It's Friday, July 11, 2025 and in this morning's issue we're covering: Chantal Wreaks Havoc in North Carolina as State Lawmakers Try to Repeal an Ambitious Climate Change Goal, NC health care costs overhyped in national ranking. Who pays those costs is another issue, ‘We helped each other. We taught each other the law.’, Hills, rivers and rocky terrain: Why the Hill Country keeps flooding, Current U.S. President's cuts to broadband make it harder for West Virginians to use the internet.

Media outlets and others featured: Inside Climate News, Carolina Public Press, The Lens, The Texas Tribune, Mountain State Spotlight.

The tropical system dumped massive rain across central North Carolina on Sunday, days after the state’s Democratic governor vetoed a bill canceling an interim carbon reduction goal of 70 percent by 2030. GOP lawmakers will likely attempt an override.

By Lisa Sorg

July 8, 2025

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

CHAPEL HILL, N.C.—Perched above the Bolin Creek Trail, 46,000 tons of coal ash appeared to be intact Monday afternoon, the mound’s slopes anchored by bushes and vines.

But at the foot of the ash pile outside its fence, the force of the floodwaters from Tropical Depression Chantal had evicted large trees from the banks of the nearby creek. Rocks larger than bowling balls had caromed off one another. A dead crawdad lay on the trail, washed out from the creek. The air smelled vaguely of sewage. 

Early Sunday morning, Tropical Storm Chantal had blown ashore in South Carolina, and by the time it meandered into central North Carolina, it had weakened to a tropical depression. 

But by nightfall the impacts felt akin to a hurricane: 5 to 10 inches of rain fell within 12 hours. 

Dams burst. Interstates closed. Roads washed away. The Haw River reached historic levels, rising as much as 22 feet in four hours, engulfing parts of Saxapahaw. Hillsborough officials advised residents to boil their water after parts of the treatment plant flooded. More than 17,000 Duke Energy customers lost power.

Eighty people who live along the Eno River in Durham had to be rescued, and another 63 were displaced in Chapel Hill. First responders had to conduct 13 water rescues near Southern Pines. One elderly woman in Chatham County died when her car became trapped in floodwaters.

Storms like Chantal—and Hurricane Helene, which technically had been downgraded to a tropical storm when it devastated western North Carolina last September—are at least in part attributable to a warming world, according to climate scientists. 

Warmer air holds more moisture. The 2020 North Carolina Climate Science Report cited a study whose modeling showed an increase in the number of intense hourly rainfall events. North Carolina-based experts concluded that it’s likely severe thunderstorms in central North Carolina will happen more often. 

Durham is already experiencing more extreme storms and precipitation events, according to the county’s 2023 Community Health Assessment, including a 129 percent increase in heavy precipitation events from 2005 to 2014 compared to the 1950s.

Yet a majority of North Carolina’s state lawmakers seem to ignore the scientific evidence. Two weeks before the storm, the state Senate had joined the House in passing Senate Bill 266, titled “The Power Bill Reduction Act,” that, in addition to providing utilities with financial incentives for natural gas and nuclear energy, would allow Duke Energy to cancel its interim carbon reduction goal of 70 percent by 2030. The utility would still have to achieve net zero by 2050.

Rep. Dean Arp, a Republican from Union County, co-sponsored the bill, with outspoken support from utilities, the American Petroleum Institute, the N.C. Chamber and manufacturing interests. Arp called it a “responsible, prudent bill.”

“People ask, ‘Why not just delay those interim goals instead of repealing them?’” Arp said on the House floor.

For bill opponents, planning is the point, a critical step to reaching net zero. “Our planet’s on fire: hurricanes, storms, wildfires, deadly heat, droughts, crazy weather,” said state Rep. Pricey Harrison, a Democrat from Guilford County. 

By eliminating the interim goal, it will be more difficult to achieve net zero by 2050, she said.

Senate Bill 266, coupled with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed rollbacks of greenhouse gas rules, will give North Carolina utilities carte blanche to pump millions of tons of carbon dioxide and methane into the air. The power plants’ emissions will accelerate the pace of climate change with near certainty.

“Science is unforgiving,” said Rep. Abe Jones, a Wake County Democrat. “This bill isn’t smart or realistic. Nature will have its way.”

Helene’s Survivors and Climate Trauma

Nine months ago, Colleen Daly eyed the floodwaters that surrounded her apartment complex south of Asheville.

The day before, Hurricane Helene had made landfall in Florida. Then, on Sept. 27, 2024, the storm surged up the spine of the Appalachians and flattened swaths of western North Carolina.

Yet even as the floodwaters rose, Daly believed the storm’s ferocity would soon pass.

We’ll be on this island, she thought, but we’re going to be OK.

