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      Thunderstorms in Omaha Leave Thousands Without Power

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      Two tornadoes were also reported near the city, which was battered by winds of up to 80 m.p.h. on Wednesday. Other parts of the Midwest were under severe thunderstorm warnings.Destructive thunderstorms lashed Omaha, Neb., on Wednesday evening, leaving more than 200,000 customers without power, shutting down the city’s airport and felling trees. Two tornadoes were reported on the city’s outskirts, the National Weather Service said.The storms swept across south-central Nebraska on Wednesday evening, bringing wind gusts of 65 to 80 miles per hour, according to the Weather Service, before moving east into Iowa, where tree damage was also reported in the Des Moines area. By about 9:20 p.m., the storms had weakened, the Weather Service said. Other parts of the Midwest, including in Kansas and South Dakota, were also under severe thunderstorm warnings.One tornado was reported in Pottawattamie County, Iowa, just east of Omaha, and another in Cass County, Neb., to the city’s southeast.Weather Damage Around OmahaReports by trained spotters of tornadoes or high winds and damage believed to be caused by them. More

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      Woman Declared Dead Is Found Alive at Funeral Home

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      Constance Glantz, 74, of Lincoln, Neb., was pronounced dead in a nursing home. A funeral home employee preparing her body realized that she was breathing.A Nebraska woman who was pronounced dead at a nursing home on Monday was discovered breathing hours later by a funeral home employee, the authorities said.The woman, Constance Glantz, 74, of Lincoln, Neb., was brought to a hospital and declared alive, Chief Deputy Ben Houchin of the Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office said at a news conference on Monday.“At this point we have not been able to find any criminal intent by the nursing home, but the investigation is ongoing,” he said.Ms. Glantz was receiving hospice care when she was pronounced dead at 9:44 a.m. by the nursing home staff at the Mulberry at Waverly in Waverly, Neb., Chief Deputy Houchin said. An investigation by the sheriff’s coroner was not necessary at the time of death, he said.The funeral home, which the local news media has reported is Butherus-Maser & Love Funeral Home in Lincoln, transported someone “they believed was a deceased individual” from the nursing home, Chief Deputy Houchin said. But an employee who began preparing Ms. Glantz’s body noticed she was still breathing. Two hours after she was declared dead, the staff called 911, he said.Staff members were performing C.P.R. on Ms. Glantz when emergency medical workers with Lincoln Fire and Rescue arrived, M.J. Lierman, an agency spokeswoman, said.They treated Ms. Glantz at the scene and transported her to a hospital, Ms. Lierman said.Ms. Glantz’s family has been notified, officials said. The authorities did not provide any additional details about Ms. Glantz, including how long she’d been in hospice or whether she had any medical conditions.Investigators were looking into whether any laws were broken, but so far “we have not been able to determine anything,” Chief Deputy Houchin said.Calls to the nursing home were not answered on Monday night.“This is a very unusual case,” Chief Deputy Houchin said. “I’ve been doing this 31 years, and nothing like this has ever gotten to this point before.”While rare, there have been cases of people who were declared dead only to be found alive soon after.In 2023, a woman in Iowa was taken in a body bag to a funeral home, where workers discovered that her chest was moving as she gasped for air.In 2020, a woman in Michigan with cerebral palsy was declared dead by paramedics but was discovered to be breathing hours later by a funeral home worker who was preparing to embalm her body.In 2018, a South African woman was pronounced dead at the scene of a car wreck but hours later was found breathing in a mortuary. And in 2014, a Mississippi man who had been pronounced dead was found alive inside a body bag at a funeral home. More

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      Don Bacon Beats Right-Wing Challenger in Nebraska

