children were essentially forgotten by the rest of society. They were subjected to physical abuse, forced labor, lack of educational opportunity, etc. And one of the things that concerns me now, about current juvenile justice practices within the state of Maryland, is the automatic charging of youth as adults. Thankfully, Maryland has passed some legislation very recently to reduce the number of youth who are charged as adults. And so I think that is a microcosm of the broader work we need to do around – like how we understand youth crime and ways that we need to remember that black children are still just children.

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As had been rumored for weeks, Marty Makary is out as commissioner of the FDA after a chaotic 13 months presiding over drama in every corner of the agency. That leaves Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Department of Health and Human Services with three senior vacancies: FDA commissioner, surgeon general, and director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. All must pass through the Senate committee chaired by Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who has had a troubled relationship with Kennedy and President Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, opponents of abortion remain unhappy with the Trump administration, demanding a more robust federal crackdown on abortion in general and the abortion pill in particular. The administration, meanwhile, has been pushing policies to encourage families to have more children.

This week’s panelists are Julie Rovner of KFF Health News, Rachel Cohrs Zhang of Bloomberg News, Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, and Lauren Weber of The Washington Post.

Among the takeaways from this week’s episode:

• Makary is leaving his role as FDA commissioner after a troubled tenure. While tensions over granting approval for fruit-flavored vapes appear to have been the last straw, Makary led an agency in near-constant turmoil that cast a shadow over its employees and the industries it oversees. Kyle Diamantas, who will serve as acting director, is not a doctor but rather a lawyer with ties to the Trump family.
• The fate of telehealth access to the abortion pill mifepristone hung in the balance this week after the Supreme Court extended its stay on a lower-court order halting that access. Should the court affirm that lower-court ruling, it would be the biggest change to abortion access nationwide since it overturned the constitutional right to an abortion in 2022.
• And the hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship continues to transfix the globe, with many American passengers in quarantine. The situation highlights the lack of U.S. engagement in global public health, as well as the slashing of federal resources at the CDC under the Trump administration.

Also this week, Rovner interviews Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), a senior member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee and the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Plus, for “extra credit” the panelists suggest health policy stories they read this week that they think you should read, too:

Julie Rovner: ProPublica’s “A Unique Oregon Law Allows It To Block Healthcare Deals. In Five Years, the State Hasn’t Done So Once,” by Rob Davis.

Rachel Cohrs Zhang: The Wall Street Journal’s “Inside Marty Makary’s Downfall at the FDA,” by Liz Essley Whyte and Josh Dawsey.

Alice Miranda Ollstein: Politico’s “Lawmakers’ Prescription Data at Risk After Data Breach,” by Katherine Tully-McManus.

Lauren Weber: Stat’s “Alcohol Is Wreaking Havoc on U.S. Public Health. American Society Looks the Other Way,” by Lev Facher and Isabella Cueto.

Also mentioned in this week’s podcast:

• Bloomberg News’ “RFK Jr.’s Communications Chief Exits as HHS Shakeup Widens,” by Rachel Cohrs Zhang.
• The Washington Post’s “Hantavirus Outbreak Tests Trump Officials Who Criticized Covid Response,” by Lena H. Sun.

For more about this episode, visit kffhealthnews.org/what-the-health.

The post In Search of a New FDA Commissioner appeared first on WAMU.

Virginia Democrats are throwing a Hail Mary in hopes of saving their redistricting efforts. On Monday, they asked the U.S. Supreme Court for an emergency injunction and for an order overturning the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision to throw out redrawn congressional maps. We ask Virginia Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell where the last-ditch effort stands, what comes next, and why Democrats remain optimistic about the midterms.  Plus, we get the Virginia Democratic leader’s thoughts on Governor Abigail Spanberger’s veto of a collective bargaining bill, the signing of historic paid family leave legislation, and why the Commonwealth’s cannabis retail market plans are in limbo.

Homelessness is on the rise in the District, according to a new city report, with advocates blaming human services program cuts and the aggressive clearing of encampments. Some fear that further slashing proposed in this year’s budget could lead to an even greater increase in homelessness. We ask Ward 3 D.C. Councilmember and chair of the Human Services Committee Matt Frumin what the council is doing to help city residents most at-risk. Plus, we talk with him about how his ward could decide the city’s mayoral race and the deepening crisis in the Metropolitan Police Department.

Sorting political fact from fiction, and having fun while we’re at it. Join us for our weekly review of the politics, policies, and personalities of the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia at 12 p.m. on Friday.

Produced by Matt Blitz

Tom Sherwood, Resident Analyst; Contributing Writer for Washington City Paper

Scott Surovell, Virginia State Senate Majority Leader

Matt Frumin, Ward 3 D.C. Councilmember

The post The Politics Hour: VA Sen. Majority Leader Scott Surovell on redistricting Hail Mary appeared first on WAMU.

Mayors are uniquely aware of what’s needed to make their cities run more efficiently. And when it comes to improving city life — from housing, to public safety, to city services — a lack of resources can be a major obstacle.

In February, Bloomberg Philanthropies announced the winners of this year’s mayors’ challenge. A $1 million prize was awarded to 24 winners from 20 countries selected from 630 entries.

1A spoke to some of those winners at Bloomberg’s Citylab conference in Madrid, Spain. The summit was held in April and convened mayors from across the globe to talk about the latest in city planning.

We sit down with Vico Sotto, mayor of Pasig in the Philippines; Lauren McLean, the Democratic mayor of Boise, Idaho; and Geordin Hill-Lewis, the Mayor of Cape Town, South Africa, to talk about how they’re navigating the challenges facing them and their neighbors.

The post How mayors across the globe are making a difference appeared first on WAMU.

Taking a cross-country trip can expose you to parts of the U.S. you don’t normally see.

And when you take that trip on foot, the experience puts you at eye level with the complexity of this country, its history, its people, and its mythology. It can also get you thinking about your own complexity, history, and mythology.

Author Issac Fitzgerald found himself on a journey from Massachusetts to Indiana and he captured that experience in his new book, “American Rambler: Walking the Trail of Johnny Appleseed.”

He makes the eight-hour drive from Boston to Washington D.C. to sit down with us to talk about the book, his journey, and what traveling can reveal to us about ourselves.

The post Author Isaac Fitzgerald on ‘American Rambler: Walking the Trail of Johnny Appleseed’ appeared first on WAMU.

What are the sounds of America?

Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech? Tracy Chapman singing “Fast Car?” The Giants’ “shot heard round the world” walk-off home run in 1951? The theme song from Super Mario?

Every year, the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress selects 25 pieces of sound to add to its collection — songs, speeches, and beyond.

In the past, we’ve partnered with the 14th Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, who oversaw this project for nine years. Each spring, 1A worked with Hayden and the Library of Congress to bring you a look at why those honorees matter to America.

This year, the Library of Congress looks a little different. President Donald Trump fired Hayden in 2025. The White House cited her “pursuit of DEI” as reason for her dismissal. But we are continuing our annual series this year with a look at the 2026 class of honorees.

We sit down with Rachael Stoeltje. She’s the head of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Virginia, which houses and preserves the Library of Congress’ audio and video artifacts.

You can hear all our past Sounds of America interviews with Carla Hayden here.

The post The 2026 Sounds of America appeared first on WAMU.

After more than two decades working in elections, including four years as Virginia’s top voting official, it takes a lot to surprise Chris Piper.

But the frenzied redistricting battle of the past few months — including a congressional map in his home state thrown out by a court after people voted to approve it, and certain elections postponed in Louisiana and Alabama after mail ballots already went out — has done it.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Piper.

Neither have voters, he worries.

“The biggest impact on voters is confusion,” Piper said. “‘Where do I go vote? Who is even my elected representative? Or, which district am I even in?’… There’s the potential for them to not know who they’re voting for.”

Much of the focus of the ongoing redistricting war has been on which political party will come out on top in the race to control Congress.

But it’s voters who will pay a cost, say voting experts and voting rights advocates, in the form of discarded votes, diminished voting power and a democratic process that is increasingly complicated to navigate.

