LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Authorities say a Lincoln man has died in a head-on crash involving a semitrailer near Lincoln. 

The Lancaster County Sheriff's Office says the crash happened Sunday afternoon on Highway 2. 

Investigators say a pickup truck driven by 43-year-old Eli Miller was eastbound on the highway when it crossed the center line and collided with the westbound semi. 

Miller was declared dead at the scene. The 47-year-old driver of the semi was taken to a Lincoln hospital for treatment of minor injuries. 

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Authorities say a Lincoln man has died in a head-on crash involving a semitrailer near Lincoln. The Lancaster County Sheriff's Office says the crash happened Sunday afternoon on Highway 2. Investigators say a pickup truck driven by 43-year-old Eli Miller was eastbound on the highway when it crossed the center line and collided with the westbound semi. Miller was declared dead at the scene. The 47-year-old driver of the semi was taken to a Lincoln hospital for treatment of minor injuries. The crash remains under investigation.

Lincoln man killed in head-on crash with semitrailer

NEW YORK (AP) — Joan MacDonald’s health was in shambles at age 71. She was overweight and on numerous medications with high cholesterol, rising blood pressure and kidney trouble.

Her daughter, a fitness coach, warned that she’d wind up an invalid if she didn’t turn things around. She did, hitting the gym for the first time and learning to balance her diet with the help of a brand new tool, an iPhone.

Now 75, MacDonald is a hype beast for health with a bodybuilder’s physique and 1.4 million loyal followers on Instagram.

She’s among a growing number of “grandfluencers,” folks 70 and up who have amassed substantial followings on social media with the help of decades-younger fans.

“It’s so rare to find someone her age being able to do all these things,” said one of her admirers, 18-year-old Marianne Zapata of Larchmont, New York. “It’s just such a positive thing to even think about.”

Both aspirational and inspirational, older influencers are turning their digital platforms into gold.

MacDonald has paid partnerships with the sportswear and supplement brand Women’s Best, and the stress-busting device Sensate. And she just launched her own health and fitness app not so many years after learning how to use digital technology herself.

On TikTok, four friends who go by @oldgays — the youngest is 65 — have 2.2 million followers, including Rihanna. They have an endorsement deal with Grindr as they delight fans with their clueless answers to pop culture questions.

Others focus on beauty and style, setting up Amazon closets with their go-to looks and putting on makeup tutorials live. Lagetta Wayne, at 78, has teens asking her to be their grandmother as she tends to her vegetables and cooks them up in Suisun City, California, as @msgrandmasgarden on TikTok.

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2020/1/1578090484280.jpeg" alt="" />
 <figcaption></figcaption>
 </figure>NEW YORK (AP) — Joan MacDonald’s health was in shambles at age 71. She was overweight and on numerous medications with high cholesterol, rising blood pressure and kidney trouble.Her daughter, a fitness coach, warned that she’d wind up an invalid if she didn’t turn things around. She did, hitting the gym for the first time and learning to balance her diet with the help of a brand new tool, an iPhone.Now 75, MacDonald is a hype beast for health with a bodybuilder’s physique and 1.4 million loyal followers on Instagram.She’s among a growing number of “grandfluencers,” folks 70 and up who have amassed substantial followings on social media with the help of decades-younger fans.“It’s so rare to find someone her age being able to do all these things,” said one of her admirers, 18-year-old Marianne Zapata of Larchmont, New York. “It’s just such a positive thing to even think about.”Both aspirational and inspirational, older influencers are turning their digital platforms into gold.MacDonald has paid partnerships with the sportswear and supplement brand Women’s Best, and the stress-busting device Sensate. And she just launched her own health and fitness app not so many years after learning how to use digital technology herself.On TikTok, four friends who go by @oldgays — the youngest is 65 — have 2.2 million followers, including Rihanna. They have an endorsement deal with Grindr as they delight fans with their clueless answers to pop culture questions.Others focus on beauty and style, setting up Amazon closets with their go-to looks and putting on makeup tutorials live. Lagetta Wayne, at 78, has teens asking her to be their grandmother as she tends to her vegetables and cooks them up in Suisun City, California, as @msgrandmasgarden on TikTok.