Daly soon met a woman who had sought refuge in the apartment building. The electricity was out. No one had cell phone service or running water. 

“‘I came here thinking there would be power,’” Daly said the woman told her. “‘I came here thinking that I could use my machine, that there might be extra oxygen. I don’t have any oxygen left.’”

Daly said her husband and a neighbor swam a quarter of a mile to the Fletcher fire station, where they got an oxygen tank. They swam back, she said, holding it over their heads as the water continued to pour in.

Daly told her story one evening in mid-June at a People’s Hearing, held in Asheville at the Highland Brewery Event Center, an airy, vaulted room illuminated by sunbeams bending through wide windows and overhead strings of retro Edison bulbs. 

Against a backdrop of purple, red and white signs that read “People Over Polluters” and “Stop EPA’s Climate Chaos,” two dozen hurricane survivors, local officials and environmental advocates gathered on stage to testify about the trauma they experienced during Helene and the historic storm’s connection to climate change.

Event organizers recorded the testimony to send it to the EPA. Earlier this year, on what EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin described as “a historic day at the EPA,” he formally proposed two regulatory repeals for power plants, Inside Climate News reported at the time: the end of greenhouse gas rules and mercury and air toxics regulations. 

The economic benefits to the fossil fuel industry would total $20 billion over the next two decades, Zeldin said. 

Yet that figure is dwarfed by the estimated costs of Helene’s destruction in western North Carolina alone, according to state officials—$60 billion—and the years of recovery that lie ahead.

“The testifiers are here to demonstrate that they are proof that climate change is a real threat,” said Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer, “and we need more protections from climate pollution, not less.”

How to Comment on the EPA’s Proposal

The EPA will hold a virtual public hearing on its greenhouse gas proposal Tuesday, July 8, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on YouTube. 

The EPA is accepting written public comments through Aug. 7. Read the full text of the rule and instructions on how to comment.

In North Carolina, eliminating the interim carbon reduction goal would save ratepayers $13 billion, bill supporters said. Senate Bill 266 would also permit Duke Energy to pass the financing costs of new natural gas and nuclear plants to its customers, with permission from the N.C. Utilities Commission. This would save $1.5 billion in future interest, bill sponsors said.

An analysis written by three N.C. State University environmental engineering professors contradicts that figure. They estimated removing the interim target would not reduce power bills, but instead could cost ratepayers up to $23 billion in added fuel expenses over the same time. 

Companies would increase natural gas generation by nearly 40 percent between 2030 and 2050, the analysis suggested, and those fuel costs are expected to rise. 

Demand for gas turbines has increased their cost by twofold, according to S&P Global, and wait times can range from one to seven years.

“I can’t overstate how removing our carbon goal is not a good idea,” said Harrison, the representative from Guilford County. “This bill promotes natural gas and nuclear at the expense of cleaner energy sources. It’s not balancing environmental goals.”

Bill supporters are justifying a massive fossil fuel infrastructure buildout happening in North Carolina to meet the energy demands from massive server farms called data centers needed to power energy-hungry AI applications and crypto mines.

Zeldin, the EPA administrator, has also cited data centers to justify the need for fossil fuels. “Coal and natural gas power plants are essential sources of baseload power that are needed to fuel manufacturing and turn the United States into the Artificial Intelligence capital of the world,” Zeldin said in a press statement.

Data centers often operate in secrecy, making it difficult to know where they plan to locate and to ascertain the amount of energy they use. 

Microsoft required Person County officials to sign a non-disclosure agreement as part of the county’s sale of a 1,350-acre megasite to the tech company. The land is adjacent to where Duke Energy plans to build two new natural gas plants and Enbridge intends to construct a new eight-mile segment of natural gas pipeline.

Neither Microsoft nor the county has announced what will be built on the tract, but a legislative presentation by the American Petroleum Institute earlier this year listed it as a data center. 

The Costs People Bear

An hour before the People’s Hearing, it began to rain. So intense was the deluge that a car’s windshield wipers could not keep pace with the torrents. From Black Mountain through Swannanoa into East Asheville, mud pooled around mounds of debris that over the past six months had been extracted from the riverbed. 

Near the North Carolina-Tennessee border, flash flooding triggered a new landslide that closed a segment of Interstate 40, which had only recently re-opened after Helene.

Suddenly the skies cleared. The sunlight took on an amber hue. Thunderheads the color of a deep bruise marched east.

As a baby, Brian Campbell was baptized along Black Creek at the headwaters of the Swannanoa River. Years later, he married his wife there. 

“This valley has always been a place that’s felt safest and most like home,” Campbell said at the People’s Hearing. 

