Conflicting studies obscure the reality of California’s fast food wage battle

• February 19, 2025

California’s Capitol has seen countless conflicts between economic interests, but few match the intensity of a duel between the fast food industry and labor unions that seemingly ended two years ago with compromise legislation raising the minimum wage to $20.

Ever since the higher wage went into effect last year, the feuding factions have argued over whether the increase has benefited workers without significant negative impacts, as Gov. Gavin Newsom and other advocates have claimed, or has reduced employment and raised prices, as the industry maintains.

The debate is picking up steam as the Fast Food Council, an entity created to oversee pay and working conditions, ponders a new effort by unions to boost the minimum wage even higher.

First, a brief history.

In 2022, the Legislature passed and Newsom signed a union-backed bill that would have raised the fast food minimum wage to $22 an hour and declared that fast food franchises are merely subsidiaries of the parent chains, rather than independently owned businesses.

The industry disliked the wage increase but loathed the challenge to the franchise system and responded with a referendum to overturn the law. However, a multimillion-dollar ballot battle was averted in 2023 with compromise legislation. It mandated a $20 minimum wage and set aside the franchise status issue, but retained creation of the Fast Food Council. The new wage went into effect last April and the conflict continued with ongoing debate about the law’s effects.

Proponents have cited multiple studies by academics at Harvard, UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley contending that the wage hike has had minimal, if any, negative effects.

“We find that the policy increased average hourly pay by a remarkable 18 percent, and yet it did not reduce employment,” a study by the UC Berkeley Institute for Research and Labor Employment concluded. “The policy increased prices about 3.7 percent, or about 15 cents on a $4 hamburger (on a one-time basis), contrary to industry claims of larger increases.”

In October, Newsom declared that “This study reaffirms that our commitment to fair wages for fast-food workers is not only lifting up working families but also strengthening our economy. The data shows that investing in workers benefits everyone — workers, businesses, and our state as a whole.”

However, both the UC Berkeley labor center and Harvard’s Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy lean to the left, and the fast food industry dismisses their studies as biased.

In January, an industry coalition called Save Local Restaurants sent a letter to Newsom declaring that “an additional wage increase would once again unfairly single out our livelihoods and cripple thousands of small business owners like us who are already struggling to survive the $20/hour minimum wage, our customers and our employees.”

On Monday, the industry released its own impact study, conducted by the Berkeley Research Group, a private consulting firm. It found that wage increases have reduced fast food employment, shortened the hours worked, compelled fast food franchises to use more automation and resulted in markedly higher consumer prices.

Both pro and con studies used roughly the same employment data generated by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. The agency does not collect specific data on the fast food chains affected by the minimum wage legislation, so the rival researchers had to extrapolate what they contend are valid statistical bases.

The situation cries out for some truly objective research into this experiment in industry-specific wage-setting. It could be extended to other economic sectors, but without some reliable data on effects, everyone involved is shooting in the dark. It will be politics, rather than fact, which governs the outcomes.

Dan Walters is a CalMatters columnist.

​ Orange County Register 

Donald Trump is sort of a fascist, actually

• February 19, 2025

Last week, this reputable news outlet published a piece by Walter E. Block, a distinguished professor of economics at Loyola University, New Orleans, where he argued that Trump is not a fascist – on the contrary, that “Trump is entitled to label the regulatory Democrats as fascists, not the other way around.” Now, I don’t really care much about whether some individual fits semantically with some semi-arbitrarily defined label, but I found Block’s arguments to be at best disingenuous and uncharitable to those who would label Trump as such.  

Why does Block think that Trump isn’t a fascist? According to him, it’s because fascists typically exert executive control over industry and Trump doesn’t do that. That’s most of it. He ignores all of the other components that go into whether someone adequately embodies fascism.

When attempting to determine whether something fits a definition, all that is usually required is to look at the necessary and sufficient conditions that are generally stipulated to encompass that definition, and compare them to the target of analysis. That’s usually all there is to it – debates about what the necessary and sufficient conditions should be are another matter. 

