If you bring your child to Hurley Children’s Center in downtown Flint, Michigan, Mona Hanna find you. The pediatrician, who gained national notoriety in 2015 for helping expose the town’s water crisis, walked through the waiting room in a white lab coat, her gaze laser-focused on the chubby baby within the lap of its unsuspecting parent.

“Hi! I’m Dr. Mona!” – she said warmly. – Any probability you reside in Flint? She came upon that the family is from neighboring Grand Blanc.

“It’s so sad!” – said Hanna. “You should move to Flint! And have another baby! You too can become part of the Rx Kids program!” The parents laughed politely. But the doctor wasn’t joking.

Billed because the first-ever citywide cash assistance program for pregnant moms and youngsters, Rx Children gives Flint residents $1,500 mid-pregnancy and $500 every month for the newborn’s first yr. There are no obligations. No income limits. And it’s universal; almost every baby born for the reason that program launched in January is enrolled.

Parents who bring their children to this clinic for tests speak about how the cash has helped – from buying cots, diapers, clothes and wipes to the way it “keeps them alive” during maternity leave or provides crucial income, when the spouse died.

But the actual purpose of Rx Kids goes far beyond Flint, as Hanna admitted as she grabbed one among the Rx Kids kids within the exam room. “Do you think we should do this for children everywhere? What do you think?” she asked, cooing. The baby gurgled happily and smiled. “It was a yes.”

Cash payments as a tool to cut back child poverty

Many other countriesincluding Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Norway, Swedenand United Kingdomthey already offer child cash profit. The U.S. essentially did just that through the coronavirus pandemic: The expanded 2021 Child Tax Credit provided low- and moderate-income families (including families previously excluded because of insufficient income) with tons of of dollars per child in direct monthly payments for six months .

The child poverty rate has dropped to approx historical minimum. But an prolonged program expired at the top of 2021 and Congress didn’t renew it. The child poverty rate has fallen backup.

For Łukasz Shaeferdirector of the Poverty Solutions initiative on the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy and a longtime advocate of cash advantages for children, it was “the most brutal day” of his profession.

Shortly thereafter, he received an email from Hanna asking if he desired to collaborate on the show that became Rx Kids. The program’s goals transcend providing cash assistance to Michigan families: It also goals to get donors, lawmakers and voters enthusiastic about how child support cash advantages may help their communities.

The list of recent converts features a Republican state Senator John Damoosewho he became an outspoken supporter to expand Rx Kids. Calling himself a “pro-life person,” Damoose said, “It’s certainly better to worry about making it easier for mothers to decide to have children.” He said the Republican Party must get serious about supporting programs like Rx Kids. “For years we have been accused of being pro-birth, not pro-life. And I think it’s not without merit. We need to put our money where our mouth is and support these children and their mothers.”

What once gave the impression of a moonshot is gaining traction: Shaefer and Hanna say their communications with Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign helped shape Harris “child voucher” proposal.. President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign also supported expanding the child tax credit.

Meanwhile, Michigan has budgeted roughly $20 million in state Temporary Assistance for Needy Families to partially fund the expansion of Rx Kids right into a shortlist of communities if those areas are in a position to raise local matching funds. These areas include rural communities reminiscent of Michigan’s distant eastern Upper Peninsula, a part of which is within the U.S. Damoose’s district. “We want the tent to be as big as possible,” Hanna said.

But some health officials within the Upper Peninsula were initially cautious. Each latest Rx Kids community might want to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in private donations to start out and proceed this system in their community. “It could be a good thing,” Leann Espinoza, Maternal and Child Health Program Manager for the Eastern Upper Peninsula, said in August. – But I do not get my hopes up. I comprehend it sounds terrible.

Upper Peninsula families ‘falling into wreck’

This summer, within the wood-paneled recreation room of the Clark Township Community Center, Espinoza delivered a message to her team: Rx Kids is just not a program the eastern Upper Peninsula will give you the option to fund on its own.

That’s about “$3 million we would have to raise,” she said, three other people LMAS District Health Department staff members.

Tonya Winberg, a public health nurse in Mackinac County, looked stunned. “Just where does that $3 million come from?” – he asked Winberg. Other potential expansion locations for Rx Kids, like Kalamazoothey’ve wealthy private foundations that may finance this system. The eastern Upper Peninsula doesn’t.

“And how do you maintain it?” Espinoza added. “We hate starting programs and then funding runs out and we have to tell people, ‘It’s gone; We can’t do this anymore.”

