The city of Minneapolis has proposed converting the former 3rd Police Precinct building into a democracy center, and on Wednesday it shared the results of a community engagement survey at an open house.

“So this would be home to the city’s election and voter services department,” explained Laura Mellum, assistant city manager for communications and engagement.

“And this is really strategic for election and voter services for a number of reasons. This would move the city’s early voting center there, providing a more central location with closer transportation and also an area with lower voter turnout,” Mellum continued.

The city just completed its months-long community engagement. Mellum said they heard from about 2,000 people; Sixty-three percent of people citywide support the proposal, and 70% of people in the 3rd District agree with it, she said.

“I would describe this as clear support for the proposal,” Mellum added.

Sam Gould is a neighbor of the former 3rd District building who has been independently advocating for his community for just over a year.

Asked if he thought the city survey accurately reflected what his neighbors had told him, he replied, “No, definitely not.”

“We have created a petition that makes it very clear that people don’t like the way this process is going,” Gould said. “The aspect of it being a voting center is fantastic, but we don’t need this big building with this incredibly important history that we can’t just sweep under the rug, to employ 16 people, to have a huge warehouse…”

The city also plans to dedicate another portion of the building to community services, and Mellum said they got some ideas from the survey, such as “social services, business-related services and other types of community meetings or cultural events.”

Gould said neighbors want to be assured they will be more involved in shaping these community services before pledging support.

“Anything that leads to growth and healing must start with the neighbors,” he said. “It just seems really disingenuous.”

The open house runs until 7:30 p.m. at the Minneapolis American Indian Center on E Franklin Ave.

The city will present the survey results to a Minneapolis City Council committee in a few weeks.

If approved, the center would not open until 2026 at the earliest, Mellum said.

Mayor Jacob Frey also sent a statement in support of the proposal:

“The community has been at the heart of the redevelopment of 3000 Minnehaha and they are tired of waiting. Our city has already held seven meetings with residents and conducted a survey to gather opinions on the future of the site. The survey results show clear support for transforming the site into a democracy center and community space. We will continue to gather input to ensure our shared vision comes to life, but we will not sit idle while the Third District sits empty. It’s time to move forward,” said Mayor Jacob Frey.

U.S. District Judge for the District of Columbia Tanya Chutkan on Wednesday unsealed a key filing in special counsel Jack Smith’s election case against former President Trump.

Chutkan unsealed Smith’s 165-page file after the special counsel filed the document outlining the case and alleged evidence he plans to use in an eventual trial against Trump.

Trump pleaded not guilty to all of Smith’s charges against him.

Trump himself hit back at Smith on Wednesday, calling the case interference in the 2024 election.

“Democrats are arming the Justice Department against me because they know I WIN and they are desperate to prop up their failed candidate Kamala Harris,” Trump posted on his Truth Social. “The DOJ dropped this latest ‘hit’ today because JD Vance humiliated Tim Walz in the debate last night.”

Trump said the DOJ “has become nothing more than an extension of Joe’s and now Kamala’s campaign.”

Read more on the Fox News app

“This is egregious prosecutorial misconduct and should not have been made public right before the election,” Trump said. “The Democratic Party is turning America into a third world country that seeks to censor, harass and intimidate its political opponents. What they have done to our justice system is one of the greatest tragedies of all time.”

The former president added that the Democratic Party is “guilty of the worst election interference in American history.”

“They are trying to DESTROY OUR DEMOCRACY by allowing millions of people to enter our country illegally. They are determined to stop us from taking back the White House, sealing the border and MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. BUT THEY WILL FAIL, AND WE WILL. “SAVE OUR NATION!” Trump posted.

Trump also called Smith “deranged” and said that he, the “Harris-Biden Justice Department and the Washington, D.C.-based Radical Left Democrats” are “HIGHLY OBSESSED” with continuing to use the Justice Department as a weapon to stay in power .

“‘TRUMP’ is dominating the election cycle and leading in the polls, and the radical Democrats throughout the Deep State are completely ‘unhinged.'” This entire case is a partisan, unconstitutional witch hunt that should be dismissed in its entirety, just like the Florida case was rejected!” said Trump.

Trump was charged for the second time in the election subversion case brought by special counsel Jack Smith

The Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that a president is protected from prosecution for official acts.

Smith then had to file another indictment against Trump and revise the charges to follow the Supreme Court’s ruling. The new indictment retained the previous criminal charges but narrowed and restated the allegations against Trump following the Supreme Court’s ruling that granted broad immunity to former presidents.

In the new indictment, Trump also pleaded not guilty to all charges.