“We’re stuck in a zero-sum battle in which the parties are trying to maximize their power by manipulating the rules,” said Nick Troiano, executive director of Unite America, a group that pushes for reforms to primary election systems. “The collateral damage is the everyday voter who just wants to have a say in who gets to represent them and to have the ability to hold them accountable.”

President Trump set off the redistricting arms race last year, but it is recent legal rulings that have highlighted the changing election landscape for voters.

Two weeks ago, the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority severely neutered the Voting Rights Act, and various Republican-led states in the South have since moved to draw more seats that favor the GOP.

The Supreme Court decision struck down a Louisiana congressional map, and the state’s Republican governor, Jeff Landry, postponed voting for U.S. House primaries so state lawmakers could enact new district lines.

“Allowing elections to proceed under an unconstitutional map would undermine the integrity of our system and violate the rights of our voters, Landry said in a statement.

His announcement came days before in-person early voting was set to begin — and well after absentee ballots were mailed to voters. Tens of thousands of absentee ballots had already been cast, and state officials sent notice to polling sites across the state that even though ballots would feature congressional races, those votes would not count.

“This is sort of entering this cautionary danger zone for us as I look at everything that’s happened in the last two weeks,” Sarah Whittington, advocacy director at the ACLU of Louisiana, told NPR. Her organization and others have filed legal challenges about the primary postponement.

Whittington said rules changing at the last minute, for explicitly political reasons, drives home a sense that many people already feel: that the system is rigged against them.

“What we are hearing over and over and over again is that your vote doesn’t matter, your vote doesn’t count. And we already know that that feels true in a lot of communities,” Whittington said. “Right now it’s actually being reinforced by folks with authority and power to say, ‘Your vote doesn’t count. I’m not going to count that ballot.'”

This week, the Supreme Court cleared the way for Alabama to change its congressional map, in the wake of the Voting Rights Act decision, leading the state to announce different elections for different congressional districts.

Piper, the former election official, said the recent map changes also increase the chance of administrative errors, like a voter getting the wrong ballot, which can make invalidated votes more likely.

“[Local officials] are already taxed. They’re already overburdened,” Piper said. “When you throw these curveballs at them on a regular basis, it increases the likelihood that there will be errors.”

In Virginia, the state’s supreme court threw out maps that voters had approved, on the grounds that Democratic state lawmakers didn’t follow the legislative process correctly.

The new maps would have given Democrats four more potential House seats, and were billed by the party as key to combatting Trump’s redistricting push.

More than 3 million Virginians voted in the referendum, which drew millions of dollars in ad spending.

Chris Melody Fields Figueredo — the executive director of Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, which helps progressive groups pass policy changes — criticized the Virginia court for overturning the will of the people.

“If you’re a person in Virginia, or any other state, your question is going to be, ‘Why is that OK here, but it is not OK here?'” she said. “That is, I think, the bigger risk that we have is, you know, having people lose faith in our government. People care about fairness.”

Troiano, of Unite America, warns that this redistricting war amounts to “a race to the bottom” that will also leave most voters without meaningful representation in Congress.

In pursuit of more safe districts, communities and voting blocs are being further divided up, making it harder for them to organize.

It’s also created a situation where there are even fewer competitive seats. Troiano said before this redistricting battle about 90% of congressional races were uncompetitive. That is up to about 93% now, he estimates.

Ultimately, this means that for the vast majority of U.S. House races, the general election will be decided before voters even get a ballot.

“I think the parties right now are operating as if our election system and our democracy belongs to them and we’re mere pawns in a game that they play as far as who can win a mere majority of seats come November,” he said. “In reality, this system belongs to the voters.”

Karen Brinson Bell, the former chief election official of North Carolina, also noted that competitive races have been shown to drive turnout. A midterm year with fewer of them, at a time when people are questioning their faith in the process, could be a recipe for a disengaged public in 2026.

“Are [voters] going to show up or are they just sickened by the whole situation?” she said.

In Louisiana, Whittington of the ACLU says she’s already hearing voters raise the same question, but she’s trying to convince them to turn out and make their voices heard.

“We don’t want folks to just sort of throw up their hands and say, ‘It doesn’t matter,’ or, you know, ‘They’ve effectively cancelled my vote,'” she said. “And we’re seeing it right now.”

The post Voters are caught in the middle as the redistricting battle intensifies appeared first on WAMU.

In a tight budget year, D.C. school leaders, parents and advocates fear a double whammy of cuts is on the way for mental health services for students.

Mayor Muriel Bowser is proposing a major shift for school-based behavioral health services: she wants to phase out the city’s contracts with a network of community-based organizations providing clinicians to schools and bring those functions under a city agency.

At the same time, she hopes to end a long-running contract with Catholic Charities DC to provide a mental health crisis response team, which primarily serves schools, a year after working to slash its budget. Similarly, Bowser plans to rely on the city’s Department of Behavioral Health to offer those services instead.

Taken together, some fear these changes will disrupt a fragile ecosystem of care for the city’s most vulnerable students at a time when there’s growing concern about truancy, “teen takeovers,” and all manner of other issues involving the District’s kids.

“We’re just staring down the barrel of major disruption by trying to move these programs in-house to an agency that I think is not staffed up yet to even take these programs on and doesn’t have the budget to either,” said Leah Castelaz, a senior policy attorney studying these issues at the Children’s Law Center. 

Department of Behavioral Health Director Barbara Bazron has defended these changes as ones that will simultaneously save money — about $7 million in all — and better utilize her agency’s existing strengths. DBH already operates its own crisis response team, which it plans to augment with new staffers going forward. And she expects the changes to the school-based system will better centralize operations by helping the city end its reliance on a constellation of private providers. 

“The school-based program will support all public schools with the more effective use of DBH or community-based clinicians and better collaborate with each school-hired behavioral health team,” Bazron said during a council hearing last month.

But  lawmakers have doubts about these plans. Some are particularly concerned that DBH plans to wind down contracts with organizations serving more than 50 schools starting in the upcoming school year, even though it has yet to hire all of the clinicians it needs to backfill that work. (Contracts impacting the remaining 130 schools served by community-based organizations, or CBOs, would be eliminated over the next few years.)

Many of the organizations involved say they have yet to even be informed whether their contracts will be impacted or not, perhaps leaving schools without dedicated mental health providers in the interim.

“I’m not gonna lie to y’all, this feels real squishy to me,” At-Large Councilmember Christina Henderson, the chair of the council’s health committee, said during the same hearing with Bazron. “We are building the plane as we are flying it.”

Bazron notes that the city plans to spend $18 million to stand up the new school-based program over the next few years, and insisted that the city made this decision in consultation with school leaders and the community-based organizations themselves as a way to improve care for students. But many have denied this. 

Miriam Hauser, vice president of behavioral health for the CBO Mary’s Center, told the council that the plan has moved forward so haphazardly that she’s not sure if her “clinicians will be provided with enough notice to engage in an ethical closure process with their clients.” Similarly, teachers have built relationships with these clinicians and many are not eager to see them replaced with city workers, if they’re replaced at all.

“Teachers are the ones who will be tasked with implementing any new initiative, adding to their already overwhelming workload,” Gracy Obuchowicz, director of educator wellness with the teacher advocacy group EmpowerEd, told the council. “By failing to understand their reality, this plan creates more work for schools instead of solving their problems.”

Chris Gamble, a behavioral health policy analyst for the Children’s Law Center, said he’s concerned the crisis response changes will only compound these disruptions. 

The Catholic Charities team — known as the Child and Adolescent Mobile Psychiatric Service, or ChAMPS—has focused specifically on this work for the last 15 years, serving as a resource for schools to call in emergency situations or a way to fill the gap if a school doesn’t have a dedicated clinician. By contrast, DBH primarily serves adults since its crisis response unit operates overnight, and Gamble questions whether the agency is ready to pick up the slack in ChAMPS’ absence.

“Teenagers, they’re not just small adults,” Gamble said. “The way you talk to a child is different from an adult. And from just the clinical perspective, something like suicidal ideation may present differently in a 10-year-old versus a 40-year-old. It’s about being able to know those nuances and ChAMPS is doing this day in and day out.”

Bazron assured the council that her agency is ready for the change, and plans to hire between six and eight additional staffers to supplement its crisis response work. Yet lawmakers expressed skepticism that would be enough to meet the need, perhaps forcing police officers to respond to yet more calls instead.