What’s the point of determining whether someone is a fascist? I believe that our social consciousness about our shared values of our democratic system tend to automatically categorize someone who is fascist as “bad” because they violate those values and someone who is not a fascist as “better, insofar as they do not violate those values.” Therefore, practical considerations dictate that it’s desirable to clarify to people what sorts of labels they should apply to others.

So let’s keep it as simple possible and use the Wikipedia definition for fascism: “Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.”

Is Trump far-right? Well, he’s not a moderate. He is spearheading the implementation of Project 2025, placing the lead architects of the Heritage Foundation project in critical positions: Russ Vought in charge of the Office of Management and Budget, Tom Homan as border czar, and John Ratcliffe as CIA director, among others. By their own admission, they’re trying to turn our government into a Christian theocracy and are attempting to implement a total ban on abortion.

Is Trump authoritarian? Again, the whole point of Project 2025 is for conservatives to coagulate power within the executive branch. Trump is currently commandeering the legislative branch’s power over spending by ordering things like a funding freeze whose spendings were legitimately mandated by Congress, and he’s also currently ignoring the judicial branch’s orders to release those funds. He’s staffing the government with puppets so that he can implement his will without worrying about checks on his power. That’s authoritarian, whether you agree with the substance of what he’s doing or not. 

Is Trump ultranationalist or militaristic? His road to victory was paved by rhetoric that positioned America against the rest of the world, with a consistent emphasis on claiming that the satisfaction of our interests is incompatible with the satisfaction of the interests of other nations – someone is a winner and someone is a loser, and we must ensure America is always the winner. He’s threatening to violate the sovereignty of multiple countries by force. He is threatening to take the Gaza strip and permanently remove millions of Palestinians. This sure sounds like the militarism and expansionism that is characteristic of fascists.

Is Trump forcefully suppressing opposition? He’s firing anyone who doesn’t pass his little loyalty test and is allegedly willing to use military force against dissenting domestic protesters. Republicans have been relegated to such a pathetic status that they’re actually truly performing acts of fealty as you would with a king, such as Rep. Claudia Tenney proposing legislation to make Trump’s birthday a national holiday. Just genuinely embarrassing stuff where you really have to set your pride aside to propose it. 

Is Trump implementing a strong regimentation of the economy and society? This is where Block made his point and, in some ways, Trump fits this condition and in other ways he doesn’t. He certainly speaks about deregulating and he does in some respects. In others, he increases regulation. Tariffs themselves are regulations. He’s attempting to undermine the free markets so as to manipulate the competitiveness (a foolhardy attempt) of domestic manufacturing. He’s mandating that society must dispense with DEI and woke ideology. Again, whether or not you think that this is a good thing, he fits the condition for fascism. It doesn’t appear to be a “strong” regimentation, but it’s not the “furthest” from fascism you can be.

So the upshot of all of this is that Trump is somewhat of a fascist. 

Block’s argument rests on the thought that executive control over industry is a necessary condition for a leader to be fascist. 

First, there is no principled reason to think that executive control over the economy is a necessary condition when a leader exhibits so many of the other conditions in the definition. 

Second, there is substantial reason to believe that Trump is exercising some executive control over the economy. It’s not to the extent of the Third Reich, obviously that would be hyperbole. But he does have something beyond modest fascist tendencies, all things considered. 

Trump genuinely embodies at least some Hitler and Mussolini adjacent tendencies that are in stark opposition to our democratic values.

Rafael Perez is a columnist for the Southern California News Group. He is a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of Rochester. You can reach him at [email protected].

​ Orange County Register 

Trump is living in a Russian-made ‘disinformation space,’ says Ukraine’s Zelenskyy

• February 19, 2025

By HANNA ARHIROVA and JUSTIN SPIKE, Associated Press

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday of living in a Russian-made “disinformation space,” pointed comments that risk further souring relations with Washington as the American leader pushes for an end to the war.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he would like to meet with Trump, a day after senior American and Russian officials held talks that were partially aimed at preparing just such a summit.