In the filing unsealed Wednesday, Smith lays out a “factual argument” alleging that Trump “resorted to crime to attempt to remain in office” after he lost the 2020 presidential election.

“With private co-conspirators, the defendant embarked on a series of increasingly desperate schemes to overturn the legitimate election results in seven states he lost – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin,” Smith wrote.

“His efforts included lying to state officials to get them to ignore actual vote counts, forging fraudulent electoral votes in target states, and attempting to recruit Vice President Michael R. Pence, in his role as President of the Senate, to the job to obstruct Congress’ certification of the election using the defendant’s fraudulent electoral votes, and when all else had failed, an angry crowd of supporters were led to the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, to prevent Congress’s certification.

Smith claims that “the core of this effort was deception” and alleges that Trump and his co-conspirators were engaged in a conspiracy to interfere with the federal government’s function by which the nation collects and counts election results, which are enshrined in the Constitution and election law is set Count Act (ECA); a conspiracy to obstruct the official process by which Congress certifies the legitimate results of the presidential election; and a conspiracy against the right of millions of Americans to vote and have their votes counted.”

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung told Fox News Digital that the release of the “false-laden, unconstitutional J6 letter immediately after Tim Walz’s disastrous debate performance is another blatant attempt by the Harris-Biden regime to undermine American democracy and insert itself into… to interfere in this election.”

“The deranged Jack Smith and the radical Democrats of Washington DC are determined to use the Justice Department as a weapon to stay in power,” Cheung said. “President Trump is dominating and radical Democrats across the Deep State are panicking.

“This entire case is a partisan, unconstitutional witch hunt that should be dismissed in its entirety along with ALL other Democratic hoaxes.”

In the filing, Smith lays out his findings and claims that people close to Trump tried to tell him that the claims were all “bull—.”

Smith describes conversations between an unnamed personal attorney for Trump and the former president. That lawyer reportedly told Trump that the campaign had “investigated his allegations of fraud and even hired outside experts to do so, but could find no support for them.”

Trump trial postponed beyond Election Day due to Jack Smith investigation

“He told the defendant that if the campaign brought these claims to court, they would be butchered because the claims were all ‘nonsense,'” the filing says. Smith claims a lawyer discussed with Trump the investigation and “exposures” of all significant claims.

Smith also details alleged interactions between Trump and Pence in the days after the election.

Smith describes a phone call between Pence and Trump on November 7, 2020, in which Pence allegedly “tried to encourage Trump as a friend” by reminding him that he had “breathed new life into a dying political party.”

Smith also describes a private lunch between Trump and Pence on November 12, 2020, where Pence allegedly gave Trump a “face-saving option.” According to the filing, that option was “not to give in but to acknowledge that the process is over.”

Smith also described another private lunch between Trump and Pence on November 16, 2020, where Pence allegedly tried to encourage Trump to accept the election results and run again in 2024. Trump reportedly said at the time, “I’m not doing that.” You know, 2024 is so far away.

Smith describes another private lunch between the two, where Pence reportedly “encouraged” Trump “not to look at the election as a loss – just a break.”

Smith wrote that after that lunch, Trump allegedly asked Pence in the Oval Office, “What do you think we should do?”

Pence reportedly said: “Having exhausted all legal avenues in the courts and in Congress and still failing, [the defendant] should ‘bow down’.”

Meanwhile, Smith claims a White House aide who traveled with Trump was heard telling his family members, “It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.”

Smith claims Trump “was aware that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in Arizona within a week of the election” and claimed Trump also “knew early on that his claims of voter fraud in Georgia were false.” “.

Smith claims that “none of the allegations or evidence is protected by presidential immunity” and argues that Trump’s “plan was a private plan.”

“He made extensive use of private actors and his campaign infrastructure to attempt to overturn the election results and acted in a private capacity as a candidate for office,” Smith alleged. “However, to the limited extent that the superseding indictment and evidence presented reflect official conduct, the government may rebut the presumption of immunity because reliance on that conduct in this prosecution does not pose a threat of interference with the authority or functions of the executive branch .” .”

Last month, Chutkan said she would not hold Trump’s trial on the allegations arising from Smith’s Jan. 6 investigation until after the 2024 presidential election. She set a deadline for responses and documents from federal prosecutors and Trump’s legal team of November 7th – after Election Day.

Fox News’ Bill Mears and David Spunt contributed to this report.

Original source of the article: Judge unseals key files in special counsel’s election case against Trump

Will the Boston Red Sox return to their big-spending trend this winter?

