It's Friday November 13, 2026 and in this morning's issue we're covering: With 25,000 more votes counted, Peltola, JKT and Begich near victory in Alaska election, Hinds County finalizes Senate vote count, helps push Scott Colom over finish line, Dillard University ceiling collapse, mold spark student housing crisis, One month after motel closures, Lafayette looks for solutions, After nearly 3 years, AG Ken Paxton drops fight to shut down El Paso’s Annunciation House, Texas Democrats Swept Statewide Races. Now Comes the Hard Part of Solving Healthcare Angst, New Orleans parents say they’re anxious about school closures, want more communication from leaders, Ukrainian TPS holders in Ohio left in limbo after federal non-decision decision.

Media outlets and others featured: Alaska Beacon, Mississippi Today, The Lens, The Current (LA), El Paso Matters, KFF Health News, Verite News, Ohio Capital Journal.

With 25,000 more votes counted, Peltola, JKT and Begich near victory in Alaska election

By James Brooks (Alaska Beacon) Published: November 11, 2026

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mary Peltola, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins and Republican U.S. House Rep. Nick Begich III came closer to clinching victory in Alaska’s general election as the Alaska Division of Elections added almost 25,000 ballots to the state tally on Tuesday night.

With 245,470 first-choice ballots counted, Peltola now leads incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Dan S. Sullivan by 4,250 first-choice votes, or 48.8% to 47.1%. That’s an increase of more than 1,600 votes from Monday.

If the race goes to a ranked choice runoff between Peltola and Sullivan preliminary, partial data published by the Division of Elections and analyzed by the Beacon shows Peltola winning that matchup as well.

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The Associated Press estimates about 84% of all ballots have been counted. A separate, independent estimate posted on Twitter found at least 37,000 votes remaining to be added to the statewide tally.

In the governor’s race, Kreiss-Tomkins has 49.7% of the first-choice votes, ahead of three Republican competitors. In the U.S. House race, Begich has 48.8% of the first-choice votes, leading an independent challenger by a significant margin.

In Alaska general election races, voters rank up to four candidates in order of preference. If a candidate in a particular race has more than 50% of the first-choice votes, they win.

If no candidate reaches that threshold, the candidate with the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated, and votes for them are transferred to their voters’ second choices.

The eliminations and redistributions continue until only two candidates are left. The person with the most votes wins.

Friday is the deadline for absentee ballots mailed from within the United States to arrive and be counted. Division officials have said to expect a significant update then. Additional updates are possible Wednesday and Thursday.

Preliminary ranked choice data indicates Senate lead won’t change

The Alaska Division of Elections is scheduled to perform its official ranked choice tabulation on Nov. 18, after the deadline for absentee ballots to arrive and still be counted.

In preliminary, partial ranked choice tabulations by the Alaska Beacon using data published by the division on Tuesday, Sen. Sullivan gains 3,066 redistributed votes and Peltola gains 2,160, a net gain of 906 for Sen. Sullivan but not enough to overcome Peltola’s lead in first-choice votes.

The ranking data does not yet include 9,909 ballots from rural Alaska precincts where ballots are initially hand-counted.

Two-thirds of the first-choice votes on those ballots went to Peltola, according to summary data published separately by the division, indicating that even after the ranked choice tabulation, Peltola will lead.

In addition, further ballot counting may help Peltola’s margin. The Democratic candidate has repeatedly gained more first-choice votes than Sullivan in ballots counted after Election Day; on Monday, she led Sullivan by 2,517 votes out of 219,342 cast, and that was an improvement over her 636-vote lead at the end of Election Day.

Governor and US House leaders appear unlikely to change either

In the governor’s race, Kreiss-Tomkins’ closest competitor is Republican candidate Bernadette Wilson, with 28.7% of the first-choice votes, followed by Republican Dave Bronson with 13.9% and Republican Treg Taylor with 7.3%.

Preliminary, partial ranked choice tabulations by the Beacon show that if Kreiss-Tomkins fails to top the 50% threshold by Nov. 18, he will easily receive the needed votes once the ranked choice runoff is used.

For the U.S. House race, Begich has lost a small bit of first-choice vote share since Election Day, when he was almost exactly at the 50% threshold. That indicates a ranked choice runoff will be needed, but his closest challenger, independent Bill Hill, has 40.9% of first-choice votes. Democratic spoiler candidate Eric Hafner, a man imprisoned in New York state for threatening federal officials, has 7.5% of the first choice votes. Libertarian Jim McDermott has 2.7%.

Preliminary, partial ranked choice tabulations show Begich winning once McDermott and Hafner are eliminated.

Hill — the candidate endorsed by the Alaska Democratic Party — ran a campaign that attempted to label Hafner a sham candidate and not a real Democrat. Ranked choice tabulations show Hill winning less than half of the second-choice votes from Hafner supporters.

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Hinds County finalizes Senate vote count, helps push Scott Colom over finish line

by Michael Goldberg and Taylor Vance, Mississippi Today
November 11, 2026

Officials in Hinds County finished processing long-awaited affidavit ballots on Wednesday in the historic Mississippi U.S. Senate race between Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democratic challenger Scott Colom. 

The race was called by The Associated Press hours after Hinds finished its tally, based on incomplete and unofficial votes, but with 99% of precincts statewide reporting.

LIVE: 2026 Mississippi election results

READ MORE: Colom wins: Mississippi picks another senator

Election workers in Hinds counted 67 outstanding mail-in ballots and processed 817 accepted affidavits. Votes were still outstanding elsewhere, but the total from the large county likely proved pivotal . 

Voters cast 2,426 affidavits in Hinds County. Of those, the election commission rejected 1,609 and accepted 817. Colom’s lead has increased to over 4,400 votes over Hyde-Smith with 99% of the vote counted.

Overall, Colom won the county with 63,302 votes to Hyde-Smith's 14,925. Independent Ty Pinkins got 997 votes in the county.

Hinds County Circuit Clerk Zack Wallace said he urged election commissioners to certify the results on Wednesday, but they wanted to wait until Thursday.