Zelenskyy said he “would like Trump’s team to be more truthful” in his first response to a series of striking claims the U.S. president made the previous day, including suggesting that Kyiv was to blame for the war, which enters its fourth year next week.

Russia’s army crossed the border on Feb. 24, 2022, in an all-out invasion that Putin sought to justify by saying it was needed to protect civilians in eastern Ukraine and prevent the country from joining NATO. Ukraine and its allies denounced it as an unprovoked act of aggression.

The comments from Trump and Zelenskyy were a remarkable back-and-forth between leaders of two countries that have been staunch allies in recent years under Trump’s predecessor, as the U.S. provided crucial military equipment to Kyiv to fend off the invasion and used its political weight to defend Ukraine and isolate Russia on the world stage.

The Trump administration has started charting a new course, reaching out to Russia and pushing for a peace deal. Senior officials from both countries held talks on Tuesday to discuss improving ties, negotiating an end to the war and potentially preparing a meeting between Trump and Putin after years of frosty relations.

“I would like to have a meeting, but it needs to be prepared so that it brings results,” Putin said Wednesday in televised remarks. He added that he would be “pleased” to meet Trump but noted that Trump has acknowledged that the Ukrainian settlement could take longer than he had initially hoped.

Zelenskyy’s remarks Wednesday came shortly before he was expected to meet with Keith Kellogg, the U.S. special envoy for Ukraine and Russia as part of the administration’s recent diplomatic blitz.

Ukraine and its European supporters have expressed concern that they weren’t invited to the talks between top American and Russian diplomats in Saudi Arabia — amid larger worries that the deal taking shape could be unfavorable to Kyiv.

At a news conference Tuesday, Trump showed little patience for Ukraine’s objections to being excluded from the talks. He also said, without providing the source, that Zelenskyy’s approval rating stood at 4%, while telling reporters that Ukraine “should have never started” the war and “could have made a deal” to prevent it.

Zelenskyy replied in his own news conference Wednesday that “we have seen this disinformation. We understand that it is coming from Russia.” He said that Trump “lives in this disinformation space.”

Zelenskyy said he hoped Kellogg would walk through Kyiv and “ask (Ukrainians) if they trust their president? Do they trust Putin? Let him ask about Trump, what they think after the statements made by their president.”

Russian state TV and other state-controlled media reacted with glee to what they portrayed as Trump’s cold shoulder to Zelenskyy.

“Trump isn’t even trying to hide his irritation with Zelenskyy,” the Rossiya channel said at the top of its newscast.

“Trump steamrolled Zelenskyy for his complaints about the talks with Russia,” the daily Komsomolskaya Pravda said.

Trump also suggested Ukraine ought to hold elections, which have been postponed due to the war and the consequent imposition of martial law, in accordance with the Ukrainian Constitution.

Zelenskyy also referred to “the story” that 90% of all aid received by Ukraine comes from the United States.

He said that, for instance, about 34% of all weapons in Ukraine are domestically produced and over 30% of support comes from Europe.

The battlefield has brought more grim news for Ukraine in recent months. A relentless onslaught in eastern areas by Russia’s bigger army is grinding down Ukrainian forces, who are slowly but steadily being pushed backward at some points on the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line.

American officials have signaled that Ukraine’s hopes of joining NATO in order to ward off Russian aggression after reaching a possible peace agreement won’t happen. Zelenskyy says any settlement will require U.S. security commitments to keep Russia at bay.

“We understand the need for security guarantees,” Kellogg said in comments carried by Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne Novyny on his arrival at Kyiv’s train station.

“It’s very clear to us the importance of the sovereignty of this nation and the independence of this nation as well. … Part of my mission is to sit and listen,” the retired three-star general said.

Kellogg said he would convey what he learns on his visit to Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to “ensure that we get this one right.”