Boston has clearly taken a step in the right direction in 2024 and is not far away from competing in the American League. The Red Sox have money to spend and it looks like they’re willing to do so this winter. Boston is worth investing in.

The Red Sox are full of young offensive talent but need to add some more talent this winter. Boston could use a starting pitcher, at least one right-handed slugger and several high-leverage relievers. These steps will certainly cost money. The Red Sox clearly need to add something, and star shortstop Trevor Story made it clear that he hopes Boston does so this winter, as transcribed by Alex Speier of the Boston Globe.

“We are the Boston Red Sox,” Story said in Speier’s transcription. “I think (addition) is what you expect. We would be happy if that were the case. Now that we have a pretty solid core of young people, hopefully this is a perfect opportunity to add something.”

Story was a bright spot for the Red Sox in 2024 despite missing much of the season. He impressed early but suffered what appeared to be a season-ending shoulder injury. Story beat the odds and ended up returning as the Red Sox fought for a playoff spot. He was solid and will likely play a big role in 2025. It sounds like he wants Boston to add even more this winter.

More MLB: Red Sox veteran elects free agency, ends three-year term

(This article has been updated to add new information.)

Coach Patty Gasso and the OU softball team will open their fall exhibition schedule on Wednesday with Game 1 of the Oklahoma Battle Series.

The intrasquad scrimmage is the first of eight exhibition games for the four-time defending NCAA champion Sooners this fall.

Here’s what you need to know:

More:Celebrate OU softball’s NCAA record fourth straight WCWS title with our new book

When does OU softball begin in the Oklahoma Battle Series?

• Date: Wednesday, October 2nd
• Time: 6:30 p.m. CT
• Where: Field of love in Norman

As Ryan Seacrest settles into his role as the new Wheel Of Fortune host, Maggie Sajak recently revealed her true feelings about Ryan taking over her father Pat Sajak’s role. How does she really feel about Seacrest as the new host?

Wheel of Fortune: Ryan Seacrest has officially taken on a new gig

After months of speculating, theorizing and bashing even before he took over, Ryan Seacrest officially stepped into his new role as host of Wheel Of Fortune.

Seacrest officially made his hosting debut on September 9th. Since it’s been a few weeks since his hosting debut, viewers and others have had some time to fill out a mental report card about how he’s doing.

Wheel of Fortune: Ryan Seacrest Seacrest has big shoes to fill

Ryan Seacrest takes over for Pat Sajak after Sajak hosted Wheel Of Fortune for decades…

The Sims Project Rene leaks are starting to circulate as players get their hands on an early build of the Life game, and they’re causing concern among some about what Maxis has in store. However, it’s worth noting that this is an early build and playtests like this are aimed at identifying problems in structure and style so that the developers can make improvements later. There is also no indication of how current this build is.

Leaked screenshots from Project Rene, while not quite showing the “Create a Sim” screen, do show the end result with multiple body types, character models, and clothing options, and they’re pretty simple. “The Sims 3 looked better” is a common refrain on Twitter, and while that’s definitely an exaggeration, in their current state, Project Rene’s Sims lack a certain nuance of expression that characterized the creations in The Sims 3 and The Sims 4.

🚨LEAKS🚨

🆕♂️♀️ The new screenshots of Create your Sims have been released, this time it’s called Create your Sims.#TheSimsProjectRene pic.twitter.com/tLixCaHwsr

– Like Life Sim (@LikeLifeSim) September 29, 2024

As one Redditer noted, they’re more like cartoon characters than Sims. Considering how cartoonish The Sims is, this might seem strange, but Maxis usually balances out the silly elements with something more human and relatable, something not yet present in Project Rene.

What worried more people who saw the leaks on Reddit and Twitter was the structure of The Sims Project Rene. The early build that some people tested took you to a Paris neighborhood with the goal of getting a cafe up and running. You have to complete daily goals, earn Simoleons as rewards, and then do it all again. The tasks ranged from things like completing a shift at the cafe – which, to be fair, seemed a bit more interactive than most Sims 4 jobs, since you can at least operate the coffee machine and “collaborate with other players” – to Buying an outfit.

📸 The gameplay of The Sims: Project Rene, in which you will experience multiplayer mode in the exploration city of the Paris district: join friends and other players, complete quests, collect items, meet the locals, a local cafe, shops, Activities and stylish rewards and more. Including build mode.

