Six minutes of news from around the nation.

Facing Medicaid cuts, OR seeks rural health funding; FBI operation in ID includes allegations of detaining, zip-tying children and expert MD adoptees need to find community, even into adulthood. 

TRANSCRIPT

The Public News Service Daily Newscast for October 23rd, 2025.

I'm Joe Ulory.

The U.S. military carried out its eighth strike on a suspected drug boat in the Eastern Pacific, killing two people.

The Associated Press reports it's the first attack outside the Caribbean as the Trump administration expands its campaign against cartels in South America. say at least 34 people have died since the strikes began last month.

Lawmakers from both parties are questioning the legal authority and oversight of the ongoing military operations.

Rural Arizona families are feeling the impact of the government shutdown as tens of thousands of federal workers have lost their jobs amid the impasse.

Labor leaders and elected officials are asking for donations to help people make ends meet.

Nearly 35,000 federal workers in Arizona have been furloughed, which local labor leader Omar Algecira says is having a direct effect on people's ability to make ends meet.

He says that's especially true in rural parts of the state.

What we're trying to do is make sure that they have food to eat, that they have the essentials that they need in life so that they can continue to do what they need to do on a day-to-day basis.

Algecira says the American Federation of Government Employees has established donation sites at the Arizona Food Bank Network and Arizona AFL-CIO local offices to help furloughed workers meet their basic needs.

I'm Mark Moran.

A Wisconsin teacher is voicing significant concerns about the recent federal special education cuts and says it's an added blow to the state's budget deficit.

This month, the US Department of Education began laying off more than 450 employees, many of whom oversee special education management.

President of the Wisconsin Education Association County Council, Peggy Wirtz Olson, is also a high school teacher.

She says Wisconsin educators have already been sounding the alarm about the lack of special education funding and advocating for a higher reimbursement rate for special education needs.

She says the state cannot withstand what she describes as a federal attack on public education.

I look at these federal level cuts on top of the state struggling cuts.

We didn't get special education funding up where we wanted to get it. kind of a one-two punch.

Wisconsin reimbursed less than a quarter of a school district special education costs, one of the lowest reimbursement rates in the nation.

Wurtz Olson stresses implications from federal cuts could extend to students across the state, adding to the already large gap to fill.

About 15 billion dollars in special education funding is overseen by the affected offices that support services for an estimated seven and a half million and students with disabilities across the country.

This is Public News Service.

A new poll finds more than three-quarters of people say they want Congress to extend the Affordable Care Act subsidies set to expire at the end of the year.

Catherine Carley reports.

Nearly 390,000 Massachusetts residents buy health insurance through the federal marketplace, with more than 80 percent utilizing enhanced tax credits.

Ashley Kerzinger with the nonpartisan Health Policy Research Polling and News Organization, KFF, says without those subsidies, insurance premiums could double.

"And when we asked people who purchase this type of coverage, what would you do if your premiums nearly doubled, four in ten said that they would go without health coverage."

She says the subsidies spurred a historic surge in ACA marketplace enrollment, from roughly 11 million enrollees in 2020 to more than 24 million in 2025.

Local leaders say small businesses would face significant financial burdens.

Members of the North Carolina State University community are still seeking justice over cancer-causing toxins that caused the closure of one of its buildings.

The Campus Community Alliance for Environmental Justice began its campaign in 2023 to spread awareness about the high levels of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, found in Poe Hall after its closure.

Sandy Alford is a member of the group and alumni of the school who has breast cancer, like hundreds of other workers and students who spent time in Poe Hall.

She remembers when she first heard about the PCB contamination in 2023 and thought of a PhD student she worked with who died at the age of 42 from a rare brain cancer.

That's why my former boss might have died.

This is why I have breast cancer.

I have a favorite professor from NC State who was in that building for 13 years and she has cancer as well as neurological damage.

Alford has gone through surgery and radiation for her cancer and says her disease followed a similar path as others from the building who have been diagnosed with cancer and other diseases.

Alfred is one of the lead litigants suing NC State over the chemicals on behalf of more than 600 alumni and former staff.

I'm Eric Tegethoff reporting.

More nurses are needed to care for Indiana's aging population.

One organization is seeking qualified nurses outside of US borders to fill the gap.

Worldwide Health Staff Solutions Chief Nursing Officer Laura Massenio has worked in the profession for 34 years.

She says many nurses with decades of experience are leaving the field and there are not enough nursing schools in the United States to train their replacements.

Many of these she adds have several unfilled faculty positions.

There has also been many new roles that have been developed outside of the traditional brick-and-mortar hospital settings that are drawing nurses out of the acute care setting and more so into the file realm.

I'm Terry Dee reporting.

