Omar King USA TODAY Thursday 20240417

The USA Today article discusses the 39th annual America's Most Endangered Rivers List, which highlights the threats to waterways across the nation. The report mentions water scarcity, overuse, development, longer droughts, rising temperatures, competition for limited water supplies, and infrastructure as threats to rivers. The article focuses on the rivers of New Mexico, which were named most imperiled due to a Supreme Court decision that limited the ability of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to enforce the Clean Water Act. The decision left many streams vulnerable to pollution and harmful effects downstream. The article also mentions the efforts to protect clean water and the importance of public action. Another article from the USA Today discusses the Democratic Party's efforts to win back blue-collar voters, particularly in Pennsylvania's 8th congressional district. The district serves as a barometer for swing voters, and the article mentions how Trump won the district in 2 This program is intended for a print and paired audience and is brought to you by the Georgia Radio Reading Service, GARS. Welcome to our reading of the USA Today. I'm Omar King for the Georgia Radio Reading Service. Today is Thursday, April 18th, 2024. Our first article comes to us from the front page. Call to Action, Sounds for Endangered Rivers. List of Current and Pending Threats gives public a chance to speak up by Denna Voiles Pulver of the USA Today. Water scarcity, overuse, and development are among the reasons why 10 waterways across the nation were ranked this year's most endangered rivers by the advocacy group American Rivers. BUILD is a call to action to defend streams and rivers, the 39th annual America's Most Endangered Rivers List. It's not all bad news, says Amy Soares-Cober, spokesperson for the Washington, D.C.-based group. These are rivers where the public has a chance to speak up and make good things happen. River nominations are solicited each year, and they're evaluated based on waterways' significance to people and wildlife. The magnitude of threats and pending decisions in the coming year that the public can influence. Reports for each river spell out how people can take action to speak up on behalf of the river, Cober said. This year, the rivers of New Mexico were named most imperiled because of concerns about a Supreme Court decision last May that experts say limited the ability of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to enforce provisions of the Clean Water Act for many streams and wetlands. We don't typically list an entire state, but most of the rivers in New Mexico are without protection because of the court decision, Cober said. Other river threats mentioned in the report include longer droughts, rising temperatures, competition for limited water supplies, and infrastructure such as highways and dams that affect water flow and wetlands. The Supreme Court ruled in May that the Clean Water Act applied only to wetlands directly connected to permanent bodies of water, siding with an Idaho couple who ran afoul of the Environmental Protection Agency's rule by backfilling a lot with dirt where they planned to build a home. The EPA had contended the filling took place near a ditch that fed into a nearby lake. New Mexico was placed at the top of the list because the state is the hardest hit by the court's decision, Cober said. It's this desert environment, and a lot of these streams only flow when it rains. The decision left 96% of New Mexico's streams vulnerable to pollution and harmful effects downstream, including the Rio Grande, Gila, San Juan, and Pecos Rivers, Cober said. It also angered state officials. Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham said the decision weakens federal protections and puts many of the state's fragmented rivers and streams at risk. Vicente Fernandez, a mayadomo for a sequia, or irrigation ditch, meaning he's in charge of coordinating water distribution along the ditch, said people depend on New Mexico's rivers for water. This is our tradition. This is our culture, Fernandez said. We don't want to be a people that loses its traditions because we haven't taken the right steps to protect our rivers. Advocates say the court ruling overturned decades of federal Clean Water Act protections, putting millions of miles of streams nationwide at risk and stripped protections for many wetlands. Reports for each river suggest specific actions people can take to find creative solutions that can benefit the rivers, communities, and local economies, said Tom Kiernan, president and CEO of American Rivers. The reports encourage people to press state governments across the nation to shore up protections for clean water, Kober said. It's also a call to protect drinking water, Kiernan said. There are few things more important than drinking water. Our leaders must hold polluters accountable and strengthen the Clean Water Act to safeguard our health and communities, he said. There are absolutely opportunities for people to take actions to generate solutions that work for the rivers, for communities, and for people's lives. Ranking number one in each of the previous two years was the beleaguered Colorado River. Last year, it was the stretch of river through the Grand Canyon in Arizona. In 2022, it was the length of the river through five states, from Colorado to California. This concludes the reading of our first article from the front page, Call to Action, Sounds for Endangered Rivers, List of Current and Pending Threats Gives Public a Chance to Speak Up by Dena Voiles-Pulver of the USA Today. Our next story from the front page comes to us from the Election 2024 section, Dems Seek to Win Back Blue Collar Voters by Josh Morgan of the USA Today. York City, every day for decades, to bring light to New York City skyscrapers. He took pride in the work and made enough money to build a house for him and his wife on a small lake near the Poconos. But now, Millie Dauntry, once a Union Blue Democrat, worries that rising costs are preventing others from finding the same opportunities. It's among the reasons he