Social media’s 70-up ‘grandfluencers’ debunking aging myths

By SUZANNE PEREZ <a href="https://www.kmuw.org/2021-09-02/some-kansas-kids-will-have-longer-school-days-after-covid-disruptions">Kansas News Service</a>

WICHITA — As more Kansas school districts report 
rising cases of COVID-19 and virus-related quarantines, educators are 
having to navigate a new state law that limits what they can offer 
online.

That’s already having an effect on school schedules in Wellington, where officials <a href="https://www.kmuw.org/2021-08-27/wellington-school-district-cancels-all-classes-and-activities-due-to-covid-19-outbreaks" target="_blank">abruptly closed all schools through Labor Day</a> and sent students home without a remote-learning option because of COVID-19 outbreaks.

Beginning Sept. 7, the Wellington district will <a href="https://4.files.edl.io/850e/09/02/21/010536-42db9cb2-13c6-439c-aaa0-e1664b04f118.pdf" target="_blank">add 10 minutes to the end of each school day</a> to comply with state guidelines for the minimum number of instructional hours.

A measure Kansas lawmakers passed last spring — <a href="http://www.kslegislature.org/li/b2021_22/measures/hb2134/" target="_blank">House Bill 2134</a> — was intended as a message to districts: Kids should be in school, in person.

The
 new law dictates that long-term online or hybrid learning models — 
anything over 40 hours per student per year — could mean losing up to 
two-thirds of state funding for that student.

The law allows districts to offer online options, such as Wichita’s <a href="https://www.usd259.org/domain/5079" target="_blank">Education Imagine Academy</a>. But students enrolled in traditional in-person schools cannot go fully remote.

Mark
 Tallman, a lobbyist with the Kansas Association of School Boards, said 
there are lots of questions about the new law, which allows some 
exemptions for health issues or emergencies.

“What I think 
legislators objected to was districts just saying, ‘We’re going to 
operate for all kids in a hybrid or remote environment because we don’t 
want the schools to be open,’ ” he said.

“If you’re in a situation
 where a student either has COVID and is missing or would be 
quarantined, that’s tied to an individual student with a specific health
 issue. . . . That’s a different situation than the law was designed to 
deal with.”

Ultimately, the Kansas Department of Education will decide what hours count when it audits attendance figures.

In Wichita, the state’s largest district, more than 1,600 students have <a href="https://www.kmuw.org/2021-08-23/wichita-boe-votes-to-mandate-masks-for-students-employees" target="_blank">missed school due to COVID isolation</a>
 or quarantine protocols. Beginning Sept. 8, the district plans to offer
 “simultaneous learning” for students who are not able to attend class 
in person.

According to the new plan, teachers will lead their 
in-person class as normal, and the quarantined student will watch 
lessons through video conferencing. A paraeducator or buddy student will
 monitor the remote student, respond to questions by chat and share the 
student’s questions with the teacher.

Teachers instructing an in-person class and a remote student will be paid an additional $50 a day.

“I
 know the need for limited remote learning will still remain,” Deputy 
Superintendent Gil Alvarez said in an email to employees.

Allowing
 quarantined students the option to tap into classrooms via computer “is
 a reasonable compromise in order to assure the greatest possible 
opportunity for our students to receive instruction directly from our 
teachers,” he said.

Between Aug. 2 and Aug. 25, the Wichita district <a href="https://www.usd259.org/Page/20944" target="_blank">reported 466 positive COVID cases</a> among students and 84 cases among employees.

At least <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewerng/viewer?url=https://www.usd259.org//cms/lib/KS01906405/Centricity/Domain/5644/Reports/Weekly+COVID-19+Staff+Quarantine+Report+08.26.21.pdf" target="_blank">133 employees were under quarantine</a>.

District officials said they are tracking but not reporting or publishing the number of quarantined students.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment this week reported <a href="https://www.coronavirus.kdheks.gov/160/COVID-19-in-Kansas" target="_blank">21 active COVID-19 clusters at schools</a> — 14 more than the previous week — with at least 114 positive cases.