“Our need for crisis services are expanding while we are slashing the budget in such a significant way,” said Ward 5 Councilmember Zachary Parker.

That’s why Gamble is hopeful lawmakers will be able to move money around in the budget to keep the city’s contract with ChAMPS. He notes lawmakers have previously considered adding a small fee on phone bills to fund the city’s 988 crisis response call center, and some of that money could be directed toward this purpose.

And Castelaz, the Children’s Law Center attorney, hopes the council will also press pause on the school-based behavioral health plan: particularly because so much of it is set to be implemented in the next few years, when a new mayor will be running DBH. (Notably, both Ward 4 Councilmember Janeese Lewis George and former councilmember Vincent Orange criticized the proposal to cut contracts with CBOs during a forum for mayoral contenders hosted last month by the D.C. Democrats.)

“We have been making some really great progress, and so how do we sustain that progress and keep growing it, even in a tight budget, I think is a really important conversation to keep having with the council,” Castelaz said.

At-Large Councilmember Doni Crawford says she expects the council will ultimately make some changes to the plan in the near term, arguing “we know it’s really important for youth to have access to resources in schools.” The council will make adjustments to Bowser’s budget proposal in the coming weeks, with a final vote set for June 23.

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7:00 p.m. Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar
“The Buyer and Cellar Matter”
Mandel Kramer as Johnny Dollar. The producer of old horror films is the key to a missing henpecked commission buyer.
(Original broadcast date September 10, 1961. CBS network. Running time 25:05)

7:30 p.m. The Lucky Strike Program Starring Jack Benny
Jack is nervous that his sponsor won’t pick up his option for another year, and the cast does a newsroom skit,  “The Mystery Of The Murdered Newspaper Columnist,” or “They Were Playing Leap Frog and They Hedda Hopper.” (Original air date October 07, 1945. NBC network. Running time 21:38)

8:00 p.m. Gunsmoke
“Paid Killer”
A man hires a killer to gun down Marshal Dillon for $1000 in gold. (Original air date November 22, 1959. CBS network. Running time 23:37)

8:30 p.m. Dragnet
“The Big Lift”
A burglar has struck seventeen times and continues to commit new crimes…totalling $8000.
(Original air date September 08, 1953. NBC network. Running time 26:34)

9:00 p.m. Spotlight on CBS Radio News
Interviews with authors Stanley Cloud and Lynne Olson of “The Murrow Boys,” and former CBS News correspondent Marvin Kalb

9:30 p.m. CBS Radio: The Listening Years
In the style of CBS Is There and You Are There, the program offers recreations of historic events since 1930 as if covered by CBS Radio News reporters.  (Original air date November 6, 1947. CBS network. Running time 28:27)

10:00 p.m. Victory Theatre
“The Philadelphia Story”
With the incredible film cast of Katharine Hepburn, Ruth Hussey, Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart. A socialite’s wedding plans are complicated by the simultaneous arrival of her ex-husband and a tabloid magazine journalist. (Original air date July 20, 1942. CBS network. Running time 51:45)

*Note that running times are approximations.

The post The Big Broadcast: May 17, 2026 appeared first on WAMU.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents made nearly 20,000 arrests in the D.C. region between March 2025 and March 2026. That’s quadruple the number made during President Joe Biden’s final year in office, according to an analysis of federal data by the Washington Post.

Many of the thousands detained are parents. Maryland, Virginia and D.C. updated their laws under the first Trump administration to let families name a temporary guardian if a parent is held by ICE.

KFF Health News correspondent Jazmin Orozco Rodriguez told Morning Edition host Esther Ciammachilli that many families aren’t aware of their legal rights, and getting exact numbers on the families impacted can be challenging. “The government doesn’t track how many children enter the system through immigration enforcement, so it’s hard to know for sure.”

NOTUS reported that in the past year at least nine children in Maryland and four in Virginia entered foster care after authorities detained or deported their parents. The impacts on children can be lifelong. Research dating back to World War II finds that children separated from their parents face higher risks of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and developmental delays.

Ayuda, a D.C.-based legal services nonprofit, is helping immigrant families plan for these scenarios. Anuscè Sanai is Ayuda’s associate director of legal programs. “It’s very hard to be in those conversations because you can see the fear on their faces,” she said. “But on the flip side, we also see the power of information. They do feel more prepared and although they have to make tough decisions, now they know which decisions to make.”

Families United D.C. Metro has information in multiple languages on how to make a plan for someone to care for a child if a parent is detained.

You can read more of Jazmin Orozco Rodriguez’s reporting from KFF Health News below.

By Jazmin Orozco Rodriguez

Apr 14, 2026

As immigration authorities carry out what President Donald Trump has promised will be the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history, several states are passing laws to keep children out of foster care when their detained parents have no family or friends available to take temporary custody of them.

The federal government doesn’t track how many children have entered foster care because of immigration enforcement actions, leaving it unclear how often it happens. In Oregon, as of February two children had been placed in foster care after being separated from their parents in immigration detention cases, according to Jake Sunderland, a spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Human Services.

“Before fall 2025, this simply had never happened before,” Sunderland said.

As of mid-February, nearly 70,000 people were being held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The record 73,000 people in detention in January represented an 84% increase compared with one year before. According to reporting from ProPublica, parents of 11,000 children who are U.S. citizens were detained from the beginning of Trump’s term through August.

The news outlet NOTUS reported in February that at least 32 children of detained or deported parents had been placed in foster care in seven states.

Sandy Santana, executive director of Children’s Rights, a legal advocacy organization, said he thinks the actual number is much higher.

“That, to us, seems really, really low,” he said.

Separation from a parent is deeply traumatic for children and can lead to various health and psychological issues, including post-traumatic stress disorder. Prolonged, intense stress can lead to more-frequent infections in children and developmental issues. That “toxic stress” is also associated with damage to areas of the brain responsible for learning and memory, according to KFF.

Maryland, New York, Washington, D.C., and Virginia amended existing laws during Trump’s first term to allow guardians to be granted temporary parental rights for immigration enforcement reasons. Now the enforcement surge that began after Trump returned to office last year has prompted a new wave of state responses.

In New Jersey, lawmakers are considering a bill to amend a state law that allows parents to nominate standby, or temporary, guardians in the cases of death, incapacity, or debilitation. The bill would add separation due to federal immigration enforcement as another allowable reason.

Nevada and California passed laws last year to protect families separated by immigration enforcement actions. California’s law, called the Family Preparedness Plan Act, allows parents to nominate guardians and share custodial rights, instead of having them suspended, while they’re detained. They regain their full parental rights if they are released and are able to reunite with their children.

There are significant legal barriers to reunification once a child is placed in state custody, said Juan Guzman, director of children’s court and guardianship at the Alliance for Children’s Rights, a legal advocacy organization in Los Angeles.

If a parent’s child is placed in foster care and the parent cannot participate in required court proceedings because they are in detention or have been deported, it’s less likely they will be able to reunite with their child, Guzman said.

An estimated 5.6 million children are U.S. citizens who live with a parent or family member who does not have legal immigration status, according to research from the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. Within that group, 2.6 million children have two parents lacking legal status.

Santana said he expects the number of family separation cases to grow as the Trump administration continues its immigration enforcement campaign, putting more children at risk of being placed in foster care.

ICE directives require the agency to make efforts to facilitate detained parents’ participation in family court, child welfare, or guardianship proceedings, but Santana said it’s uncertain whether ICE is complying with those rules.

ICE officials did not respond to requests for comment for this report.

Before the change in California’s law, the only way a parent could share custodial rights with another guardian was if the parent was terminally ill, Guzman said.

If parents create a preparedness plan and identify an individual to assume guardianship of their children, the state child welfare agency can begin the process of placing the children with that individual without opening a formal foster care case, he added.

While Nevada lawmakers expanded an existing guardianship law last year to include immigration enforcement, the measure requires the parents to take the additional step of filing notarized paperwork with the secretary of state’s office, said Cristian Gonzalez-Perez, an attorney at Make the Road Nevada, a nonprofit that provides resources to immigrant communities.