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

​ Orange County Register 

First look inside mesmerizing jellyfish aquarium coming to SeaWorld San Diego

• February 18, 2025

Mesmerizing and mysterious jellyfish will surround visitors in a new SeaWorld San Diego aquarium that focuses on the serene, graceful and ethereal creatures that have existed since before the age of dinosaurs.

The new Jewels of the Sea: A Jellyfish Experience aquarium will debut on March 15 at the San Diego marine park just in time for the Spring Break season.

The Jewels of the Sea attraction near the Electric Eel roller coaster will feature several species — including moon jellies, pacific sea nettles and upside-down jellyfish.

ALSO SEE: The race is on to open America’s first tilt coaster

The first-of-its-kind aquarium at any SeaWorld park promises to be an Instagram-worthy photo spot with a jellyfish-filled archway, one of the largest jelly cylinders in the country and a glowing LED room of the pulsating invertebrates.

Jewels of the Sea will be divided into three sections — Realm of Jellies, Jellyfish Passage and the Medusa Gallery.

The Realm of Jellies will focus on the anatomy and life cycle of the jellyfish.

The Jellyfish Passage will feature a 14-foot-tall moon jelly aquarium — one of the tallest in the nation.

The Medusa Gallery will celebrate the beauty and mystery of comb jellies and sea nettles.

The vital role jellyfish play in transporting nutrients throughout ocean layers and other educational details will be highlighted throughout the exhibit.

ALSO SEE: Knott’s Berry Farm’s Peanuts festival celebrates 75 years of Snoopy

A touch pool will allow visitors to get up close to the brainless beauties that have terrified generations of beach-goers with their stinging tentacles.

Hardcore jellyfish fans can sign up for a $50 Jelly Up-Close Tour led by an expert aquarist.

SeaWorld San Diego annual passholders will get a preview of Jewels of the Sea before the official grand opening of the attraction.

​ Orange County Register 

Judge declines to immediately block Elon Musk or DOGE from federal data or layoffs

• February 18, 2025

By LINDSAY WHITEHURST

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge declined Tuesday to immediately block billionaire Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency from accessing government data systems or participating in worker layoffs.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan found that there are legitimate questions about Musk’s authority, but said there isn’t evidence of the kind of grave legal harm that would justify a temporary restraining order.

The decision came in a lawsuit filed by 14 states challenging DOGE’s authority to access sensitive government data. The attorneys general argued that actions taken by Musk at the helm of DOGE can only be taken by a nominated and Senate-confirmed official under the Constitution.

The Trump administration has maintained that Musk doesn’t have authority of his own and layoffs are coming from agency heads.

Musk’s team has tapped into computer systems across multiple agencies with the blessing of President Donald Trump, digging into budgets and searching for what he calls waste, fraud and abuse, even as a growing number of lawsuits allege DOGE is violating the law.

​ Orange County Register 

Judge questions motives for Trump’s order banning transgender troops

• February 18, 2025

By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday questioned President Donald Trump’s motives for issuing an executive order that calls for banning transgender troops from serving in the U.S. military, describing a portion of the directive as “frankly ridiculous.”

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes indicated that she won’t rule before early March on whether to temporarily block the Trump administration from enforcing the order, which plaintiffs’ attorneys have said illegally discriminates against transgender troops.

But her questions and remarks during Tuesday’s hearing suggest that she is deeply skeptical of the administration’s reasoning for ordering a policy change. Reyes also lauded the service of several active-duty troops who sued to block the order.

“If you were in a foxhole, would you care about these individuals’ gender identity?” the judge asked a government attorney, who answered that it “would not be a primary concern of mine.”

Trump’s Jan. 27 order claims the sexual identity of transgender service members “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life” and is harmful to military readiness. It requires Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to issue a revised policy.

Six transgender people who are active-duty service members and two others seeking to join the military sued to block the Trump administration from enforcing the order. In a court filing, plaintiffs’ lawyers argued that Trump’s order openly expresses “hostility” and constitutionally impermissible “animus” toward transgender people.

Reyes said the order’s language smears thousands of transgender troops as dishonest, dishonorable and undisciplined.

