News from around the nation.

WV community protests closure of homeless encampment; a new report calls for greater investment in MA's public colleges and universities; video games are being used to teach Indigenous language; Trump Administration forces last WA coal-fired power plant to remain open; NM residents encouraged to comment on clean water rule change; and GA advocates work to end the death penalty nationwide.

Transcript

Public news service Monday, December 29th, 2025 afternoon update, I'm Edwin J. Viera.

After the city of Wheeling decided to forcibly close a large homeless encampment earlier this month, protests continue from community members who feel the decision couldn't be made at a worse time, amid winter weather and the holiday season.

Nadia Ramlagan reports.

A few years ago, a US Supreme Court ruling allowed cities and towns to ban outdoor camping and Wheeling became one of around 150 localities nationwide to implement a no camping ban.

Vincent DeGeorge with Ohio Valley Mutual Aid says camp sweeps or bulldozing tents are not solutions to homelessness.

They don't make people any more able to afford homes.

Instead, they simply displace homeless people and make them more desperate.

City leaders say they gave people living in the camp six weeks notice and described the location as being unfit for human habitation.

Recent research examining the city of Los Angeles found that while camp bans and sweeps temporarily reduced visible homelessness in public spaces, the number of unhoused people increased within months.

A recent report on higher education in Massachusetts calls for greater investment in faculty and staff at the state's public colleges and universities.

Catherine Carley has more.

Attendance overall has returned to pre-pandemic levels, while enrollment at the state's 15 community colleges is up nearly 40 percent in the past few years.

Claudine Barnes, union president of the Massachusetts Community College Council, says without increased appropriations to hire and adequately pay more full-time educators, students are being set up to fail.

We simply just don't have the kind of staff that's needed to provide the kind of advising that's necessary for the students that are coming in without people drowning themselves in work.

She says most full-time staff have additional part-time jobs to make ends meet.

Data show salaries at the state's public higher ed institutions are well below the national average when adjusted for the cost of living, with community college faculty facing a more than $30,000 gap in pay.

In a classroom on South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation, whiteboards are sometimes swapped with Super Mario or Fortnite video games.

A teacher is reviving the Lakota language through an activity young students often enjoy, as Mike Mowen tells that story.

Alex Littlehorn is founder of the non-profit Gen7, where he created little gaming lessons using the Super Mario universe.

Littlehorn, who is Lakota and Choctaw, now makes use of those tech skills when teaching first through eighth grade at a school on Pine Ridge.

He grew up learning about his great grandparents boarding school trauma and some of his elders don't speak Lakota.

He wanted to end the cultural disconnect learning to speak it in high school.

I had my own identity issues and when I was going through school and learning Lakota and being able to confidently speak that really like filled a hole for me.

Little Horn also creates weekly phrase videos or art videos of him sketching while speaking Lakota.

Many of his videos have more than thousand views on YouTube.

He says they're not just for the classroom, noting many adult learners use them too.

This is public news service. 2025 was a big year in news, but some stories slipped through the cracks.

As Eric Tegethoff reports, Project Censored is highlighting 12 of the year's most under-reported stories.

The organization selects topics that weren't thoroughly covered by the mainstream press.

Many of the stories on a list impact North Carolina directly, such as the severe under-representation of the working class and state Just 1.6 percent of state lawmakers are working class, according to research from Duke University and Leola University Chicago that's conducted every two years.

Andy Lee Roth, editor at large for Project Censored, says this issue impacts what legislatures can achieve.

When you have a lack of working class representation in state legislatures, that means that working class perspectives are simply missing from the key public policy debates that take place in those chambers.

North Carolina is among 10 states that didn't have any working class members state legislators.

Roth notes that the work of Project Censored also celebrates the importance of independent journalism, where many of the underreported stories originate from.

As Missouri lawmakers brace for another possible government shutdown in January, health care advocates warn proposed Medicaid changes could put coverage at risk for hundreds of thousands of people.

Crystal Blair has the details.

The state has more than 1.3 million residents enrolled in Medicaid and critics say new paperwork and verification requirements combined with ongoing administrative strain could cause many to lose coverage even if they remain eligible.

Greg Woodhams with the League of Women Voters of Missouri addressed the problem at a recent webinar hosted by the League.

Many eligible participants won't be able to navigate red tape from new work requirements and more frequent verification of eligibility and will lose coverage.

Woodhams says fewer than a third of those who lost coverage were actually found ineligible.

He adds that Missouri is not alone, pointing out that other states have seen large coverage losses driven paperwork barriers rather than eligibility.

Federal immigration authorities say a recent enforcement surge in Ohio has resulted in arrests of people with serious criminal records, while Columbus leaders emphasize local police are not involved and urge residents to understand their rights, Bar-Siddiqui reports.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says it launched Operation Buckeye on December 16, increasing enforcement activity in Columbus and other parts of the state.

The agency describes the operation as a focused effort aimed at people it says pose public safety risks and lack legal authorization to remain in the country.

Madison Sheehan, ICE Deputy Director, says the operation moved quickly and prioritized individuals with violent or repeat criminal histories.

"We've had a lot of success very quickly.

Our officers have gone out and truly arrested the worst of the worst.

We have arrested gang members, murderers, and rapists."

ICE says those arrested include people with felony convictions and long-standing removal orders.

Immigration advocates have raised concerns nationally that enforcement actions can still create fear within immigrant communities beyond those targeted.

This story was produced in association with media in the public interest and funded in part by the George Gund Foundation.

I'm Edwin J. Viera for Public News Service, member and listener supported.

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