Campbell is the executive director of Physicians for Social Responsibility. Last September he had just returned to North Carolina from several meetings with global experts on climate change and health. 

Shortly before midnight, he awoke to heavy rain and wind and, he said, “to the low hum of the Swannanoa River, which I’d never heard before. This normally quiet stream was now churning.”

His family and several neighbors walked down a hill. They stood in silence and watched as whitewater crews rescued unhoused people from a rooftop alongside the MANNA FoodBank, which was engulfed in water, Campbell said.

“We know climate change has real and devastating consequences, and we know the only way to solve this is through strong local, state and federal leadership,” Campbell said. “The EPA must do its part regulating carbon and other harmful emissions. And we must protect federal investments in clean energy, in health care and health research and environmental justice and in community recovery and resilience. These policies and investments save lives, and we refuse to sit quietly while they’re under attack.”

Senate Bill 266 is not yet law. On July 2, Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, vetoed it.

“This bill not only makes everyone’s utility bills more expensive but it shifts the cost of electricity from large industrial users onto the backs of regular people,” Stein wrote in his veto message. “This bill walks back our state’s commitment to reduce carbon emissions, sending the wrong signal to businesses that want to be part of our clean economy.”

A few Democrats joined Republican lawmakers in supporting the bill. If that margin holds, there will be enough votes for an override. 

On Monday, the day after Tropical Depression Chantal reminded far too many North Carolinians of previous hurricanes, workmen with chainsaws sliced up trees that had fallen across highways, business owners mucked out storefronts and tow trucks hauled away soaked cars. Over 15,000 people were still without power as temperatures soared into the 90s. 

Yet more rain is forecast for later in the week. 

NC health care costs overhyped in national ranking. Who pays those costs is another issue.

by Jane Winik Sartwell, Carolina Public Press
July 9, 2025

North Carolina is the most expensive state in the nation for health care, according to a highly cited claim made by Forbes magazine, at least. But how true are those claims about costs?

Not very, according to a new analysis that challenges both the methodology and conclusions of the Forbes ranking. The reality, researchers from Ascendient Healthcare say, is much more nuanced. 

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But Forbes did get something right about health care costs — just not exactly what they set out to prove. In doing so, the publication revealed an under-researched issue in North Carolina health care policy. 

Dubious methodology to judge costs

Which state has the most expensive health care? The answer depends on how you measure “expensive.” 

That’s where things get complex. And those complexities have important implications.

The Forbes ranking relies on a weighting system devised by the authors of the study. The system puts 85% of the weight on what folks with employee-sponsored health insurance pay in premiums and deductibles each year.

Here’s one problem: less than half of North Carolinians have employee-sponsored health care. 

"Somebody made some determination about the relative importance of each of these elements to be able to spit out an overall metric,” Brad Wright, former UNC Sheps Center researcher who now works at University of South Carolina, told Carolina Public Press. 

“Without seeing a justification for how they did that, that’s concerning. If you gave me the same data set and I just changed those weight percentages, I’d get a different answer, and would be writing a different story.”

Forbes’s method addresses insurance shopping concerns rather than health care system performance, according to Dawn Carter, a North Carolina health care consultant who co-wrote the Ascendient analysis of health care costs in the state.

The methodology results in some interesting aberrations. Some of the least-expensive states for health care, according to Forbes, are Hawaii, California, and Massachusetts.

“Those cheapest states are states I don't think of as being least expensive in anything,” State Treasurer Brad Briner told CPP. “Once you see that, you have to ask yourself the questions: What is the methodology here? What is the ulterior motive here?”

Briner’s skepticism of the Forbes costs ranking is a break from his predecessor. 

Former State Treasurer Dale Folwell, a Republican like Briner, frequently cited North Carolina’s ranking to argue against North Carolina’s Certificate of Need laws, which regulate hospital construction. 

The politicization of the Forbes data shows how powerful — and potentially arbitrary — statistics can be. 

“The issue, of course, is that every data set is filtered through whatever lens the authors choose: pro-insurance, pro-state regulations, etc.,” UNC law professor Joan Krause told CPP.

Forbes defended its approach when CPP pressed about the methodology.

Forbes Advisor Editor Michelle Megna wrote: “We felt access and outcomes were most important, so gave them the most weight in our scoring.”

Other ways to measure health care costs

Ascendient’s chosen data points paint a very different picture. 

“When I saw those headlines, I just thought: ‘Wait a minute. This is just not this is not consistent with what I know to be true,’” Carter told CPP.

“Let's check their data and understand where this is coming from. And then let’s check back with the other data points that we are more familiar with.”

A common way of measuring health care costs, according to Carter, is to aggregate all health care spending — think hospitals, nursing homes, doctors — within the state and divide by total population.