"I think they probably just want to double-check everything and not rush the certification and just make sure all the T's are crossed and I's are dotted," Wallace said.

The nation has been watching Mississippi, and Hinds County in particular, as the Magnolia State is one of two states with its Senate race not called more than a week after Election Day. Poll watchers, attorneys and media hovered again Wednesday as the Hinds Election Commission finalized the vote tally.

As Hinds County Election Commissioner Yvonne Horton and her colleagues counted the last remaining ballots on Wednesday, Horton said the process had gone according to plan, despite the prolonged period for uploading final results. Some observers have long criticized Hinds County for delays in reporting results, and videos of workers counting ballots by hand have swirled on social media all week, prompting frustration.

“They are ignorant about our process. They just don't know,” Horton said. “And I don't have time to tell them.”

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

Dillard University ceiling collapse, mold spark student housing crisis

By Vivi Smilgius, The Lens

Students at Dillard University held up posters showing photos of their mold-infested dorms and campus apartments, hoping to be recognized by alumni who were visiting the Gentilly campus Thursday for an alumni association meeting.

Throughout the meeting, which kicked off the university’s homecoming weekend, students in suits and business-professional dresses stood silently in the front of the room, facing the audience with pictures of vents, ceilings, walls and furniture covered with dark blue and black mold. 

The student demonstration comes more than a month after a Dillard student was injured when the ceiling collapsed in her apartment within Gentilly Gardens, an on-campus apartment complex where many juniors and seniors live. Several dozen students who lived in the complex were forced by the university to relocate, and many said they were placed in other on-campus dorms and apartments that had mold and structural damage. 

At the meeting, members of the school’s Student Government Association (SGA) called on the alumni association to advocate on their behalf with the university. They also demanded that the administration address the dangers that students face within the run-down, mold-ridden structures.

“We cannot continue to sit in rooms reminiscing about how wonderful Dillard used to be while overlooking the realities that students today are facing,” said Madison Cox, a junior, who is president of SGA at Dillard.

Dillard, the oldest historically Black college in Louisiana, is well-known for its College of Nursing and its newly begun Masters of Science in Nursing program. It has been recognized as a leading producer of physics majors, particularly more female physics majors than almost any other Historically Black College or University (HBCU) in the nation. Every spring, its graduates walk in their blue gowns down the university’s renowned Avenue of the Oaks.

But the school has struggled for several years with declining enrollment, reduced federal funding and, like many universities across the country, burgeoning operational expenses. Students say they’ve felt the impacts of these challenges, and they’re worried about the university’s future.

“We cannot continue to sit in rooms reminiscing about how wonderful Dillard used to be while overlooking the realities that students today are facing.”Madison Cox — Junior and Student Government Association President

Dillard’s SGA is launching its own initiative, called Operation BLEU, which asks the university to disclose to students key information about finances and plans for the future. The SGA initiative calls for “transparency, accountability, institutional renewal and meaningful student engagement,” Cox said at the meeting on Thursday.

To launch Operation BLEU, the SGA has created a list of questions for university administrators about campus housing, enrollment and long-term fiscal planning. The students have asked the university to respond to their queries in writing, organize a student town hall and provide a “comprehensive institutional recovery roadmap,” Cox said.

Members of the alumni association gave Cox a standing ovation when she finished speaking.

“We are all very, very supportive of that work that needs to be done,” said Tiffani Moore, the president of the alumni association and a Dillard graduate from the class of 2002.

A crisis, a report and a new position

Questions about the safety of student housing at Dillard came to a head after the partial ceiling collapse in mid-September. A month later, student De’Juan Fuel submitted a “crisis report” to Dillard administrators requesting “immediate intervention and accountability” from the university’s president and board of trustees.

Students did not receive clear communications about the collapse or the injured student, and were not sure whether they were safe in their apartments, said Fuel, a senior at Dillard who lived in Gentilly Gardens during the partial ceiling collapse and authored the crisis report. 

“It’s been, mentally, a lot,” said Fuel.“I’ve had moments where I cannot sleep. I’m waking up feeling ill in the morning. I’m trying to force myself to focus on academics.”

After the collapse, contractors inspected the building and determined that it was unsafe. The university told about three dozen students, including Fuel, that they needed to move out of Gentilly Gardens in three phases that required some to relocate within the next 48 hours and others following in the subsequent month. 

The relocation timeline and instructions were confusing throughout the process, students said. The instructions changed several times and many students said they received contradictory orders about where to move and when. 

“My mere presence should be an indication that there’s an acknowledgement
that things are not well. But I’m a person of my word, and I’m here to listen.”Roland Pickens — Executive in Residence for Student Experience and Campus Renewal

The university also threatened disciplinary action against students who did not move out by their deadline, though many students were reassigned to apartments or dorms that had previously been marked “offline,” or out of use, due to mold, lack of ventilation, or structural damage.

Mold thrives in damp, poorly ventilated spaces, especially in buildings that have sprung roof or window leaks. People who live in moldy rooms can experience skin rashes, constant sneezing, watery or itchy eyes, nasal congestion, and trouble breathing.

Ahrianna Vicks, a senior at Dillard, lived next door to the apartment where the ceiling collapsed, and was part of the first phase of relocations with a move-out deadline of Oct. 18. Vicks struggled to juggle her academic responsibilities, including midterms, with hurried packing. Then she and her boxes ended up in another on-campus residence with visible mold.

Even before the collapse, Vicks had been frustrated that she had been assigned to Gentilly Gardens, which she believed was supposed to be moved “offline” this upcoming spring. The move to a moldy dorm also bothered her, she said, because it seems like the university had not thought ahead about placing students in safe living conditions. 

“It feels like reactive solutions instead of proactive solutions,” she said. “If the incident didn’t happen, we would still be in our current housing.”

The university’s relocation of students from Gentilly Gardens feels like a slap in the face to some students, who pay up to $37,000 each year to attend Dillard, according to a “cost of attendance” page on the university’s website. Apartments in the dilapidated Gentilly Gardens cost $8,867 per semester for room and board.