She asked Justice Department attorney Jason Lynch: “How is that anything other than showing animus?”

“I don’t have an answer for you,” Lynch responded.

“No, you have an answer. You just don’t want to give it,” the judge shot back.

Trump’s order also says that “use of pronouns that inaccurately reflect an individual’s sex” is inconsistent with a government policy to “establish high standards for troop readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity.”

Reyes said it is “frankly ridiculous” to suggest that pronoun usage could impact the military readiness of the U.S. armed forces.

“Because it doesn’t. Because any common sense, rational person would understand that it doesn’t,” said Reyes, who was nominated by President Joe Biden, a Democrat.

Reyes peppered Lynch for several hours with questions about the executive order. They disagreed on whether the language of the executive order explicitly bans transgender people from serving in the military.

Reyes asked Lynch if Trump himself would call it a ban, then added, “He would say, ‘Of course it is,’ because he calls it a transgender ban.” Lynch said the order itself doesn’t require the discharge of service members while Hegseth crafts a policy that reflects it.

“Everyone knows a change is coming. I’m not denying that,” Lynch said.

Reyes is expected to hear more arguments on Wednesday and again on March 3.

Plaintiffs’ attorneys contend Trump’s order violates transgender people’s rights to equal protection under the Fifth Amendment, marking them as “unequal and dispensable, demeaning them in the eyes of their fellow service members and the public.”

“The ban is an irrational and prejudicial attack on service members who have risked their lives to serve their country,” they wrote in a court filing.

Government attorneys say the plaintiffs are prematurely challenging an order that doesn’t immediately require transgender troops to be discharged. The Justice Department also argues that the constitutional right to equal protection “requires only that similarly situated persons be treated alike.”

“A transgender individual identifying as a woman is not similarly situated to a biological female, nor is a transgender individual identifying as a man similarly situated to a biological male,” they wrote.

During Trump’s first term, the Republican issued a directive directive to ban transgender service members. The Supreme Court allowed the ban to to take effect. Biden scrapped it when he took office.

Thousands of transgender people serve in the military, but they represent less than 1 percent of all active-duty service members.

The plaintiffs include an Army Reserves platoon leader, an Army major who was awarded a Bronze Star for service in Afghanistan and a Sailor of the Year award winner serving in the Navy. They are represented by attorneys for the National Center for Lesbian Rights and GLAD Law.

​ Orange County Register 

Ducks prospects: Beckett Sennecke proving the team right

• February 18, 2025

While many of the Ducks’ top 25-and-under players are already competing for the parent club, they still have reinforcements on the way from the junior, minor pro and European pro levels.

As their core grows, it could also expand, especially given that the Ducks had two first-rounders this season on the heels of 2023-24, when they added one lottery pick in the draft and another recent one via trade in current NHL’ers Leo Carlsson and Cutter Gauthier.

The league’s prolonged pause for the 4 Nations Face-Off shifted the spotlight onto the aspirants who could soon join a team that already has enough university-aged players to fill a fraternity house.

Beckett Sennecke

Sennecke himself was stunned to be selected third overall in June, but he has more than justified his draft standing and Ducks GM Pat Verbeek’s confidence in him. The Oshawa Generals’ virtuoso was named the 21st-best player in the world under 23 by The Athletic’s Corey Pronman, on a list that included established NHL stars like Ottawa’s Tim Stützle and generational prospects such as Chicago’s Connor Bedard.

The 19-year-old forward has placed fifth in goals and eighth in points in the Ontario Hockey League, despite beginning his campaign recovering from a stress fracture in his foot and missing a handful of games this season. Sennecke was the league’s Player of the Month in December, when he burst forth with 22 points in eight games. Half that scoring came in a three-game spurt that he capped off with a goal-of-the-year candidate, abusing San Jose lottery pick Sam Dickinson in the process. On Valentine’s Day, he gave the Guelph Storm the unwelcome gift of his third hat trick of the season.