plans to support former President Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election. They've changed tremendously, Millie Dauntry said of the Democratic Party. He left around 2016. They used to help people. Now it doesn't seem that way. President Joe Biden's path to holding the White House could hinge on his ability to win back blue-collar, former Democratic voters like Millie Dauntry, who live in Pennsylvania's 8th congressional district. Situated in the northeastern corner of the state, the area is expected to serve as the perfect barometer to test the mood of disillusioned swing voters, particularly in post-industrial parts of the country. Trump actually won Pennsylvania's congressional district in the 2020 presidential election, even though it also returned a longtime Democratic member to the U.S. House in the 2022 midterm election. Only two other congressional districts, Ohio's 9th district, spanning from the Indiana border to the tip of Lake Erie, and Maine's 2nd district, which encompasses the state's northern territory, face the same trend with their incumbent Democrats. The finicky politics of all three districts also reflects their common identity as once prosperous industrial hubs whose economies have declined as manufacturing jobs have moved abroad. Both major party candidates have put a heavy focus on winning over similar voters in the past few weeks. Trump held a weekend rally in Pennsylvania, and Biden campaigned in his hometown, Scranton, on Tuesday, and other parts of the state Wednesday, with events highlighting his economic, middle-class, and tax policies. The Fight for the Working Class In 2016, Trump wooed working-class voters in areas like Pennsylvania's 8th district with a message centered on economic grievances and a pledge to make America great again. He also tapped into their anger toward politicians, who many believed had left them in the dustbin of a quickly globalizing society. And it worked. Former Democratic-leaning counties overwhelmingly voted for Trump, helping the reality TV celebrity and New York businessman go on to an upset White House victory in his first-ever political campaign. Notably, Trump's Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, margin of victory in dark-blue counties dwindled from the levels former President Barack Obama achieved when he won the presidency in 2008 and 2012. Luzerne County, an area with a strong union presence in the southwestern tip of Pennsylvania's 8th district, voted for Obama in 2012 by a margin of about 5 percentage points. Trump won it in 2016 by almost 20. In the New Jersey border county of Monroe, Clinton won by less than 1 percentage point, compared with Obama's 14-point victory in 2012. Thomas Shabila, chair of the Luzerne County Democratic Party, attributed Clinton's 2016 loss in Pennsylvania's 8th district partially to an assumption that Democrats would automatically win union voters and partially to a lack of campaigning in the area. Shabila argued that it wasn't so much that Democrats had failed unions, but that they had failed to voice why Democrats are the union's candidates. In 2020, Biden leaned into that message, targeting working-class voters by touting his own blue-collar roots and by running a moderate message. In front of his childhood home in Scranton, Biden unveiled an economic plan designed around building up American manufacturing by using government investments to stimulate the infrastructure, energy and healthcare industries. Ben Toll, a professor at Wilkes University, argues that Pennsylvania's 8th district reflected the political dynamics that engulfed suburban and blue-collar swing areas, and it could again in 2024. Biden didn't win the district where he lived for the first 10 years of his life, but he built on Clinton's lead in Democratic strongholds, like Scranton, and shrunk Trump's margins in the district's more rural communities. But where Biden merely needed to hold the margins in these areas to win states like Pennsylvania in 2020, Toll suggested that the incumbent Democratic president might have a more difficult time this year. The mood of the country is still not supportive of Biden's presidency, he said. The suburbs are going to be less likely to break as decisively for him as they did in 2020, and that means he needs to win the places that he can win that maybe other, more progressive Democrats can't. Infrastructure, jobs and votes. The strategies of Democratic representatives who have managed to win over conservative voters in working-class areas have done so by almost exclusively campaigning on infrastructure and jobs-related bills that they have passed. The three Trump-won 2020 districts to which House Democrats won re-election in the 2022 midterms remain competitive. The Cook Political Report labels all three as toss-ups in 2024. Even so, the approaches Democrat lawmakers have used to connect with voters in these districts may provide a roadmap for Biden to navigate similarly tricky areas in 2024. Democratic Representative Matt Cartwright has served Pennsylvania's 8th district since 2013 and has hung on despite Trump's popularity with the area's consensuance, partially because of his focus on passing district-specific funding projects. Gerald E. Folt, 76, a resident of the district and self-described conservative Democrat, said that where Biden was doing a good job, Cartwright was doing an excellent job for the region. He's bringing in money, and he's supporting our Department of Defense industries. He's supporting infrastructure, E. Folt said. In particular, he noted Cartwright's efforts to restore passenger rail service between Scranton and New York City, a measure that was passed under Biden's sweeping 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law. The railroad helped Scranton flourish in the 19th and 20th centuries as garment factories relocated to the area from New York City, while local iron and coal were transported to other parts of the East Coast, but Scranton has been connected via passenger service since 1970. Amtrak estimates the new corridor will have an explosive $84 million a year economic impact on the region when it is up and