“I’m paying you all this money to live in conditions that actively affect my health … in a space that is literally inhospitable,” said Nailah Baker, a junior at Dillard. Baker has asthma and has suffered with mold infestations in multiple housing arrangements at Dillard, including Gentilly Gardens, she said.

Student morale and the school’s reputation have both taken a long-term hit, Baker believes.

“I don’t even know if we’re going to get to our bicentennial [in 2069] because of the lack of care for the students and buildings on campus,” she said.

Dillard University did not respond to questions from The Lens about why students moved into rooms marked “offline,” and whether the university has addressed specific health and safety concerns raised by students.

But spokesperson Tara Cunningham sent a statement noting that the university’s administration had received the crisis report and was “working to minimize disruption” to students’ academic work while relocating them.

“The Board of Trustees and university leadership are reviewing [the report] carefully and taking the concerns raised seriously,” Cunningham wrote. “Student safety is Dillard University’s highest priority.”

The university created a new position, “Executive in Residence for Student Experience and Campus Renewal,” and appointed Roland Pickens, a Dillard alumni and former trustee, to serve in that role. One of Pickens’ immediate responsibilities as executive in residence is to oversee the Gentilly Gardens relocation plan, he announced at the alumni association meeting on Thursday.

Pickens, a 1985 Dillard graduate, recently retired from a career as a healthcare executive, including as the chief operating officer of San Francisco General Hospital. But his retirement plans changed when Dillard called, he said.

“If things were going well, I would be sitting on that beach that I planned to be on right about now,” Pickens said. “My mere presence should be an indication that there’s an acknowledgement that things are not well. But I’m a person of my word, and I’m here to listen.”

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This story was originally published by The Lens. Read the original story at https://thelensnola.org/2026/11/09/dillard-university-housing-crisis/.

License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

One month after motel closures, Lafayette looks for solutions

by Anna Oakes, The Current
November 11, 2026

Since the abrupt eviction at the Express Inn and the notice of impending closure at the Plantation Motor Inn one month ago, the former residents of both motels have scattered across the city.

A young mother and her son are living week by week in a hotel, waiting for their rental assistance to come through so they can pay the security deposit on an apartment. 

An elderly woman with mental illness has been moved to an assisted living facility, according to a hotel manager. 

One woman and her fiance told The Current via text that they’ve been sleeping where they can: a night here or there in a motel, in abandoned buildings, or in the woods. 

A former Plantation resident and member of the cleaning staff is living in a nearby Motel 6. 

Many former residents have received assistance from ARCH, the Acadiana Regional Coalition on Homelessness & Housing, for a one-month stay at a nearby motel, as they wait for rental assistance and longer-term housing options. 

ARCH director Elsa Dimitriadis says the organization conducted outreach to 66 households across both motels. More than half of those households now receive ongoing assistance. The majority of them are from the Plantation Inn, where a court-ordered closure came with a 45-day transition period, rather than an immediate closure as mandated for the Express Inn just days prior. 

“The households receiving assistance are in different circumstances,” Dimitriadis tells The Current in a written statement. “Some are staying in temporary motel accommodations, while others have made arrangements with family or friends. We are continuing to work with households toward more stable housing solutions.”

That work includes helping households obtain and replace necessary documentation as well as navigate rental applications and apply for housing assistance through the Lafayette Housing Authority.

ARCH is also able to provide some financial assistance.

For that purpose, the Lafayette Housing Authority has made an additional $300,000 in housing assistance available.

According to LCG’s agreement with the Housing Authority, which an LCG spokesperson says is “getting routed to fully execute” at the moment, $150,000 of those funds are allocated to homelessness prevention and rehousing, including rental assistance, security and utility deposits, and application fees.

Another $150,000 has been allocated to a disaster housing reserve, in the case of the mayor-president issuing a local disaster declaration, meaning those funds aren't immediately available to use in assisting evicted motel residents.

LCG provided another $100,000 towards emergency services, including “emergency motel accommodations, transportation, moving assistance, and related response expenses,” according to Dimitriadis. 

Finding long-term housing for former motel residents is an entirely different task, however, and a difficult one to complete in a constrained housing market.

“Our objective is not simply to move someone into a rental unit as quickly as possible. We want to help households secure housing they have a realistic opportunity to maintain,” Dimitriadis says. “An unsuccessful placement that results in another eviction can make future housing opportunities even more difficult to obtain.”

A different approach

Only a few rooms are still occupied at the Plantation Inn, following a move-out and relocation day hosted by ARCH on Nov. 2 and other tabling sessions they have held at the property. When the court order to cease operations was issued on Oct. 9, long-term residents were allowed to stay through the term of their existing arrangement with the motel, up to 45 days.

According to Dimitriadis, 28 households formerly housed at the Plantation Inn are currently receiving continued assistance through the emergency response led by ARCH, compared to six households from the Express Inn.

While the court orders to cease operations at both properties cited similar concerns around crime and public safety to support the measure, Express Inn residents only had hours to find alternative accommodations before the motel was shut down by law enforcement.  

“Because the initial response was focused on emergency triage rather than ongoing enrollment, we did not collect contact information from residents during that response,” Dimitriadis says of ARCH’s efforts at the Express Inn. The six former Express Inn households currently receiving assistance reached out to ARCH after the initial eviction, during which ARCH passed out flyers and contact information.”

At the Plantation Inn, where residents received up to 45 days’ notice, “we had more time to conduct a structured engagement process,” Dimitriadis tells The Current. “We subsequently established tables on-site, where residents could meet with staff, review program requirements, discuss their circumstances, and complete agreements.”

Plantation Motor Inn manager Stacey Richard, who has worked at the property for over a decade and knows most of its residents personally, says she’s been impressed with how Dimitriadis’ organization has handled the move-out process at the motel.

“The ARCH is doing a wonderful job,” Richard says.

Homeless – kind of

The security deposit required to begin renting an apartment can be prohibitively expensive for people earning low wages — in addition to other requirements around income, household size or pets.

As a result, many low-income residents rent rooms in the city’s motels, which require no deposit, but often cost more on a monthly basis than an apartment rental might.