1/3 pic.twitter.com/qelsZkCPkZ

– Like Life Sim (@LikeLifeSim) September 29, 2024

This is something I’d expect from a F2P game with a battle pass, and it’s the least Sims-like experience I can imagine. This doubles when you consider that you can also earn XP by completing actions, such as talking to other Sims or wishing at the wishing well. Some fans are speculating that Maxis plans to add microtransactions that will give you more Simoleons to spend on customization items, presumably cosmetics and hopefully not items in build mode. Part of the appeal of The Sims is doing whatever you want, no matter how strange and inefficient it may be, and the prospect of completing chores with no real reward or personality involved just doesn’t seem to appeal Having a connection to the series.

However, these concerns may be unfounded. EA and Maxis recently acknowledged The Sims Project Rene in a Sims celebration recap in which they also announced a Sims movie starring Margot Robbie, but they have yet to show any official footage or explain how Project Rene works. It could be that bad, but it could also just be an early build taken completely out of context.

The Texas Longhorns were already one of the top teams in EA Sports College Football 25, with several elite players across the board and an elite level of speed at the skill positions.

Not to mention the best quarterback room in the entire game.

But on Wednesday, this team got even better as several players received rating updates and the team’s overall talent level increased.

The biggest beneficiary of the update for Texas was tight end Gunnar Helm, whose rating went from 78 overall to 85 overall. Meanwhile, safety Michael Taaffe also received a significant upgrade, improving his skills by five points from 78 to 83 overall.

Wide receiver DeAndre Moore – who has been one of the team’s best receivers over the past two weeks – also improved from 77 to 81, while running backs Quintrevion Wisner and Jerrick Gibson also improved by four skill points each to a total of 80.

Two players also switched positions for the Longhorns, with Jahdae Barron officially moved to corner and offensive lineman Jaydon Chatman to left guard. Anthony Hill was also moved to middle linebacker.

You can see all the Longhorns player changes below:

attack

LT Kelvin Banks 95 (+1)
WR Isaiah Bond 89 (+1)
WR Matthew Golden 87 (+1)
WR Silas Bolden 85 (-1)
WR DeAndre Moore 81 (+4)
WR Ryan Wingo 81 (+1)
TE Amari Niblack 84 (-1)
RB Jerrick Gibson 80 (+4)
RB Quintrevion Wisner 80 (+4)
OL Jaydon Chatman 79 (+1)

defense

CB Jahdae Barron 89 (+1)
LB Anthony Hill 88 (+1)
S Andrew Mukuba 87 (-2)
S Michael Taaffe 83 (+5)
DT Bill Norton 82 (+4)
LB David Gbenda 80 (+2)

There’s never a bad time for stories that celebrate acts of kindness, but the current news cycle makes them all the more worthwhile. In the new film “White Bird,” which hits theaters on Friday, the act is of great significance: A family in Nazi-occupied France harbors a young Jewish girl whose friends and family have all been taken away.

“White Bird,” from German director Marc Forster (“Finding Neverland,” “The Kite Runner”), is a lovely adaptation of RJ Palacio’s graphic novel for young adults. This is also perfect for this audience – a story within a story that packs all the drama of war and young romance. Let’s just not exaggerate the idea that it is part of a shared cinematic universe of kindness with the Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson film Wonder, also based on Palacio’s work.

It is depicted as something a grandmother tells her grandson, who appears to be taking the wrong path. Helen Mirren is called Grandmère or Sara Blum, a famous artist who tells young Julian (Bryce Gheisar) at dinner one evening what she went through during the war. Julian’s immediate, earnest interest in what his grandmother has to say is perhaps the most incredible part of this story, which involves some deus ex machina wolves, as he is a neglected rich boy who tends to drop out of fancy private schools to be thrown. I suppose it’s an introduction, and Mirren is a wonderful narrator.

Ariella Glaser plays the young Sara Blum, who leads a good life in her small French town with educated, working parents Max (Ishai Golan) and Rose (Olivia Ross). She barely notices the changing tides as the war intensifies and cares more about her friends and the cute boy at school. The story points out that she barely noticed the classmate who would ultimately save her life: Julien (Orlando Schwerdt), who walks with a crutch and whose father works in the sewers. In other words, not a popular kid. In an awkward moment, the audience and Julien realize that she doesn’t even know his name.

But when the Nazis come to arrest the Jewish students at the school, he is there to help them get to his family’s estate. Gillian Anderson plays Julien’s mother Vivienne, a down-to-earth character but a minor character until a devastating scene near the end of the film.

The young actors are very good and well cast on their path to friendship and then to first love. They get to know each other and spend time imagining a world where they aren’t confined to a barn. Your imagination will come to life through dreamy projected images.