running. Biden has sought to connect his broader policy initiatives to local projects like the railroad. When he visited Scranton in 2021 to drum up support for his infrastructure proposal, he emphasized his impact on Pennsylvania. The president has also appeared recently with long-term representative Marcy Kaptur, who has held Ohio's ninth congressional district in the northwest corner of the state since 1983. At the heart of Kaptur's district sits the Union Town of Toledo, a former industrial powerhouse at the edge of Lake Erie. As the Midwestern state has shifted from the purple to red over the past decade, Kaptur has remained a dominant force in its politics. Her district became redder during Ohio's 2022 map-making process, but a Republican challenger who reportedly misrepresented his military record and Kaptur's ability to reach independent voters helped her win re-election that year. Kaptur, now the longest-serving woman in Congress, credits her electoral victories to her efforts in building and maintaining the industries in her district. I could point to 1,000 things, voting for the automotive industry, not against it, voting for the steel industry, not against it. Kaptur 77 told USA Today, people remember, they remember. She and Biden visited the picket line when United Auto Workers held a strike last year against Ford and General Motors in Stellantis. UAW Local 14 President Tony Totti said some members support Trump, but he can't see them backing Kaptur's 2024 opponent, Republican State Representative Derek Marin, who supported anti-union legislation in the statehouse. Totti also credited Kaptur with securing federal funding for an electric vehicle center in Toledo, which will train students and mechanics on the new technology to head off worker shortages as the auto industry evolves from producing gas to electric-powered vehicles. You won't agree with her 100% of the time, but she is effective, Totti said. Republicans say they feel good about Marin's chances against Kaptur this year, but they acknowledge her influence in the district. I think the worst mistake Republicans can make is underestimating Marcy Kaptur, said Caleb Stidham, chair of the Erie County Republican Party. She's a fierce competitor. She's been around for 40 years for a reason. She knows how to campaign. John Wiener, 89, a Republican and retired lawyer in defiance, feels the same way. Wiener has never voted for Kaptur, but he conceded that she's a good public servant, but one he believes has been in office too long. She's tough to beat, Wiener said. She's been in there a long time, and she's done a good job. One of the reasons these representatives have found success, said Tim Helwig, a political science professor at the University of Buffalo, is their focus on district-specific issues, but in 2024, that can be a more difficult formula for Biden and Democrats to replicate. In off-year elections like 2022, politics is more local, Helwig said, but in presidential years, especially when you have two very, very different candidates, it's more stylistic. He argued that Democrats shouldn't get too excited that these districts are going to keep shifting their ways. Though Maine is a Democratic-leaning state, its northern, conservative-leading second district poses a particular threat to Biden in 2024. The state is one of just two in the U.S. that awards an electoral vote to the candidate who wins in each of its congressional districts. That means even if Biden wins Maine, Trump could walk away with an electoral vote for the second district. That's what happened in 2020, when Trump won the area by seven points. Democratic Representative Jaren Golden, who has served the second district since 2018, also won that year, but when it comes to navigating the more conservative voters in the area, Golden, 41, told USA Today he doesn't have a strategy that can be replicated. It's just in my blood, said Golden, who has lived in the area for most of his life. At the end of the day, it's just the majority of the voters in the district recognize me as someone who gets them. Golden briefly left the district in 2022 after enlisting in the Marine Corps and serving combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He later attended Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, and went on to work for Republican Senator Susan Collins before launching his own campaign for office. Golden's local persona has helped him attract the support of typically Republican voters, like Jerry Bernanchez. The 61-year-old from Auburn, Maine, voted for Trump in 2020, but supported Golden during the 2022 midterms because of the congressman's down-to-earth and typical Mainer style. This November, Bernanchez plans to vote for Golden again, but when it comes to the presidential race, he's not keen on either major party candidate, none of the above. That's basically my take on it. The self-described independent said, maybe myself, I know how to spell my name. If Biden and National Democrats want to win back voters similar to Bernanchez, Golden suggested they need to spend more time talking with and understanding them. The party is just a little out of touch with the working class communities, Golden said. It's a long distance from, you know, your childhood growing up to 30 or 40 plus years of public service. This concludes the reading of our second article from the front page, Dems Seek to Win Back Blue Collar Voters, by Josh Morgan of the USA Today, published April 17th, 2024. Our next article comes to us from the money section of the USA Today. Social media has kids on edge. Can we fix damage? The author says it's not too late to repair problem, by Jennifer Jolly, special to USA Today, published April 17th, 2024. The screen time battles are already in full swing with my niece. She turned two years old in January. I want iPad. She wails across the house during lunchtime. She refuses to eat, even though I can tell she's hangry. She's even more inconsolable when I tell her she can watch 10 minutes of Cocomelon only after she takes at least three bites of her lunch. If it were up to me, I would throw her iPad away. I'm not kidding. I can't stand to