From her post in the neonatal intensive care unit at Children’s Nebraska, Dr. Ann Anderson-Berry sees some of Nebraska’s sickest and smallest patients.

It’s a devastating and unexpected end to a pregnancy, where the baby’s survival is often in question. For parents who rely on Medicaid, the government insurance program for low-income and disabled Americans, filling out the pages of paperwork to get their newborn covered is rarely top of mind.

“It's just too tenuous to go home, or to think about paperwork,” said Anderson-Berry, division chief of neonatology at Children’s Nebraska. “And so, sometimes these applications are not submitted in the first days or even the first couple of weeks after delivery.”

Those families — and other Medicaid-eligible patients seeking emergency care — have long had a grace period to apply, because by law, Medicaid would go back and retroactively pay for three months of care before the application.

Nebraska’s Department of Health and Human Services is now seeking to end that retroactive coverage altogether.

If adopted, Nebraska would be the only state in the country to entirely eliminate retroactive coverage, including for children and pregnant women. Ten other states currently have reduced retroactive coverage, though they all have some exceptions for certain groups or allow a longer coverage period than what Nebraska has proposed, according to KFF’s Medicaid Waiver Tracker. DHHS is currently accepting public comment on the proposal.

State officials argue the move will save Nebraska millions of dollars each year, and it will incentivize hospitals to quickly enroll Medicaid-eligible patients.

But health care officials, advocates and some lawmakers say the move will do more harm than good, and that harm will fall on an already stressed health care system and on the state’s most vulnerable residents — low-income Nebraskans needing urgent and costly care.

“It’s cruel and it's a money grab in my opinion ... it's placing an administrative burden to help save the state money at the expense of everybody else in the health system,” said Justin Wolf, CEO of Memorial Community Health hospital in Aurora.

Medicaid enrollees in Nebraska would still be covered within the calendar month that they applied for care, but if a person experienced a medical emergency toward the end of February, for example, and wasn’t able to submit the application until March 1, none of their care in February would be covered.

For patients in an emergency, those first days of care are often the most expensive. A NICU baby’s regular care costs about $4,000 per day, Anderson-Berry said. A baby with extremely low birth weight can have hospital bills well over $1 million.

Eliminating retroactive coverage won’t just impact Medicaideligible newborns and their families. Any low-income Nebraskan with an emergency — who gets in a bad car accident or has a heart attack — could be unable to finish their application by the last day of the month.

“Plan your heart attack for the first week of the month,” Anderson-Berry said.

Medicaid retroactive coverage is intended to prevent lowincome people from going into severe and crippling medical debt, said Sarah Maresh, health care access program director at Nebraska Appleseed.

It also protects hospitals and providers by making sure they will be paid for care, Maresh said, especially in catastrophic situations like a traumatic car accident, where hospitals must provide care regardless of whether a patient has insurance.

Ending that retroactive coverage will create a financial incentive for hospitals to be “timely and thorough” when helping patients complete Medicaid applications, because the majority of costs will be shifted to hospitals, DHHS Chief Financial Officer John Meals said at a legislative hearing in February.

But hospitals already spend a lot of money actively engaging with patients to help them enroll in Medicaid or private insurance, said Jeremy Nordquist, CEO of the Nebraska Hospital Association. Still, there’s a portion of the population that hospitals can’t reach until they’re brought in as emergency patients.

Nebraska DHHS officials declined to be interviewed for this story. A spokesman said DHHS leadership was busy with legislative and budget discussions.

Even without action by the state, the window for retroactive Medicaid coverage is already slated to narrow.

President Donald Trump’s 2025 tax and spending bill, often called the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” cut the existing three full months of retroactive coverage to one month for the Medicaid expansion population and two months for traditional Medicaid enrollees like children and disabled adults. The Medicaid changes take effect Jan. 1, 2027.

DHHS is applying for a fiveyear waiver that will go beyond the federal changes. Nebraska plans to set retroactive coverage to zero months, effective Oct. 1, Meals told lawmakers last month.

Unlike the federal changes, though, Nebraska’s proposed cuts would be across the board.

“They're proposing to eliminate it for every Medicaid population, including people with disabilities, nursing home residents, pregnant folks, Medicaid babies and children,” Maresh said.

Other states have already reduced retroactive eligibility, though they ultimately carved out exceptions.

In 2017, Iowa did something similar to what Nebraska is proposing and eliminated all retroactive coverage, except for pregnant women and infants. But the state eventually added more exemptions for children and longterm care residents after facing pushback from nursing homes because of the financial strain, Maresh said.

DHHS estimates that ending retroactive coverage will save the state between $18 million and $21 million each year during the five-year waiver.

But Nordquist said those savings will cost the state federal matching dollars for health care — the federal government pays between $1 and $9 for every $1 the state spends on Medicaid.

Bryan Health, which operates six hospitals in the state, estimates that its hospital system will lose about $35 million each year if retroactive coverage is set to zero, said Ashton Wyrick, senior director of government and community relations advancement.

“Really, it's inflicting $2 worth of pain, or cost, to the hospital, for the state to save a dollar,” Wyrick said. “So it’s not necessarily a clean cut.'

Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh introduced a bill that would require the state to maintain the maximum amount of retroactive coverage as determined by federal law. The bill hasn’t advanced from the Health and Human Services Committee, but Chairman Brian Hardin said negotiations are ongoing among legislators, the Governor’s Office and DHHS.

“To push it to zero, I don’t know that Nebraska is ready for that, that’s my opinion,” Hardin said.

Providers, especially in rural areas, are operating on increasingly thin margins, said Jim Ulrich, CEO of York General. York’s long-term care facility has the benefit of being attached to a larger hospital system, but the margin has still grown so small that it’s nonexistent some months.

Getting a Medicaid application together for new residents is hard, Ulrich said, because providers often have to rely on family members to collect all the necessary documentation, like birth certificates, proof of residence and financial records.

“Just getting that process done takes time,” Ulrich said.

Some families will not be able to cover the cost of care for the time between a person needing to enter a facility and finishing the Medicaid application, Ulrich said, and providers will have to write them off as charity care.

“Nursing homes are tough to make go as it is ... retroactive payments are a bigger thing, but even the little things like cuts in rates or eligibility can have an impact,” Ulrich said.

The Flatwater Free Press is Nebraska’s first independent, nonprofit newsroom focused on investigations and feature stories that matter.

“I'm an Air Force vet, I was in for 10 years,” said Jorden Gershenson, now the chief technology officer at Aulendur Labs. But when he got involved in the startup world, Gershenson found himself practically alone with a defense-oriented business, despite a critical mass of tech talent at Offutt Air Force Base in Bellevue.