Using this method, which accounts for people on all kinds of health care plans, North Carolina has the 10th-lowest health care costs in the nation. 

North Carolina health care spending per capita comes out at $8,917 annually, while nationally, the average is $10,191.

Another way to rank costs is to measure hospital prices, since hospitals tend to be the most expensive option for health care. According to Ascendient, North Carolina had the 13th-lowest net price per inpatient discharge nationally.

Plus, when one looks at total insurance premiums rather than employee contributions, North Carolina drops from second to 45th-most expensive, according to Wright. 

But all this does not mean that Forbes didn’t point out something true. 

What Forbes got right

What Forbes proved is this: more than in any other state, NC employers shift higher portions of insurance costs onto employees. 

This is a real data point, proven out by Forbes. 

“There’s two different things going on here. One is ‘How much does health care cost?,’ and then the other is ‘Who pays?’” Treasurer Briner said. 

“If the question is: ‘Who pays?,’ that is a very different discussion. In North Carolina, we have made the choice to have the individual pay more than the companies. In Massachusetts, for example, they've had the state pay a lot more than the individual.”

Though this doesn’t necessarily equate to NC’s overall health care costs being the highest, it is a salient point.

North Carolina employees contributed $1,806 for single coverage, the 14th-highest in the nation, while employers paid $5,937, the 10th-lowest. 

If the issue is cost-shifting rather than expensive health care delivery, the potential policy solutions are different.

“If you don't really look at what your data point is and what it's measuring, then you're going to look for policy solutions that don't fix the root cause of the problem,” Carter said. “To generalize that one correct data point to make a claim about health care costs doesn't paint a clear picture.” 

But why do North Carolina employers do this? The answer isn't entirely clear, even to experts who study the state's health care system.

Carter guesses it might have something to do with North Carolina’s “business-friendly” stance. 

Briner views it as a necessary balance to the low taxes and low cost-of-living North Carolina provides to its residents. 

More research is needed to understand why companies shift more insurance costs onto their employees in North Carolina than in any other state. It is likely a combination of state policy decisions, labor market dynamics and regulatory choices. 

Once that is understood, the real conversation begins. 

This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

‘We helped each other. We taught each other the law.’

Calvin Duncan, one of the finest inmate counsels to ever file a writ from the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, releases his autobiography today, July 8. The Lens is honored to publish an excerpt from this highly anticipated book, The Jailhouse Lawyer.

by Calvin Duncan and Sophie Cull July 8, 2025

At age 19, Calvin Duncan was accused of first-degree murder. For years, while he sat in jail, he knew little of the crime he stood accused of. His attorneys hadn’t investigated. As it turns out, a young white woman had ID’d him from a mugshot from a shoplifting arrest from years earlier. She had been standing with her boyfriend David Yaeger at the bus stop by Tastee Donuts at Esplanade and North Broad Streets when two young Black men tried to rob them, then shot the boyfriend dead. 

In 1983, to help fight the wrongful charge, Calvin began to teach himself the law, while being held within the Orleans Parish Prison in New Orleans. In his new book The Jailhouse Lawyer, co-written by Sophie Cull, he writes about that time in his life:

Attempting to learn the law in jail was like training for a marathon barefoot. Law books and court opinions were rare gems. Calvin was lucky to get hold of a dictionary. He slept with his pencil and legal pad under his pillow to keep them from being stolen. 

Men on the tiers dubbed “lockerbox lawyers” gave legal advice and drafted motions in exchange for cigarettes. But Calvin quickly realized their advice was inexpert, and their motions were regurgitated from other pleadings. He filed one or two of their briefs—a motion for a speedy trial and a change of venue—but Judge Frank Shea predictably ignored them. 

Occasionally, guys on the tier would offer up briefs filed by their lawyers, and Calvin would study them line by line, breaking down every word until he grasped its meaning. He could spend hours looking up terms in the dictionary only to find he hadn’t yet made it to the end of a single page. In moments of fatigue, he set his reading aside and returned to the card games and the television in the dayroom.

Between June and December 1983, five more trial dates were put off, mostly at the request of Calvin’s lawyer, who had yet to visit him in jail. An older Cuban man with broken English called Calvin “Dog” because of the way his feet wagged back and forth when he was falling asleep. Calvin had embraced the nickname, especially amused when he and Catkiller were dubbed “Cat and Dog.” But now, the guys on his tier started calling him “Setback,” a nickname he despised. 

While he waited for his case to move, he redoubled his efforts to learn the law. He began tearing articles about police investigations and court hearings out of the daily papers and sticking them to scraps of paper with chewed pink bubble gum. At night, he took notes while he watched the news, listening for stories that involved cases in criminal court. 