Gonzalez-Perez said some immigrants are still hesitant to fill out government forms, out of fear that ICE might access their information and target them. He reassures community members that the state forms are secure and can be accessed only by hospitals and courts.

The Trump administration has taken unprecedented steps to access sensitive information through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the IRS, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and other entities.

Gonzalez-Perez and Guzman said that not enough immigrant parents know their rights. Nominating a temporary guardian and creating a plan for their families is one way they can prevent feelings of helplessness, Gonzalez-Perez said.

“Folks don’t want to talk about it, right?” Guzman said. “The parent having to speak to a child about the possibility of separation, it’s scary. It’s not something anybody wants to do.”

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

The post As ICE arrests surge, new state laws prevent kids from landing in foster care appeared first on WAMU.

May 1 was College Decision Day – the deadline for many high school seniors to commit to where they’ll spend the next four years of their education. Videos of college-bound students flooded social media.

Their excitement is palpable. But deciding where – and whether – to go to college has never been easy.

A college degree was once seen as the surest path to a middle-class life. But a growing number of Americans now say they’re not sure it’s worth the price tag. For decades, tuition has outpaced inflation. And student debt has become the defining financial burden for a generation.

Now, more students than ever are asking what exactly it is they’re paying for.

In 2026, what is college for? How are financial pressures changing what students and families expect to get out of a degree? And for those who do decide to go – how do they make the most of it?

The post Is going to college still worth it? appeared first on WAMU.

In August 2024, 26-year-old Conor Hylton checked into Bridgeport Hospital in Connecticut. Overnight, he was transferred to critical care, where he died.

It was only after his passing that his family found out that Conor was treated at what’s known as a “tele-ICU.” His story shines a light on a practice that’s been around for decades despite a lack of substantial research about its outcomes.

A tele-ICU is a hospital unit where patient care is handled off-site by remote doctors, nurses, or specialists. Up to a third of ICU beds in the U.S. are in tele-ICUs. That’s according to a study from the American Hospital Association.

In Wisconsin, as of May 1, critical care physicians are no longer physically present in the ICUs of a few Ascension satellite hospitals. They remain available via video call to help bedside nurses and on-site hospital medicine doctors, known as hospitalists, who do not specialize in critical care.

These facilities do present an opportunity to expand and improve the health care people receive. But what are the risks of replacing in-person care in the most critical, life or death moments?

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What kind of political system do we have in America these days?

Some experts say the United States is no longer a liberal democracy, but operating under a system called “competitive authoritarianism.”

For this installment of NPR’s Word of the Week, we explore the term’s origin story and how it is being applied in a way those who came up with it never imagined.

If you’re not familiar with the term, here is a basic definition:

Competitive authoritarian countries have democratic rules and hold competitive elections, but the party in charge uses various tactics to tilt the electoral playing field in its favor to maintain power.

Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard who helped come up with the concept, explained it last year on NPR member station WAMU’s show, 1A.

“Elected authoritarians, when they come to power, try to convert the state, which is supposed to be a neutral arbiter, into both a weapon and a shield,” said Levitsky, who co-authored the book How Democracies Die. “It’s a weapon to be deployed against political rivals, and it is a shield to protect themselves and to protect their allies who engage in authoritarian or illegal behavior.”

Levitsky says Trump’s pardoning of the people convicted in the January 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol is a prime example.

Competitive authoritarianism is a pretty new term. Levitsky and Lucan Way – now a professor at the University of Toronto – came up with it in 2002 to describe systems in countries such as Serbia, Kenya and Peru.

“We never – when we coined this term 25 years ago – never imagined that we would apply it to the United States,” said Levitsky.

But Levitsky says Trump is following a familiar playbook crafted by leaders such as former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“When we began to see the Justice Department go after people who were public critics of Trump, when we began to see lawsuits against (the) media or attacks on universities that are viewed as critical of the government,” said Levitsky, “all these things are raising the cost of opposition.”

To describe these kinds of political systems, Way and Levitsky initially came up with the phrase, “Contested Autocracy.”

Way admits it was a “horrible” term. Then, in conversation, Way’s faculty adviser, Harvard professor Timothy Colton, unwittingly provided a eureka moment. He misremembered the concept as “competitive authoritarianism.”

“So, we thought, ‘Oh my God,’ that was it!” Way recalled.

The term is catching on.

Since President Trump took office last year, searches on Google Trends for competitive authoritarianism have spiked. It has also shown up in scores of publications, from the Ventura County Star in California to The Scotsman in Edinburgh and The Indian Express in Mumbai.

President Trump has repeatedly insisted he is not an autocrat.

“A lot of people are saying maybe we like a dictator,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office last August. “I don’t like a dictator. I’m not a dictator.”

Other scholars say the U.S. remains very much a democracy. They point out that despite Trump’s repeated calls for late night host Jimmy Kimmel to be fired, he remains on the air. In addition, citizens routinely protest and criticize Trump and his policies online and on the streets.

Nor does competitive authoritarianism ensure permanent rule.

Just ask Orbán. The former Hungarian leader was widely seen as perfecting the competitive authoritarian playbook during his 16 years in power.

But a poor economy and rampant corruption took a toll. Last month, a unified opposition swept Orbán’s party in a landslide.

The post Is the U.S. slipping into ‘Competitive Authoritarianism?’ appeared first on WAMU.

LaJoy Johnson-Law spends hours in the car each day driving her daughter, Abria, from their home in Southeast D.C. to her school in Northwest.

It’s the only way she can get Abria to her special education class. While she’d do anything for her daughter, the distance wears on her, and it points to the inequities in the city’s education system. 

“People are tired of traveling across God’s good green countryside just to be able to get to certain programming,” said Johnson-Law, who’s also the Ward 8 representative to the State Board of Education. “We shouldn’t have to do all that. We should be able to go somewhere literally in Ward 8.”

That’s exactly the sort of thing she’s hoping the District’s next mayor can address. Local leaders have worked for years to reverse the historic disinvestment in wards 7 and 8 east of the Anacostia River, but substantive changes remain elusive. These neighborhoods still have some of the highest poverty rates and worst health outcomes in the city.

Wards 7 and 8 also tend to have the lowest voter turnout in local elections, so winning over their voters isn’t strategically critical for candidates (as compared to, say, Ward 3). But it’s nonetheless important symbolically for candidates to demonstrate they won’t forget about these neighborhoods, says former Ward 8 Councilmember LaRuby May.

“You have to care about the folks who need the most caring,” May said. “If you only care about the folks who need the least or who already have the most then that’s not the mark of a true leader.”

As the mayoral race hurtles toward the June primary, Ward 8 activist Markus Batchelor says his neighbors are torn. They’re eager for things to change, but still hesitant to totally upend a system that has delivered some progress in recent years. It’s a dynamic that maps neatly onto the pitches from the two leading candidates for mayor: the more progressive Ward 4 Councilmember Janeese Lewis George and more moderate former Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie.

“Folks are just trying to figure out which vision for the future is workable in an environment that seems very uncertain, but also very ripe for change,” Batchelor said. “But no matter who they’re for, I think everybody thinks that they’re investing in what they feel is a departure from the status quo.”

This divide is evident on an issue especially important in wards 7 and 8: how to bring more grocery stores to these communities. Every candidate agrees on the need to do so — there are only a handful of full-service stores located east of the river, forcing residents to make long journeys to other parts of the city or to the suburbs to find fresh food — but they’re pursuing sharply different approaches.

At a debate in Ward 7 hosted by WUSA9, Lewis George said she’d explore opening a publicly owned grocery store, a strategy that’s gained attention after New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani made the issue a centerpiece of his campaign last year. The District has offered generous subsidies to stores in the past, but never operated a store itself.

“A public-private partnership can work with the right investment dollars and the right support to make that happen,” Lewis George said.

McDuffie countered that such an approach is unrealistic. He pointed to the work he’s already done to help stand up a new store at the Skyland Town Center development in Ward 7 as the sort of practical approach that can get results, and said he worked closely with Ward 7 Councilmember Wendell Felder to ensure at least one grocery store is included as part of the development set to surround the new Washington Commanders stadium at the RFK campus.