The Public News Service Daily Newscast for October 24th, 2025.

I'm Joe Mullery.

The Senate failed Thursday to advance a bill that would have paid some federal workers during the ongoing government shutdown.

ABC News reports Senator Ron Johnson's Shutdown Fairness Act fell short 55 to 45 votes, needing 60 to move forward.

Three Democrats joined Republicans in support.

The bill would have paid troops and certain essential federal employees, but most Democrats opposed it, saying it gave too much power to the administration to decide who gets paid.

With Senators heading home for the weekend, the shutdown, now the second longest, will continue into next week.

Oregon is in the process of applying for funds from the Rural Health Transformation Program, A federal program established by the Trump administration's H.R.1 bill to improve health care in rural communities.

Claire Pierce-Robel is with the Oregon Health Authority.

At a recent public forum, she said whether or not Oregon receives the funding, it is still within the context of historic cuts to Medicaid from the budget bill.

The federal funding through this program is not intended to offset the H.R.1 Medicaid cuts and in fact is a fairly small amount compared to the cuts that we were anticipating just in the state of Oregon alone.

The program will provide qualifying states with at least 100 million dollars per year for five years.

An FBI-led raid in southwest Idaho last weekend continues to raise questions about tactics used which included detaining and zip-tying families.

Eric and federal law enforcement agents were involved in an operation in Wilder to break up illegal horse race gambling.

Four people were arrested by the FBI at the event and another on Monday.

But it was the harsh tactics law enforcement used that drew criticism including the deployment of helicopters, drones and rubber bullets.

Rebecca DeLeon with the ACLU of Idaho says her organization received live updates as the raid unfolded.

She says about 400 people had gathered for a horse racing event that was billed as family-friendly.

They detained absolutely everybody and that included children.

We saw quite young children, maybe 10 years old or a little younger, who were zip tied.

We have evidence of bruises on their wrists from being zip tied, and we think that there's absolutely zero justification for that.

The agency says reports suggesting young children were zip tied or hit with rubber bullets are false.

Immigration Customs Enforcement was also at the raid and detained more than 100 people, including parents of children at the event.

The Department of Homeland Security claimed in a statement that ICE was part of operations dismantling criminal networks in the United States.

This is Public News Service.

New national data reinforce what labor analysts have been warning for years.

The U.S. economy faces a severe skills shortage.

States are responding to ensure students have solid credentials and as Mike Mullen reports, North Dakota is part of the conversation.

Environment Minnesota teamed up with volunteers to collect samples from 41 lakes, rivers, and streams.

All but one were analyzed with detections confirmed across the board.

Scientists are learning more about how these fragments from larger plastic items that break down over time enter the environment and what the health risks are.

Environment Minnesota's Caitlin Rolfes says their results make it clear that freshwater sources aren't immune.

And now we know that they have been found in 40 lakes across the state.

The project tested four types of microplastics, including fibers from clothing and textiles, and film used in plastic bags and flexible packaging.

A new report finds discretionary parole boards in New York and nationwide are inherently flawed.

Prison Policy Initiative reports says parole releases are declining in every state due to what it sees as flaws in the system.

Wanda Bertram with the Prison Policy Initiative says this type of system dashes people's hopes for early release.

It doesn't matter how much work they might do on themselves, how much they might transform their lives while they're incarcerated.

Many people behind bars who have done that, for instance, who committed violent crimes, spent decades behind bars and have become completely different people.

The report says 2022 was the worst year for people in New York prison seeking parole, in part since there were fewer parole board hearings and they approved fewer applications.

These numbers declined during the early years of the pandemic, Although they're slowly rebounding, the numbers of meetings and paroles granted are still well below pre-pandemic levels.

I'm Edwin J. Vieira.

Experts often stress how important it is for adoptive families to connect with one another, creating communities based on a shared experience and understanding.

But that remains important for adoptees even as they enter adulthood.

More from Zimone Perez.

Bethany Frazier is a business owner and adoptee who a few years ago in adulthood found community with other adoptees through the Barker Foundation.

After reuniting with her biological father and discovering her ethnicity, which had been kept from her by her adoptive parents, Frazier felt confused and upset.

She ended up calling the Barker Foundation to get connected with people who validate her feelings and share her experiences.

It doesn't matter the age, gender, or the ethnicity.

Every single adopted person that I meet, I feel like we're almost kind of connected through this life experience, sort of starting in the same place.

At some point, we were relinquished or something happened where we became somebody else's child.

Frazier says she wanted a community that understood her experience, but had limited connections to fellow adoptees, and that it's important for adult adoptees to take the leap and join an adoptee community.

This is Joe Ulery for Public News Service, member and listener supported.

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