Occasionally, Earline would go to the state supreme court library for him and send copies of new legal decisions she found. It was a favor reminiscent of their early days together, when Earline used to help with his homework on the bus home from school. Even now, though she had moved on to another relationship, she was loyal to a fault, attending his court dates and bringing cases to the jail. Over a period of months, he compiled an impressive collection of articles and papers—a makeshift law book of his own.

Occasionally a dictionary would appear on the tier and he would vie for it, eager to decipher more of the legal jargon he didn’t know. He concluded that the language of the law was needlessly confusing: “mandamus” meant a command, “indigent” referred to the inability to pay, and a “motion” was just a request. The purpose of legalese, it seemed to him, was to ensure attorneys got paid while poor people were kept in the dark. He was determined to understand it as well as any lawyer. 

A full year and a half had now passed since his arrest. He’d still never met with his court- appointed attorney, and the cycle of setting and resetting trial dates was driving him to despair. In dark moments, Calvin wondered if he was lost to Orleans Parish Prison for good.

After another scuffle on the tier, Calvin was back in the dungeon, huddled over a yellow legal pad. He was glad to be alone in a cell tonight. He had work to do. 

“May it please the court, Petitioner is incarcerated in Orleans Parish Prison and there are no Law Library Facility located in this prison system. Petitioner is indigent, so petitioner is unable to buy a Code of Criminal Procedure (1984, Paperback). . . Petitioner is in custody in the Orleans Parish Prison accuse of a capital offense—First Degree Murder, a crime Petitioner did not commit. Wherefore, Petitioner Calvin F. Duncan prays that this honorable court consider petitioner motion and provide petitioner with a Code of Criminal Procedure Law Book.”

He sat back and ran his eyes over the red ink, wincing at the garish color. It looked amateurish, but he had no choice. He was stuck in the cells without a black pen. The Code of Criminal Procedure was the state’s legal rule book governing how criminal trials worked in Louisiana. Every prosecutor, judge, and criminal defense lawyer had one. He needed one, too. 

He printed a title across the top of the page: “Motion for a Law Book.” After reading through it one last time, he tugged the yellow pages away from the notepad, guarding the perforations so they wouldn’t tear. 

Then he tucked them into an envelope addressed to the state’s highest court. If the justices at the Louisiana Supreme Court knew anything of the conditions at Orleans Parish Prison, they would surely answer his call for help. 

When a response from the court arrived weeks later, however, Calvin realized his mistake. The order, only two sentences long, said the court lacked jurisdiction because his motion wasn’t first adjudicated by the lower courts. The motion was sent back down to the court of appeals, which in turn sent it back down to the trial court, to Judge Shea. Calvin figured the motion was doomed—Judge Shea would only ignore it.

At his next status conference, just as another uneventful hearing unfolded, Calvin was preparing to be taken back to the cells when an unexpected movement caught his eye. Judge Shea instructed the bailiff to hand defense counsel a copy of the Code of Criminal Procedure. Calvin’s lawyer raised his brows as the bailiff set the hulking book in his hands. 

Astonished, Calvin turned toward the judge, but Shea continued the proceedings, never meeting his gaze. When court adjourned, Calvin’s lawyer met him in the holding cell with the book. “Apparently you asked for this. Don’t let them take it away,” he warned. 

Calvin knew the rules: nothing was allowed back on the tier. Even a law book was deemed contraband. He approached the sheriff’s deputy at the door to the stairwell with caution, but the deputy let him pass. So did the next. When he made it all the way to his cot with the book tucked safely under his arm, he felt like Moses parting the Red Sea. 

He laid the treatise on his mattress, watching it sink into the thin bedding, heavy with a thousand procedural rules he would need to learn. He stared in disbelief. He hadn’t just filed his very first motion in court—he’d won it.

The first suit Calvin prepared on his own was over the jail’s failure to provide him with a high-fiber diet. A doctor had ordered that he eat raisins and bran cereal as a remedy for a bout of severe intestinal pain, yet the jail continued to serve him the same food as everyone else. 

When the trial date for his lawsuit arrived, Calvin was taken to court to represent himself. The judge nicknamed the lawsuit the “Case of the Missing Raisins” and ruled in Calvin’s favor, and the jail began providing him with the proper diet. Months later, he received a check for $250 in damages, which he used to purchase a legal dictionary and a legal writing textbook. 

His first suit a success, Calvin began filing suits about other sorts of dehumanizing treatment: when the shake-down crew confiscated his legal work while turning over the cells, or when he was beaten by deputies. Each filing gave him a better feel for how the law worked in practice. 