“White Bird,” which began filming in early 2021, has been delayed several times over the past two years. Often this indicates a quality problem and the obligation to release it reluctantly anyway. But that’s not the case here: this is a very well-made film that seems to have just fallen into a kind of release limbo only partially related to the strikes.

It’s a little by the book – perhaps exactly what you’d expect from sophisticated historical fiction for young adults. Being a kind-hearted, straightforward film that might even make you shed a few tears is not a crime against cinema.

“White Bird,” a Lionsgate theatrical release Friday, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for “thematic material, some strong violence and language.” Running time: 120 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.

With the rise of satellite internet and the unspooling of fiber optic cables, rural Alaska is in the midst of huge changes in broadband connectivity. For school districts increasingly reliant on the internet to deliver education, these changes couldn’t come sooner.

But finding the most affordable option, and turning away from established providers in favor of services like Starlink, is easier said than done for many rural school districts. It means navigating the complex and ever-growing systems of state and federal subsidies these districts have long relied on, and that critics say should be given more scrutiny.

It remains unclear how far into the future a school internet system propped up by hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies can last. Which internet service providers are able to come out on top securing these lucrative contracts, and whether satellite internet like Starlink proves to be a pie in the sky approach, is still up in the air.

Switching to Starlink

With kids back in school across the state, one district in Western Alaska is in the first year of a major change. It’s switching from GCI to Starlink satellite internet to serve its approximately 2,000 students living hundreds of miles off the road system. The switch is only one of the difficult moves that the Lower Yukon School District has made in response to years of virtually flat per-student funding from the state.

“We were staring down the barrel of a big deficit,” said Joshua Walton, the district’s technology director. “And we were saying, ‘How do we mitigate some of the fallout of this?’ One of the biggest things that we looked at was internet. After a lot of calls and a lot of research, we made the plunge.”

Walton said that the decision to switch to Starlink wasn’t an easy one. But he said that the highest internet speeds the district could afford from long-time provider GCI were falling short of the mark.

“You run into a lot of issues with testing. Any kind of online curriculum, classes struggled to use it just because the bandwidth isn’t there,” Walton said.

In 2023, download speeds for all but one of the district’s 11 schools were limited to 25 megabits per second. That’s what the Federal Communications Commission considered, until recently, to be adequate for the internet needs of a small household. At its Emmonak school, the district was relying on that connection to serve more than 250 students and faculty.

With Starlink, Walton said that the district should be able to tap into download speeds as much as 10 times faster, and at a price many times cheaper. He said that upfront costs for the switch were around $100,000, but that the decrease in annual costs after federal subsidies is considerable.

“Out of pocket, we’re looking at, like, somewhere around ($40,000), which is just substantial savings when you look at where we were before,” Walton said. “From close to a million dollars out of pocket with GCI, (it) was an easy decision to make.”

Walton stressed that the district’s first year on Starlink is really a test run, and that there is no true backup if the low-Earth orbit satellite internet service fails.

Next year, after a one-year contract with an Anchorage-based Starlink reseller Microcom expires, the Lower Yukon School District will be free to choose whichever provider it believes can meet its needs through a competitive bidding process. Walton said that he hopes that the complete network overhaul that he helped to complete in time for the school year is more than a flash in the pan.

“I am on the edge of my seat, kind of just making sure that everything is going to work out because we’re betting big on Starlink right now,” Walton said.

The Lower Yukon School District is the largest district in the state to take the plunge with satellite internet, but it’s not the first. A handful of smaller districts spread across the state are headed into their second year using satellite internet.

“At the forefront”

More than 1,100 miles away from the lower Yukon, the tiny Southeast Island School District has fewer than 150 students spread across seven remote schools on Prince of Wales and Baranof Islands in Southeast Alaska.

Until recently, it was paying GCI around $1.2 million a year for 25-megabit internet at all but one of its schools. After state and federal subsidies, the district was still on the hook for nearly $50,000 in annual out-of-pocket costs.

That’s according to Everett Cook, the district’s technology director. As tech assistant in 2022, he said that he saw an opportunity to break away from the norm when the district’s remote Port Alexander school was facing chronic internet outages.

“It was right when Starlink was coming out, and I said, ‘We could be at the forefront of this and it would completely benefit all the schools,’” Cook said.

Within a short time, the district’s first Starlink unit was installed at Port Alexander, which Cook said kept roughly a dozen students connected that year. Over the coming months, additional schools in the Southeast Island district got Starlink, something Cook said that the district was fortunate to be able to phase in while still receiving services from GCI.

“It was really on a testing (basis) like, ‘Let’s see how this is going to work,’” Cook said.