Only
 two school outbreaks were publicly identified by the state: Mount Olive
 Lutheran School in Overland Park and Central Elementary School in 
Lyons.

Suzanne Perez reports on education for KMUW in Wichita 
and the Kansas News Service. You can follow her on Twitter @SuzPerezICT 
or email her at perez@kmuw.org.

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2021/9/1630687392939.png" alt="A kindergartner at Colvin Elementary School in Wichita. Suzanne Perez / KMUW" />
 <figcaption>A kindergartner at Colvin Elementary School in Wichita. Suzanne Perez / KMUW</figcaption>
 </figure>By SUZANNE PEREZ <a href="https://www.kmuw.org/2021-09-02/some-kansas-kids-will-have-longer-school-days-after-covid-disruptions">Kansas News Service</a>WICHITA — As more Kansas school districts report 
rising cases of COVID-19 and virus-related quarantines, educators are 
having to navigate a new state law that limits what they can offer 
online.That’s already having an effect on school schedules in Wellington, where officials <a href="https://www.kmuw.org/2021-08-27/wellington-school-district-cancels-all-classes-and-activities-due-to-covid-19-outbreaks" target="_blank">abruptly closed all schools through Labor Day</a> and sent students home without a remote-learning option because of COVID-19 outbreaks.Beginning Sept. 7, the Wellington district will <a href="https://4.files.edl.io/850e/09/02/21/010536-42db9cb2-13c6-439c-aaa0-e1664b04f118.pdf" target="_blank">add 10 minutes to the end of each school day</a> to comply with state guidelines for the minimum number of instructional hours.A measure Kansas lawmakers passed last spring — <a href="http://www.kslegislature.org/li/b2021_22/measures/hb2134/" target="_blank">House Bill 2134</a> — was intended as a message to districts: Kids should be in school, in person.The
 new law dictates that long-term online or hybrid learning models — 
anything over 40 hours per student per year — could mean losing up to 
two-thirds of state funding for that student.The law allows districts to offer online options, such as Wichita’s <a href="https://www.usd259.org/domain/5079" target="_blank">Education Imagine Academy</a>. But students enrolled in traditional in-person schools cannot go fully remote.Mark
 Tallman, a lobbyist with the Kansas Association of School Boards, said 
there are lots of questions about the new law, which allows some 
exemptions for health issues or emergencies.“What I think 
legislators objected to was districts just saying, ‘We’re going to 
operate for all kids in a hybrid or remote environment because we don’t 
want the schools to be open,’ ” he said.“If you’re in a situation
 where a student either has COVID and is missing or would be 
quarantined, that’s tied to an individual student with a specific health
 issue. . . . That’s a different situation than the law was designed to 
deal with.”Ultimately, the Kansas Department of Education will decide what hours count when it audits attendance figures.In Wichita, the state’s largest district, more than 1,600 students have <a href="https://www.kmuw.org/2021-08-23/wichita-boe-votes-to-mandate-masks-for-students-employees" target="_blank">missed school due to COVID isolation</a>
 or quarantine protocols. Beginning Sept. 8, the district plans to offer
 “simultaneous learning” for students who are not able to attend class 
in person.According to the new plan, teachers will lead their 
in-person class as normal, and the quarantined student will watch 
lessons through video conferencing. A paraeducator or buddy student will
 monitor the remote student, respond to questions by chat and share the 
student’s questions with the teacher.Teachers instructing an in-person class and a remote student will be paid an additional $50 a day.“I
 know the need for limited remote learning will still remain,” Deputy 
Superintendent Gil Alvarez said in an email to employees.Allowing
 quarantined students the option to tap into classrooms via computer “is
 a reasonable compromise in order to assure the greatest possible 
opportunity for our students to receive instruction directly from our 
teachers,” he said.Between Aug. 2 and Aug. 25, the Wichita district <a href="https://www.usd259.org/Page/20944" target="_blank">reported 466 positive COVID cases</a> among students and 84 cases among employees.At least <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewerng/viewer?url=https://www.usd259.org//cms/lib/KS01906405/Centricity/Domain/5644/Reports/Weekly+COVID-19+Staff+Quarantine+Report+08.26.21.pdf" target="_blank">133 employees were under quarantine</a>.District officials said they are tracking but not reporting or publishing the number of quarantined students.The Kansas Department of Health and Environment this week reported <a href="https://www.coronavirus.kdheks.gov/160/COVID-19-in-Kansas" target="_blank">21 active COVID-19 clusters at schools</a> — 14 more than the previous week — with at least 114 positive cases.Only
 two school outbreaks were publicly identified by the state: Mount Olive
 Lutheran School in Overland Park and Central Elementary School in 
Lyons.Suzanne Perez reports on education for KMUW in Wichita 
and the Kansas News Service. You can follow her on Twitter @SuzPerezICT 
or email her at perez@kmuw.org.