“I'm going, ‘Where are all the defense guys?’” Gershenson said. “The same in (the defense world) … we're not bringing the startups and the people with the new bright ideas to come check this stuff out.”

So on March 25 at Big Grove Brewery, Gershenson helped launch the B2G Guild (short for “business to government”) to connect the defense and startup worlds. The event was an experiment to see who would — or if anyone would — show up.

Roughly 40 attendees came, spanning tech, artificial intelligence, startups and defense, including from the Nebraska Defense Research Corporation, a University of Nebraska-affiliated organization helping small businesses work with the military.

“What NDRC can do (is give us) us a facility where we can get into the classified realms relatively easily, there are on ramps to get the clearances, things like that,” said Chris Wong, an Air Force veteran and Nebraska Innovation Fellow working on drones. “That's how we can win out.”

Barriers

Navigating defense technology and the startup world isn’t easy. Technology built for the military doesn’t always have a direct application to consumers. Aulendur Labs, for example, specializes in using machine learning to predict nuclear fallout.

But to have a consumer product and to get venture capital investment, they pivoted to using machine learning to predict other markets, like energy forecasting. “When I go to talk to VCs and I start talking to them about defense, eyes glaze over,” Gershenson said.

“They look at me like I'm pulling teeth — like that is the worst thing they could ever possibly imagine, even though we've got companies making billions doing exactly that, and we're here at (the United States Strategic Command at Offutt),” he said.

For Wong, an important strategy is bridging defense technology with all the other industries in Nebraska, like finance and agriculture. That’s how he approaches sustainability at his drone startup.

“We can really come together and provide that diversified business that can sustain ourselves through the ebbs and flows of working production,” Wong said.

Building community But there is also an opportunity to use a startup approach to speed up defense innovation, Gershenson said. He pointed to startups like Palantir Technologies and Anduril Industries, now worth billions of dollars.

“We may have our personal opinions about how they do business,” Gershenson said, alluding to controversies about the companies’ use of technology and ethics. But an important takeaway is their approach to “building product first,” he said, instead of waiting for the long process of government requests for proposals.

“Raise your hand if you've ever said, ‘The government customer has no idea what they actually want,’” Gershenson asked the B2G Guild event attendees. Several raised their hands. “We know what they want better than they do, and when they see it, they're going to buy it.”

But building that technology — and those companies — requires venture capital and other resources from the startup world. The B2G Guild hopes to facilitate that, especially given the clear interest from attendees.

Meetings will now take place the last Tuesday of each month at the Catalyst building in Omaha. “The hope is that this can be a group of like-minded individuals who are in the same community, who are trying to solve problems,” Gershenson said. “Because this world of government work, especially military work, is very weird and complicated, and no one really understands it.”

Silicon Prairie News is the leading independent, nonprofit newsroom focused on covering stories about innovation and entrepreneurship in Nebraska.

The weekend kicked off with a youth free throw contest March 2 and a 3-point contest and dunk contest for the adults.

The 3-point contest was won by Mitchell Wiese, with Jeff Kurtenbach coming in second place. The dunk contest was won by Owen Kurtenbach, and Sage Frauendorfer finished second.

On March 21 the adult teams played in the Alumni basketball tournament. The event was held in the Lindsey Event and Wellness Center for the first time.

The Defenders boys and girls each posted first place finishes, and the Bulldogs boys and girls each placed third.

Individually, the Defenders were led by several first place finishes.

Winning events were Gavin Geilenkirchen, 100-meter dash; Eva Klassen, 400-meter dash; Carson Wegener, 400-meter dash; Emily Stricklin, 800-meter run; Claire Wegener, 1660-meter and

3200-meter runs; Jaiden Anderson, 1600- and 3200-meter runs; Lillie Beltz, 100- and 300-meter hurdles; Kellan Mundil, 110-meter hurdles; the girls 4x100 meter relay of Kylee Kuchar, Ella Foltz, Avery Westring, Whitney Wegener; the girls 4x800-meter relay team of Grace Braun, Clara Classen, Shelby Korth, Taylor Pfeifer; Kali Jarosz, long jump; Brenden Johannes, triple jump; Whitney Wegener was first in the shot put and discus; and Ethan Wieseler won the shot put.

The Bulldogs enjoyed plenty of success in the first meet of the season.

Placing first were Nyla Beller,

100-and 200-meter dashes; Miciah Mohrman won the 800-meter run and was part of the winning

4x400-meter relay, along with Landon Taylor-Parker, Layton Pospisil and Evan Reichmuth and the first place 4x800-meter relay with Landon Taylor-Parker, Joel Brandl and Klayton Brandl.

Women Team Rankings 

1) Archangels 217

2) Riverside 127

3) Humphrey-Lindsey 64.5

4) Columbus 40.5

5) David City 35

6) Neligh-Oakdale 29

Men Team Rankings 

1) Archangels 160 2) Riverside 135

3) Humphrey-Lindsey 78

4) Neligh-Oakdale 77

5) David City 36

6) Columbus 33

Girls 100 Meter Dash

1. Nyla Beller, H-L, 13.39

3. Lillie Beltz, 13.56

Boys 100 Meter Dash

1. Gavin Geilenkirchen, ACHS, 11.50

Girls 200 Meter Dash 

1. Nyla Beller, H-L, 28.11

2. Kali Jarosz, ACHS, 29.05

3. Eva Klassen, ACHS, 29.11

Boys 200 Meter Dash

3. Layton Pospisil, H-L, 24.94

5. Brenden Johannes, ACHS, 25.69

Girls 400 Meter Dash

1. Eva Klassen, ACHS, 1:04.61

2. Kali Jarosz, ACHS, 1:06.70

3. Shelby Hemmer, H-L, 1:10.06

Boys 400 Meter Dash

1. Carson Wegener, ACHS, 58.42

3. Taigent Prorok, H-L, 59.88

6. Tyler Burhman, H-L, 1:04.01

Girls 800 Meter Run

1. Emily Stricklin, ACHS, 2:45.34

3. Brenna Wieseler, ACHS, 2:56.43

6. Kylee Kuchar, ACHS, 3:03.01

Boys 800 Meter Run

1. Miciah Mohrman, H-L, 2:15.25

3. Landon Taylor-Parker, H-L,

2:18.974.