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      Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska, a mainstream Republican, on Tuesday easily fended off a primary challenge from a right-wing businessman, advancing to what is expected to be a tight re-election contest in a competitive district won by President Biden in 2020.Mr. Bacon, a fourth-term congressman who has maintained a reputation as an independent voice in a party increasingly dominated by the hard right, won with an overwhelming share of the vote, according to The Associated Press.In recent years, a number of mainstream Republicans in politically competitive districts have been felled in primaries by ultraconservative candidates who went on to drag the party down in the general election.But since he was elected in 2016, Mr. Bacon, a former brigadier general in the Air Force, carved out a niche for himself as one of the only Republicans who could hold the Omaha-based swing seat. Since 2000, voters in the district have backed the winner of the presidential election, except in 2012.That brand came through for him on Tuesday night.His opponent, Dan Frei, a hard-line Republican who secured the endorsement of the state’s Republican Party, had painted Mr. Bacon as a fixture of the Washington establishment and ran on cutting federal spending and an “America First agenda.” Mr. Frei described himself as “a Trumper” but did not ultimately secure an endorsement from the former president.He also lagged far behind Mr. Bacon in fund-raising.Mr. Bacon, 60, has broken repeatedly with his party to support several bipartisan pieces of legislation, including Mr. Biden’s infrastructure bill, a bill to establish an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and a measure calling for the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act.He was one of several Republicans in purple districts who pressed Speaker Mike Johnson to allow a foreign aid package including funding for Ukraine to come to a vote on the House floor. “We need to have a Churchill, not a Chamberlain,” Mr. Bacon said at the time.Mr. Frei sought to weaponize Mr. Bacon’s support for aid to Ukraine against him; Mr. Bacon, in turn, received backing from Mark Levin, a prominent right-wing radio host.“I am not into these radical isolationists,” Mr. Levin said. “I don’t side with terrorists against Israel. I don’t side with Russia against Ukraine.”Mr. Bacon also received some backup from the Congressional Leadership Fund, the super PAC aligned with House Republican leaders, which ran advertisements supporting the congressman on the southern border, an issue his opponent had sought to leverage against him.Mr. Bacon won re-election last year by 3 points against Tony Vargas, a state senator, even though Mr. Biden won the district in 2020 by 6 points.He will have a rematch against Mr. Vargas in November. More

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      He led a strike at Kellogg’s. Now he’s aiming for a Nebraska Senate seat

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      Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia and Nevada – these are the swing states most pundits expect will decide the 2024 election. No one has deep-red Nebraska on that list. But a 48-year-old pipefitter and union organizer from Omaha is hoping to change that.Three years ago, Dan Osborn led the Nebraska leg of a US-wide strike against the cereal giant Kellogg’s as the company pushed for concessions in a new union contract despite posting record profits during the Covid-19 pandemic.Now he’s taking on Deb Fischer, a Republican senator, who is running for her third US Senate term in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate in 18 years. Osborn is running as an independent and says he hasn’t yet decided who will get his vote come November but his pro-labor, pro-choice views are unlikely to sit well with conservative Republicans.“This from the beginning was considered a long shot,” said Osborn. “I’ve enjoyed proving people wrong from the very beginning of this and I look forward to continue proving people wrong, that this isn’t impossible. I want to show that Nebraska has an independent spirit.”Nebraska is historically a stronghold for Republicans. A Democrat has not won a US Senate seat to represent the state since Ben Nelson in 2006. An independent hasn’t won since George Norris in 1936.Despite the odds, Osborn’s campaign is off to an impressive start. A November 2023 poll, the only one conducted so far for the race, put Osborn at 40% to 38% for Fischer, with 18% undecided. Osborn has also fundraised more than $600,000 so far, a record for an independent candidate in the state, primarily from small donors.Osborn said he was approached to run by railroad workers in Nebraska who have been disgruntled with Fischer over her refusal to support the Railroad Safety Act.The bill was drafted in response to the East Palestine, Ohio, disaster as railroad workers and unions have decried poor working conditions and safety issues driven by railroad corporations, which Osborn has pointed out are big donors to his opponent. In contrast, Fischer had introduced legislation to further deregulate the railroad industry.Improving railroad safety is a part of Osborn’s campaign platform, along with cannabis legalization, enacting congressional term limits, lowering tax rates for small business owners and the middle class, and improving pay and support for veterans.“We’re dealing with people like Deb Fischer who take corporate Pac money and they vote accordingly,” added Osborn. “They are not for the workers, for the people, they’re for corporations.”His former employer Kellogg’s has also hit the headlines, with Kellogg’s CEO, Gary Pilnick, stating during an appearance on CNBC that poor families facing financial distress should consider eating cereal for dinner.“This just goes to show how out of touch CEOs are with regular people,” said Osborn.Osborn is a long shot for Nebraska but he’s hoping that his story will resonate with people who are fed up with business as usual and a 1% that seem to think “let them eat cereal” is an answer to income inequality. He cited a 2020 report that calculated the redistribution of wealth in the US from the bottom 90% of earners to the top 1% of earners, finding that $50tn has been taken in redistributed income in recent decades.“How does that happen on everybody’s watch? It’s because the special interests and corporations own the politicians and they vote accordingly,” concluded Osborn. “I’m tired of it and I think people are starting to wake up to that fact because we’re all hurting right now. I’m hurting. I’m still working 40-50 hours as a steamfitter while I’m running for Senate and my dollar doesn’t stretch like it used to, I’m getting hurt at the gas pump, I’m getting hurt at the grocery stores and everybody else is too.” More