watch her, one of the most intelligent and empathetic toddlers I've ever been around, gets completely sucked in and tuned out on screens. She taps and swipes and stares, totally hypnotized by its magnetic pull. Screens are already her go-to method of comfort, her favorite reward, even better than candy. All too often, then on-demand babysitter for her parents, who are overwhelmed and just trying to make it through the day. There's a lot to unpack here, and I have no idea how to help. To be fair, I whip out a phone as fast as anyone else when we're all out to dinner together. The crayons and puzzles stop working. We all just need a few bites of food and five minutes of adult conversation, right? What's worse, I often feel powerless against the pull of my screens, too. I have zero doubt that smartphones have rewired our brains in negative ways. Not because so many new studies suggest it, but because of how I feel and what I see happening in the world around me. The always-on gadgets that were supposed to make my life easier, more fun, and more productive, now often disrupt my sleep, ruin any semblance of work-life balance, and wipe out my self-esteem. I get lost in rabbit holes nearly every time I pick up my smartphone, and I routinely feel incapacitated when it comes to doing anything about it. As bad as I feel about my own smartphone and screens, I feel worse for our kids. I've witnessed them suffer the most from our device addictions and their own. Give them a smartphone and an all-access pass to social media too soon, and risk alarming rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide. But if you're the one strict parent who denies access, you are stunting their growth in an ever-evolving digital world, and potentially socially ostracizing them too. The Anxious Generation Have Smartphones Rewired Childhood? Everyone I know is talking about the new book, The Anxious Generation, how the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness. In it, social psychologist, author, and New York University professor Jonathan Haidt stacks mountains of evidence indicating a correlation between the rise of smartphones and sharp declines in the well-being of our kids. Haidt argues that the transition from a play-based to a phone-based youth has rewired childhood. He also says that it has disrupted social and neurological development and caused social anxiety, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation, and addiction. The problems ramped up around the year 2012, Haidt said. He cites hundreds of scientific studies and other high-quality data to paint smartphones, tablets, and social media as unstoppable forces. Pushing Zen-Z, people born after 1996, out of reality and into a digital world where rules aren't always clear, people hide behind anonymous social media accounts, and rumors spread faster than wildfire. Smartphones and social media aren't the only culprits, though. Sure, they open a can of worms by providing unrestricted access to carefully orchestrated algorithms trained to lure kids in and keep them coming back for more, but Haidt said was those factors combined with the rise of fearful and overprotective parenting that started in the 1980s and continues to the present day that created a perfect storm of a diminishing ability to raise healthy humans. We rewired childhood and created an epidemic of mental illness, Haidt said, in several recent interviews. After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged into the early 2010s. We have overprotected our children in the real world and underprotected them online. Critics argue Haidt and his colleagues have all mistaken correlation for causation, among other complaints, but it looks like some of the sharpest critics haven't actually read the book. The author is next level transparent and shares the data and sources openly online. Isn't this just the latest parent panic? I'll admit, it's not an easy read as a parent. The most frustrating part, for me at least, is that I've known in my gut this was happening for over a decade. Most parents probably feel the same way, and despite doing our very best, we often fall back on the old, well the train's already left the station, or before this, there was too much TV, and before that, too much risque rock music, and this isn't just the latest thing to freak out about excuses, but it's pretty apparent that we're collectively relied too much on technology to pacify our kids. If life was a horror movie, this is where we'd realize the call was coming from inside the house all along. Tech companies, of course, are all too happy to oblige. Most draw up extensive terms of use that prohibit kids of certain ages from using their services, but there's virtually no enforcement of those guidelines. Ask anyone under the age of 13 how they manage to work around social media restrictions, and they say, I lied about my age, um, duh. Kids also love games and communicating with their friends online, and knowing when those habits cross over into problematic territory is proven to be more complicated than many parents imagine. Social media and video games are among the worst offenders. They hook children during vulnerable development stages, while their brains are rapidly rewiring response to incoming stimulation. White writes, By designing a firehouse of addictive content, they entered through kids' eyes and ears, and by displacing physical play and in-person socializing, these companies have rewired childhood and changed human development on an almost unimaginable scale. The damage, he says, is clear. An epidemic of pain and suffering among young people around the world has produced a generation of failure-to-launch boys and fragile, depressed girls. Can we raise healthy humans alongside modern tech? This is a question that I've asked myself and hundreds of others in the past decade, both while covering consumer tech and raising a now 23-year-old daughter. Here's what I know for sure, extremes don't work. Zero-tech households are a lot like no-sugar families. They sneak, hide, and lie about the inevitable screen time they manage to finagle from friends, other families, and even school. They