Some kids will have longer school days after COVID disruptions 

POLK COUNTY, Fla. (AP)-A man wearing full body armor fatally shot four people, including a mother and the 3-month-old baby she was cradling, and engaged in a massive gunfight with police and deputies before he was wounded and surrendered, a Florida sheriff said Sunday. An 11-year-old girl who was shot seven times survived.

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said during a press conference that even after 33-year-old Bryan Riley was arrested Sunday morning, he was so aggressive that he tried to wrestle a gun from police as he lay on his hospital gurney.

Judd said Riley, a former Marine who served as a sharpshooter in both Iraq and Afghanistan, seemed to have targeted his victims at random and appeared to be suffering from mental health issues. Judd said Riley’s girlfriend told authorities Riley had been slowly unraveling for weeks and repeatedly told her that he could communicate directly with God.

“They begged for their lives and I killed them anyway,” Judd said Riley told them during an interrogation.

Investigators said preliminary evidence shows 40-year-old Justice Gleason just happened to be an unlucky stranger out mowing his lawn Saturday night when Riley drove by his home in Lakeland, about 30 miles (48.28 kilometers) east of Tampa, saying God told him to stop because Gleason’s daughter was going to commit suicide.

A second, unidentified person also confronted Riley, telling him that story wasn’t true and warned they’d call police if he didn’t leave, Judd said. He referred to the person as a victim but declined to clarify which one.

Authorities responded to the scene but never found Riley.

About nine hours later, around 4:30 a.m., Riley returned to the home, laying out glowsticks to create a path leading to the house to draw officers “into an ambush,” Judd said.

Randomly, a lieutenant far in the distance heard popping noises and immediately put the agency on active-shooter mode, bringing all state and local law enforcement in the area to the scene.

Following the sounds of gunfire, authorities arrived at the home and found Riley’s white truck ablaze and an unarmed Riley outside, dressed in camouflage.

Riley immediately ran inside, where authorities heard another round of gunfire, “a woman scream and a baby whimper,” Judd said.

Officers tried to enter the front of the house, but it was barricaded. When they circled to the back, they encountered Riley, who appeared to have put on full body armor including head and knee coverings and a bulletproof vest.

Authorities exchanged heavy gunfire, with dozens “if not hundreds of rounds” fired, before Riley retreated back into the home, according to the sheriff.

Everything fell silent, Judd said, until a helicopter unit alerted authorities on the ground that Riley was coming out. He had been shot once and was ready to surrender.

Meanwhile, officers heard cries for help inside the home, but were unsure whether there were additional shooters and feared the home was booby-trapped. A brave sergeant rushed in and grabbed the 11-year-old girl who had been shot at least seven times.

She told deputies there were three dead people inside, Judd said, adding that she was rushed into surgery and was expected to survive.

Deputies sent robots into the home to check for explosives and other traps. When it was clear, they found the bodies of Gleason; the 33-year-old mother; the baby; and the baby’s 62-year-old grandmother, who was in a separate home nearby. Authorities released only Gleason’s name, and did not say if or how he was related to the other victims.

Authorities declined to say how many times the victims had been shot or where they were in the home, but said they were all hiding and huddling in fear. The family dog also was shot to death.

Authorities said Riley’s girlfriend of four years, whom he lived with, had been cooperative and was shocked, saying he was never violent but suffered from PTSD and had become increasingly erratic.

She said he’d spent the previous week on what he called a mission from God, stockpiling supplies that he said were for Hurricane Ida victims, including $1,000 worth of cigars.