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      Severe Weather Expected to Bring Tornadoes and Flooding to Great Plains

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      Forecasters on Saturday said that “dangerous supercell thunderstorms” were possible that could produce strong tornadoes.The threat of tornadoes loomed across parts of the Central U.S. as warnings were posted in parts of Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas amid severe thunderstorms and high winds throughout the Great Plains on Saturday.The severe weather followed a day in which tornadoes tore through parts of Nebraska and Iowa, leveling dozens of homes on Friday.Tornadoes Friday and SaturdayLocations of tornado sightings or damage reported by trained spotters. More

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      Another Red-Blue Divide: Money to Feed Kids in the Summer

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      The governor was firm: Nebraska would reject the new federal money for summer meals. The state already fed a small number of children when schools closed. He would not sign on to a program to provide all families that received free or cut-rate school meals with cards to buy groceries during the summer.“I don’t believe in welfare,” the governor, Jim Pillen, a Republican, said in December.A group of low-income youths, in a face-to-face meeting, urged him to reconsider. One told him she had eaten less when schools were out. Another criticized the meals at the existing feeding sites and held a crustless prepackaged sandwich to argue that electronic benefit cards from the new federal program would offer better food and more choice.“Sometimes money isn’t the solution,” the governor replied.A week later, Mr. Pillen made a U-turn the size of a Nebraska cornfield, approving the cards and praising the young people for speaking out.“This isn’t about me winning,” he said. “This is about coming to the conclusion of what is best for our kids.”After meeting with young people, Gov. Jim Pillen of Nebraska reversed himself and accepted federal money for summer meals.Kenneth Ferriera/Lincoln Journal Star, via Associated PressMr. Pillen’s extraordinary reversal shows the conflicts shaping red-state views of federal aid: needs beckon, but suspicions run high of the Biden administration and programs that critics call handouts.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Far-right podcaster prompts Nebraska move to change electoral system