“Once you start with a motel you can’t get out, you know. Because all your money goes to the room and then you can’t save,” Richard says. “If you’re not making this big, big money, nobody can do it.”

Dimitriadis says standard definitions of homelessness used by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which provides a majority of the funding for homeless and housing service providers like ARCH, fail to capture that population.

“For example, individuals and families paying for extended motel stays, people temporarily staying with friends or relatives, and even people couch surfing within long-term motel households may not appear in our homelessness data, despite having extremely precarious housing arrangements,” she points out.

Accounting for residents in those precarious living situations is part of the goal of a housing needs assessment effort that ARCH is contributing to.

“We are working with the Reinvestment Fund + WRT [which are conducting the assessment] to help ensure the assessment considers these populations and draws from sources beyond the formal homeless response system, including education and other community partners,” Dimitriadis says.

The six-month needs assessment kickoff is scheduled for next week, and final recommendations are anticipated for spring 2027.

Meanwhile, at a press conference last month, Lafayette officials announced that five more properties might be shut down under the same “nuisance” ordinance that led to the closure of the Plantation Motor and Express inns.

Assistant District Attorney Chase Edwards framed the closures as a necessary step to prevent crime — saying, at the time, “we have to stop allowing there to be places where you can commit crimes all you want without consequences.” 

At Tuesday’s council meeting, Mayor-President Monique Boulet’s chief of staff, Christina Dayries, appeared to cast some doubt on that approach — at least with regards to its effects on homelessness.

“We cannot simply move people from one location to another and consider the problem solved,” Dayries said in a presentation on homelessness to the city and parish councils Tuesday night. “We must address the circumstances that contribute to homelessness.” 

Richard also doubts the effectiveness of that strategy. 

“My opinion: Y’all just took a home away from them and nothing’s going to change,” she says. “I told one cop, I said, ‘Oh, since the Plantation shut down, everybody’s off of drugs and there’s no more crime!’ Well, he started laughing. He said, ‘Yeaaah, okay.’”

Richard is being paid by the motel’s owner to stay until the end of the initial 45-day buffer period — until Nov. 21 or 23, she isn’t quite sure. She is also speaking with ARCH about being eligible herself for long-term housing support. 

But many programs have strict rules, and Richard is worried she won’t be able to have her grandchildren stay with her.

Meanwhile, she says the property’s owner is looking into converting the inn’s 83 rooms into Section 8 housing, of which there is a severe shortage in Lafayette. 

She does not know how, or if, she might fit into that plan. “I’m still kind of waiting till the last minute,” she says. “But I’m prepared, a little bit.”

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

After nearly 3 years, AG Ken Paxton drops fight to shut down El Paso’s Annunciation House

by Cindy Ramirez, El Paso Matters
November 9, 2026

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has dropped a suit seeking to shut down Annunciation House after demanding two years ago to examine the records of the nonprofit network of migrant shelters in El Paso, including information about the people it served.

“It’s very gratifying that this has now ended. It’s over,” Ruben Garcia, founder and executive director of Annunciation House, told El Paso Matters. “What I would want next is for the state Legislature to say, ‘We have to find a way to prevent this from happening.’”

The Attorney General’s Office on Monday filed a notice of nonsuit with prejudice, meaning the office will never again file a lawsuit with similar allegations against the organization in the future. Paxton’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The move comes as Paxton, a Republican who unsuccessfully sought a U.S. Senate seat in the Nov. 3 midterm election, prepares to leave the AG’s Office in mid-January. Attorney General-elect Nathan Johnson, a Democrat who now serves in the Senate, has said he intends to review cases brought by Paxton.

The AG’s Office first delivered a demand letter to examine Annunciation House records on Feb. 7, 2024. The next day, the organization sued Paxton challenging the demand. Within days, Paxon sought to revoke the Annunciation House’s nonprofit registration in Texas and shut down its operation, alleging harboring, human smuggling and stash-house activity.

Garcia vehemently denied the claims, stating the organization serves migrants processed and released by U.S. immigration authorities.

The case wound its way through the courts, with an El Paso district judge blocking the AG’s attempt, and Paxton appealing to the Texas Supreme Court. In May 2025, the Texas Supreme Court reversed the lower court’s decision and later denied Annunciation House’s request for a rehearing.

Annunciation House was among more than a handful of organizations that Paxton targeted using consumer protection laws.

“This whole process of suing organizations like Annunciation House puts a blanket, a wet blanket, over the work of all of these organizations and many others that were not sued but feared they might be,” Garcia said. “It makes everybody go about their daily work looking over their shoulder, asking themselves, ‘Are they going to come after me?’”

The case was set to go to court again in March, with a hearing in an El Paso district court. Garcia noted that he was scheduled to be deposed later this week as the case had picked up pace before the midterms.

U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, said Paxton dropping the lawsuit was “long overdue good news.” 

“This is what happens when the people use our collective voice at the ballot box,” she said in a statement to El Paso Matters. “Under Democratic leadership, our state will be redirecting its time, energy, and resources to issues that matter instead of the partisan bullying we'd grown accustomed to under Republicans.”

Garcia agreed, saying that he’s confident dropping the suit is a result of the midterm elections that saw Democrats sweep key seats across Texas.

“We’re tremendously grateful that that it it gives back a certain level of of voice to organizations and in their ability to more freely speak out on the issues that are affecting refugees in terrible, terrible ways,” he said. 

Annunciation House was established in February 1978 by Garcia and four other young adults who began meeting in 1976 searching for ways to serve El Paso’s poor and homeless, particularly undocumented immigrants who were turned away from other shelters.

The organization has served more than a half a million people, and in 2023 was the focal organization providing shelter to thousands of migrants who arrived in El Paso during a major influx. 

Editor’s note: 5:45 p.m. Nov. 9: This story has been updated with additional details and comments.

This article first appeared on El Paso Matters and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. 

Texas Democrats Swept Statewide Races. Now Comes the Hard Part of Solving Healthcare Angst.