“Prior to this morning, this guy was a war hero. He fought for his country in Afghanistan and Iraq,” said Judd. “And this morning he’s a cold-blooded killer.”

Riley, who had no criminal history, also told authorities he was on methamphetamines. His vehicle had also been stocked with supplies for a gunfight, authorities said, including bleeding control kits.

While being treated at the hospital, Riley jumped up and tried to grab an officer’s gun.

“They had to fight with him again in the emergency room,” Judd said, adding that Riley was ultimately tied down and medicated.

He is expected to recover and will be transferred to jail to face charges.

“The big question that all of us has is, ‘Why?’” State Attorney Brian Haas said. “We will not know today or maybe ever.”

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2021/9/1630929700322.png" alt="" />
 <figcaption></figcaption>
 </figure>By KELLI KENNEDYPOLK COUNTY, Fla. (AP)-A man wearing full body armor fatally shot four people, including a mother and the 3-month-old baby she was cradling, and engaged in a massive gunfight with police and deputies before he was wounded and surrendered, a Florida sheriff said Sunday. An 11-year-old girl who was shot seven times survived.Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said during a press conference that even after 33-year-old Bryan Riley was arrested Sunday morning, he was so aggressive that he tried to wrestle a gun from police as he lay on his hospital gurney.Judd said Riley, a former Marine who served as a sharpshooter in both Iraq and Afghanistan, seemed to have targeted his victims at random and appeared to be suffering from mental health issues. Judd said Riley’s girlfriend told authorities Riley had been slowly unraveling for weeks and repeatedly told her that he could communicate directly with God.“They begged for their lives and I killed them anyway,” Judd said Riley told them during an interrogation.Investigators said preliminary evidence shows 40-year-old Justice Gleason just happened to be an unlucky stranger out mowing his lawn Saturday night when Riley drove by his home in Lakeland, about 30 miles (48.28 kilometers) east of Tampa, saying God told him to stop because Gleason’s daughter was going to commit suicide.A second, unidentified person also confronted Riley, telling him that story wasn’t true and warned they’d call police if he didn’t leave, Judd said. He referred to the person as a victim but declined to clarify which one.Authorities responded to the scene but never found Riley.About nine hours later, around 4:30 a.m., Riley returned to the home, laying out glowsticks to create a path leading to the house to draw officers “into an ambush,” Judd said.Randomly, a lieutenant far in the distance heard popping noises and immediately put the agency on active-shooter mode, bringing all state and local law enforcement in the area to the scene.Following the sounds of gunfire, authorities arrived at the home and found Riley’s white truck ablaze and an unarmed Riley outside, dressed in camouflage.Riley immediately ran inside, where authorities heard another round of gunfire, “a woman scream and a baby whimper,” Judd said.Officers tried to enter the front of the house, but it was barricaded. When they circled to the back, they encountered Riley, who appeared to have put on full body armor including head and knee coverings and a bulletproof vest.Authorities exchanged heavy gunfire, with dozens “if not hundreds of rounds” fired, before Riley retreated back into the home, according to the sheriff.Everything fell silent, Judd said, until a helicopter unit alerted authorities on the ground that Riley was coming out. He had been shot once and was ready to surrender.Meanwhile, officers heard cries for help inside the home, but were unsure whether there were additional shooters and feared the home was booby-trapped. A brave sergeant rushed in and grabbed the 11-year-old girl who had been shot at least seven times.She told deputies there were three dead people inside, Judd said, adding that she was rushed into surgery and was expected to survive.Deputies sent robots into the home to check for explosives and other traps. When it was clear, they found the bodies of Gleason; the 33-year-old mother; the baby; and the baby’s 62-year-old grandmother, who was in a separate home nearby. Authorities released only Gleason’s name, and did not say if or how he was related to the other victims.Authorities declined to say how many times the victims had been shot or where they were in the home, but said they were all hiding and huddling in fear. The family dog also was shot to death.Authorities said Riley’s girlfriend of four years, whom he lived with, had been cooperative and was shocked, saying he was never violent but suffered from PTSD and had become increasingly erratic.She said he’d spent the previous week on what he called a mission from God, stockpiling supplies that he said were for Hurricane Ida victims, including $1,000 worth of cigars.“Prior to this morning, this guy was a war hero. He fought for his country in Afghanistan and Iraq,” said Judd. “And this morning he’s a cold-blooded killer.”Riley, who had no criminal history, also told authorities he was on methamphetamines. His vehicle had also been stocked with supplies for a gunfight, authorities said, including bleeding control kits.While being treated at the hospital, Riley jumped up and tried to grab an officer’s gun.“They had to fight with him again in the emergency room,” Judd said, adding that Riley was ultimately tied down and medicated.He is expected to recover and will be transferred to jail to face charges.“The big question that all of us has is, ‘Why?’” State Attorney Brian Haas said. “We will not know today or maybe ever.”