The starkly beautiful and densely forested Upper Peninsula is accustomed to feeling forgotten. There’s a running joke about how often this happens incorrectly labeled as Canada or Wisconsin on maps. He is approx one-third of Michigan’s land massbut only 3% of its inhabitants. The sheer scale and small population mean that options for food, housing and childcare are limited. Poverty rates are there higher than the state average in most of Espinoza’s territory, and the region has a few of them highest rates With newborns exposed to prenatal drug exposure in line with the state health department.

At the community center, Espinoza and her colleagues begin listing all of the ways Rx Kids could save the lives of Upper Peninsula families, a lot of whom have some income and resources but “don’t earn enough to make it,” Espinoza said. . “Families that have fallen. And those are the ones that I really, really, really think this program would benefit from, especially here.”

Espinoza’s next meeting was with one among these families. Jessica Kline and her 18-month-old daughter Aurora live in Munising, a tourist town on Lake Superior. “She has a strong personality and red hair, so she came with a warning sticker,” Kline said with fun about her daughter.

Aurora is a tiny creature rushing across the family’s apartment, unfazed by the nasal tube connecting her to an oxygen machine. She was born early, at just 24 weeks of gestation, weighing slightly below 2 kilos. No hospital within the Upper Peninsula was equipped to care for such a young premature baby. So Aurora and her parents spent seven months in a hospital in Ann Arbor, five hours south of their home. “We didn’t have a reliable vehicle,” Kline said. “We had no source of income.” The hospital’s social services provided food at the speed of $19 a day, which Kline saved to purchase supplies for Aurora.

When they finally brought Aurora to the Upper Peninsula, their house was vandalized and the copper pipes were removed. Espinoza’s team helped them find an apartment and took them grocery shopping. Every day is a series of little battles, from finding the medical supplies Aurora must determining learn how to get to the revolving door of specialists tons of of miles away. Still, Aurora’s dad has a job in the town. They have family nearby. They make it work, Kline said.

But having a program like Rx Kids could have made an enormous difference in her daughter’s first yr of life. “Five hundred dollars a month would be enough to get us back on our feet,” she said.

After Espinoza left Kline’s apartment, she drove south to her office in Manistique. It was late. Everyone else went home. Espinoza sat at her desk, attempting to be pragmatic. He knows that Rx Kids won’t magically solve the shortage of child care and housing and all the opposite things needed to interrupt the cycle of poverty. But that may fix Kline’s automobile. That would help.

Espinoza said there’ll undoubtedly be critics – individuals who think parents will simply use the cash to purchase drugs. “‘What did they do to deserve this?’” she imagined them saying. “You just give them free money and they didn’t do anything to get it?” Because they do not understand. They don’t understand the barriers. They don’t understand that sometimes the selection is not all the time yours. For example, I talked to moms who really need to go to work and wish to support their family, but there is no such thing as a childcare. So they don’t have any other selection.”

Espinoza recently received an update from Hanna at Rx Kids: Thanks largely to personal foundations outside the Upper Peninsula, this system has raised enough money to fund a “perinatal” version of Rx Kids for five counties within the eastern Upper Peninsula. The perinatal program would offer a payment of $1,500 mid-pregnancy plus $500 per 30 days for the newborn’s first three months, quite than for your entire yr. “But really, the goal is to do the full program, which is why we continue to raise money,” Hanna said by email.

“I think it would be fantastic if we even launched a perinatal version,” Espinoza said. “It’s more than we had before.”

Fox 26 reported that Erica Lee Carter, daughter of the late Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, has taken the official oath of office to take over her mother’s seat in Texas’ 18th Congressional District

Carter announced her candidacy for her mother’s seat in August 2024 after Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called for a special election to fill the seat following Lee’s death following a battle with pancreatic cancer. Her selection was not a surprise. After her mother’s death, Carter said in a press release, “I want to finish for my mom!”

After taking the oath of office in Washington on November 12, she turned to other members of Congress and said: she mentioned that she was excited to work with them.

“Thank you to the voters of Texas’ 18th Congressional District for trusting me to serve the rest of the 118th Congress.

“I am honored to conclude for you and in memory of my mother, the late great Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee,” Carter said, in line with .

“I’m ready to get up and work for you. I look forward to working with Speaker Mike Johnson, Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and all of my colleagues in Congress on the important issues facing the United States House of Representatives on behalf of the American people.”

Carter will serve in the role until January 3, 2025. After that, former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner will serve in Texas’ 18th Congressional District after the outcomes are announced on Election Day.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee held this position from 1995 until her death. Carter documented her journey on X, formerly known as Twitter, by posting a photograph of herself sitting in her mother’s old office. “It is an indescribable honor and profound humiliation to be sworn in as the next Congresswoman of Texas’ 18th Congressional District,” she wrote on Twitter. “As I stand here today, I proudly take the place of my mother, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee.”