By Renuka Rayasam

Nov. 6, 2026

Texas Democrats spent three decades trying to regain control of the governor’s mansion and other top state leadership positions. This Election Day, they pulled off a decisive upset, taking statewide offices and the state House, partly due to voter anger over healthcare costs and the difficulty of getting care.

Now the state’s newly elected leaders have two months before the next legislative session to figure out how to deliver on their promises on healthcare affordability and other thorny issues, such as abortion. And they need to do it in the face of bruising political opposition over a frenetic 140-day legislative session that begins Jan. 12.

“Democrats are still putting together something of an agenda in essentially what is a ‘dog catches car’ scenario,” said James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project, a polling and political analysis group at the University of Texas-Austin.

Texas was at the crest of the nationwide blue wave that flipped control of Congress. The traditionally deep-red state elected James Talarico to the U.S. Senate, and Democrats picked up a seat in the U.S. House, despite efforts by Republicans to draw districts in their favor and at least $225 million spent by Elon Musk to elect Texas GOP candidates.

But the biggest changes for Texans could come from the state-level elections that Democrats also dominated on Nov. 3. And the stakes are high: Texas routinely ranks among the lowest in the nation in health outcomes and has the most uninsured people in the country.

Democratic Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa and Lt. Gov.-elect Vikki Goodwin, both state lawmakers, are scheduled to be sworn in on Jan. 19, a week after the legislative session opens. Hinojosa will become the first Democrat to occupy the governor’s mansion since Ann Richards moved out in 1995. Hinojosa defeated Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, a popular, well-funded incumbent who had never lost an election before this one.

For three terms, Abbott, along with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, fought against expanding Medicaid, contested the Affordable Care Act, oversaw the gutting of abortion rights, and weakened vaccine mandates.

While campaigning, Hinojosa and Goodwin said their top health priorities were expanding coverage, bringing down healthcare costs, and improving women’s health. Goodwin has proposed creating a state health insurance plan, funded through Texas’ $24 billion “rainy day fund.”

As state House members, Goodwin filed bills to expand Medicaid and restore abortion rights and Hinojosa filed or signed on to bills to broaden exemptions to abortion bans and add doulas to the state’s maternal mortality review committee. Few of those bills got floor votes.

Political watchers and lobbyists in Austin, Texas’ capital, say it’s too early to tell how Hinojosa, Goodwin, and other newly elected top Democrats will shape legislation for the upcoming session, whom they will appoint to top agency leadership positions, and how they will maneuver around opposition from Republicans who will still hold the majority in the state Senate.

This may be the new leaders’ best shot to figure things out. After the legislative session is over at the end of May, Texas’ legislative schedule doesn’t call for another regular session until 2029 — following the 2028 presidential election, when the entire state House will again be up for reelection.

The State of the State’s Health

About 5 million of Texas’ nearly 32 million residents lack health coverage. That includes 1 million children without insurance. Texas is one of 10 states that didn’t expand Medicaid to cover more low-income adults. New moms in Texas continue to die at higher rates than they do nationally. And healthcare costs topped lists of voter concerns in the state, according to polls in recent months.

On the federal level, Congress didn’t renew enhanced subsidies for Affordable Care Act premiums last year, passed a budget bill with new restrictions on food and healthcare assistance, and cut the federal health budget.

Because of rising costs and enrollment glitches, hundreds of thousands of Texans recently lost health coverage, said Lynn Cowles, director of health and food justice at the policy group Every Texan.

Rachel Elsberry, an insurance broker in Austin who has clients in more than a dozen states, witnessed the challenges people faced with affordability.

“Whether you voted red or blue, every client I talk to, regardless of where they are on the political spectrum, says healthcare costs are too high,” she said. She said she routinely turns away Texas clients who don’t qualify for subsidies on ACA plans or low-cost or free federal health programs.

“It’s heartbreaking,” she said.

Cowles has already met with Hinojosa’s staffers, who she said were receptive to more than a dozen steps her group suggested the governor take to make it easier for people to sign up and stay covered under state health programs.

“It’s an incredibly different world,” Cowles said. “It’s amazing to say these things out loud.”

About 1 million Texans would be newly eligible for Medicaid coverage if state leaders expanded the program. Even though the federal government would foot 90% of the bill for those enrollees, Democratic state leadership still faces steep odds.

“To thread that needle even after dramatic changes like last night is going to be challenging,” John Henderson, president and CEO of the Texas Organization of Rural & Community Hospitals, said the day after the election.

Legislators have a very narrow window to pass bills in the Texas Statehouse, said Charles Miller, director of health and economic mobility at Texas 2036, a nonpartisan policy research and advocacy group. And few measures succeed: During the state’s last regular session, in 2025, of 11,503 bills filed, 3,534 went into effect.

“The clock is ticking,” Miller said.

Senate Republicans Pledge To Hold the Line

Newly elected Democratic leaders are expected to face stiff opposition from the Republican-controlled state Senate. Republican state Sen. Charles Schwertner, a physician who chairs the state Senate’s Business and Commerce Committee, pledged a GOP fight in a social media post after the election: “Texas stands as long as the Texas Senate Republican caucus holds the line,” he wrote. “We will.”

With such Republican opposition, Miller said Democrats will need to look for measures that can garner wide support, such as boosting healthcare price transparency, tackling healthcare monopolies, and figuring out how to draw down more federal healthcare dollars without tapping the state budget.

A bipartisan state House committee on healthcare affordability that has been meeting this year is set to deliver recommendations before the start of the session.

Historically, lieutenant governor has been one of the most powerful elected state posts, with single-handed authority to appoint committees and committee chairs and decide which bills get a floor vote. As lieutenant governor, Patrick used a Republican majority to expand his authority, lowering the state Senate debate threshold to allow partisan bills to pass without Democratic support.

But political observers speculate that Senate Republicans may try to pass procedural rules to significantly weaken the lieutenant governor’s power to steer the chamber for when Goodwin takes office.

“The rumors are flying in Austin,” Henson said.