4. Joel Brandl, H-L, 2:24.52

5. Jett Reichmuth, ACHS, 2:31.77

6. Cade Wietfeld, ACHS, 2:35.92

Girls 1600 Meter Run

1. Claire Wegener, ACHS, 6:18.24

2. Emily Stricklin, ACHS, 6:29.62

3. Courtney Eisenmann, ACHS,

6:47.91

6. Erin Kruid, H-L, 7:17.46

Boys 1600 Meter Run

1. Jaiden Anderson, ACHS, 5:08.23

2. Wyatt Kuchar, ACHS, 5:13.

3. Garrett Graham, H-L, 5:15.11

6. Klayton Brandl, H-L, 5:25.79

Girls 3200 Meter Run

1. Claire Wegener, ACHS, 14:39.36

2. Jocelyn Classen, ACHS, 15:34.62

4. Avery Westring, ACHS, 19:20.96

Boys 3200 Meter Run

1. Jaiden Anderson, ACHS, 11:48.49

3. Klayton Brandl, H-L, 12:15.90

4. Wyatt Kuchar, ACHS, 12:20.92

Girls 100 Meter Hurdles

2. Lillie Beltz, ACHS, 18.77

4. Tatum Classen, ACHS, 20.96 Boys 110 Meter Hurdles

1. Kellan Mundil, ACHS, 18.81

5. Dominick Preister, ACHS, 20.46

6. Landon Wegener, ACHS, 21.01

Girls 300 Meter Hurdles 

2. Lillie Beltz, ACHS, 51.31

5. Tatum Classen, ACHS, 59.59

Boys 300 Meter Hurdles

3. Dominick Preister, ACHS, 46.93

Girls 4x100 Meter Relay

2. ACHS (Leslieann Brandl, Lillie Beltz, Taylor Pfeifer, Whitney Wegener), Leslieann), 53.32

5. H-L (Isabella Preister, Mackenzie Kurtenbach, Jaedyn Friesen, Lily Stenger), 58.24

Boys 4x100 Meter Relay

2. ACHS (Gavin Geilenkirchen, Brenden Johannes, Ethan Wieseler, Matthew Zach), 47.06

Girls 4x400 Meter Relay

1. ACHS (Kylee Kuchar, Ella Foltz, Avery Westring, Whitney Wegener),

4:43.26

3. H-L (Isabella Gaspers, Emma Preister, Hallie Reichmuth, Shelby Hemmer), 4:59.52

Boys 4x400 Meter Relay

1. H-L Miciah Mohrman, Landon Taylor-Parker, Layton Pospisil, Evan Reichmuth),

3:46.81 2. ACHS Tucker Czarnick, Carson Wegener, Ethan Wieseler, Cade Wietfeld), 4:00.79

Girls 4x800 Meter Relay

1. ACHS, (Grace Braun, Clara Classen, Shelby Korth, Taylor Pfeifer),

10:59.70

3. H-L Shelby Hemmer, Hallie Reichmuth, Jaedyn Friesen, Emma Preister), 12:20.97

Boys 4x800 Meter Relay

1. H-L, (Miciah Mohrman, Landon Taylor-Parker, Joel Brandl, Klayton Brandl), 9:20.57

2. ACHS, (Carson Wegener, Jaiden Anderson, Jett Reichmuth, Wyatt Kuchar), 9:20.57

Girls High Jump

6. Isabella Gaspers, H-L, 4-04

6. Leslieann Brandl, ACHS, 4-04

Boys High Jump

4. Landon Wegener, 5-00

4. Kellan Mundil, ACHS, 5-00

Girls Pole Vault

2. Kylee Kuchar, ACHS, 7-06.00

5. Jocelyn Classen, ACHS, 6-06.00

Boys Pole Vault

6. Jadyn Olmer, ACHS, 9-00

Girls Long Jump

1. Kali Jarosz, ACHS, 15-06.00

2. Nyla Beller, H-L, 14-06.50

3. Scarlett Kessler, ACHS, 14-05.50

4. Izzy Tasa, ACHS, 14-03.50

Boys Long Jump

2. Layton Pospisil, H-L 18-00.25

3. Brenden Johannes, ACHS, 17--

11.504.

4. Nathan Preister, ACHS, 17-09.75

6. Evan Reichmuth, H-L, -10.00

Girls Triple Jump

3. Scarlett Kessler, ACHS, 32-00.00

6. Izzy Tasa, ACHS, 30-08.00

Boys Triple Jump

1. Brenden Johannes, ACHS, 42--

10.002.

2. Nathan Preister, ACHS, 40-07.00

Girls Discus Throw

1. Whitney Wegener, ACHS, 114-10

4. Emma Preister, H-L, 86-09

5. Hallie Reichmuth, H-L, 86-08.50

6. Ella Foltz, ACHS, 78-03

Boys Discus Throw

4. Ethan Wieseler, ACHS, 114-07

6. Gage Braun, ACHS, 103-02.50

Girls Shot Put

1. Whitney Wegener, ACHS, 32--

04.00

2. Ella Foltz, ACHS, 31-01.50

4. Emma Preister, H-L, 30-00.00

5. Hallie Reichmuth, H-L, 29-03.50

6. Maddie Reichmuth, H-L 27-08.00

Boys Shot Put

1. Ethan Wieseler, ACHS, 42-05.00

2. Chase Freudenburg, ACHS, 36--

08.00

5. Gage Braun, ACHS, 35-01.50

The award program is a special project of the National FFA Foundation. The National FFA Chapter Award program recognizes FFA chapters for developing and conducting a detailed Program of Activities (POA).

Each activity provides opportunities for members to excel in one of three areas: Growing Leaders, Strengthening Agriculture and Building Communities. Chapter activities included in the award application included: Local Leadership Night, Career Workshops and Bowl-A-Rama in Growing Leaders, Safety Academy, Ag Olympics and Ag in the Park in Strengthening Agriculture and Pumpkins for A Purpose - Breast Cancer Awareness, Feed A Farmer ... Feed the World and Operation Reduce, Reuse, Recycle in Building Communities. Ratings are based on chapter activities, student participation, activity goals and outcomes.

The Humphrey FFA will advance onto National Chapter Award Competition and Recognition.

Humphrey has held a State Premier Chapter rating every year since 2011.

FFA members earned several honors during the convention The Humphrey FFA Chapter had 12 members receive their State FFA Degree this year.

They are Gage Braun, Caden Brandl, Tucker Czarnick, Ella Foltz, Reagan Graham, Kathleen Hogancamp, Claire Kallweit,

Kylee Kuchar, Miciah Mohrman, Seth Preister, Xavier Rudnik and Colter Schneider.

The Supervised Agricultural Experience is an essential element in Agricultural Education. A member’s SAE Program is a great way for students to learn and earn. It is a program/project that engages a student by taking what they learn in the classroom and applying it to their experiences. The experiences can be in the areas of Entrepreneurship, Placement, Agriscience and Service Learning. Students are given the opportunity to use skills and apply them in a realworld setting. They organize and develop income and expense records, working agreements, balance sheets, enterprise summaries and the list goes on.

The State FFA Degree is the highest degree that can be conferred by the Nebraska FFA Association.