When its contract with GCI ended in 2023, Cook said that all seven schools were poised to make the switch. And in contrast to the Lower Yukon School District, there would be backups in place for all but two of the schools: 50 megabits per second connections through Alaska Power and Telephone or AP&T, another regional internet provider in Southeast.

Cook said that total internet costs for the district have been chipped down to just over $18,000 a year through the changeover to Starlink and AP&T, and that download speeds have increased multiple times over. He said that’s in part because the state program meant to help the Southeast Island School District afford internet connectivity also limited the speeds it could tap into.

So when the district turned away from its million-dollar contract with GCI last year, the stakes were high. By implementing faster internet, they were also turning away from more than $200,000 from a state broadband assistance program called the Alaska School Broadband Assistance Grant or BAG, which placed a cap on internet speeds eligible for support.

“You’re using this government money to purchase an internet connection, and then you’re using more government money to slow it down in order to help pay for it. Like, what the heck?” Cook said.

As for federal subsidies, Cook said that the district has decided to forego them altogether. He said that it was costing around $10,000 a year to hire someone just to handle the necessary paperwork. For now, the Southeast Island School District has achieved major savings and a level of broadband independence that is rare in Alaska school districts.

But the much larger Lower Yukon School District doesn’t have that luxury. This year, the district is asking for more than $600,000 in federal subsidies to pay for its Starlink-based network, according to federal records.

In Southeast, Cook said that so far he sees the switchover as a success. Nevertheless, there are risks and unknowns with the new setup, including a lack of guaranteed bandwidth or dedicated support staff in case something goes wrong, both services that GCI is able to offer. But Cook said that he’s up for the challenge.

“It seems to me that a lot of the schools prefer to have the management services and they don’t have the headache of it. They’d rather just deal with the other things that they have to deal with,” Cook said. “Whereas I had fun doing it.”

“The big money”: E-rate

While the switch in internet providers is an experiment for the Lower Yukon School District, it’s still relying on the same massive federal subsidies to cover its internet costs.

That money is distributed through the Schools and Libraries Universal Service Support Program, known as the E-Rate program, aimed at achieving equal access to telecommunications across the country. In 2023 it provided roughly $115 million in broadband subsidies to Alaska school districts. The number is expected to double in 2024, according to federal E-Rate records.

“That’s where all the big money is,” said Valerie Oliver.

Until last year, Oliver served as the state’s E-Rate consultant under the Alaska State Library, a position she held for two decades. As she explained, federal broadband subsidies are tied to poverty levels.

“The number of kiddos you’ve got that are eligible for free or reduced lunch, that determines the discount that you’re going to get in the E-Rate program,” Oliver said.

In rural Alaska, that discount is generally 80% to 90%. The remainder of what districts owe each year to cover their internet cost is where the state comes in, through the BAG program.

BAG

BAG was first launched in 2014 to assist schools in Alaska with reaching internet download speeds of 10 megabits per second, considered laughably slow today.

Oliver helped write the first and second versions of the regulations that guide how BAG is administered. She said that she and the director of the BAG program at the time didn’t have the benefit of a team of experts to guide the process.

“It was two librarians working with an attorney who didn’t know anything about BAG, or E-Rate, or anything,” Oliver said.

For years, BAG capped eligible internet download speeds at 10 megabits per second, and then at 25 megabits per second. In the last legislative session, it quadrupled the cap to 100 megabits per second, enabled by fast-track passage of House Bill 193.

Rep. Bryce Edgmon (I-Dillingham), who sponsored the bill, which was originally introduced as Senate Bill 140 by Bethel Democrat Lyman Hoffman, urged quick passage of HB 193.

In a House Finance hearing in February 2024, Edgmon highlighted the looming deadline to apply for E-Rate subsidies at the 100 megabits per second benchmark, enabling eligible school districts to then secure the remainder of the necessary funding through the BAG program.

In the hearing, Edgmon said that he was hopeful that federal broadband funding, including more than $1 billion allocated for Alaska through the Broadband Equity and Development Program or BEAD, would eventually remove the need for the BAG program altogether.

“There is a sort of an imperfect nature of this as it was when it got introduced in 2014, amended in 2020, and here we are in 2024 upping it, hoping that these billions of dollars of federal money that are coming through primarily the BEAD program can help offset or make this bill not applicable,” Edgmon said.

Estimating the annual budget for the state’s BAG program is tricky. This is because Alaska’s commitment is determined by the level of E-Rate subsidies awarded to school districts. These begin flowing in after the state’s number is already set.

