Stephen Franklin

Oct 27, 2024 | barnraisingmedia.com | Stephen Franklin |Sherry Kempf |Kristi Eaton |Mark Muncy

Unlike Benton Harbor, these places are white. Benton Harbor is 87% Black, the median household income is $26,592 and 43% of its citizens live below the poverty line. Compared to its neighbor city St. Joseph, Benton Harbor is a place of unrelenting hard luck. A place where good paying factory jobs disappeared not too long ago. Where the rate of violent crime is the second highest in Michigan. Where whites fled and the population declined by half over a few decades. Where downtown businesses vanished.

Oct 2, 2024 | barnraisingmedia.com | Bryce Oates |Stephen Franklin |Mark Muncy

Cook Political Report rates 11 seats of the 54 battleground races as “Democrat-incumbent tossups” and 12 as “lean Democrat.” Thirteen seats are considered “Republican-incumbent tossups” and 6 districts “lean Republican.” In 2022, Republicans picked up 10 additional seats to win the House majority. This year, Democrats are expected to win back 2 seats, Alabama’s 2nd and New York’s 22nd congressional districts, due to redistricting.

Dec 14, 2023 | publichealthwatch.org | Stephen Franklin

At the Leonardville Nursing Home, a modest one-story building set back on a two-lane road on the edge of a small rural Kansas town of Leonardville (population 430 and dropping), Heather Germann worries day in and day out. How is she going to get staff and keep them? She raised wages just recently, and that helped. But not enough.