To be eligible to receive the State FFA Degree from the state association, the member must meet minimum qualifications including: 2 years active membership, 4 semesters of agriculture education classes, 2 years of record books, conduct an SAE that earned $3,000 or worked 1,500 unpaid hours and productively invested $1,200, demonstrated leadership ability on the local level and above, maintained a 2.5 or higher GPA, completed 25 hours of community service and pass state degree interview.

Seven Humphrey FFA Members competed in Leadership Development events on the State Level.

Gage Braun competed in Extemporaneous Speaking and earned a bronze medal.

The Senior Parliamentary Procedure Team earned a Gold Medal placing them in the top third of the contest.

This event includes a written exam on parliamentary procedure, a 10 minute demonstration with required motions and questions from judges.

The Agriscience team earned first place.

Individually, Shelby Hemmer 2nd Place, Brenna Wieseler 4th Place, Emily Preister 10th Place and MacKenzie Kurtenbach Blue Ribbon. Kenley Pospisil and Claire Wegener were alternates for the event.

This is the largest Career Development event at State Convention with 553 competitors on 141 teams.

This contest included completing a career portfolio, taking a written exam and dissecting a fetal pig and a fish.

Other Career Development results are as follows: Natural Resources CDE Blue Ribbons: Mariah Schumacher, Garrett Graham Participants: Maddie Reichmuth, Kinley Gronenthal Farm & Agribusiness Management was the 10th Place Team Blue Ribbons: Seth Preister, Garrett Behle and Josh Martensen Participant: Caden Brandl Food Science CDE Red Ribbon: Macey Fistler Participants: Jaedyn Friesen, Aydan Hake and Emma Preister Ag Mechanics CDE Participants: Tucker Czarnick, Wyatt Brandl, Tanner Classen and Miciah Mohrman Three Humphrey FFA members were selected for the State FFA Choir. They are Xavier Rudnik, Karsen Jacobson and Gage Braun, and Gage auditioned and was selected for a solo performance.

Additional Recognition at State FFA: Natalie Stock was selected to participate in the Ag Issues Academy.

Reagan Graham earned a Silver on her Beef Production Placement Proficiency Award.

The Parliamentary Procedure team is Harley Goering, Emma Groteluschen, Braelyn Hemmer, Mariah Schumacher, Xavier Rudnik and Colter Schneider

In an effort to help the plan, the village is offering two “Village Dump Days” a year. This is a perk that only village residents can use. 

“We bring in five or more dumpsters, allowing all village residents to use them as much as they need. Typically our Dump Days are a span of 7 days. We have received a lot of positive feedback and are always asked when the next one is,” Schmidt said. 

She said “No plan like this is ever an easy feat for a small village with 339 villagers. It’s a collective group effort to keep a place beautiful and leave it better than you found it. Paying homage to those who made Platte Center what it is and for the following generations to come. They always say it takes a Village and there’s no other place to be but the Village of Platte Center.”

The hope is to clean up the village over the next 5 years.

Initially, the village board of trustees agreed to implement a town clean up effort, and will work with residents to help clean up their properties.

The plan is for the clean up to run from Sept. 30, 2025, until Sept. 30, 2029. After that, the hope is property owners maintain their cleaned-up properties.

Ordinances address abandoned automobiles, abandoned mobile homes, unlicensed or inoperable vehicles, unsafe buildings, and weeds, litter and stagnant water.

The village has seen other towns implement clean ups, so Platte Center is hoping to do the same.

The goal is to not only make the village cleaner and look nicer, but safer for kids.

The plan to make clean up as easy as possible for residents, that’s where the additional Dump Days come in, and there is a hope to create a clean up committee to help maintain properties.

The village is going to work with property owners who have hobby cars or are working on a project, and will issue licenses allowing them to keep the vehicle on their property.

The plan is being distributed through social media and copies of the map showing how the town is divided and specific deadlines for clean up and a list of ordinances.

The goal is to have a cleaner town, and the village board hopes everyone gets on board, however, if a property owner does not meet their clean-up deadline, fines will be issued up to $500 a day for violating the ordinances.

The world's largest gathering of cranes draws people from around the world to south-central Nebraska each March.

Some simply enjoy watching sandhill cranes dance in cornfields and on river sandbars. Some listen to the chorus of purrs, ticks and woots.

More serious 'birders' hope to glimpse a flash of bright white amid all the gray feathers — confirmation that endangered whooping cranes have joined the sandhill flocks.

But of the tens of thousands of human visitors who flock to Nebraska each year, few, if any, know the sights and sounds as well as George Archibald. The 79-year-old co-founder of the International Crane Foundation has come to Nebraska nearly every year since 1975 to take in one of Earth’s greatest migrational events.

He has spent the past month here, an unusually long stay for the globe-trotting Archibald, who has dedicated more than a half-century to observing, studying, protecting and even dancing with the world's cranes — all 15 species of them.

Archibald's childhood interest in birds and first encounter with a sandhill crane blossomed into a lifelong mission after he met another crane-crazy 20-something, Ron Sauey, in 1971 at Cornell University.

Two years later, they founded the International Crane Foundation with the goal of saving cranes and their habitats. That two-man operation, originally headquartered in a horse barn on Sauey’s family farm in Wisconsin, has grown into an international conservation powerhouse, with 176 employees and offices in China, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia and Texas, along with the current 300-acre headquarters near Baraboo, Wisconsin. Archibald still serves as the foundation’s senior conservationist.

Despite his standing in the world of conservation, Archibald is happiest when he is around cranes. That makes his March visits to Nebraska, the Central Flyway midmigration stop for a million or so sandhill cranes, especially joyful occasions.

'When I travel around the world and meet cranes and hear their calls, I feel like they're greeting me like an old friend,' he said. 'When I hear the first crane of spring near my house, I'm overjoyed.'

Pre-med to saving cranes Archibald was a bird-loving kid who bred waterfowl, pheasants and chickens at his family's home in rural coastal Nova Scotia. His parents were educators, though Mom stopped teaching to raise six children.

An early influence was Aldo Leopold's 1948 book 'A Sand County Almanac,' especially the 'Marshland Elegy' essay set near the Baraboo Hills. 'And it was inspired by just two sandhill cranes he saw leaving a marsh on a hazy morning,' Archibald said.

The book sparked a revelation. 'It's like the Earth is my home and I want to take care of my home,' he said.

Archibald remained interested in birds as he grew older, but didn't think he could make a living that way. So he attended Dalhousie University in Halifax with plans to eventually become a pediatrician.

'Cranes were my hobby interest,' Archibald said. It was enhanced during his undergrad summers of 1966 and 1967, when he was an Alberta Game Farm bird caretaker and first saw a sandhill crane.