For the new law passed this year, the Legislature requested around $25 million, a rough estimate of the costs if every eligible district receives state funding to achieve the 100 megabits per second increase. And while the recently announced BAG award totals came in under budget, the new total is a three-fold increase from last year’s funding. It’s an expense that critics say the state should be leery of.

Fairbanks Republican Rep. Will Stapp was one of just a handful of lawmakers to vote no on HB 193. He said that he was shocked to see how much districts were paying out of pocket, despite receiving the maximum amount of federal and state subsidies.

“At the end of the day, these are considerable price increases, and you just have to ask yourself the question, ‘Hey, is this the actual cost of providing the service in the location?’ Some of these billings are pretty astronomical,” Stapp said.

An apparent windfall

When the Lower Yukon School District made the switch to Starlink, internet provider GCI lost its second-largest drawer of federal subsidies among the more than 30 districts it serves in Alaska.

But things have played out differently for GCI in the district it serves that draws the greatest subsidies: the much larger Lower Kuskokwim School District. In April, the district’s school board approved a contract with GCI for more than $101 million a year. The price tag for a high-speed connection at the district office in Bethel alone is currently $1.4 million per month.

After BAG and E-rate subsidies, the district is on the hook for around $3 million of this contract annually, according to a school board memo.

For GCI, the 100 megabits per second change to state BAG regulations has resulted in an apparent windfall, far beyond what the next largest Alaska providers have achieved in terms of overall subsidies. With the state support to increase speeds, districts GCI serves have roughly doubled their E-Rate subsidies to more than $200 million since the change, according to federal records. The Lower Kuskokwim district alone has applied for more than half of these federal subsidies. As for BAG subsidies, roughly $7.2 million is being awarded this year to bring its schools to 100 megabits per second.

In an emailed response, GCI declined to discuss details of its contract with the Lower Kuskokwim School District, but said that the price of internet services in rural Alaska were generally high due to the high costs of building, upgrading, operating, and maintaining networks.

The email went on to say that the company is very excited about bringing fiber internet to Bethel and other rural communities over the coming years through its AIRRAQ project – a collaboration between GCI and Bethel Native Corporation funded by over $100 million of tribal broadband connectivity grants. However, it did not say whether this project had any bearing on the current pricing for the Lower Kuskokwim School District.

The district’s new superintendent, Andrew “Hannibal” Anderson, said that it was satisfied with the current arrangement with GCI, but also declined to discuss details.

The future of BAG

This year, the state of Alaska can afford to fill in the gap between the millions of federal subsidy dollars and the internet needs of rural school districts. But that may not always be the case. Oliver, the state’s former E-Rate consultant, said that people should pay attention to the implications of steadily increasing costs for the BAG program.

“If we’re not careful and let the service providers jack up the cost of things too high, then we’ll never be able to pay our non-discounted share, our 10%, because they will knock things out of the ballpark, which is exactly what they’ve done with (the Lower Kuskokwim district),” Oliver said.

Oliver said that there’s a real risk that districts could have to make do with reduced subsidies.

“If we’re not already there, we will soon be at proration, and that is going to impact all districts that apply, including those that were good fiscal stewards of selecting a cost effective connection in the first place,” Oliver said.

Oliver said that she still believes in the importance of the program for helping address disparities in internet access across the state, and that there is still a chance to protect the future of the program.

“Can we improve upon something that started out as good? We absolutely can. And we should, because we are spending millions of dollars when we as a state don’t have a lot to spare,” Oliver said.

The Alaska Department of Education and Early Development declined to comment on the long-term sustainability of the BAG program.

The state Online Public Notices website was accepting written comments until Tuesday. It has details for providing oral comments via telephone on Oct. 9.

The lawyer for one of the four suspects charged in the livestreamed shooting death of Birmingham mother Asia Poole said there was no chance a jury would convict any of them of murder.

Lawyers for the four young suspects – a woman and three men, including a 17-year-old – claim their clients fired their weapons in self-defense that night after seeing four armed men – including the victim’s brother – confront them.

They also claimed that the first shot may have come from Poole’s brother, who was armed with a Draco.

“Based on what we’ve heard, in my honest, professional opinion, in 32 years of doing this, there is no way a jury would ever convict any of these people,” said attorney Darryl Bender, 20 represented for a long time. old Aacoreyah Denae Woods.

“There is evidence that on the other side of the passage upstairs (on the apartment building floor) there were three armed men and this young lady’s brother who had the best motive in the world,” Bender said.

“His younger sister had just been beaten up; Her car was stolen by the woman who beat her up.”

“The law does not require that these people allow him to shoot and then defend himself,” the lawyer said.