She also posted a touching comparison photo of herself delivering her first speech to Congress in the identical place where Jackson Lee delivered his first speech almost 30 years ago.

Local Texas leaders, including Republican Jasmine Crockett, delivered celebratory remarks. She prolonged “warm welcome” Carter, who resembles her mother, says she knows the previous congresswoman “looks down at the ground with pride.”

It took Las Vegas police officer Alexander Bookman one second to shoot and kill Brandon Durham on Tuesday after ordering him to “drop the knife” and firing six shots after entering Durham’s home.

However, Durham, a 43-year-old black man who works in real estate, was the homeowner and told his daughter to call the police for help in reporting a house invasion.

The video shows the lady holding the knife while Durham held her wrists with each hands to avoid being stabbed.

“Hey! Hey! Drop the knife! Drop the knife!” Bookman screamed, opening fire and shouting orders.

The first bullet appeared to hit Durham in the pinnacle, causing him to groan in pain as he fell to the ground. Bookman then fired a further five shots while Durham was on the ground.

“Hands up!” Bookman shouted.

But by then, Durham was dead, and the one person in a position to raise their hands was the lady who had broken into Durham’s home after smashing several automobile windows in front of his house.

Alejandra Marie Boudreaux, 31, was arrested on charges of home invasion while in possession of a firearm or deadly weapon; assault constituting domestic violence with a deadly weapon; child abuse or neglect; and disrespect for the protection of person or property, in accordance with court records available online in Clark County, all of that are felonies.

Las Vegas Metropolitan Police told local media that Durham had a previous relationship with Boudreaux, but provided no details about it.

Durham’s 15-year-old daughter, Isabella Durham, was home when her father was killed and was hiding in a bedroom.

“I heard shots. “I heard them and I’m disgusted,” her daughter said at a press conference outside the home on Thursday, in accordance with The Times. Las Vegas review magazine.

“When I grabbed the phone and handed it to him, that was the last time I saw my father alive.”

Shooting

Las Vegas Metropolitan Police released a 55-second video from Bookman’s body camera that shows an officer arriving in a squad automobile.

The dispatcher could be heard describing an individual between 20 and 35 years old, of average construct, wearing a black sweatshirt and black sweatpants moments before Bookman exited the police automobile.

A person could be heard screaming from contained in the house, prompting Bookman to kick the door open and enter the home together with his gun drawn, followed by one other officer.

The man’s pleas for help grow to be louder and loud banging could be heard as officers move to the back of the home, where they find Durham fighting with Boudreaux in a bedroom doorway.

Boudreaux appears to be wearing a black sweatshirt and sweatpants, but underneath the sweatshirt is a red hoodie together with his head covered. But Bookman shot and killed Durham, who was only wearing underwear.

Police didn’t say who was holding the knife, only saying that the 2 were “fighting for the knife.”

However, Durham’s family watched the video and consider he was never holding a knife.

“What colors are you looking at? Not the colors of the clothes. You look at the color of his skin and that’s why he’s dead,” said Rachael Gore, a registered domestic partner of Durham who describes herself as his wife. Vegas Review-Journal.

Police say Boudreaux can also be black. However, because she was wearing a hoodie and a long-sleeved shirt, her skin color wasn’t as obvious as Durham’s, who was only wearing underwear.

Durham’s friend Branden Cinquegrani described him as a “good man.”

“I just want everyone to know that he’s not a knife-wielding man in Sunset Park,” he told the Review-Journal.

Durham’s mother, Lenore DeJesus, also expressed outrage on the news conference.

“What I want and what I demand are answers,” she said, in accordance with the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

“The police owe us these answers,” she continued. “No lies, no made-up stories, no things to cover up their actions. They must take responsibility for what happened and provides us the answers we deserve. We don’t deserve any less.”

Bookman, 26, has been placed on paid administrative leave. According to The Times, the Durham shooting is the thirteenth by Las Vegas police this yr, and eight of them were fatal. Forest Vegas Sunny.

This time last yr, Las Vegas police shot and killed six people, two of whom died.

“My brother is dead because a police officer wasn’t properly trained,” said Durham’s sister, Diane Wright 8 News now.

“The officer shot my brother in the head and shot him at least four more times until my brother was lying dead on the floor… saying, ‘Don’t move,'” Wright said. “Where is he going? Has he already been killed by you?