Then in 1967, in search of fun, Archibald traveled to Ithaca, New York, to see Cornell's renown ornithology lab.

He walked into the Cornell building, heard the sound of birds and entered a room full of parrots. As he walked around, Archibald noticed another door. Inside, he found the man who would soon become his mentor: Professor William Bilger.

Bilger encouraged him to study cranes at Cornell. 'I told him that's exactly what I want to do,' Archibald said. He enrolled in 1968 to start working on an ecology-related Ph.D.

As Archibald was completing his degree, he met Sauey, who was just starting his doctorate degree with a focus on behaviors of Siberian cranes in winter.

'I overheard Ron say he was from Wisconsin and I'd never been there,' Archibald said. 'I asked if he was familiar with Aldo Leopold. It was like asking a priest if he knew about the pope.'

As Sauey continued his studies, Archibald traveled to Japan and other countries to observe cranes in the wild for his dissertation.

'Studying crane behaviors was fun, but I had to do something for conservation,' he said. He and co-founder Sauey worked together on their shared mission until 1987, when Sauey died.

'I had no idea where I'd be today,' Archibald said. 'But I'm a Christian, and I hope a devoted one, so I put each day in the hands of a higher power. I'm surprised, but thrilled.'

Cranes today The International Crane Foundation headquarters has a captive flock of approximately 100 cranes. It's the only place in the world with a complete collection of all 15 species in the crane family.

He likes whooping cranes for their beauty and rarity. Sandhill cranes, on the other hand, are very successful birds that have interesting responses to a variety of circumstances, he said. 'They paint their feathers with mud so they're harder to see by predators.'

All of the world's cranes face survival challenges: habitat loss from climate change and development; pollution; bird flu and other pathogens; and invasive species. Politics and shifting funding priorities threaten efforts to save the cranes.

That's what makes the International Crane Foundation's partnerships with local organizations so important. In Nebraska, that includes Audubon's Rowe Sanctuary, the Crane Trust, The Nature Conservancy, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Rainwater Basin and the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission.

Archibald has come to the Platte River in Nebraska every March since 1975, except during COVID in 2021. He usually stays a day or two, but this year he invited International Crane Foundation members. 'This is the first time I've stayed for a month,' he said.

Archibald's crane-crazy friends in Nebraska and around the world include conservation photographer Michael Forsberg of Lincoln. The two first met in 1998 at Audubon's Rowe Sanctuary.

'George has the uncanny ability to be just as comfortable talking cranes with a group of farmers at coffee as he does at some fancy dinner with dignitaries and heads of state,' he said. 'And when he does, they listen.'

Another friend was the late Jane Goodall. She and Archibald would meet in Nebraska during crane season and in foreign countries when they happened to be there at the same time.

Archibald has a message for Nebraskans who see sandhill cranes during their daily lives but have never stopped for a good look. 'You have one of the world's great migration spectacles that people from all over the world come to see ... The (Platte) river is the most important part.'

He intends to keep seeing and protecting that spectacle for as long as he can. 'I'm never going to retire unless mentally or physically I cannot do what I do,' Archibald said. 'I love what I do.'

The Flatwater Free Press is Nebraska’s first independent, nonprofit newsroom focused on investigations and feature stories that matter.

Members of the 2026 Humphrey-Lindsay track and field team are, front row, left to right, Kenley Pospisil, Erin Kruid, Kinley Gronenthal, Jaedyn Friesen, Emma Preister, Briley Dohmen, Isabella Gaspers, Hallie Reichmuth and Nyla Beller. Second row, Evan Reichmuth, Shelby Hemmer, Khloe Hooker, Autumn Fittje, Lily Stenger, Callista Reichmuth, Maddie Reichmuth, Sierra Reardon and Kaylee Vering. Third row, Joel Brandl, Logan Brandl, Landon Taylor-Parker, Miciah Mohrman, Camryn Dickes, Zoey Gronenthal, Tyler Burhman, Xavier Schumacher, Ayden Honebrink and Taigent Prorok. Back row, Garrett Graham, Gavin Friesen, Layton Pospisil, Garrett Behle, Klayton Brandl, Caleb Kloppenborg, Paul Wright and Tristan Mc-Cloud. Not pictured are Gabe Luschen, Katie Hogancamp, Keith Kirby, Sami Prorok and Mackenzie Kurtenbach.

Generosity starts with a simple conversation and a willingness to help.

Local farmers are donating hay to those who suffered from wildfires in western Nebraska through the nonprofit organization, NeFarmTok.

Sage Frauendorfer contacted John Schure March 14, and said, “Know anyone who would maybe donate some hay? Just figuring between your trucks and ours and a few others we could take some hay and supplies out West,” Sage said.

John and Sage decided to work together to get as much hay donated and truckers to haul and to seek donations to help with the fuel cost.

Sage and his contacts pretty much lined up all the trucks and hay, with John Schure who are part of the nonprofit NeFarmTok.

• See HAY, Page 6 John started making posts to his social media site, TikTok @ fifthgenfarmer, and his Facebook site to help find the donations to help fund the fuel costs that would be needed.

Sage and Ben Pfeifer, of Lindsay, had been in contact with each other about trucking the hay. For several years, Ben had bought calves from a father and son by the name of Delwin and Dusty Wilson, of Arthur, Neb. Ben found out the Wilson’s ranch had been 90 percent burned up by the Morrill fire. Ben contacted Dusty Wilson and offered to help him and his neighbors get some hay, and the group had its mission.

John said 86-year-old Delwin Wilson kept repeating, “I just can’t believe all the generosity.”

On Thursday, March 19, a convoy was formed of seven trucks and they hauled 240 bales. Another convoy of three made the trip Saturday, March 21, with 78 bales for a total of 318 bales.

At almost 600 miles round trip. They were just shy of a 6,500 miles drive between all the trucks in those three days.

In the first two rounds that have run west there is close to a $50,000 donated value between the hay, trucking and fuel expenses.

John said, “We have received an overwhelming response of support — calls, messages, and texts offering donations ranging from 10 bales to full semitruckloads from across Eastern Nebraska, Kansas and Illinois.”

At this time, they want to focus their efforts on the most rural ranchers with immediate needs.

“Please keep in mind, this is not a short-term issue — it is a long-term need. Those affected by the wildfires will require continued support and assistance for months to come,” John said. “We are incredibly grateful for the generosity and willingness to help. Together, we will continue to support our ag communities through this relief effort.”

NeFarmTok Inc. is a 501(c) (3) non-profit that was started by four farmers and ranchers that met on the social media platform TikTok.