Florida gunman killed 4, including mom still holding baby

WASHINGTON (AP) — Mary Taboniar went 15 months without a paycheck, thanks to the COVID pandemic. A housekeeper at the Hilton Hawaiian Village resort in Honolulu, the single mother of two saw her income completely vanish as the virus devastated the hospitality industry.

For more than a year, Taboniar depended entirely on boosted unemployment benefits and a network of local foodbanks to feed her family. Even this summer as the vaccine rollout took hold and tourists began to travel again, her work was slow to return, peaking at 11 days in August — about half her pre-pandemic workload.

Taboniar is one of millions of Americans for whom Labor Day 2021 represents a perilous crossroads. Two primary anchors of the government’s COVID protection package are ending or have recently ended. Starting Monday, an estimated 8.9 million people will&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/business-health-pandemics-coronavirus-pandemic-jobless-claims-382a89695d83991a42f23e8da3fe7fa9">lose all unemployment&nbsp;</a>benefits. A federal eviction moratorium already has expired.

While other aspects of pandemic assistance including rental aid and the&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/monthly-child-payments-poverty-bd4643ad09e6986ef4b526ebd5a3272b">expanded Child Tax Credit</a>&nbsp;are still widely available, untold millions of Americans will face Labor Day with a suddenly shrunken social safety net.

“This will be a double whammy of hardship,” said Jamie Contreras, secretary-treasurer of the SEIU, a union that represents custodians in office buildings and food service workers in airports. “We’re not anywhere near done. People still need help. ... For millions of people nothing has changed from a year and a half ago.”

For Taboniar, 43, that means her unemployment benefits will completely disappear — even as her work hours vanish again. A fresh virus surge prompted&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/health-coronavirus-pandemic-honolulu-6753de40faf5e667bb070ac4a8ed64c1">Hawaii’s governor to recommend&nbsp;</a>that vacationers delay their plans.

“It’s really scaring me,” she said. “How can I pay rent if I don’t have unemployment and my job isn’t back?”

She’s planning to apply for the newly expanded SNAP assistance program, better known as food stamps, but doubts that will be enough to make up the difference. “I’m just grasping for anything,” she said.

President Joe Biden’s administration believes the U.S. economy is strong enough not to be rattled by evictions or the drop in unemployment benefits. Officials maintain that other elements of the safety net, like the Child Tax Credit and the SNAP program (which Biden permanently boosted earlier this summer) are enough to smooth things over. On Friday, a White House spokesperson said there were no plans to reevaluate the end of the unemployment benefits.

“Twenty-two-trillion-dollar economies work in no small part on momentum and we have strong momentum going in the right direction on behalf of the American workforce,” said Jared Bernstein, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

Labor Secretary Marty Walsh said he believed the country’s labor force was ready for the shift.

“Overall the economy is moving forward and recovering,” Walsh said in an interview. “I think the American economy and the American worker are in a better position going into Labor Day 2021 than they were on Labor Day 2020.”

Walsh and others point to encouraging job numbers; as of Friday the unemployment rate was&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/business-health-pandemics-coronavirus-pandemic-jobless-claims-382a89695d83991a42f23e8da3fe7fa9">down to a fairly healthy 5.2%</a>. But Andrew Stettler, a senior fellow with the Century Foundation, a left-leaning think tank, says the end of the expanded unemployment benefits is still coming too early.