He started to file suits on behalf of other men, many of whom were enduring worse conditions than he was. He helped them file over the lack of medical care, arbitrary disciplinary procedures, inadequate food portions that were leading some people to starve, and failure to provide mental health treatment. Having been demoralized for so long, Calvin found that defending others helped him regain a sense of purpose. 

One lawsuit in particular showed him how powerful the law could be. 

Old-timers sent back from Angola to the parish prison for court appearances weren’t being provided dentures when they were placed in the jail. (Indeed, there was no dental care provided in the jail at all, save for tooth extractions.) As a result, they couldn’t properly chew their food. 

Calvin watched them suffering over their meals and losing weight by the week. He filed an emergency suit on their behalf, arguing that the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution guaranteed their right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. The sheriff fought the suit initially, but once it became clear that the judge wasn’t going to dismiss it, he gave the men their dentures to moot the case. 

When Calvin saw the elderly men able to eat—that simple, precious act—he fell in love with the law. He could wield the very thing holding him in prison to challenge those who had taken his freedom. The law gave him a way to fight back. 

After a string of wins, the guys in the jail dubbed Calvin “the Snickers Lawyer,” referring to his policy of accepting only a candy bar for helping with a suit. He wouldn’t accept any other payment for his work.

In early 1986, Calvin learned about a new U.S. Supreme Court case, Michigan v. Jackson, which established that once a suspect requests an attorney, they cannot be interrogated further without the attorney present. He requested a copy of the decision from the court—no easy task from inside the jail—and used it to support his appeal, arguing that his statements to authorities after his extradition hearing should have been excluded from trial.

He sent the handwritten appeal to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal, the state appellate court that handled appeals of criminal cases from New Orleans, just in time to meet his deadline. Despite his constraints, he was pleased with the brief.

When his lawyer finally sent him a copy of what he’d filed, Calvin was incensed. It was only two pages long and contained a single claim.

Worse, the trial lawyers hadn’t objected to the issue, meaning it wasn’t preserved for appeal. His appellate lawyer hadn’t even read the record closely enough to realize he was filing a meaningless claim.

Calvin prepared a bar complaint against the attorney, but he knew that wouldn’t save him in court. He tried to reassure himself that his own brief would be enough to win a new trial, even without his attorney’s help. While he waited for the court to rule, he focused on getting to Angola so he could access the law library and prepared his defense.

The opportunity finally came when Calvin saw the sheriff’s attorney at the jail one day. They recognized each other from prior court hearings on Calvin’s many suits. Calvin called him over to the bars. “If you get me transferred to Angola, I’ll drop all my lawsuits,” he offered.

The lawyer’s brows twitched with interest. “I’ll see what I can do.”

A few weeks later, Calvin was on his way.

Excerpted from The Jailhouse Lawyer. Published with permission from Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House, © 2023 by Calvin Duncan and Sophie Cull. On Thursday, July 10 at 6 p.m., Baldwin & Co. will host the launch of  The Jailhouse Lawyer in the Georges Auditorium at Dillard University, with special guest Sister Helen Prejean. RSVP here.

Duncan has arranged with his publisher to get free paperback copies of his book to people still incarcerated. For every three copies of his book that are sold, one copy will go to a person in prison. Also, Duncan sat down this week with The Lens’ Bernard Smith. That interview is here.

Hills, rivers and rocky terrain: Why the Hill Country keeps flooding

By Alejandra Martinez, The Texas Tribune, Graphics by Edison Wu, The Texas Tribune

July 8, 2025

"Hills, rivers and rocky terrain: Why the Hill Country keeps flooding" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

When floodwaters tore through the Texas Hill Country on July Fourth weekend, killing more than 100 people — including campers and counselors at an all-girls summer camp along the Guadalupe River — Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly was quick to voice shock.

“We didn’t know this flood was coming,” Kelly said. Yet in nearly the same breath, he acknowledged that the region is “the most dangerous river valley in the United States” — one that deals with floods “on a regular basis.”

That contradiction — an expectation of danger paired with apparent surprise — has become tragically familiar in Central Texas.

Despite being part of a wide swath of Texas nicknamed “Flash Flood Alley,” this part of the Hill Country continues to suffer devastating losses — both in human lives and property — after floods that scientists and emergency planners have warned about for decades.

The region includes several Texas river basins: the Colorado, the Guadalupe and the San Antonio.

Between 2 and 7 a.m. July 4, the Guadalupe River in Kerrville rose 35 feet, according to a flood gauge in the area. The flooded river swallowed roads, bridges, entire RV parks and structures along the Guadalupe’s banks.

The region has a history drenched in loss, marked by some of the state’s most deadly floods.