“I want people to follow the facts and not just the rhetoric,” McDuffie said during the debate. “Look at the results that people have done since they’ve been elected.”

VJ Johnson, the head of the Hillcrest Civic Association, shares some of that skepticism. He believes Lewis George’s plans sound good, in theory. But he says the older, more moderate voters in his Ward 7 neighborhood fear they won’t come to fruition.

“One of the things that we struggle with is we want concrete, actionable, tangible steps,” said Johnson, who is backing McDuffie in the race. “We want to see what you’re trying to do so we can help you do it, so we know where you’re going with it.”

Yet Ward 7 activist Chioma Iwuoha believes voters east of the river are looking for inspiration. She points to Lewis George’s plan for massively expanding the city’s childcare programs as the sort of thing that will excite voters who struggle to pay bills.

“She’s not choosing to do the easy thing,” said Iwuoha, who supports Lewis George. “She’s willing to take the risk and she’s done the analysis to see what’s feasible.”

Many political observers believe McDuffie will win Ward 7; it’s dominated by the older Black homeowners that Johnson describes who are more likely to prefer his cautious approach. McDuffie also has roots in the ward, after buying his first home in Marshall Heights, and he also recently picked up Felder’s endorsement. 

Ward 8 is more of a toss-up. McDuffie has certainly built credibility there after working on several economic development projects in the ward during his time on the council. But the ward is also a bit younger, with more renters who could be attracted to Lewis George’s message, says longtime activist Philip Pannell. She’s put a particular emphasis on strengthening tenant protections and cracking down on negligent landlords, both areas of interest for residents living in substandard housing. 

“Janeese’s campaign has the most energetic ground game in Ward 8,” says Pannell, who is backing Lewis George. “I’m predicting that she’s going to win Ward 8.”

And Batchelor believes a third candidate could compete for votes east of the river as well: former councilmember Vincent Orange. Not only did he represent the nearby Ward 5 for years, but he also retains a base of support among seniors due to his long history in D.C. politics. Orange doesn’t have the financial strength of the other candidates, so he may not be able to win the race, but he could cut into the other vote shares.

Whoever emerges victorious won’t have time to waste in bringing resources to these communities, says Ward 7 activist Patricia Stamper, not with the RFK stadium development set to bring a wave of change to these neighborhoods. 

The development may be happening on the west bank of the Anacostia River, but city leaders are certainly hoping it draws new investment and construction projects to neighborhoods like Congress Heights and Anacostia. Stamper hopes the next mayor can find ways to connect residents to opportunities stemming from RFK without seeing them priced out of their homes. 

“We have a populace that has all this access and potential, but we need to turn that potential into a plan,” Stamper said. 

The Democratic primary is set for June 16.

The post D.C.’s Wards 7 and 8 still struggle with underinvestment. What can the next mayor do to help? appeared first on WAMU.

The U.S. war with Iran has pushed inflation to its highest level in almost three years.

Consumer prices in April were up 3.8% from a year ago, according to a report Tuesday from the Labor Department. That was the biggest annual increase since May 2023.

Prices rose 0.6% between March and April.

From gas prices to housing, here are three things to know about the rising cost of living.

Gasoline prices have jumped sharply since the war began, snarling tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, a vital corridor for energy shipments. The average price of regular gas is $2.50 a gallon, according to AAA. That’s up 38 cents from a month ago. The jump in energy prices accounted for 40% of the monthly increase in the consumer price index in April.

When energy costs jump sharply, it can have spillover effects. Air fares, for example, jumped 2.8% last month and are more than 20% higher than they were a year ago, as airlines struggle with a spike in jet fuel prices. The cost of diesel fuel has risen by $1.88 a gallon since the war began. If that lasts, it could put upward pressure on the price of everything that’s delivered by truck or train.

Excluding volatile food and energy costs, “core” inflation was 2.8% in April.

Housing costs were also a driver of inflation, jumping 0.6% between March and April, but some of that is a statistical fluke resulting from the six-week government shutdown last fall. Government number crunchers were temporarily idled in October, so were unable to collect housing prices that month. That’s had the effect of artificially lowering the measure of housing inflation. Tuesday’s report provides a kind of catch-up.

The post Inflation jumps to its highest level since 2023. Here are 3 things costing a lot more appeared first on WAMU.

Despite the strained ceasefire, U.S. and Iranian boats continue to strike at each other in the Strait of Hormuz.

Meanwhile, fighting between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah is intensifying despite a separate ceasefire announced between Israel and Lebanon on April 16.

Over the weekend, Iran sent the Trump administration a new proposal to end the conflict. President Donald Trump soon rejected Iran’s terms, posting on social media that they were “totally unacceptable.”

What’s in the now-rejected Iranian proposal? And what do both parties want out of any potential agreement to end the war?

The post Donald Trump rejected Iran’s latest peace proposal. Why? appeared first on WAMU.

Since the 1960s, public health officials have campaigned against young people using tobacco.

The results were gradual but remarkable. Their efforts led to a decline in smoking by people of all ages, including teens and young adults. But newer nicotine products, and less funding for public health campaigns about them, could slow or stop that decline.

As a result, some U.S. towns are turning to a different tool. They’re mulling over bans on tobacco sales for anyone born after a certain year.

It’s not unprecedented. The United Kingdom, recently passed a generational ban on tobacco that would affect all people aged 17 or younger. And over time, it would apply to more and more of those who enter adulthood.

Is a generational tobacco ban the way to protect young people? What does it take to make it work? We sit down and talk about it.

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The 18 American passengers traveling on the cruise ship hit by a hantavirus outbreak arrived in the U.S. early Monday.

They’re currently under quarantine in Omaha, Nebraska, and Atlanta, Georgia. So far, one has tested positive for the virus. Health officials are reassuring the public that there’s little risk of an outbreak and the WHO chief said this is “not another COVID-19.”

But misinformation about hantavirus is rapidly spreading on social media and epidemiologists say that’s more concerning right now than the disease itself. So, what are we getting wrong about the virus and this situation?

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Last year, when Columbia University found itself embroiled by anti-war protests and fighting with the Trump administration, journalist Jodi Kantor was invited to speak at the school’s commencement.

“My friends actually tried to stop me. Like, ‘Don’t do it. Call in sick,’” remembers Kantor.

The Pulitzer prize-winner did wind up giving that speech. And that experience led her to write a new book about how young people can find their life’s work. We sit down with Kantor to talk about ‘How to Start.’

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Water 80% restored on Saipan, Red Cross accepts applications on Guam for help with homes destroyed by typhoon, CNMI plans post-storm tourism recovery.

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On the next Charlotte Talks, North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson joins us. Since taking office, he has worked on opioid crisis litigation, consumer scams and housing-cost reforms. He also recently won a case breaking up the Ticketmaster–Live Nation monopoly that could save ticket buyers money. Then we’ll talk with Michael Graff, founder of the Charlotte Optimist, which just celebrated its first anniversary.

Then a conversation with guest host Ely Portillo and Michael Graff, founder of the Charlotte Optimist. Over the last year, the Charlotte Optimist has explored the city and those who inhabit it. Graff notes on his website, “Other publications exist to tell you what you should know, and they do it very well. We exist to tell you what you should spend time thinking about.”

GUESTS:
Jeff Jackson, North Carolina attorney general
Michael Graff, founder of the Charlotte Optimist

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Pedro Gonzalez had the crowd cackling at New York Comedy Club Stamford earlier this month as he brought levity to the immigrant experience of living in the United States.

A lot of Gonzalez‘s jokes are centered around his life as a Colombian immigrant living in New York, everything from dating to working to raising children. In a time of political polarization around immigrants, Gonzalez said humor can help build bridges between people.

“The way that I see life is like, ‘Hey, we’re not all that different. I’m not better than you. You’re not better than me. Life is real hard,'” Gonzalez said. “‘Why don’t we laugh instead of being divided?'”

Gonzalez said he doesn’t think comedy is the platform to make points.

“But I think it’s a platform to speak about your own frustrations and feelings,” he said.

Being an immigrant at a U.S. airport, for example. During his performance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” the first Colombian immigrant to do so, Gonzalez shared his experience hearing someone tell him to “go back to your country,” a common phrase used in discussions about immigration—this as he was trying to catch his flight to South America.

