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Maine voters to decide fate of electric utilities, tribal obligations in off-year election

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:11:53 GMT

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Maine voters faced a busy ballot on Tuesday in an off-year election dominated by a decision over whether to replace the state’s two much-criticized private electric utilities.Voters were also set to decide whether to restore language about honoring obligations to Native American tribes to printed versions of the state constitution. Other referendums included a vote on whether to attempt to curb influence from foreign governments and entities on state elections.The state’s busy slate of referendums comes a year before Maine will likely once again emerge as a battleground for a congressional seat and a presidential electoral vote in its more conservative 2nd Congressional District.NEW POWER COMPANYThe proposed takeover of two investor-owned utilities that distribute 97% of electricity in the state is unprecedented.If approved, the referendum would mark the first time a state with existing private utilities decided to scrap them all at the same time in favo...

Five years after California’s deadliest wildfire, survivors forge different paths toward recovery

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:11:53 GMT

PARADISE, Calif. (AP) — On the day Paradise burned, Gwen Nordgren stopped her car just long enough to rescue a young woman escaping by foot.By that time on Nov. 8, 2018, the sky was black even though the sun had been up for hours. Both sides of the street were on fire as Nordgren grabbed the woman’s hand.“Have you lived a good life?” she asked. The woman said she had.“So have I,” said Nordgren, the president of the Paradise Lutheran Church council. “We’re going to say the Our Father and we’re going to drive like hell.”Nordgren has told that story countless times in the five years since the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California’s history nearly erased a quiet community in the Sierra Nevada foothills. There are thousands more stories like it, each one providing a frame for one of the worst wildfires in U.S. history.Five years later, some — like Nordgren — are sharing their stories freely and managing their post-traumatic stress enough to return ...

US Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee and state Sen. John Whitmire lead crowded field in Houston mayor’s race

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:11:53 GMT

HOUSTON (AP) — Voters in Houston headed to the polls Tuesday to elect the next mayor of the nation’s fourth-largest city, choosing from a crowded field that includes U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee and state Sen. John Whitmire, two longtime Democratic lawmakers.Jackson Lee and Whitmire have dominated an open mayoral race that drew 17 candidates to the ballot and one write-in candidate — and has been focused on issues of crime, crumbling infrastructure and potential budget shortfalls. If elected, Jackson Lee would be Houston’s first Black female mayor. Since 1995, she has represented Houston in Congress. Whitmire has spent five decades in the Texas Legislature, where he has helped drive tough-on-crime policies while also casting himself as a reformer.If no candidate manages to get more than half of the vote on Tuesday, the top two will head to a runoff, which would be held Dec. 9.Jackson Lee, 73, and Whitmire, 74, have touted their experience in a race to lead one of the youngest major ...

The Supreme Court takes up a case that again tests the limits of gun rights

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:11:53 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is taking up a challenge to a federal law that prohibits people from having guns if they are under a court order to stay away from their spouse, partner or other family members. The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in their first case about guns since last year’s decision that called into question numerous gun control laws.The federal appeals court in New Orleans struck down the law following the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision in June 2022. That high-court ruling not only expanded Americans’ gun rights under the Constitution, but also changed the way courts are supposed to evaluate restrictions on firearms.Justice Clarence Thomas’ opinion for the court tossed out the balancing test judges had long used to decide whether gun laws were constitutional. Rather than consider whether a law enhances public safety, judges should only weigh whether it fits into the nation’s history of gun regulation, Thomas wrote.The Bruen decision ...

Civilians fleeing northern Gaza’s combat zone report a terrifying journey on foot past Israeli tanks

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:11:53 GMT

BUREIJ REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip (AP) — What was once Gaza’s busiest thoroughfare has become a terrifying escape route for Palestinian civilians fleeing combat on foot or on donkey carts. On their way south, those running for their lives said they raised their hands and waved white flags to move past Israeli tanks along the four-lane highway. Some reported Israeli soldiers firing at them and said they passed bodies strewn alongside the road.Many escaped with just the clothes on their back. One woman, covered head-to-toe in a black veil and robe, cradled a toddler and clutched a black purse. A man walked alongside a covered donkey cart that transported his family. It was piled high with mattresses.In the north of the Gaza Strip, Israeli ground forces backed by relentless airstrikes have encircled Gaza City, the base of Hamas ‘ power, since the weekend. They cut the strip in half and sought to drive Palestinians from northern Gaza as troops advanced. From early on in the war, now...