NeFarmTok arranged and met in person and wanted to start a non-profit to benefit and assist Nebraskans that have endured a life changing event and assist rural communities with financial support that need to recover from or respond to the needs of the local population. NeFarmTok started a golf tournament, and this year after the 6th Annual Golf Tournament, there will be a fundraiser with silent auction and live auction July 11, in Humphrey at Steepleview Gold Course.

John said, “Helping people who have experienced tragedy matters on both a human and community level. It provides immediate relief, restores hope, strengthens communities and creates a ripple effect. At its core, helping others in tragedy reflects the values of compassion, kindness, and shared responsibility— especially in close-knit rural communities where neighbors look out for one another.”

He added his thanks to everyone who has donated hay, donated their truck or trailers, donated their time, donated their machines to help load the hay, and folks who have donated money to help pay for fuel.

Lexi Rodriguez has had to navigate college, professional volleyball and life on the go. Now, she wants to pass along everything she’s learned to young girls.

As a Nebraska Cornhusker volleyball player, she was a four-time All-American and now suits up for LOVB Nebraska.

She was in Lindsay Sunday at the Event Center, meeting fans, taking photos with them and signing autographs.

Rodriguez is teaming up with Kelly and Melanie Krings as part of SheSports, an app designed for girls 8-18 that promotes positivity that connects female collegiate athletes with young fans.

Rodriguez said she and the Krings’s have been working together for a few years and in November launched the app.

“I’ve known Kelly for a few years, and we did some things when NIL (Name, Likeness and Image) started, working with his business and kind of helping with some nonprofit work. Going into my senior year (2024) he proposed this idea — not of what it is now — but just kind of planting a seed, and after my senior year we went hard after want it

• See LEXI, Page 3 will look like and what we had to do to create an app and create this platform.

“It took two years of thinking about it and changing things, and then when it finally came, we released it in November, and it’s taken off. It’s been five months, but it’s been able to see how people interact with it,” she said.

Rodriguez says the app is her way of giving back, and gives girls a chance to interact with athletes and learn they all go through the same things growing up.

“I think when you’re a volleyball player for Nebraska, you have this amazing platform and amazing following of people who look at role models, and when I was at Nebraska, I didn’t know what to do with it, I didn’t know how to interact with the girls and fans and everything like that, so I think that was the biggest appeal is creating something to actually give back to these younger athletes in the younger girls who wanted to accomplish their goals and maybe being in my shoes one day, so that was the biggest thing. It’s been fulfilling to talk to the girls across Nebraska and kind of see the impact it has already had,” she said.

Being a volleyball player at Nebraska is like being a rock star, and that was an adjustment for Rodriguez who came from Sterling, Ill., a smaller town. of around 14,700 people.

“I was a 19-20 year old girl, and I didn’t know how much of a big deal that was, and I was just making fun TikToks, and I wanted my platform to mean more, and impact more, so I think with Kelly and his wife, this is the perfect opportunity,” she said.

In a short time, the app is taking off, and doing what they hoped it would, connecting girls and athletes in a positive way. Rodriguez said they are interested in the same things she was at their age and continues to drive her.

“A lot of it’s been about the mental health, mindfulness, confidence piece, just because on social media you don’t see all that. You can interact with the athletes, but it’s more like fun, you get to see them hang out with their friends, and I think this is more like vulnerable. These girls can actually ask me how I deal with the struggles and failures and everything and it’s really fun for me to have a place like be vulnerable as well and talk about these things that maybe I wouldn’t talk about on a daily basis on my social media account, it’s a place where it feels really connected to the younger girls, and hopefully, it’s the same for athletes,” she said.

There were no such apps when she was playing high school volleyball or being recruited and playing at Nebraska.

“I think that’s another fun part of it is that, hopefully, it continues to grow and girls from across the country kind of have this inside access to like the behind-the-scenes of college athletes, maybe some pro athletes of all different sports, and I think that would just be super cool because when you’re younger like you wanna see what they’re doing, but when I was younger, I could watch them play one match once a week, and that was it, I had to idolize them from afar. Hopefully, giving them this insider access and making them feel like this is a little more possible, I think that would be really cool for the future,” she said.

Interacting with the girls gives Rodriguez a chance to talk about what she’s experienced and learned, but she also tells them she is still going through the issues of dealing with professional volleyball and life in general.

“I think the biggest thing is that I’m still going still through it, I’m still playing, while I’m trying to help inspire these young girls, I’m still learning and I’m still overcoming things from going to practice and failing or have a struggle and then like coming back and seeing these girls, ask me that same struggle, just kind of being able to reflect, and tell them I’m still struggling with this, this is so normal, and you’re not alone in it, and it’s something that every person has to deal with. As younger girls or even fans, you see these athletes and you put them on a pedestal, but I’m literally just a girl who’s been exactly where you were like. I do the same things you do in your life, and at the gym, and they can see that with every athlete who’s on our app.

At around 14, former Husker coach John Cook started recruiting her. She came to some summer camps, and he ended up offering a scholarship.

“This is dream school like I couldn’t see myself going anywhere else,” she said. “I always wanted to play in the Big 10, so, Nebraska was my first camp, my first experience, so I didn’t have anything to compare it to, but I remember being here and just feeling like this place is incredible, the passion in the care and the support that you felt from everyone. You could see the girls interact, and just the history of excellence that was there. It was everything that 14-year-old me was wanting out of college, and luckily it worked out,” she said.

It’s a different stage when you get to Nebraska, people knew Rodriguez, but she was still learning to navigate college.

“I think it was really weird for me, especially in the first few years of my career, my freshman and sophomore years, I was just like I don’t know if I deserve this type of recognition and acknowledgment, but I mean I was always grateful, and felt like I was honored to have so many people look up to me, support me, but at the same time I’m just like a small town girl, I don’t really know — it’s like that impostor syndrome, but once you’re around Husker Nation a lot you just feel like a part of the family, and I’ve been here for like six years now, and it does feel like a second home.”

This is her first full season playing professional for LOVB Nebraska, and that brings about more changes.

It’s was difficult at first, for sure, but when you transition from the college experience where you’re with your friends every day for four years and the same coaching staff, and then you enter this phase where this is your job and this is what you’re doing to make money, and you’re playing with people who are now like 15 years older than you and not just like two or three and it’s a different experience, but it’s still just as fulfilling, it’s still the same game, and you’re working to become a better version of yourself, so it’s been fun overall, and I’m happy to still be in Nebraska to do it.”

Women’s athletics are growing, and Rodriguez and the SheSports app, are a part of that growth.

“I think with the stadium game in Nebraska (the volleyball team played at Memorial Stadium) and Caitlin Clark, and there’s just kind of an explosion of women’s sports, and it’s still growing, so I feel it with all the coverage and media on it I think it’s incredible for all sports like basketball, volleyball, gymnastics, swimming, and I feel like there’s a lot more eyes on it, which is fully deserved,” she said.