are often worse than their peers at self-regulation. On the other end of the spectrum, giving a child their own smartphone before double digits creates a sort of zombie apocalypse too. I'm thinking one friend with a now 10-year-old daughter who spends nine or more hours a day on TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube. She told me recently she would die without her phone. Anecdotally, extremely controlled screen time seems to have the best outcomes, but that's really hard and time-consuming for most parents to manage. The problem is overwhelming. The peer pressure from other kids, and even other parents, is extreme. Many teens and young adults I talk to wish there were clear requirements and boundaries, similar to driving licenses and drinking ages. One recent study even noted that the majority of college students say they wish TikTok and Instagram were never invented. My daughter has told me the same thing. The biggest opponent we are facing is not that parents, or even teens, disagree with us. It is that so many feel hopeless, Heights lead researcher Zach Rauch wrote in an email. Our goal is to show that there really is a lot we can do, especially if we act together. The book recommends four new norms to turn back the phone-based childhood. No smartphones before high school. No social media until 16. Schools should ban phones during the entire school day. Just put them into a phone locker or yarn pouch. Finally, we need to give our kids more independence, freedom, and responsibility to play or hang out with each other on their own in the real world, just as most of us did when we were their age. Not all screen time is bad. Rauch is quick to point out that not all screen time is bad. He and Heights recommended families watch an age-appropriate movie together or play a game in real time with a friend or family member for a healthier dose of tech. The problems, they say, come with sites like YouTube and other products designed to maximize the amount of time they spend on the platforms, i.e. TikTok. And it's the asynchronous activities, such as posting and scrolling on social media, that suck kids and keeps them for real-world interactions that are crucial for their social development. Heights recommends flip phones before high school. I've been preaching this for the past several years, too. I use a $20 Straight Talk wireless Nokia 2760 flip phone on nights and weekends to help with my smartphone addiction and have recently given a handful to my friends and middle school age kids. Have we all heard of all of this before? I've heard and offered most of these suggestions before and not seen any real change. What's different now? Will we actually roll back the damage and create a healthier future for our children with tech? Can we get tech titans who won't let their kids use the same devices and apps they created to put age limits or more real-life guardrails around their inventions? We have to try. Height set a deadline and says society can end the phone-based childhood by the end of 2025. That's a lofty goal, but he says we're at a tipping point and he's sure this can and will work. We find that we don't need to convince many people about the nature of the problem. Most people see it, Height wrote on his Substack. Our main opponents are despair and resignation. The four norms are for a way out of the trap. This concludes the reading of our article from the USA Today money section. Social media has kids on edge. Can we fix damage? Author says it's not too late to repair problem by Jennifer Jolly, special to USA Today, published April 17th, 2024. Our next article comes to us from the sports section of the USA Today. Congrats, you're a WNBA draft pick. Now comes the hard part for 36 players. By Lindsey Schnell of the USA Today, published April 17th, 2024. As she gestured to the 2024 WNBA draft class, a group that features the likes of Kaitlyn Clark, Angel Reese, Cameron Brink, and a bevy of other stars, ESPN analyst Adria Carter summed it up perfectly. This group changed the game, she said. She's right, or she will be soon. In just a month, we'll see the impact of these young women who are joining the oldest women's professional sports league when women's basketball is in an all-time high, more popular than ever. The sport is riding the rave of a tremendously successful and most viewed Final Four, finally standing in the spotlight after decades of being pushed to the side. Women's basketball is not a fad, WNBA commissioner Kathleen Eaglebert said before the draft started. We've been steadily building this momentum for years. The question is, what kind of staying power does this 2024 draft class have? This year's draft was the most star-studded since the big three in 2013, when Brittany Greiner, Alina Del Don, and Skylar Diggins, now Diggins-Smith, went number one, two, and three, respectively, generating tons of talk and energy around the league. Eleven years later, those three are still around. Though each has individual struggles, Del Don has been sidelined by injuries for long stretches of her professional career. Diggins-Smith missed 2023's season after giving birth and then had a weird and seemingly ugly breakup with the Phoenix Mercury before signing with Seattle. Greiner, of course, was wrongfully detained in Russia for nearly a year, her absence glaring and heartbreaking during the 2022 season. Despite the pauses in their playing careers, for whatever reasons, the staying power of those three superstars is noteworthy. With just 144 roster spots stretching across 12 teams, the WNBA is the toughest professional league in the world to make. Because of salary cap rules, quite a few teams only carry 11, making the total roster numbers closer to 136. That's brutal, and even for some of the best players in the college game, it's not uncommon to hear your name called on draft night and then be cut before the first game. Consider that the top pick for 2021, Charlie Collier, isn't in the league anymore. In fact, just seven players from the 2021 draft were on rosters going into last season. If you're a draftee, you can't like those odds. Monday night before Kaitlyn Clark went