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      The power of the far-right commentator Charlie Kirk was illustrated when his tweet prompted the governor of Nebraska to support a bill to change the state’s system for presidential elections in order to deny Democrats a single electoral vote that could decide the presidency later this year.“Nebraskans should call their legislators and their governor to demand their state stop pointlessly giving strength to their political enemies,” Kirk wrote.Jim Pillen acted soon after.Nebraska has five electoral college votes. Since 1991, it has split them. Two go to the candidate with most votes statewide, the others to the winners of three electoral districts. Though the state skews heavily Republican, it gave Democrats one electoral vote in 2008 and 2020.This year, Joe Biden could lose Arizona, Georgia and Nevada to Donald Trump but win the electoral college 270-268 if he won Nebraska’s second district again. All five Nebraska votes going to Trump would produce a 269-269 tie, throwing the election to the US House, where Republicans control more state delegations and would thus pick the winner.On Tuesday, Kirk posited that scenario and said: “Despite [Nebraska] being one of the most Republican states … thanks to this system, Omaha’s electoral vote leans blue … [and Biden is] likely to win it again this year.“California would never do this. New York would never do this. And as long as that’s the case, neither should we. This is completely fixable. Nebraska’s legislature can act to make sure their state’s electoral votes go towards electing the candidate the VAST majority of Nebraskans prefer.“There’s already a bill ready to go – LB764. All Nebraska has to do is put it up for a vote. As I write this, the Nebraska legislature is still in session … call @TeamPillen and let him know you want this fixed.”Kirk included a phone number. As noted by Semafor, a little over five hours later the Nebraska governor issued a statement “in response to a callout for his support”.“I am a strong supporter of Senator [Loren] Lippincott’s winner-takes-all bill and have been from the start,” Pillen said. “It would bring Nebraska into line with 48 of our fellow states, better reflect the founders’ intent, and ensure our state speaks with one unified voice in presidential elections.”The only other state to allow for split electoral college votes is Maine.Pillen said: “I call upon fellow Republicans in the legislature to pass this bill to my desk so I can sign it into law.”Not long after that, Donald Trump saluted what he called “a very smart letter”.The Nebraska legislative session ends this month. Democrats said they were ready to block attempts to pass LB764.“The Nebraska Democratic party is watching this bill closely and still believes we have the votes to stop the Republicans from removing a fair electoral system that represents voters,” Jane Kleeb, the Democratic state chair, told Semafor.“The only reason Governor Pillen sent a release today is the extremist Charlie Kirk sent a tweet that, of course, our governor jumped up to respond to.”Kirk, 30, is a co-founder of Turning Point USA, a youth-oriented fundraising juggernaut, and an influential rightwing podcaster. A dedicated controversialist, he recently made waves by claiming “birth control really screws up female brains”.On Wednesday, Kirk tweeted footage of pundits discussing his Nebraska gambit, writing: “MSNBC is panicking about Nebraska. BOOM!” More

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      Nebraska Republicans Renew Push for ‘Winner Take All’ Electoral System

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      A renewed push by Nebraska Republicans to move to a “winner-take-all” system in presidential elections has raised the prospect that the 2024 contest could end in an electoral college tie — with the House of Representatives deciding the winner.Nebraska and Maine are the only states that divide their electoral votes according to the presidential winners of congressional districts. In 2020, Joseph R. Biden Jr. won the eastern district around Omaha and its one vote. On Tuesday, Gov. Jim Pillen of Nebraska, a Republican, threw his support behind a G.O.P.-led bill languishing in the state’s unicameral legislature that would end the practice.“It would bring Nebraska in line with 48 of our fellow states, better reflect the founders’ intent, and ensure our state speaks with one unified voice in presidential elections,” Mr. Pillen wrote in a statement.The resurrection of the state bill was sparked this week by Charlie Kirk, the chief executive of Turning Point USA, a pro-Trump conservative advocacy group, who pressed the state legislature to move forward on social media.Former President Donald J. Trump quickly endorsed the governor’s “very smart letter” on his social media site.And for good reason. If Mr. Biden were to hold Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, but lose Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and the one Nebraska vote he took in 2020, the electoral college would be deadlocked at 269 votes each. The House would then decide the victor, not by total votes but by the votes of each state delegation. That would almost certainly give the election to Mr. Trump.But that Sun-Belt-sweep-plus-one scenario still might be out of reach. Democrats in the legislature expressed confidence on Tuesday that they could filibuster the measure, and the state legislative session is set to end on April 18.Conversely, Maine, where Democrats hold the governor’s office and a majority in the legislature, could change its system to take back the electoral vote that Mr. Trump won in 2020. Mr. Biden won Maine by nine percentage points, but Mr. Trump took a vote in the electoral college by winning the state’s rural second district. More