“What a jury will hear is that his sister was beaten up, he’s armed, three other men were armed and these people start shooting and running. “It was self-defense all day.”

Woods and three others are charged with murder in the Aug. 20 shooting of Poole and attempted murder in the wounding of Poole’s best friend, Damarion Rankins, who was shot in the thigh.

The other defendants are Justin Jamond “June Bug” Hendrix, 20, Taylor “Paper Route Tay,” McCloud, 22, and a 17-year-old male.

They are also charged with the attempted murder of Poole’s best friend, Damarion Rankins, who was shot in the hip.

Several are also accused of firing a firearm into an occupied building containing two apartments that were hit by gunfire that night.

Janiyah Hendrix, 19, who fought with Poole before the shots rang out, is charged with first-degree carjacking after authorities said she fled the chaotic crime scene in Poole’s car.

Janiyah Hendrix and Justin Hendrix are siblings. Justin Hendrix is ​​also charged with conspiracy to commit murder in an unrelated shooting. In this case no one was injured.

The four murder suspects appeared before Jefferson County District Judge William Bell on Wednesday for a preliminary hearing on the charges. When the hearing concluded, Bell referred all cases to a grand jury for indictment consideration.

Bell also granted Woods $250,000 bail with a condition of electronic monitoring. Prosecutors denied bail for Woods.

Hendrix and McCloud remain held without bond.

The 17-year-old suspect will have a bail hearing on Thursday.

Poole, mother of a young daughter, died from a single gunshot wound to the back. The father of Poole’s 4-year-old daughter died weeks before Poole’s murder.

The shooting happened on Gallant Drive at the Monarch Ridge Apartments around 10 p.m. on August 20th.

Poole’s acquaintances said there was an ongoing dispute between her and Janiyah Hendrix over a man.

The fight between Poole and Janiyah Hendrix began near Poole’s vehicle in the parking lot. They eventually got separated, but it started again in the doorway of the building where Poole lived.

The fight and subsequent shootout were captured on Facebook Live videos. Surveillance cameras — including cameras located in every doorway of the large apartment complex — also captured some of the chaos that night and were recovered by the Metro Area Crime Center.

Birmingham Homicide Detective John Finke was the only witness at Wednesday’s hearing.

Finke testified that when he arrived at the scene of the Monarch Ridge accident that night, “there were shell casings everywhere” and Poole lying dead in her airlock.

According to police, more than 160 cartridges were found. The shell casings recovered from the crime scene came from four weapons of different calibers.

Finke said he initially received nicknames from those involved and was later able to identify them by their real names. With the help of witnesses and the surviving victim, he was able to identify those seen in the videos.

Finke said Justin Hendrix is ​​seen in the videos wearing a black hoodie and black ski mask and is armed with two weapons – a Draco and an AR-15 pistol.

McCloud was dressed all in black and armed with a gun, he said.

Woods was wearing denim shorts, a brown shirt and was armed with a Draco that had an extended magazine. At one point, the detective said, she also wore a ski mask.

The video, Finke testified, showed that the 17-year-old suspect – who was seen shirtless in the videos – fired the first shot toward the wind tunnel as Janiyah Hendrix fled the scene in Poole’s vehicle.

It also showed Woods, McCloud and Justin Hendrix firing their weapons. All four shooters, Finke said, fired their weapons into the doorway where Poole was found dead.

Police had previously said that at least two people returned fire after the four suspects fired.

Finke said about seven or eight videos were collected from that night. None of them, he said, showed anyone firing from the wind tunnel and said no bullet casings were found there.

One of the Facebook Live videos came from a cellphone that was thrown into the wind tunnel as the shooting began and captured minutes of gunfire.

In that video, the owner was seen saying “No, Romeo, no” just before the shooting began.

She later told investigators that she told him not to run into the parking lot and into the crowd. She also said Poole’s brother did not fire any shots.

Defense attorneys claim that the audio recording of this recording clearly indicates that the first shot was fired in the immediate vicinity of this cell phone and not from the parking lot.

They also determined that Poole was shot in the back while she was likely looking out into the parking lot, suggesting the fatal shot may have come from one of the gunmen standing next to her in the alleyway.

Finke testified that he spoke twice with Poole’s brother, who twice failed to show up for scheduled interviews with detectives.

The brother did not respond to an earlier request for comment from AL.com.

Police are still waiting for ballistics tests to determine what type of bullet killed Poole.

Finke said during his testimony that as part of the investigation they collected a Draco, which was found about a mile from the crime scene along with a black mask and gloves.

He said investigators still have not identified three of the masked men brandishing weapons that night.