number one, Engelbert reiterated that the league is closer to expansion than not, and said she feels optimistic that she can get 16 teams by 2028. The Bay Area expansion team is slated to begin in 2025. In the meantime, how many of Monday's players will be able to actually impact the WNBA? Are there enough spots for them? Of course we know what Kaitlyn Clark is going to do in Indiana, and players like Camila Cardoza, a mobile 6'7 post, don't come along very often. She will always find a home on a roster. Cameron Brink's ability to impact both ends of the floor should help her anchor a WNBA team, in this case, the Los Angeles Sparks, for a long time. Outside of those examples, there's plenty of room to worry, not because these young women lack for talent, but because they lack for opportunities. Lots of players went to what is easily the best situation for them. D'Asia Fair, an undersized scoring machine from Syracuse, will learn from Becky Hammond of the Las Vegas Aces than anyone else. Angel Reese and her relentless motor will thrive under new Chicago Sky head coach Teresa Weatherspoon. UCLA's Charisma Osborne is headed to Phoenix, where the Mercury desperately need some scores on the low end of the pay scale, but roster spots are limited. That's a shame, especially at a time when it feels like there's no limit on the growth of women's basketball. It's time for WNBA to step up and get serious about expansion. Actions speak louder than words, as the saying goes. The players are acting, elevating the game every day with their play, from high school to college. The power brokers in the WNBA need to stop dragging their heels and name the next round of new or revived teams. The 2024 draft will be remembered as one of the strongest in the history of the league, a testament to the talent explosion across women's basketball, but if the majority of these players aren't on WNBA rosters in three years, that'll be a loss for everyone. Then they won't be the group that changed the game. They'll just be like so many before them, and that's no way to grow the game. This concludes our first article from the sports section of the USA Today. Congrats, you're a WNBA draft pick. Now comes the hard part for 36 players by Lindsey Schnell of the USA Today, published April 17th, 2024. Our second article from the sports section of the USA Today is Clark Gets Assistance, Carrying Banner for the WNBA, by Nancy Amor, columnist of the USA Today, Brooklyn. The hardest part is over for Kaitlyn Clark. For more than a year now, she's carried the hopes of women's basketball on her shoulders. She was expected to set records and drive interest in her sport, to say nothing of trying to lead her Iowa squad back to the national championship game. There were obligations to sponsors, media appearances, the eyes of the entire country on her in a way few other athletes in any sport at any level could even fathom. Clark even made an appearance on Saturday Night Live before graduating college, for heaven's sake. The last few weeks have been pretty insane, Clark acknowledged. The attention and the expectations won't stop with the Indiana Fever taking her with the number one pick Monday night, but the burden is no longer hers alone. For starters, the WNBA's Fever also has Aaliyah Boston, last year's Rookie of the Year, so Clark won't be expected to carry the scoring load. The scoring and the long shots is what everyone falls in love with. Going to an organization that has, in my eyes, one of the best post players in the entire world, my point guard eyes just light up at that, Clark said, grinning. As a point guard, my biggest job is I'm just feeding Aaliyah the ball every single day. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to be in there and be like, go make a layup, she added. She's going to make my life easy. Clark's life will never be really easy. She's captivated the nation like few other athletes have, and that interest isn't going to diminish. There will always be eyes on her, and the league is going to make sure the spotlight on her remains bright. Her current sponsors aren't going anywhere, and when she walked off the stage, Jake from State Farm was one of the first people to hug her, and it's a good bet she's going to pick up even more. There will be the inevitable adjustment period to the W, and this year, at least, there will be veterans looking to put the high-profile rookie in her place, but what Clark did in college has created interest in other players, and they will lift the WNBA together. Clark will still draw the eyeballs, but maybe Rekia Jackson becomes an MVP. Maybe Camila Cardoza and Angel Reese win a title together. All of these players will help add to the foundation Clark has built. This is a generational class, said Jackson, drafted fourth overall by the Los Angeles Sparks. Viewership is peaking. Women's basketball is on an uproar. Everybody is tuning in. I'm grateful to be a part of this draft class. I feel like we're just trending in the right direction. Clark is also going to a franchise in a state where basketball is revered, as close to an official religion as it gets. There were 17,000 people who turned out just for the draft party Monday night, including new teammates Erica Wheeler, Lexi Hull, and Maya Caldwell. The veterans were ecstatic when Clark's name was called, leaping out of their seats and putting on Clark's jersey they had at the ready. They'll be as invested in her success as she is, and, as established players, will offer a buffer in a way her Iowa teammates could not. Clark no longer has to worry about school, either. She will graduate next month and can put 110% of her focus on basketball. Getting settled in her new league and new city, getting stronger, getting better. In college, I always said my main focus is on basketball. That's why I have had every other opportunity in my life, Clark said. Going into my professional career, I plan to do the exact same thing. My focus is solely on basketball, being the best I can. When I do that really well, and carry myself really well, everything just kind of takes care of itself. Clark has navigated the fishbowl that's been her life with