He reflected on that joke in his interview with Connecticut Public. “It’s funny to point out how dumb people can be,” he said.

Airing frustrations in a comedic way can start conversations that wouldn’t be had otherwise because the topic is too tense or taboo, Gonzalez said.

“I choose to be open with everything,” Gonzalez said. “If I go out with friends, and my friend who’s driving [who] I know is undocumented, and we’re about to enter a restaurant, and we see a police car, and we feel something inside. Then, that’s something that I need to speak about.”

Finding ‘a piece of gold’

Gonzalez, 43, is originally from Bogotá, Colombia. His family immigrated to the U.S. after his father experienced financial hardship and local political strife.

“[My dad] was a community leader in the region where we lived,” Gonzalez said. “When the rebel forces found out they couldn’t extort money from him, they tried to use him as an envoy to have other people pay extortion. He was like, ‘I can’t do this.'”

Coming to the U.S. brought Gonzalez closer to what appealed to him as a comedian. Gonzalez said he didn’t find much inspiration in Colombian low-brow comedy.

“My attraction to stand-up is more from the point of view of the American type of stand -up, which is very well-written jokes,” Gonzalez said. “I fell in love by watching [Jerry] Seinfeld [and] Chris Rock.”

It got to the point where Gonzalez said he had friends at work tell him to go try stand-up. That’s because he spent most of his time on the clock watching Comedy Central.

When he finally did stand-up and landed a joke for the first time, Gonzalez said it was like he “found a piece of gold.”

Still, he never left his Latino roots behind.

“I perform in Spanish, and I love performing in Spanish,” Gonzalez said. “Once you find what’s funny about you, you could say jokes in any language, and people will connect to you because you’re being funny and truthful about you.”

Cracking jokes with Colombians

At New York Comedy Club Stamford, Gonzalez brought many snippets of Colombian culture into his stand-up, like going to a cockfight with his dad, placing baby Jesus into the nativity scene at midnight on Christmas, and fearing La Patasola, or the One-Legged Woman, a part of Colombian folklore.

For non-Colombians in the audience, the comedy set was a look into what Colombian life is like. For Colombians like Julieth Jaramillo, it was a reminder of home.

Gonzalez called Jaramillo out for her melodic Paisa accent during the show. She threw her head back laughing when he did.

“He is a Latino comedian, a Colombian, and I wanted to show my support,” Jaramillo said about attending. “I love his personality. … He can take things that might initially seem negative and turn them into something incredibly positive, specifically bringing joy to people and making them laugh.”

Jaramillo is a Greenwich resident originally from Medellín, Colombia’s City of Eternal Spring. She said seeing an immigrant like Gonzalez succeed brings her great pride.

“Here’s a man where everything is foreign and everything’s a challenge. Coming here when you’re older, still making a name for yourself … is something definitely to be proud of,” Jaramillo said. “As a paisa, as the Colombian that I am, I really admire him.”

Gonzalez connected with Jaramillo and other Colombians during the later half of the show, when he offered relationship advice to intercultural couples.

“I want the places where there is a strong Colombian community to be the places that I want to keep coming back to,” Gonzalez said.

Colombians make up the third largest group of Latinos in Stamford, and the sixth largest group statewide.

Gonzalez told the crowd he plans to come back to Connecticut at least once a year. He said it was one of the top 10 shows he’d ever done. 

“It just feels great to know that somebody else’s Sunday, they got to share a beautiful night with their wife or their kids or their mom,” Gonzalez said, “and they’re going home in a better mood because they trusted me with their time and their money to give them a good time, a good show.”

“That sounds like I’m an escort,” Gonzalez joked. “Both strippers and myself are providing a good time.”

The post Comedian Pedro Gonzalez isn’t in CT to make a point about immigration. He’s here to laugh about it appeared first on WAMU.

Award-winning and bestselling fantasy author TJ Klune, a prominent LGBTQ+ voice in contemporary fantasy fiction, is making the final stop of his nationwide book tour in Central New York on Tuesday.

The event, hosted by Friends of the Central Library, is part of the longest-running library lecture series in the country. It begins at 7:30 p.m. at the Crouse Hinds Theater at The Oncenter in downtown Syracuse.

Klune’s latest release, We Burned So Bright, just came out in late April and quickly climbed to the top of the LGBTQ+ fantasy fiction ranking of Amazon.com’s Hot New Releases.

Ahead of his Syracuse appearance, Klune sat down with WAER’s own Holliday Moore to discuss the recurring themes across his work, including identity, found family, and belonging…

Holliday Moore (WAER): For 30 seasons, Friends of Central Library have held a robust author series bringing well-known writers to Central New York. On Tuesday, New York Times best-selling author T.J. Klune is featured. The beloved author of The House in the Cerulean Sea, about a young boy who moves into a magical house with a mysterious family, and Under the Whispering Door, another fantasy novel about a young woman who discovers a hidden door into a magical world. TJ Klune joins us right now ahead of his appearance on Tuesday at The Oncenter here in Syracuse. Welcome, TJ.

TJ Klune: Thank you so much for having me. I greatly appreciate it.

Holliday Moore (WAER): You have several books in the works. The Bones Beneath My Skin, is so very timely about a journalist who recently lost his job.

TJ Klune: Yeah, exactly. It’s a book set in the 90s. It exists because of my love for the conspiracy-laden time that we live in and is born of my love of shows like “The X-Files” and “Farscape” when I was a kid. And this book is essentially about a man who has lost everything, including his job as a journalist. in Washington, D.C., and he has to try to find a way to recover and try to put his life back together. And when he arrives at his family’s mountain cabin, he discovers that there are already two people there who will have the power to change the course of his life and everybody else’s in the world.

Holliday Moore (WAER): Looking at your works collection, the covers appear geared towards children’s literature.

TJ Klune: My cover artist, Chris Sickles, creates the covers by building the 3D set. So every cover you see of mine is actually a 3D set that he builds and photographs and then puts them into – so, for example, the Bones Beneath My Skin cover – you’ll notice that there’s like a bright light coming from the tunnel on the cover. That’s actually a sparkler that he put into the scene and then lit and then photographed everything. He is one of my favorite people in the world, and he is such a ridiculous talent that everybody should be aware of. But yeah, it is meant to invoke a certain sense of feeling. For me, rather than it being geared toward children, I get a sense of nostalgia from the covers. I get a sense of possibility of mystery and magic. And I just think he is just one of the most talented people in the world.

Holliday Moore (WAER): All of your books are in super unique places, sort of a cozy sci-fi atmosphere. How do you find those premises and which has been your favorite to write about so far?

TJ Klune: Under the Whispering Door is my rumination on death and grief and what it means to be a human being and book. The majority of the book is set in a four-story refurbished tea house. It is one of my favorite settings because, look, if you’re setting a book inside one location for almost the entirety of the book, the location has to feel like a character. It has to feel real. It has to feel lived in. And since the book deals with heavy topics like death and grief, as the book is about ferrymen whose job it is to help spirits cross over to whatever’s next, I wanted to find a place that felt safe, that felt like it could be a place where you could rest. And I thought about how many times I’ve been to tea shops in the past all over the world and how a sense of calm washes over me when I go inside because I’ll have overstuffed chairs, fire crackling in a fireplace. And I remember thinking, if I’m going to be writing something specifically like death and grief, I need to have a safe place in this world so people can not just focus on the death side of things, that they could focus on how these people are coming together. So the tea shop in Under the Whispering Door is probably one of my favorite locations that I’ve ever created.

Holliday Moore (WAER):  Your books are also known for their LGBTQ+ insight, and we’re at a time when being gay or gender fluid is getting push back. What underlying themes do you hope to share in your books for these communities?