Rather than setting an arbitrary deadline, Stettler says the administration should have tied the end of the the protections to specific economic recovery metrics. He suggests three consecutive months with nationwide unemployment below 5% as a reasonable benchmark to trigger the end of the unemployment benefits.

“This does seem to be the wrong policy decision based on where we are,” Stettler said.

The end to these protections while the economic crisis persists could have a devastating impact on lower-middle class families that were barely holding on through the pandemic. Potentially millions of people “will have a more difficult time regaining the foothold in the middle class that they lost,” Stettler said.

Biden and the Democrats who control Congress are at a crossroads, allowing the aid to expire as they focus instead on his more sweeping “build back better” package of infrastructure and other spending. The $3.5 trillion proposal would rebuild many of the safety net programs, but it faces hurdles in the closely divided Congress.

In the meantime, families will have to make do.

“These are two very important things that are expiring. There’s no doubt that there will be families impacted by their expiration and that they will have additional hardship,” Sharon Parrott, the president of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, said in an interview.

The COVID-19 response has been sweeping in its size and scope, some $5 trillion in federal expenditures since the virus outbreak in 2020, an unprecedented undertaking.

Congressional Republicans had supported some of the initial COVID-19 outlays, but voted lockstep against Biden’s $1.9 trillion recovery package earlier this year as unnecessary. Many argued against extending another round of unemployment aid, and Republicans vow to oppose Biden’s $3.5 trillion package lawmakers are expected to consider later this month.

There are still multiple avenues of support available, although in some cases the actual delivery of that support has been problematic.

States with higher levels of unemployment can use the $350 billion worth of aid they received from the relief package to expand their own jobless payments, as noted by an Aug. 19 letter by Walsh and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

Federal rental assistance funds remain available, though the money has been slow to get out the door, leaving the White House and lawmakers pushing state and local officials to disperse funds more quickly to both landlords and tenants.

The investment bank Morgan Stanley estimated Thursday that the economy will grow at an annual pace of 2.9% in the third quarter, down sharply from its prior forecast of 6.5%. That decline largely reflects a pullback in federal aid spending and supply chain bottlenecks.

And the economy still faces hurdles. Union officials says sectors like hotel housekeepers and office janitorial staffs have been the slowest to recover.

“Our industry is the tip of the spear when it comes to COVID,” said D. Taylor, president of UNITE HERE, a union that represents hotel housekeepers — a field that is “primarily staffed by women and people of color.”

Many of those housekeepers never returned to full employment even as Americans resumed traveling and hotel occupancy rates swelled over the summer.

Taylor said several major hotel chains have moved to permanently cut down on labor costs by reducing levels of service under the guise of COVID. Taboniar’s hotel in Hawaii for example has shifted to cleaning rooms every five days unless the guest specifically requests otherwise in advance. Even as the hotel was at more than 90% occupancy in August, she was only employed for half her usual pre-pandemic number of days.

The delta variant of the coronavirus also poses a challenge, threatening future school closures and the delay of plans to return workers to their offices.

Walsh called the delta variant “an asterisk on everything.”

The sudden lapse of a crucial element of the pandemic safety net has fueled calls for a re-evaluation of the entire unemployment benefits system. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the chairman of the Finance Committee, said in an interview it’s crucial that Congress modernizes the unemployment insurance system as part of the package.

“It’s heartbreaking to know it didn’t have to be this way,” Wyden said.