incredible grace, making it look easy even when it wasn't. Now that she's made it to the W, there's no way this next phase of her life can possibly be as difficult. Different yes, but not as difficult. I can't imagine a more perfect fit, a better place for me to start my professional career, Clark said. I couldn't be more excited to get there. She sits atop multiple NCAA scoring lists and arrives in the WNBA first in her class, but she is no longer one of one, and no one deserves the company more. This concludes the second article from the Sports section of USA Today. Clark Gets Assistance Carrying Banner for WNBA by Nancy Amor, columnist of the USA Today, published April 17, 2024. Our next article comes to us from the Life section of USA Today, Love for Little House Still Strong After 50 Years. Like Swifties and Calico, fans of the show rave about Laura and the rest of the Ingalls family by Laura Trujillo of the USA Today, published April 17, 2024. From Simi Valley, California, maybe you are a Laura too. If so, you are probably between the ages of 40 and 70, and your name is actually more likely Lisa or Michelle, Susan or Debbie, unless you are me, in which case you really are a Laura. And if so, Laura Ingalls shaped your life in a way that's hard to articulate, but easy to feel. Maybe it was partly from the Little House series. Your mom read to you in bed each night, but more likely it was from Melissa Gilbert on NBC's TV series, Little House on the Prairie. She was Laura, the girl we wanted to be and the best friend we needed. The TV character was inspired by the books, but was not true to them. The show needed more drama, even in 1974, to hold your attention, especially when it took Pa an entire chapter to build a door. Laura was mischievous. She stood up for herself. She wanted to make the right choice, but she struggled with temptation, jealousy, and doing the right thing. It was part of her appeal. She wasn't perfect, but she always got the right thing. I was the five-year-old girl who asked for pigtail braids and calico dresses, fishing poles and black boots. My mom obliged, and I went to kindergarten the next fall in a long blue, white floral dress. She sewed with short sleeves and a compromise because the first day of school in Phoenix was 102 degrees. My mom embroidered a silhouette of Laura Ingalls on my denim school bag. So this is how I find myself now. Gilroy Gilbert, nearly 50 years after Little House premiered, standing in front of a replica of the set of The Little House. She was a replica of the real house in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, in the 1800s. The replica now sits here in Rancho Santa Susana Park, just a few miles from where the show was filmed between 1974 and 1983. You can see the green hills from here, and if you squint, the trees of the Big Sky Ranch surrounded by the houses that stretch through the canyons across freeways to where the Kardashians now live. But now we are Ma's age from the show, or older, and at 59, Melissa Gilbert is somehow our mom's age too, but also our age, or younger, in a weird space-time continuum that exists at the Little House of the Prairie 50th anniversary cast reunion and festival on its sunny weekend day in March. And for a moment, we are back in America with just three TV channels and a slow-paced show that took us back to even simpler times every Monday evening for one hour. There are more than 18,000 people here for Laura, but this is not a festival for the women who call themselves Bonneheads and travel to one of seven official home sites, nor are they hardcore Laura Ingalls wider fans who attend Laurapalooza, an academic conference dedicated to the pioneer author who hates the show for its historical inaccuracies. This is for the rest of us who prefer the TV show, who would much rather have an episode inspired by Laura that allows her to push Nelly down a hill in a wheelchair because we all knew Nelly was faking her paralysis the whole time. We are grown women now, and we can both admire the show and not get lost in whether Laura really wrote the books or if her daughter, Rose Wilder, did. We don't want to take away book awards because the portrayal of indigenous people in the 1800s isn't the same as ours is now. In the pilot episode, in which a Greek actor plays an indigenous man, Pa tries to become friends. We are here to remember that little girl and ourselves. Laura among friends. Three hundred plus people back past the booth selling Olessen's mercantile canvas tote bags for $30 and wood cutouts of the little house for $250 and past Old Town Square Tent where Allison Ingram, who played Nelly, is sharing a story about her TV brother, Waits Angela Hernandez. She is wearing a shirt that says WWCD. What would Charles do? She has an image of a bare-chested Michael Landon as Charles Ingalls. She wanted a bonnet, but the Martin Prairie booth had sold out that morning at $24.50 each. She stands behind a woman wearing a full-length calico dress, Doc Martens, in front of a woman with a fake crow in her head. If you know, you know. In many ways, it feels like grown-up Swifties training friendship bracelets in muted prairie colors, holding spots for each other in line, sharing tips on where the shaved ice is, and swapping stories about the show. She wasn't just a part of my childhood. She was my childhood, says Hernandez, who was lately celebrating her 60th birthday at the festival on a trip from Dallas and brought a copy of Gilbert's first memoir, Prairie Tale. I didn't have the best family life. I pretended Paul was my dad, and this was my family, and every Monday they were there. While the event crowd is mostly white and skews to the middle age among us, there are enough women in their 20s and dressed-up kids, as well as men, to allow you to see as a swath of America, one that's traveled here from Ohio and New York City, Northern California, and Florida. Many proclaim their devotion to Jesus in their t-shirts. Others identify as modern-day homesteaders raising chickens in their backyards, learning to can and sew, and wearing t-shirts that say, Vote for Women. They paid $45 a day for $200 as a VIP. They