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Nearly a century ago in 1932, hard rains pushed the Guadalupe River out of its banks. That destructive flooding drowned seven people and property losses exceeded $500,000 — equivalent to $11.8 million today. A blog post by Kerrville Mayor Joe H. Herring Jr. recounted the story of a teen trapped in a tree for 23 hours during that flood and the men that tried to save him.

“The story of July 1, 1932 is a story of warning, and a story with heroes,” Herring wrote.

In 1978, a tropical storm stalled over the headwaters of the Guadalupe and Medina Rivers. The resulting flood drowned 33 people, causing millions of dollars in property damages, ravaging roads, bridges and ranchland.

Less than a decade later, in 1987, an intense summer storm dumped about 11.5 inches of rain in mid-July near the headwaters of the Guadalupe River, sending a massive flood wave through Ingram, Kerrville and Comfort. As the wall of water rushed through a church camp near Comfort, a bus and a van attempted to evacuate campers but stalled in rapidly rising water. Ten teenagers drowned and 33 other people were injured — a tragedy that some officials alluded to in recent days when defending the lack of evacuations before the July 4 flood.

Most recently, on Memorial Day weekend in 2015, heavy rainfall upstream on the Blanco River caused flash flooding in Wimberley, uprooting centuries-old trees and damaging or destroying nearly 400 homes along its banks, displacing hundreds of residents. The river rose approximately 5 feet every 15 minutes, cresting near 50 feet. Thirteen people died in the flood.

“People new to the area may not know the history. The climate doesn’t look like a place where flooding happens often. It’s hot, semi-arid. It’s deceptive,” said Todd Votteler, a longtime water policy expert and former executive manager at the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority.

As water expert and environmental consultant Matthew Berg put it: “Rivers have a lot longer memory than we do.”

The magnet of the rivers

People are drawn to the Texas Hill Country for its natural beauty. It's a place where families camp under starry skies, fish in spring-fed creeks, and cool off in deep swimming holes carved into limestone.

But the very features that make this region so appealing — its hills, rivers, and rocky terrain — also make it one of the most flood-prone areas in the country.

On topographical maps, the terrain resembled elephant skin, with countless folds worn into the hills by centuries of runoff. The hilly land has dramatic elevation changes caused by the Balcones Escarpment, a major geological feature that cuts across Central Texas.

Tropical storms routinely hit the escarpment and dump heavy rain, said Avantika Gori, a flood risk expert and civil and environmental engineering professor at Rice University. Last week, the storms that caused the flash floods in the Hill Country were intensified by the moisture from the remnants of Tropical Storm Barry.

And when storms roll in, water rushes downhill fast, gaining speed and force as it moves.

There’s little to slow it down — thin, rocky soil doesn’t absorb much water, and exposed bedrock and sparse vegetation offer no buffer. Clay-rich soils in parts of the region also prevent infiltration, meaning rain turns to runoff almost immediately.

“It's like the region's been paved over with concrete,” said Gori. “So the water falls, and it just runs off. And then, because of the steep slope, you get these really fast-moving waves of water.”

Robert Mace, a hydrologist and executive director of the Meadows Center at Texas State University, calls it “a recipe for catastrophic floods.”

Storms becoming more intense

On July 4, the floods struck at perhaps the worst possible moment — in the early morning hours at the start of a holiday weekend that had drawn large numbers of people to the river.

The National Weather Service issued a flood watch Thursday afternoon, predicting isolated rainfall of up to seven inches. It issued a flash flood warning that included Kerr County after 1 a.m. Friday, when most people were asleep, and declared a flash flood emergency — the most severe alert possible — around 4 a.m.

“Many storms form at night,” said Votteler, the water policy expert.

The huge loss of life from Friday’s flood — which is likely to grow higher with at least two dozen people still missing in several counties — has raised new questions about what local, state and federal officials could have or should have done to better warn people near the river.

John Nielsen-Gammon, the state’s climatologist, said the severity of storms is also changing. Climate change has caused warmer air that can hold more water, leading to more intense rainfall. Ocean heat fuels stronger tropical systems.

Mace, the hydrologist, said what was once a 500-year flood is increasingly happening every few decades.

“Floodplain maps are based on historical data,” said Mace. “They don’t reflect the current — or future — risk. It’s backward-looking in a forward-moving crisis.”

Disclosure: Rice University has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2025/07/08/flooding-history-texas-hill-country/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Trump’s digital equity cuts make it harder for West Virginians to use the internet

by Tre Spencer, Mountain State Spotlight
July 1, 2025

For about a decade at the Burnsville Public Library, Beth Anderson has taught seniors and young adults how to set up email accounts, write resumes and book online doctors' appointments. 

Anderson, the library’s director, wrote her own curriculum to help dozens of Braxton County residents with basic computer skills. 