Nathan Johnson, a Democratic state senator who will soon assume the post of Texas attorney general, told The Texas Tribune that even if the state’s abortion laws don’t change, he won’t use the power of his office to sue out-of-state doctors who send abortion medication to the state.

Dorcaus Robinson, 46, said changes cannot come soon enough on healthcare costs. Robinson, who lives in Houston with her two younger sons, said she voted for Hinojosa and other top Democrats but broke with the party in other races.

This year, Robinson said, she is paying $730 a month for an ACA health plan, up from $500 a month last year. Robinson, publisher of The Houston Sun, has multiple sclerosis and relies on her plan to cover a shot that would otherwise be $10,000 a month.

But when her insurer called after the election to let her know her premium would be rising again next year, she said, her first thought was, “Is it too late for me to benefit from this blue tsunami?”

Robinson said she recalled that after President Donald Trump took office last year, he began filing executive actions and making changes on day one. She expects the same from the Democrats she supported.

“It’s like football: The next man is up,” she said. “Let’s go in and get this done. I hope they have their plan and they are ready.”

But she added: “Is it realistic? Can it be done? I don’t know.”

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

New Orleans parents say they’re anxious about school closures, want more communication from leaders

by Safura Syed, Verite News New Orleans
November 5, 2026

Karen Seymour’s three kids just started attending Elan Academy in New Orleans this fall, but she’s already thinking of what she might have to do if the school closes. She transferred her kids to Elan after the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education closed their old school, Athlos Academy in Jefferson Parish, in May for low academic performance. (The Seymours live in New Orleans, but as a state-run school, Athlos was open to students from any parish.)  Seymour said she wasn’t aware that the school had been struggling academically. 

Two of Seymour’s children are autistic. Her 9-year-old daughter, Penelope, struggled for years to verbally communicate with peers and teachers. Penelope had been at Athlos Academy since kindergarten, and had just started talking during school in second grade. But after Seymour had to transfer Penelope to Elan Academy for third grade, Seymour said, Penelope “shut down again.” 

“When she came here, she was looking for her old friends, her old teachers,” Seymour said. “It's just hard for kids with special needs to have to adapt to new change, new scenery, new faces.”

Seymour isn’t alone in being worried about school closures. A recent Cowen Institute poll of 1,000 parents and guardians in New Orleans found that 61% of respondents worried that their children’s schools would close due to underenrollment. Among respondents with special-needs children, the figure rose to 70%. 

According to a new NOLA Public Schools district enrollment report, Elan Academy — like about half of the public schools in the city — is underenrolled. District Superintendent Fateama Fulmore will present the report to the Orleans Parish School Board during a special meeting on Thursday (Nov. 5). But plans for how to “right-size” the district — close schools and move more students into fewer buildings — won’t be presented until a Dec. 9 board meeting, so it’s not yet clear whether the Seymour family will have to find yet another school. 

Among the city’s underenrolled schools, a handful have fill rates of a little more than 60 percent, well under the 91% goal. The most underenrolled are L.B. Landry High School, Booker T. Washington High School, Walter L. Cohen High School, Samuel J. Green Charter School, Dr. Martin Luther King Charter School for Sci Tech and Lycee Francais International de la Louisiane. Elan Academy’s fill rate is around 83 percent. 

Having low enrollment numbers doesn’t guarantee schools will close. The report says that the decisions addressing underenrollment will “be dependent on other district processes” — although it does not clarify what those processes might be — and be dependent on neighborhood needs. However, the district doesn’t expect to reach 100% enrollment efficiency this year. 

“At the same time, maximizing utilization is not the goal,” the report reads. “A healthy system needs some available capacity to preserve family choice, accommodate students entering or moving within the system, offer a diversity of school models, and respond to changes in demand.”

Higher test scores, lower letter grades

Seymour said the thought of Elan Academy closing has crossed her mind. In fact, because the district is taking geography into account in closure decisions, Elan, which is located in Algiers, may be safer than some underenrolled East Bank schools. Recent analysis from influential education nonprofit New Schools for New Orleans, shared with Verite News, cautioned against closing West Bank Schools because additional closures would force hundreds of students into long commutes across the river.

If she does have to deal with another school closure, though, Seymour said she’ll start homeschooling her children. She said it’s been hard for her to watch her children struggling to adjust to a new school, and to try and again build their confidence through a difficult and disruptive transition. 

“I see all the closures going on now, and I’m like, ‘Wow, I hope this school doesn’t shut down because then I have to take them out again,’” Seymour said. “But if that does happen, I don’t want to send them through that all over again.”

According to the Cowen poll, parents were less worried about their own children’s schools being closed due to poor performance. Just 42% of respondents said that was a concern. That might be because parents have higher opinions about public school performance than in the past. 32% of respondents gave New Orleans public schools an ‘A’ or ‘B’ grade, up by 3 points from last year's poll, and fewer respondents rated them with a ‘D’ or ‘F’ grade. 

But while New Orleans parents might feel more favorably about the district’s academic performance, especially with rising test scores, the letter grades given to schools by the state later this month will likely drop because of a new accountability system, which will grade schools on a state-wide bell curve. Only 35% of parents said they had heard about changes to the state grading system, according to the poll.  

The stricter grading system, combined with a new policy that makes it easier for the NOLA Public Schools district to close charters before their renewal year, will likely put more schools on the chopping block. Already, one school, Fannie C. Williams Elementary, agreed to give up its charter at the end of the school year because of poor academic performance. Dr. Martin Luther King Charter School for Sci Tech, the only public school in the Lower 9th Ward, is facing the threat of district-imposed closure for the same reason. 

And thanks to new legislation, the district will also be able to close schools for not having enough students if Superintendent Fateama Fulmore determines that the district is severely underenrolled. Those determinations will be announced to the school board during its Nov. 17 meeting. 

The ‘emotional weight’ of school closures

Public school enrollment has been dropping for years in New Orleans and around the country, with the steepest decreases occurring after the COVID-19 pandemic. In New Orleans, enrollment has declined by about 10% since 2019, according to district data. Jesse Chanin, an education researcher with the Coalition for Compassionate Schools, said the district had been alerted to the coming enrollment crisis as early as 2019, before the pandemic, when kindergarten enrollment began to noticeably decrease. 