Tristan Luneau

Luneau, 21, started each of the past two seasons in the NHL, but a tempered development plan last year was knocked askew by a viral infection that cost him not only a chance to play for Canada at the World Junior Championships but also the remainder of his campaign. Toned up at the gym and tuned into the film room, Luneau was raring to go during the summer and preseason.

Yet a crowded blue line and some refinements needed in his game against top competition landed Luneau back in San Diego with the American Hockey League’s Gulls. He leads all AHL defensemen who’ve played 30 matches or more in points per game. His explosive skating, robust physique and relentlessness seem sure to make him as popular among fans as he already is within the organization.

Rest of the best

Sam Colangelo and Sasha Pastujov have each chased a point-per-game pace in San Diego thus far. Goalie Tomas Suchanek’s severe knee injury destabilized the Gulls’ net and while the Ducks’ most prized goalie prospect, Damian Clara, hasn’t yet arrived in North America, he did switch up the ambiance abroad. He was playing in Sweden’s top league for the first time after last season’s sterling debut at the relegation level with Brynäs IF, the franchise for which former Duck Jakob Silfverberg plays. Yet the Ducks were dissatisfied with the development of the towering Italian by his new club, Färjestad BK, leading to a transfer for Clara to Finnish side Kärpät.

The Ducks’ other 2024 first-rounder, defenseman Stian Solberg, has also played with Färjestad this season, his first outside his native Norway. He and the Norwegians were favored to win  December’s Division 1 Group A World Junior Championship, but took bronze behind champion Denmark and runner-up Austria. Elsewhere overseas, unsigned 2020 Ducks fifth-rounder Arytom Galimov has enjoyed a breakout season, currently placing fifth in scoring in the Kontinental Hockey League, where only one other NHL prospect, No. 5 overall pick Ivan Demidov, ranks in the top 10.

​ Orange County Register 

Arctic air sweeping south over Plains shatters record temperatures in North Dakota

• February 18, 2025

By JACK DURA

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — More than 95 million people are facing gripping cold Tuesday as a polar vortex sends temperatures plunging to record levels, closing schools, bursting pipes and forcing communities to set up more temporary shelters for the homeless.

“Some of the coldest temperatures of the entire winter season right now across the central United States,” said Andrew Orrison, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

The harsh cold descended on the nation’s midsection Monday on the heels of weekend storms that pummeled the Eastern U.S. killing at least 17 people. Some areas in the Midwest have wind chills as cold as -50 to -60 degrees, Orrison said.

It is so dangerous that hundreds of public school districts canceled classes or switched to online learning Tuesday in Oklahoma, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Kansas and Missouri. And in Kansas City, Kansas, dozens of tents were set up in one building to house the homeless.

The biggest batch of record-setting cold temperatures are likely to hit early Thursday and Friday, Orrison said. But North Dakota already felt more like the North Pole on Tuesday as Bismarck hit minus 39, breaking the record of minus 37 (minus 38.3 C) set in 1910 for the same date.

Stephanie Hatzenbuhler’s family has been contending with the cold in many ways on their farm and ranch west of Mandan, North Dakota, from their calving operation, to vehicles and equipment starting, to their coal-fired furnace keeping up.

“There’s always something new to learn and something new to experience. It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve done this, so you have to adapt,” said Hatzenbuhler, who called the cold spell “the Siberian experience.”

Conditions were rapidly deteriorating across northeast, east and central Oklahoma as residents in these parts of the state were dealing with freezing rain, ice and snow, according to the National Weather Service.

The Oklahoma Highway Patrol said US Highway 75 between Tulsa and Okmulgee was shut down in both directions because of the amount of vehicles and semi-tractor trailers that were stuck on the road due to ice.

“Our troopers are working to get salt and sand trucks to the area to treat the roads but it is extremely slick in that area,” the Oklahoma Highway Patrol said in post on X.

In upstate New York, a foot or more of lake-effect snow was expected to fall Tuesday in some areas east of Lake Ontario. The blowing snow created white-out conditions and prompted travel advisories.