SheSports and Rodriguez headed to Columbus Lakeview after their Lindsay meet and greet, but she has been interacting with fans since she stepped on campus, but she’s not quite used to her celebrity.

“We’re going out to different communities and kind of interacting with some of the girls in Nebraska. It’s a little weird even after being in this state for fivesix years, I’m always like guys. I don’t think anyone’s gonna show up. I don’t know. Are you sure this is a good idea? But they’re Nebraska fans, and they are the best fans in the world and it’s always cool to be able to interact with them.”

She hopes SheSports catches on nationwide, and reaches even more girls.

“I hope it becomes something nationwide and attracts athletes from all over becoming something that kids get to experience what it’s like to be a college or professional athlete — just feel more empowered being on the app,” she said

In recent years, as the United States has suffered a series of damaging climate disasters, experts have warned that the nation is headed toward a homeowner’s insurance crisis. Insurance companies dropped hundreds of thousands of customers who live in areas vulnerable to hurricanes and wildfires, and numerous small insurers have gone bellyup after big disasters. This has led some to forecast that a broader market failure in disasterprone states is looming, or even a housing market collapse.

That has not happened yet. But in the meantime, insurance has gotten a lot more expensive — and the price hikes are not going anywhere. A new nationwide report from the insurance price comparison firm Insurify found that the average American homeowner’s insurance bill rose 12% last year, reaching $2,948 per year, and will rise another 4% this year.

In Nebraska, the cost of homeowner’s insurance has risen 20% since 2023. In the past two weeks, the state has experienced a rash of wildfires, including the largest in state history, which is still burning as of Friday. Based on projected premiums for 2026, Nebraska already is the fourth most expensive state for homeowner’s insurance.

Nationwide, the increases have far outpaced overall inflation for the same period. (These numbers don’t include flood insurance, which most often requires a separate plan, backed by the federal government.)

There are a lot of factors behind these rising bills: Insurance companies consider the value of a home, the cost of the materials needed to rebuild it and even the credit scores of the homeowner. But the primary culprits are the rising toll of extreme weather as the planet warms and the millions of new homes that developers have built in vulnerable areas. Insured losses from natural catastrophes in the U.S. averaged $100 billion a year between 2023 and 2025, up from an annual average of around $15 billion per year a decade earlier, according to the Insurance Information Institute.

“When you have these big catastrophes, it’s not just that insurers have to pay out a lot of plans, it’s that they’re all happening fast,” said Matt Brannon, the senior economic analyst at Insurify and the author of the new report. “It creates extreme financial risk for insurers, and they tend to respond to this risk by raising their rates.”

While prices are increasing in almost every state, Brannon says the most eye-watering prices are concentrated in a few regions. Below, we break down some of these hotspots using this new data. We look at where climate change and extreme weather have caused rates to surge in recent years, and which places could feel the pain next.

California Past: 16% rise since 2023 Projected: 16% rise by the end of 2026 California is throwing everything it has at its insurance crisis, but the state government still can’t seem to move the needle. Insurance prices have gone up by 16% in the last two years and are about to increase by another 16% this year, according to Insurify.

The state’s insurance market has been in free fall since devastating wildfire outbreaks in 2017 and 2018, which led major companies like State Farm to drop tens of thousands of mountainside customers and even pull out of the state. Regulators have coaxed insurers back by allowing them to use forward-looking “catastrophe models” that use future climate data and by letting them pass on more of their costs to customers. In return, insurers had to stop dropping customers in fire-prone hillsides.

Ahead of a pivotal race for insurance commissioner this year, legislators have introduced bills that would create new fire resilience grant programs and would increase coverage discounts for homeowners who retrofit their properties.

Georgia Past: 24% rise since 2023 Projected: 10% rise by the end of 2026 Hurricane Helene was among the deadliest and most expensive hurricanes ever to hit Georgia, killing 37 people, damaging tens of thousands of homes and buildings and dealing a $5.5 million blow to the state’s agriculture and forestry industries. Those losses are driving a second year of home insurance rate hikes for Georgia, where Insurify projects a 10% increase in premiums in 2026 following a 9% increase in 2025. The impact is spread out over multiple years because of local regulations that make it tougher to quickly raise rates, according to Brannon. Neighboring Florida, by contrast, saw an 18% jump in 2025 because insurers were able to react quickly to heavy losses from Helene, but it is expecting more modest increases this year.

Georgia’s lagging insurance rates are now bumping up against a steep increase in damage and risk from hurricanes. Although the state’s coastline, as the Insurify report notes, is relatively small, Georgia has taken repeated hits from hurricanes in the last decade. Climate change is also spreading those impacts across much more of the state. Hurricanes and tropical storms typically weaken and break up over land, but higher temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico are making storms stronger when they make landfall. That in turn means they remain powerful — and damaging — as they track across inland Georgia.

Illinois Past: 48% rise since 2023 Projected: 5% rise by the end of 2026 Illinois may be free of the kind of wildfires and hurricanes that have roiled insurance markets on the coasts, but it has not been spared from crushing premiums. Between 2021 and 2024, home insurance costs increased by about 50% in Illinois, costing homeowners close to an additional $1,000 per year, according to a Consumer Federation of America report.

State Farm, the largest home insurer in the country, announced plans to raise homeowner insurance rates by over 27% across the state last summer. Allstate, the nation’s second-largest home insurer, filed for increases totaling 9% on average for over 200,000 Illinois policyholders. Both of the insurance giants pointed to extreme weather as driving up costs — in 2024, only Texas reported more hail damage than Illinois, according to State Farm.

Last month, during his budget proposal to Illinois legislators, Gov. JB Pritzker railed against a steady stream of homeowner insurance rate hikes, calling the spiraling costs “nothing short of a crisis.” Currently, Illinois is the only state in the country without legislation prohibiting excessive rates. Legislators failed to pass a bill limiting price hikes last fall, but Pritzker is still urging the General Assembly to revive the bill.

Michigan Past: 36% rise since 2023 Projected: 3% rise by the end of 2026 The Great Lakes state saw a nearly 36% increase in insurance prices in the last two years, thanks to two factors: insurance companies absorbing losses from other parts of the country and an uptick in severe weather like thunderstorms, ice storms, flooding and hail. Michigan is seeing more of these “secondary perils” that often generate a large number of low- to mid-range claims. Every year since 2011, the state has experienced at least one severe storm where losses exceeded $1 billion, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In 2024, five such storms occurred.