Despite that, five new schools were added to the district for the 2019-2020 school year. Still, school closures were outpacing additions. And while schools might have changed hands, passing between operators and the district or vice versa, no new public charter school has been opened since fall of 2021. The total number of schools has decreased from 87 in 2018 to 61 in 2026. 

The current enrollment crisis being faced by the district was “completely avoidable,” Chanin said, had the district not agreed to open new charters in the first place. 

But now, district officials say that downsizing will have to continue in order to make schools financially viable. The fewer students there are in school buildings, the less money each school gets from the state, leading to tighter budgets and potential cuts to programs. So having more students in fewer buildings makes sense — at least from a financial standpoint. 

The district’s schedule gives parents little time to prepare for a school closure. The NOLA Public Schools Common App Process (formerly OneApp) opens in November and closes in late January, but Seymour said she’d want to plan well in advance of those deadlines. Seymour said learning about a closure a year in advance would be most helpful for her, and wanted more community involvement in how closure decisions are made. 

“I just think they need to come to something to where the communities and the superintendents of the school, or charter, or however it goes, need to sit down and have a big meeting about this instead of waiting till the last minute to let you know, ‘OK, we shutting down,’” Seymour said. 

With little information coming at the moment, rumors have festered. Tricia Cacioppo’s daughter attends New Orleans Charter Science and Mathematics High School, after the school she was attending last year, New Harmony High School, closed. Cacioppio said her daughter has heard rumors about Sci High closing, too, if it receives low test scores. The school has a 96% enrollment rate, well above the district goal. And despite it being a C-rated school academically, and no indication that it is being considered for closure, Cacioppo said she worries about it “every day,” especially because her daughter is a junior. 

“I'm like, ‘Well, is your school still open?’” Cacioppio said. “Because after going through that last year, it's a thing that you have to actually worry about.”

Rumors can be detrimental to schools, Chanin said, if parents pre-emptively pull their children from a school they believe might close. That was the case for Lionel Franklin, whose son was attending L.B. Landry High School as of a few weeks ago. When Franklin heard that the school might close, he immediately transferred his son to another school, and said he “didn’t want to get caught up in the moment.” 

Parents who spoke to Verite News said they wanted to see more transparency and longer timelines in the schools closure process. Last month, Allisyn Swift, the executive director of the Coalition for Compassionate Schools, suggested a similar idea to the Orleans Parish School Board during a committee meeting. There is a historical context of Black schools being targeted for closure during the post-Reconstruction era in the 19th century and school integration in the 20th, which should be acknowledged, Swift said. The vast majority of New Orleans public schools are majority Black, but schools with the highest proportions of white students have better performance scores, and are therefore likely safe from closure.  

“That is why there’s the tone that comes along with schools closing that brings a lot more emotional weight than just what the facts are around school closure,” Swift said during the meeting. 

Swift recommended that the school board offer avenues of public participation, including listening sessions, to acknowledge the loss of community that comes along with a school closure. 

Chanin, a researcher at the Coalition for Compassionate Schools, said the district could structure discussions in a way that is productive and provides closure. 

“It doesn't just need to be a free-for-all where everyone's yelling at the board,” Chanin said. “Thinking about how could we facilitate this in a way that does provide a people with a voice and an outlet and is meaningful to people and feels democratic.”

In a recent board committee meeting, Fulmore said that the district has done work to increase engagement with parents around the closure process. The district has recently held meetings about charter renewals and closures including at L.B. Landry and Fannie C. Williams. Board policy only requires the district to inform the public of a potential school closure two weeks before closure recommendations are presented in December, Fulmore said. 

“This administration is going above and beyond, not because we are asked to do it, we are required to do it, but because we believe it is the right thing to do in informing families,” Fulmore said. “We’re out here talking to you face-to-face and not just sending you something in the mail to join us at a meeting to hear the outcome of our decision.” 

This article first appeared on Verite News New Orleans and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. 

Ukrainian TPS holders in Ohio left in limbo after federal non-decision decision

By Nick Evans (Ohio Capital Journal) Published: November 10, 2026

While most Ohio lawmakers were out campaigning for reelection last month, Ohio state Rep. Sean Brennan, D-Parma, was driving across Poland’s border with Ukraine to deliver a couple dozen ambulances and medical supplies.

The trip was part of Ukraine Focus’s 19th mission to Ukraine. The Virginia-based nonprofit sources and delivers ambulances, among other programs to support the war-torn country. The United Ukrainian Organizations of Ohio helped organize participants from Ohio.

“We delivered around 50 ambulances, as I recall,” Brennan explained. “Along with other vehicles, along with humanitarian and medical supplies for the Ukrainian military to use in the in their war efforts to maintain their sovereignty, which they’re entitled to and deserve.

Brennan’s Parma-area district has the largest Ukrainian-American population in the state, and many Ukrainians sheltering in the U.S. while the war continues have settled in the area. Those families face an uncertain future.

Roughly 100,000 Ukrainians are living in the U.S. under Temporary Protected Status — the same protections recently terminated for nearly 350,000 Haitians living in the U.S.

Ukrainians’ TPS status lapsed on Oct. 19. But rather than formally extending or ending protections, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services did nothing. In a terse statement, the agency said an announcement “will be made at the appropriate time,” and until then, TPS holders can maintain their work authorization.

“They’ve put the people in limbo,” United Ukrainian Organizations of Ohio President George Jaskiw said.

“Is this just a reprieve before the election and then after election the hammer will come down? That’s what somebody asked me,” he said. “I have no answer. I don’t know what’s in the mind of (Department of Homeland Security) administration.”

The trip

Brennan’s European sojourn started in Prague. He and several other volunteers (including Jaskiw) picked up ambulances and drove through Krakow in Poland, and then on to Lviv in Western Ukraine. Brennan was struck by the extent to which Ukrainians were carrying on with their lives despite four years of armed conflict.