Snowfall across the U.S. measured as much as 3 feet (0.91 meters) to 6.5 feet (1.98 meter) in southeastern Wyoming’s Snowy Range, to several inches from South Dakota to Missouri.

Kentucky braces for winter storm

In flood-battered Kentucky, the state was bracing for a winter storm that could dump a half-foot or more of snow in some parts of the state, starting Wednesday.

“This is a snowstorm in the middle of a natural disaster,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said at a news conference Tuesday in Frankfort, the capital city.

The weather-related death toll in Kentucky rose to 14, the governor said, with the two latest fatalities in Jefferson County, which includes Louisville. The two, an adult male and an adult female, were apparently homeless and both appeared to die from hypothermia, he said.

“So that should tell all of us that the weather conditions are as dangerous as that water is,” Beshear said.

Part of Virginia prepares for a foot of snow

Officials in Virginia prepared for up to a foot of snow in the state’s southern region, less than a week after being pummeled with snow, freezing rain and floodwaters.

“If you are not where you want to be by midnight tonight, please don’t go,” Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin said in a news conference on Tuesday.

Youngkin said the National Guard will be deployed across the state, and officials have also stockpiled water and meals for those in need. Local governments will also keep the doors of their homeless shelters open.

North Carolina governor declares a state of emergency

In North Carolina, Gov. Josh Stein declared a state of emergency on Tuesday as the National Weather Service forecast the approaching storm could bring up to 9 inches (22.9 centimeters) in far northeastern counties near the Atlantic coast.

The most populated areas of the state, including Charlotte, Raleigh and Greensboro, could see from 1 to 3 inches (2.5 to 7.6 centimeters) of snow, according to the weather service. Mountain areas still recovering from Hurricane Helene in the fall are largely expected to receive an inch or two.

Stein and state Emergency Management Director Will Ray also warned residents — particularly in east-central counties — about freezing rain and ice accumulation that could threaten power outages and make roads treacherous.

“At this time our greatest concerns are potential power outages and road safety,” Stein said at a media briefing.

Ray said more than 180 North Carolina National Guard members have been activated to help any affected communities. Over 1,300 state Transportation Department employees and contractors were preparing for the storm in part by pretreating roads.

In Tennessee, Obion County Mayor Steve Carr said on social media Monday evening that there are currently no reports of missing people or deaths after a levee failed Saturday, flooding the small community of Rives, home to around 300 people in the western part of the state.

After assessing the destruction with the sheriff, the mayor said it is “unprecedented and has profoundly impacted the community.” Rives remains under a state of emergency and more than 75% of the city has had power restored, the mayor said.

West Virginia had 3 storm-related deaths

In southern West Virginia, officials announced three flood-related deaths in McDowell County, where multiple roads were destroyed, public water systems were severed, schools remain closed and thousands were still without power Tuesday.

The county has one of the highest poverty rates in the nation.

More than 90 people have been helped from their southwest Detroit homes after a nearly century-old water main burst Monday, leaving streets and basements flooded during below-freezing temperatures. The flood waters receded later Monday morning after the break was found and the water flow stopped, according to the Great Lakes Water Authority.

What caused the break has not yet been determined. Nearly 400 homes are in the emergency flood zone, Mayor Mike Duggan told reporters Tuesday.

Scores of snow-covered vehicles were stuck in water up to their wheel wells or engine hoods. Fire and dive team crews used inflatable boats to help some people from homes. A few people were driven out in the bucket of a front-end loader.

Associated Press writer Heather Hollingsworth in Mission, Kansas, Julie Walker in New York, Corey Williams in Detroit, Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis, Bruce Schreiner in Louisville, Kentucky, Gary Robertson in Raleigh, North Carolina, Olivia Diaz in Richmond, Virginia, and Jonathan Mattise in Nashville, Tennessee, Leah Willingham in Charleston, West Virginia, Juan Lozano in Houston, Michael Hill in Albany, New York, contributed to this report.

Diaz is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

​ Orange County Register