TJ Klune: Think of it this way. Imagine you’re a kid and your greatest love is reading, but you also love movies and TV and video games and all this stuff, but you never get to see yourself in those forms of media. If we were, we were there to get sick or to get hurt or to get killed, all to teach the straight characters a lesson. When I was a kid, that was devastating because it made me feel like there was something wrong with me, that I was broken, that I was othered. And so when I was a kid, I made the decision that when I grew up, I wanted to put people like me in books. I’m one of the very lucky ones who got to grow up doing actually what they love most in the world. And the response has been nothing short of extraordinary. I mean, I get to speak with queer people all over the world, and I want to be clear here. I write for anybody who wants to read my books, but I write with queer people in mind because I know how difficult it is to be alive in the year 2026. Especially now when we’re seeing more and more attacks on specifically trans people, some of the most vulnerable people with the highest suicide rates in the world, and we’re punching down on them? How is that fair to anyone whatsoever? I knew I was gay by the time I was 10 years old. I may not have known exactly what that meant, But I understood that I wasn’t like everybody else. It blows my mind that we have decided what children should be rather than letting children be their weird and wonderful selves.

Holliday Moore (WAER): There’s a theme among writers called found families. You are known for being particularly good at writing in that theme. How do you find your way to write about unlikely foundlings that come together in such unique ways?

TJ Klune: Yeah, publishers like to put out graphics and say like, oh, this book has “enemies to lovers.” Oh, and this book has “found family.” And that’s wonderful. But it’s also very weird to see your existence be tropified into marketing because found family came from queer people. Many people, like myself included, did not get to have the love and support that children should get from responsible parents. At the end of the day, it taught me so much about how not to treat people and how to treat people because when you learn how not to treat people, there’s a part of you that wonders, okay, I can do the opposite, but what does the opposite really look like? So then you have to go out into the world and learn kindness and learn empathy and learn hope. And where did I learn that? From books. I learned that from books because I had nobody else to learn that from. So books were my teacher. Books taught me how to be a better person. And I think that if you are a reader, you know how that feels. Or if you’re not a reader, guess what? Those books are going to be there waiting for you when you’re ready. And they will teach you things no matter how old you are.

Holliday Moore (WAER): Author T.J. Klune, thank you so much for visiting with WAER today, and we look forward to seeing you at The Oncenter on Tuesday.

TJ Klune: Thank you so much for having me. I greatly appreciate it.

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Oneida County Executive Anthony Picente is tying the nation’s 250th anniversary to goals he’s established in a number of areas, including housing, youth mental health and economic growth.

As he delivered his annual State of the County address on Friday, Picente reflected not only on the county’s past but looked ahead to long-term investments to benefit county residents. He unveiled what he calls his ‘250-Forward Vision.’

Creating more housing opportunities is a major goal for Picente, who wants to create a fund that would help developers defray the costs of things like sidewalks, sewer connections and lighting.

“To outlay more money to the developers at the beginning, to deal with some of the infrastructure,” said Picente, “and then they’ll be able to reduce their overall cost structure, build quicker, and be able to pass those savings on.”

Picente also announced a new youth wellness initiative that will bring together students from each school district in Oneida County to discuss mental health, school safety, social pressures and other challenges.

“We need to do some work there,” Picente said. “We’ve got to find out what’s happening. (There’s) too much, whether it’s cell phones or whether it’s communication, cyberbullying, sexual harassment, other things that are happening, we need to take the temperature down, but we need to hear from them.”

Among other initiatives the county executive discussed in his speech: a matching grant program to help local American Legion and VFW posts improve their facilities; expanding workforce development programs and working on a ban of the unregulated substance, kratom, which Picente said has serious health risks.

Picente is a Republican, but the Democratic Minority Leader of the Oneida County Board of Legislators, Tim Julian said at the local level, squabbles over national party politics really don’t apply here.

“There’s no Democrat or Republican way to pick up garbage, pave a street, get a cat out of a tree, any of those things,” said Julian. “There’s no national platform to bog us down, it’s just common sense, good government.”

Picente made similar comments during his address, noting that while the community may be “imperfect, we get things done and we get along.”

Picente, who has been Oneida County Executive since 2007, is the longest-tenured county executive in New York state.

He is up for reelection in 2027. When asked whether he will run for another term, he said he will have an official announcement at the end of this year.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” Picente said. He added he loves the job and said the county is “making great progress.” He said the county “has so much promise in front of us, and there’s more to come.”

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Two New Hampshire residents were aboard the MV Hondius cruise ship, the boat at the center of a deadly hantavirus outbreak.

The individuals are in the United States, but have not returned to New Hampshire, according to the N.H. Department of Health and Human Services. Officials said Monday that they are “actively communicating with our federal partners to assess whether they will be returning to the state in order to coordinate appropriate monitoring to ensure their health and that of the public.”

State health officials said there is “no current health risk to residents” and that it would share additional information as it is made available.

The cruise ship departed from Argentina and made multiple stops on remote islands across the South Atlantic. Three passengers aboard the ship have died from hantavirus, with at least six others infected, according to NPR. Sixteen American passengers are in Nebraska at a quarantine facility, including one person who tested positive, according to the CDC, while two other passengers are in Atlanta, NPR reports.

It isn’t clear if the New Hampshire residents are among those in Nebraska.

Symptoms of Andes strain of the hantavirus usually begin within 4-42 days after an exposure, according to health officials. Early symptoms can include fever, fatigue, muscle aches, headache, and gastrointestinal symptoms like nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. There is no specific treatment or vaccine currently available.

On average, 30 people are identified with hantavirus every year in the U.S. The last case of hantavirus identified in a New Hampshire resident was in 2019 and thought to be acquired through travel.

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A St. Joseph County police officer has been placed on administrative leave after firing their weapon during a pursuit Monday morning.

According to the St. Joseph County Police Department, officers were called around 8:20 a.m. Monday to the 52000 block of Hastings Street for reports of trespassing.

Police said one person ran from officers and was later apprehended. Around the same time, a vehicle carrying two other people drove away from the scene. During that encounter, an officer fired their weapon, though no one was struck.

Police said the vehicle drove away, leading officers on a pursuit before all people involved were eventually detained. No injuries were reported.

Under an agreement between the St. Joseph County Police Department, South Bend Police Department and Mishawaka Police Department, South Bend police are leading the investigation into the shooting.

Once the outside investigation is complete, the case will be turned over to the St. Joseph County Prosecutor’s Office for review.

County police also said an internal investigation into the officer’s actions is underway. The officer who fired their weapon was placed on administrative leave, per department policy.

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Dominion Energy is proposing a 3-gigawatt natural gas plant in Cumberland County.

It would be the largest natural gas generator in the state if built — though it would just barely be outsized by the maximum output of the Bath County Pumped Storage Station.

Dominion still has to meet the requirements of the Virginia Clean Economy Act — which requires the company to retire all carbon-emitting power stations by 2045, unless it can demonstrate a reliability need.

That need became easier to prove with the rapid, ongoing buildout of data centers — the State Corporation Commission cited a reliability need in its approval of permits for the controversial Chesterfield Energy Reliability Center in 2025. Commercial electricity sales have grown faster in Virginia than in any state but Texas since 2019.

The proposed plant is slightly different from the one planned for Chesterfield. It would operate around the clock, rather than as a “peaker” plant that switches on to meet swings in demand. That allows Dominion to use a more efficient “combined cycle” design, where excess steam is used in a secondary turbine to generate more electricity.

The company hasn’t released emissions estimates for the Cumberland Energy Center yet.

Dominion said in a release that it is working towards an “increasingly clean” generation fleet, highlighting a mid-April SCC decision allowing the company to pursue 1,000 megawatts — roughly a third of the peak output of the proposed Cumberland plant — in solar and storage projects.

The Cumberland Energy Center would also put out more power than the company’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, which started delivering electricity to the grid in March. That project is expected to be fully operational by early 2027.

The new gas plant, slated for 900 acres in northern Cumberland County between the James River and Duncan Store Road, will be subject to review and public hearings by local and state government bodies.

Dominion is slated to give a presentation to the Cumberland County Board of Supervisors at its public meeting on Tuesday. The company has not yet filed an application for a conditional use permit.

First District Supervisor Bryan Hamlet declined to provide a comment ahead of that meeting, but has expressed a range of views on the project through Facebook posts.

Hamlet said in an April 13 post he was concerned about a lack of transparency in the process, but later highlighted an April 23 open house Dominion held on the proposal as a chance to learn more. He said the project “has the potential to be one of the most SIGNIFICANT economic opportunities our county has EVER seen.”