Uvalde mother whose daughter was killed in 2022 school shooting on the ballot for mayoral election

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:11:53 GMT

UVALDE, Texas (AP) — A Uvalde mother who has pushed for tougher gun laws after her daughter was among the 19 children killed in the Robb Elementary School attack is on the ballot Tuesday in a bid to become mayor of the South Texas town, which was left divided by one of America’s deadliest mass shootings. Kimberly Mata-Rubio, 34, would become Uvalde’s first female mayor and has talked about charting a new direction for the town of 15,000 residents, where differences persist over how to move forward from the tragedy. That includes continued calls for accountability over the hesitant response by police, who did not confront the teenage gunman for more than an hour. Running against Mata-Rubio are Cody Smith, a former Uvalde mayor who left office in 2012, and Veronica Martinez, a local elementary school teacher. This is the first mayoral election in Uvalde since the May 24, 2022, shooting. The gunman carried out the attack in a fourth-grade classroom with an AR-style rifle, a weapon Mata...

Voters are deciding whether to make Ohio the 24th state to legalize recreational marijuana

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:11:53 GMT

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The future of recreational marijuana legalization in Ohio is in the balance Tuesday.Issue 2 on the statewide ballot would allow adults 21 and over to buy and possess up to 2.5 ounces of cannabis and to grow plants at home. A 10% tax would be imposed on purchases, with proceeds going to administrative costs, addiction treatment, municipalities with dispensaries, and social equity and jobs programs. Ohio would become the 24th state to allow adult use cannabis for fun if the measure passes.The conclusion of the vote follows a nearly two-year push by the Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, which surmounted administrative, legal and legislative hurdles to put the citizen-initiated statute before voters.In accordance with Ohio law, the proposal went first to the Republican-dominated Legislature, which was given four months to pass it. With many majority lawmakers opposed, they refused.GOP Senate President Matt Huffman stood firm against the proposal and has...

Republicans are vying to control New Jersey’s Legislature for the first time in over 2 decades

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:11:53 GMT

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — New Jersey wraps up voting Tuesday for a new Legislature, with all 120 seats on the ballot, as Republicans fight for controlling either chamber for the first time in more than two decades. The GOP has refrained from declaring its members would recapture control of either chamber, which they haven’t held since 2001. But they sounded optimistic after picking up seven legislative seats in 2021, when Gov. Phil Murphy won reelection by a slimmer margin than polls had projected.At stake is control of the 80-member Assembly and 40-seat Senate, with Democrats currently dominating both chambers, as well as holding the governorship. Candidates in this year’s contested races each ran on their own issues. But overall, Democrats focused on a number of property tax rebates they delivered over the last two years as well as pledging to defend abortion rights. Republicans campaigned in part on ending Democrats’ more than two decades of control and leaned heavily on w...

Virginia’s capital city voting again on whether to allow a casino

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:11:53 GMT

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Voters in Virginia’s capital city are deciding Tuesday whether developers can move forward with a proposed $562 million resort casino along Interstate 95. A ballot measure on whether to allow the gambling and entertainment complex is before Richmond voters for a second time, after the city narrowly rejected the proposal two years ago. The developers returned with a retooled proposal and invested around $10 million into a pro-casino campaign aimed at building support for the project, which has the backing of Mayor Levar Stoney and major area business groups. The proposal also faced a lesser-funded but organized opposition effort. Many of the anti-casino signs that dotted the city in recent weeks have emphasized the fact that the city already said “no” once before. The project — this time branded the Richmond Grand Resort and Casino — would be located on the same former tobacco company site just off I-95 in south Richmond that was identified in the first pro...

Exonerated ‘Central Park Five’ member set to win council seat as New York votes in local elections

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:11:53 GMT

Exonerated “Central Park Five” member Yusef Salaam is poised to win a seat Tuesday on the New York City Council, marking a stunning reversal of fortune for a political newcomer who was wrongly imprisoned as a teenager in the infamous rape case.Salaam, a Democrat, will represent a central Harlem district on the City Council, having run unopposed for the seat in one of many local elections playing out across New York state on Tuesday. He won his primary election in a landslide.The victory will come more than two decades after DNA evidence was used to overturn the convictions of Salaam and four other Black and Latino men in the 1989 rape and beating of a white jogger in Central Park. Salaam was imprisoned for almost seven years.“For me, this means that we can really be become our ancestors’ wildest dreams,” Salaam said in an interview before the election. Elsewhere in New York City, voters will decide whether to reelect the Queens district attorney and cast ballots in other City Counci...