But despite recent hikes, Insurify notes that Michigan still has some of the lowest average premiums in the Midwest. Prices in 2026 will stabilize slightly after two years of hikes, with premiums projected to rise by 3%. These fluctuations, especially in the Midwest, are the result of companies figuring out how to price changing risk, according to insurance experts. “They’re trying to adjust their pricing to cover the potential costs,” said Andy Hoffman, a professor of sustainable enterprise at the University of Michigan.

Nebraska Past: 20% rise since 2023 Projected: 13% rise by the end of 2026 Going back over 10 years, Nebraska has seen some of the highest rates of increases in home insurance premiums in the country, said Eric Hunt, assistant extension educator of agricultural meteorology and climate resilience at the University of Nebraska Extension. Over the past year alone, premiums jumped 25% on average, according to data from Insurify.

Currently, Nebraska allows companies to set premiums based on market rates, rather than getting approval or being capped by state regulators. That system is one of the reasons why insurance has gotten so expensive.

The rise in rates also correlates with the state’s severe storms, which bring damage from increased hail and high winds. The city of Lincoln, for example, faced severe hail back in May 2016, and multiple damaging windstorms have hit both Lincoln and Omaha in the last five years. As the climate continues to change, Nebraska could see more of these severe storms, in addition to potentially more heavy rain events that can cause flash flooding.

There’s another risk that’s also emerging: Nebraska is getting less snow than it used to, worsening the state’s wildfire season. As of Thursday morning, four large wildfires in the western half of the state had burned more than 824,000 acres, according to incident reports. That includes the Morrill Fire, which has burned 643,074 acres across five counties in the Nebraska Panhandle and is now the largest documented fire in state history. The fires have been fueled by intense winds.

“I think, especially in the western part of the state, I think you’re going to see smaller towns be more vulnerable to those fires,” Hunt said.

As insurance rates gain more attention from state politicians, Hunt said he expects there to be more attempts to regulate increases in Nebraska.

North Carolina Past: 14% rise since 2023 Projected: 5% rise by the end of 2026 North Carolina’s rate bureau asked for a 42% insurance rate hike last year, citing both increased risky development in hurricane-prone coastal areas and billions in storm damage from Hurricane Helene. But the state insurance commissioner granted an increase of just 7.5%. Now, Insurify projects North Carolina’s insurance premiums to rise in 2026 by about 5%.

Much of the damage incurred by North Carolina homeowners over the past several years is flood damage from extreme, multibillion-dollar storms like Helene, but flood damage is not covered by homeowners insurance.

Other storm damage is coverable in certain cases, like windrelated tree damage, but that too is proving to be problematic. “In North Carolina and in higherrisk coastal states, insurers are not providing coverage, like in your base home policy plan, for things like high wind damage,” said Jayson O’Neill, a spokesperson for Unlocking America’s Future. A quarter of homeowners insurance claims after Helene were closed without payment last year. Furthermore, some insurance companies are abandoning the state, or risk-prone swaths of it, entirely. O’Neill said he thinks these denials keep rate increases on the moderate side — with upfront costs to homeowners.

There is no easy way out of this problem, no matter what disasters a state is facing. State regulators can’t just refuse insurance companies permission to raise prices, because then those companies will drop customers or leave the market altogether, as has happened in California. Many states offer their own “public option,” such as Florida Citizens and the California FAIR Plan, but these backstops tend to provide worse coverage, and they’re often more expensive than the private market. Such options can also pull money from a state’s tax base, which raises a fairness issue — why should every taxpayer have to fund insurance for those who live in the most expensive and disasterprone homes?

The only real solution to rising prices — other than slowing down climate change itself — is to reduce the amount of property that is at risk from natural disasters. That entails renovating, rebuilding or relocating millions of properties across dozens of states until major disasters no longer cause billions of dollars in damages. The cost of disasters such as flooding has gone down over the last century when compared against the value of property exposed to those disasters, indicating that some adaptation has already happened, but it needs to happen even faster.

A recent report from the Natural Resources Defense Council predicted the U.S. could be “an uninsurable country” if no action is taken.

The question is who should pay for this. Most individual homeowners don’t have thousands of dollars to spend on new roofs and walls, and states don’t have billions of dollars to hand out for retrofits. Developers tend to resist building codes that require tougher homes, and insurance companies themselves are hesitant to pay for customer upgrades and then have their customers depart for other providers, depriving the insurer of any cost savings.

The solution may be some mix of all these policies. In another recent report from the Natural Resources Defense Council, researchers argue that states should impose surcharges on their insurers and use the money to fund roof upgrades and vegetation clearance, targeting the most vulnerable homes that are driving claims. North Carolina and Alabama have both scaled such programs. Lawmakers could also upgrade building rules for new homes, imposing a cost on developers, as Florida did following Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Meanwhile, the legislature in Colorado has weighed creating a state-run “reinsurance” program, which would provide a financial backstop for smaller insurers and reduce their costs.

In Nebraska, lawmakers last year conducted two interim studies on the issue — one examining the causes of rising premiums and another examining the impact of those rising costs. The studies did not result in recommendations for specific legislation, said Joshua Christolear, legal counsel for the Legislature's Banking, Commerce and Insurance Committee.

Until we reduce the risk profile of the nation’s homes, the price increases are unlikely to stop, according to Carolyn Kousky, an expert on disaster insurance and former University of Pennsylvania economist who runs the Insurance For Good project, which advocates for just disaster insurance frameworks.

“We see in the hotspots of climate risk that the premiums have even outpaced (other costs),” she said. “Until we actually focus much more heavily on loss reduction and climate adaptation, that will continue to be a challenge.”

Students who placed in the top three qualified for state speech in Kearney.

Cejay Dahlberg was the humorous runner-up. Harley Goering placed 5th in entertainment, and Gabe Luschen was the district champion. Karsen Jacobson placed 4th and Mariah Schumacher placed 3rd in Informative. The OID of Karsen Jacobson, Abbey Ramsay, Lia Whited, Cejay Dahlberg, and Colter Schneider placed 3rd. Camille Keller placed 5th in Program of Oral Interpretation. In persuasive speaking, Colter Schneider placed 5th and Harley Goering placed 6th. In poetry, Camille Keller placed 5th and Lia Whited was the runner up. In duet acting, Cejay Dahlberg and Lia Whited got 5th place.

As a team, Humphrey-Lindsay finished in second behind Twin River.

Qualifying for state are: The OID of Karsen, Lia, Colter, Cejay, and Abbey.

Cejay in humorous.

Lia in poetry.

Mariah in informative.

Gabe in entertainment.

Also, the unified speech competitors that will be competiing at state. They are: Blayne and Xavier in duet.

Katie and Melody in duet.

Katie in Informative.

Melody in informative.

Tyler, Blayne, Archer and Xavier in OID.