Disclosure: Dominion Energy is a VPM sponsor.

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Agencies for Connecticut homemaker companions must provide eight hours of paid training to employees beginning January 2027 to ensure the safety of their clients. That’s outlined in a bill state lawmakers gave final approval to last week, that next heads to the governor’s desk.

The companies employing these caregivers will need to ensure employees are trained to help clients use the toilet or bathe, and get dressed. The paid training must also cover how to identify and report abuse and neglect, along with changes in client’s condition and needs.

Part of the new training requirements for homemaker companions include best practices for these workers to support a client with dementia.

Christy Kovel with the Alzheimer’s Association Connecticut chapter said the workforce training is especially important since many older adults prefer to age in place, at home.

“We know that with the growing prevalence of the aging population in Connecticut and the growing prevalence of Alzheimer’s or other dementia, we have seen the rise of homemaker companion agencies,” Kovel said.

Kovel said there are at least 1,000 of these agencies now operating in Connecticut. Homemaker companions provide non-medical care such as help with cleaning and cooking, and must register with the Department of Consumer Protection.

As a 2023 Connecticut Mirror investigation found, the state doesn’t have much oversight over these companies.

The legislature gave final approval to the bill last week, but still needs Gov. Ned Lamont’s signature. If Lamont signs the bill, the state Department of Consumer Protection must publish an online list of their approved employee training programs by Oct. 1.

“I think it will not only help the caregivers to feel a little more empowered, you know, in terms of what they do for their job,” Kovel said. “It also will put families at ease knowing that caregivers that they may select from an agency that they hire are trained.”

The bill outlines that new caregivers must be trained within 90 days of starting work. The requirements also apply to homemaker companions who haven’t yet done such trainings.

In addition, there are continuing education requirements required every few years, such as communication training, and differences in medical and nonmedical care. Some employees might be eligible for exemption if they’re moving to a new agency and have been trained in the last three years.

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Grocery prices got you down? Learn how to cut your food bill with NPR’s 4-part newsletter. Sign up here for budgeting tips, meal planning and more.

BELLMAWR, N.J. — When Rachel Negro-Henderson started shopping at Aldi regularly during the pandemic — a change her family made when her husband lost his income as a crew coach — she’d sometimes have awkward run-ins with acquaintances.

“People would not want to talk about why they were here, like it was a mistake,” the healthcare administrator said. “They just stumbled into a grocery store because they needed a tomato.”

But after just a few years, those interactions have changed. Negro-Henderson, who lives in Audubon, N.J., with her husband and three kids, says she now sees people she knows there all the time.

“Everyone’s like, ‘Yeah, I’m saving money. I might as well come here. I’m getting the same product,'” Negro-Henderson said.

A slew of factors has been making it harder to put an affordable meal on the table. Food insecurity mushroomed during the COVID-19 pandemic, and grocery prices have skyrocketed in recent years. Layer onto that inflation, the threat of tariffs and corporate cost-cutting schemes like shrinkflation and electronic shelf labels, which give retailers the ability to change prices based on demand.

“Consumers are just to a point where [they’re saying], ‘Give us a break,'” said grocery industry analyst Phil Lempert. “This is food. You don’t screw around with our food.”

Many of those facing economic pressures and frustrations have begun shopping at budget grocery stores and warehouse clubs in lieu of traditional supermarkets, their priorities shifting in pursuit of a good deal. Look to social media to see the change, where creators regularly post their favorite finds at Aldi or meals they’ve made entirely from ingredients bought at Costco.

In the process, Lempert said, discounters have invested in improving their food and beverage offerings, shaking off any lackluster reputations they may have had in the past and ushering in a new generation of cost-conscious consumers.

According to Lempert, budget grocery stores tend to be smaller than the typical 40,000-square-foot supermarket, carry fewer items, have smaller staffs and operate with greater efficiency.

For example, he said, Aldi doesn’t unpack boxes of canned goods but, rather, has employees tear off the tops of shipping boxes and place them directly on store shelves to save time.

“If you look at the stores themselves, they’re bare-bones,” he said. “You go into a Wegmans and you’re seeing beautiful service departments and beautiful signage and stuff like that. You know, you’re not seeing that” at discount stores.

European brands Aldi and Lidl have grown their presence in the U.S. in recent years, with Aldi in particular boasting massive growth. The German-owned company said in a statement that it brought in 17 million new U.S. customers last year alone and opened nearly 200 new stores. It plans to open another 180 stores across the country this year. (The discount chain Grocery Outlet, on the other hand, announced it would close 36 stores after its CEO and president said it “expanded too quickly.”)

Warehouse clubs such as Costco and Sam’s Club, a division of Walmart, are popular choices for large families and also offer groceries at modest prices using their vast buying power. You might’ve heard about Costco’s $1.50 hot-dog-and-soda deal or its $4.99 rotisserie chicken. Costco reported net sales of $28.41 billion for the March “retail month,” an 11.3% jump over roughly the same period last year, and Sam’s Club said it’s hoping to more than double its profits over the next eight to 10 years.

Some consumers may reasonably raise an eyebrow at claims of low prices. But recent data released by Consumer Reports comparing a basket of goods at dozens of grocers — and using Walmart as a baseline — found that prices at Aldi and Lidl were more than 8% lower than at Walmart. BJ’s Wholesale Club was 21% cheaper than Walmart, while Costco boasted prices 21.4% lower. Only six retailers were cheaper than Walmart, with the other two being WinCo and H-E-B.

Shoppers are increasingly warming to store-brand items, too. According to the Private Label Manufacturers Association, sales of store-brand items increased nearly three times faster than sales of national name brand products last year.

That’s not to say there aren’t drawbacks to budget grocery stores, which often stock fewer items than traditional supermarkets. Even though Rachel Negro-Henderson says she’s the “biggest fan of Aldi,” she can’t always buy everything on her list there and chooses to purchase some items elsewhere, like a local deli or butcher.

“There’s still things as a good New Jersey Italian that I will only buy from another store, lunch meat, stuff like that,” Negro-Henderson said. But she added that she doesn’t mind making the extra trips. “There’s bigger sacrifices in this world than having to run to another store to grab a shallot.”

She and her husband, Rich Henderson, said they were drawn in by Aldi’s low prices, its GMO-free store-brand items and the company’s sustainability ethos. “Then the more we shopped here, the more products we tried,” Henderson said, “we realized quality-wise you’re not really sacrificing anything. You’re sacrificing name brands for the most part, but the quality is still great.” (More than 90% of the products at Aldi are store brands, according to the company’s website.)

What follows from budget grocery shopping is budget cooking, and social media offers videos of creators whipping up all manner of meals on the cheap.

One of them is Kiki Rough, who posts popular videos of herself cooking Depression-era, recession-era and wartime recipes on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook. Recent dishes include a “meatloaf” made using beans and a French Toast casserole without eggs.

Rough was inspired by her own personal experience with food insecurity, and wanted to share what she’s learned about how to stretch your grocery budget and cook with whatever you’ve got in your kitchen. She said she’s seen people from entry-level workers to corporate executives at her day job as the head of marketing at a tech firm struggle with food costs.

“I honestly think that the most practical tip is giving yourself a mindset shift, because I know a lot of people right now who have shame about where they are in their lives, their financial situations, down to the food that they have access to,” Rough said. “You need to not be ashamed that we are in a difficult economy.”

Lempert, the grocery industry analyst, said he expects frugal grocery practices to stick around, including a focus on lower prices. A survey released by market research firm AlixPartners in December found that a majority of respondents planned to spend as much or more on food in 2026, but also said they would seek out cheaper groceries and try to avoid impulse buying.

“People are using shopping lists more than ever before,” Lempert said. “People are shopping more online, because they can compare prices easier. People are tired of getting ripped off on food prices.”

Generation Z and millennial shoppers, he added, also tend to care less about a supermarket’s “bells and whistles” than their parents and baby boomers.

“We’re never going to go back to shopping the old way,” Lempert said.

Grocery prices got you down? Learn how to cut your food bill with NPR’s 4-part newsletter. Sign up here for budgeting tips, meal planning and more.

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