“We’re just trying to help people navigate a computer and the Internet a little better, because it's a scary place for people who don't even know how to turn on a computer,” she said. 

This year, Anderson has been trying to revamp the classes and applying for federal funding to help. But those plans have stalled because the federal digital equity grant program was terminated. 

In May, President Donald Trump announced plans on Truth Social that he would cut $2.75 billion in federal funding from the Biden-era Digital Equity Act, claiming it was “racist”, “unconstitutional” and “illegal”. 

The act would’ve helped a wide swath of Americans who are low-income earners, live in rural areas, or are historically underrepresented and was passed by Congress into law.  

And the move will disproportionately hurt West Virginia, where 35% of residents still lack access to high-speed internet and another 12% lack basic computer literacy skills. 

Many people don’t have a device that can connect to the internet, can’t afford broadband or lack the skills to use it effectively, according to the state’s digital equity plan. If people know how to use the internet, they can better access government services, telehealth appointments and job opportunities. 

West Virginia already received $732,000 to create the equity plan and was set to get an additional $9 million to implement it. 

That funding would have helped residents in affording devices such as computers, tablets and laptops, enabling them to access affordable internet. Additionally, it would have provided them the fundamental skills to utilize the internet through a series of grant programs out of the Office of Broadband. 

State broadband officials planned to create a technology lending and recycling program to increase the number of West Virginians who own devices that can connect to the internet. 

They also planned to partner with libraries, senior centers and school districts to implement digital literacy courses to train individuals to teach computer skills. 

But now, those plans have been frozen. 

“The digital equity dollars would have been very nice, because that would have helped offset some of the costs,” Anderson said. “We could have hired someone to come in and do just those trainings instead of taking away our small staff's time.”

Nearly every West Virginian would benefit from digital equity 

The National Digital Inclusion Alliance is an Ohio-based nonprofit at the forefront of helping ensure communities have equal access to technology and the internet. 

Angela Siefer, executive director, said the state was gearing up to implement its digital equity plan before the announcement. 

“Now, all of that is at risk,” she said. “They could lose that staff and the systems they built, and even if the funding is restored, that momentum they had may be gone.”

Digital equity means ensuring that everyone, regardless of income or background, has the tools, skills and access needed to fully participate in modern life, from school and work to healthcare. 

The Digital Equity Act was created to help communities that have long been underserved by internet infrastructure and technology access. 

The act was part of the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which Sens. Shelley Moore Capito and Joe Manchin voted for along with Rep. David McKinley. Reps. Carol Miller and Alex Mooney voted against it. 

It was to close the systemic digital divide by educating often underrepresented and first-time internet users how to use it for healthcare, education or workforce purposes.

The law identified eight categories of people who needed help getting online, including minorities, low-income earners and those living in rural areas. 

By that measure, 97% of West Virginians were set to benefit,  the highest percentage of any state. 

“This program was helping rural residents, older adults, veterans and people across the country,” Siefer said. “We thought that would be enough to show its value. But clearly, our hopes weren’t well placed.”

The Trump administration has targeted diversity, equity and inclusion funding nationwide. DEI programs exist to promote fair treatment and full participation of all groups of people, especially those historically underrepresented. 

Last week, 22 states joined a lawsuit against the Trump administration’s efforts to cancel billions in federal funding. West Virginia is not part of the lawsuit. The states say the executive branch exceeded its authority to slash Congressional appropriated funding. 

Digital skills are in demand, but funding still falls flat 

For many in Buckhannon, the Upshur County Public Library is more than a place to check out a book; it’s a place to connect to the digital world. 

Inside, librarians shuffle pages. Children sit and read, others click away, sitting in front of bright computer screens. 

Paul Narko, the library’s director since 2018, regularly sees people come in needing help paying utility bills, filing taxes or going to telehealth appointments.  

“We deal with these requests all the time, almost every day and multiple times a day,” he said. “People come in to use our computers and they want us to sit down and do everything for them.” 

The library recently received a $20,000 private grant to buy laptops and pay a new staff member to teach free digital literacy classes for the first time. 

“I see the program eventually expanding beyond Upshur County, if we can get some more funding and find someone to teach the classes,” he said. 

For now, the classes will be in a single library in a single county, which is far from the vision of what state officials had planned. They hoped to expand similar programs until the funding was abruptly cut, derailing any goals they had.

In 2019, state lawmakers identified that students in schools needed to learn how to use the internet to succeed. They created a statewide program that served over 57,000 students and has seen positive results.

But that program was only targeting students, not other groups of West Virginians. The federal funding was meant to help lower-income families, older adults and minority communities access the internet. 

Now, without that support, many will continue to be left behind.

This article first appeared on Mountain State Spotlight and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.