did receive a turkey and mashed potato lunch and commemorative poster for access to meet and greets and panels. A bus tour of the Big Sky Ranch was $75. Selfies and autographs ranged from $10 to $75. They talk about good people and morals, consumerism, and getting back to simpler times. This is a show that common sense media praised, calling the Ingalls family a model of mutual respect and affection. But their fans never left the prairie. They had the DVDs and streamed the show while they work out, sew, or cook dinner. So they also know that while the show was seen as wholesome and sweet and filled with love and grit, it was dark. In one season, Walnut Grove dealt with a plague, infant mortality, the loss of parents, poverty, racism, and fires. In The Tent, a big screen plays episode after episode, running from one season into another. And here we are with Lord Is My Shepherd, the two-hour 1974 episode Gilbert says is her favorite, where Laura wrestles with envy, faith, and forgiveness. Some fans gather in The Tent for shade, but find themselves crying along with the shows. Gilbert is sitting at a folding table inside a community center. There is a blue tape marking a line that is too deep, snakes to the door, and stretches around the park to a five-hour wait. Fans wearing bonnets and calico, bonnets and jeans, want photos with her. They tell her, we love you. Sometimes they forget and yell Laura. Gilbert laughs and answers to all of them. She's wearing a cream dress with small roses and lace, pantaloons with boots that look like they belong on the prairie. Her high cheekbones and gray curly hair pulled up revealed she is even prettier than she was ten years ago. Little House on the Prairie crosses all borders. Everybody can kind of take ownership of it, whether they're politically right or left, she says. The conservative movement in this country considers Little House on the Prairie their show, and there's the liberal movement that considers it their show, because we were telling stories of the 1970s, which unfortunately are the stories today, about women's rights and voting rights and all other of those things. Mary Ann Van Den Berg waits in line to greet Gilbert, her husband of 37 years, send her from Riverton, Utah. Wearing jeans and a black 90s inspired black t-shirt with three images of Charles Ingalls that reads, Paul, she says she watched Little House every week growing up. She shared the show with her five kids, but confesses only her $3 enjoyed it. Now she watches Little House Mondays through Saturdays while she exercises. It's my reward, says Van Den Berg, 56. It starts my day in a good way and makes me feel connected. Like many women, she's nervous about meeting Gilbert, who both helped shape and affected an entire generation of women. What do I say to her? How do I act? Heck, how do I even stand? She says. Okay, I'll shake her hand. No, that might be too personal for her. I don't know what to do. Men hold scrapbooks, some of them made as children, and can select one of 23 8x10 photos of Gilbert to be autographed. The most popular pictures are young Gilbert in a red dress with Jack, a dog that looks suspiciously like a tanned white Bernadottle. Gilbert signs copies of her 2022 memoir, Back to the Prairie, for some fans and also signs Little House in the Big Woods, a book she didn't write. Not that these fans care. To them, she is Laura. We were all Lauras. Almost every woman at the event shares the same story. She wanted to be Laura. She wanted to be best friends with Laura. She played Little House and would pretend to be Laura, and siblings had to be Nellie or Mary, or the younger ones, Willie. I've loved Laura since I was six, says Deborah Mendez from Discovery, California. I wanted to live in Walnut Grove. Her two daughters, who accompanied her on the trip from Northern California, have the puzzled look as they stare at their mom, the look that says you are realizing your mom is a person and not just your mom. She's so happy, Scholar Mendez, 21, says. She's making me cry. Mendez reaches the table and pays for a photo to be taken with Gilbert. We just love you so much, she says through tears. I feel like I was invited to Laura's house, Gilbert wraps her arms around the girls and their moms and smiles. A few minutes later, Mendez looks at her, signed photo. I feel like I just met my best friend, Mendez says, capturing a feeling among many women here. I wish I could have said something better, something different. So Melissa knows how I feel. But it's more than memories of her childhood, Mendez says, her love of Laura and Gilbert endures. I love how she's doing now. She's aging so gracefully, so naturally, she says. She's beautiful and she hasn't had an easy life, but here she is and I love everything about her. Gilbert recognizes this in women. Their almost impossible need to tell her about their lives, to thank her. But sometimes, instead, they just burst into tears and can't say anything and now worry the photo they want to take with her will be ruined. She waits for them, sometimes makes them laugh. In some ways, she doesn't say much. She knows that many women are trying to find this part, this inner Laura, that after a divorce or just being an empty nester, they wonder where that spunky girl is. I think of all the qualities that we can have to maintain that sort of youthful wonder. Curiosity is the most important. Curiosity is what keeps us open and vibrant and learning and trying, she says. Laura was curious about the world, about everything. Gilbert stops for a moment, thinking about all the women who are still searching. She wants to tell them something. She never left, Gilbert says. Laura is in every woman. She is that thing that makes you, you. This concludes the reading of the article from the Life section of the USA Today, Love for Little House, Still Strong After 50 Years. Like Swifties and Calico, fans of the show rave about Laura and the rest of the Ingalls family. By Laura Trujillo of the USA Today, published April 17th, 2024. That concludes our reading of the USA Today. This has been Omar for the Georgia Radio Reading Service. Thank you for listening to GARS.