“Now that being said, there were signs of war,” Brennan said, “There were a couple of mornings where the air raid sirens went off, and we had to go down into the bunker of our hotel for our safety.”

Security was tight at the border, he said, and they passed check points for several miles on their way to Lviv. After they arrived, the volunteers handed over the vehicles to members of the Ukrainian armed forces and toured a handful of the civilian efforts to support the war.

“We got to sit down with them and tie some of the ties onto the nets that are used on the front to camouflage vehicles and other equipment from the drones,” Brennan described. “We also visited a place where they dry food. They dry fruits, vegetables, and meat to create (meals ready to eat) for soldiers on the front. That was pretty amazing.”

But most surprising, he said, was a dilapidated Soviet-era building.

“They took us into the building onto one of the floors,” Brennan described. “They opened up the door, and there were about I would say 100 3-D printers making items for drones.”

“It was something out of a spy novel.”

While the volunteers were delivering ambulances, news broke that President Donald Trump was going to rescind sanctions on Russian diesel and purchase millions of barrels from the country. The administration’s stated justification for the deal was to lower fuel costs.

“Lower prices for Americans, especially our Great Farmers, Ranchers, and Truckers, is my Greatest Priority,” President Trump said in a Truth Social post.

Experts doubt those purchases will materially affect the cost of fuel in the U.S., but they do offer a financial lifeline to the Russian government.

“People were dumbfounded,” Brennan said. “As was I, and I think I’m speaking on behalf of everybody that was on our trip.”

“Russia Supports Iran,” he added. “So, you know any American dollars that go to Russia for diesel, is going to be shot right back at us, and I don’t think anybody wants that.”

The TPS legal process

In Ohio, Ukrainian families are waiting anxiously to see what happens with their immigration status. USCIS’s non-decision grants them a reprieve, but not much of one.

Aleksandar Cuic is a law professor at Case Western Reserve University who works with the school’s immigration law clinic.

“I’ve never seen them not do anything,” he said. “Historically they’ve either terminated it, took away the designation, or they’ve extended it. That’s always historically what’s been done.”

Federal law requires the Secretary of Homeland Security to consult with “appropriate agencies” about the conditions in a country before terminating its TPS designation.

“TPS for Ukraine is due to a war,” Cuic said. “Unless they’re going to determine that the war is over or it’s safe to go back. That’s something that they have to do. They have to kind of show that hey, the conditions, why we created TPS, are now gone.”

At least on paper, it’s a thoughtful process, but in practice, it doesn’t always work out that way. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Department of Homeland Security to end protections for more than 400,000 Haitians and Syrians living in the United States.

In Haiti, gangs control 90% of the country and five million people can’t get enough to eat. Attorneys challenging the revocation of TPS noted the U.S. State Department warns travelers that “no part of Syria is safe from violence.”

Then just days before the court issued its ruling, attorneys representing TPS holders uncovered documents indicating then-Secretary Kristi Noem never actually consulted the U.S. State Department about conditions in Haiti. The attorneys petitioned the court to set the case aside. Instead a 6-3 conservative majority sided with the Trump administration.

“I think it’s fair to say it’s kind of a political maneuver right now,” Cuic said. “You know, you’re looking at the countries that they’re pulling TPS from, (they) are countries that the Trump administration has, for lack of a better term, targeted.”

If federal officials decide to terminate Ukraine’s TPS designation, recipients will have 60 days to leave the country.

TPS holders’ uncertainty

Ivan Prodanyk left Ukraine with his wife and two daughters the day the war began. His family has Temporary Protected Status and they’ve settled in Cleveland. The government’s lack of a decision has rattled him.

“At first, it’s uncertainty,” he said. “You do not know what to do because you already started to do something here. You need to (be) working. You need to pay bills.”

In some ways, Prodanyk said, the situation in Ukraine today is even worse than it was when he left, and he isn’t eager to uproot his family once again.

“You need to leave and start the life one more time?” he asked, “Where? In another country? Or come back to Ukraine and be under the missiles and bombs?”

Prodanyk said he and his wife both work and pay taxes. He was a lawyer in Ukraine and has been able to make his way through law school again here in the U.S. He’s frustrated at the “unfairness” of the government potentially forcing out people who are contributing to their communities.

“I don’t know why government not appreciate Ukrainians,” he said, “and they don’t want Ukrainians to stay here, even right now when the situation in Ukraine is terrible.”

If push comes to shove, and federal officials do terminate their status, Prodanyk and his family will leave. But he said he won’t put his children in danger, and won’t separate himself from his family, so they’ll be forced to find some other country that would welcome them.

While Prodanyk’s family braces for USCIS’s eventual decision, the agency’s delay is already having real world, negative impacts on other Ukrainian immigrants.

Alex is a mechanical engineer from Ukraine, living in Ohio under TPS. Ohio Capital Journal isn’t using his last name over fears of retribution.

“Due to all this issue, I lost my work,” Alex explained. “My company, who I worked for, they decided to terminate contract with me because there is no dates on my documents.”

“They didn’t want me to work illegal,” he added, “and just they decided I had to quit because I have no information about when my documents will be expired, if they will be extended, or no.”

Right before our interview, Alex visited the Bureau of Motor Vehicles to renew his driver’s license. He was turned away. Alex worries that for him, and other TPS holders, USCIS simply allowing work authorization to continue might not be enough for Ukrainian job seekers to land a gig.

“So, if their HR or whoever is gonna check the ability to work (they) will verify through the eVerify,” Alex said. “Most likely it will say that that person is liable for work, but that person cannot get to work without driving a car, which is the problem.”

Alex’s family comes from Bucha, the site of massacre in 2022 which still sees regular bombardment from drones or airstrikes. Alex has two children; a son who was born in the U.S. and a daughter in grade school. He explained she had a difficult time with classes at first because she couldn’t speak English, but now she’s doing much better.

“She’s comfortable. She likes to be here. She likes to live here. She has some American friends,” Alex said. “They are all happy together, and all that I want (is to) just stay here, build my future life.”

Follow Ohio Capital Journal Reporter Nick Evans on X or on Bluesky.

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