One of the changes he proposes is to have jobless benefits more linked to economic conditions, so they won’t expire in times of need. “We got to take the unemployment system into the 21st century,” he said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Mary Taboniar went 15 months without a paycheck, thanks to the COVID pandemic. A housekeeper at the Hilton Hawaiian Village resort in Honolulu, the single mother of two saw her income completely vanish as the virus devastated the hospitality industry.For more than a year, Taboniar depended entirely on boosted unemployment benefits and a network of local foodbanks to feed her family. Even this summer as the vaccine rollout took hold and tourists began to travel again, her work was slow to return, peaking at 11 days in August — about half her pre-pandemic workload.Taboniar is one of millions of Americans for whom Labor Day 2021 represents a perilous crossroads. Two primary anchors of the government’s COVID protection package are ending or have recently ended. Starting Monday, an estimated 8.9 million people will&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/business-health-pandemics-coronavirus-pandemic-jobless-claims-382a89695d83991a42f23e8da3fe7fa9">lose all unemployment&nbsp;</a>benefits. A federal eviction moratorium already has expired.While other aspects of pandemic assistance including rental aid and the&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/monthly-child-payments-poverty-bd4643ad09e6986ef4b526ebd5a3272b">expanded Child Tax Credit</a>&nbsp;are still widely available, untold millions of Americans will face Labor Day with a suddenly shrunken social safety net.“This will be a double whammy of hardship,” said Jamie Contreras, secretary-treasurer of the SEIU, a union that represents custodians in office buildings and food service workers in airports. “We’re not anywhere near done. People still need help. ... For millions of people nothing has changed from a year and a half ago.”For Taboniar, 43, that means her unemployment benefits will completely disappear — even as her work hours vanish again. A fresh virus surge prompted&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/health-coronavirus-pandemic-honolulu-6753de40faf5e667bb070ac4a8ed64c1">Hawaii’s governor to recommend&nbsp;</a>that vacationers delay their plans.“It’s really scaring me,” she said. “How can I pay rent if I don’t have unemployment and my job isn’t back?”She’s planning to apply for the newly expanded SNAP assistance program, better known as food stamps, but doubts that will be enough to make up the difference. “I’m just grasping for anything,” she said.President Joe Biden’s administration believes the U.S. economy is strong enough not to be rattled by evictions or the drop in unemployment benefits. Officials maintain that other elements of the safety net, like the Child Tax Credit and the SNAP program (which Biden permanently boosted earlier this summer) are enough to smooth things over. On Friday, a White House spokesperson said there were no plans to reevaluate the end of the unemployment benefits.“Twenty-two-trillion-dollar economies work in no small part on momentum and we have strong momentum going in the right direction on behalf of the American workforce,” said Jared Bernstein, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.Labor Secretary Marty Walsh said he believed the country’s labor force was ready for the shift.“Overall the economy is moving forward and recovering,” Walsh said in an interview. “I think the American economy and the American worker are in a better position going into Labor Day 2021 than they were on Labor Day 2020.”Walsh and others point to encouraging job numbers; as of Friday the unemployment rate was&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/business-health-pandemics-coronavirus-pandemic-jobless-claims-382a89695d83991a42f23e8da3fe7fa9">down to a fairly healthy 5.2%</a>. But Andrew Stettler, a senior fellow with the Century Foundation, a left-leaning think tank, says the end of the expanded unemployment benefits is still coming too early.Rather than setting an arbitrary deadline, Stettler says the administration should have tied the end of the the protections to specific economic recovery metrics. He suggests three consecutive months with nationwide unemployment below 5% as a reasonable benchmark to trigger the end of the unemployment benefits.“This does seem to be the wrong policy decision based on where we are,” Stettler said.The end to these protections while the economic crisis persists could have a devastating impact on lower-middle class families that were barely holding on through the pandemic. Potentially millions of people “will have a more difficult time regaining the foothold in the middle class that they lost,” Stettler said.Biden and the Democrats who control Congress are at a crossroads, allowing the aid to expire as they focus instead on his more sweeping “build back better” package of infrastructure and other spending. The $3.5 trillion proposal would rebuild many of the safety net programs, but it faces hurdles in the closely divided Congress.In the meantime, families will have to make do.“These are two very important things that are expiring. There’s no doubt that there will be families impacted by their expiration and that they will have additional hardship,” Sharon Parrott, the president of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, said in an interview.The COVID-19 response has been sweeping in its size and scope, some $5 trillion in federal expenditures since the virus outbreak in 2020, an unprecedented undertaking.Congressional Republicans had supported some of the initial COVID-19 outlays, but voted lockstep against Biden’s $1.9 trillion recovery package earlier this year as unnecessary. Many argued against extending another round of unemployment aid, and Republicans vow to oppose Biden’s $3.5 trillion package lawmakers are expected to consider later this month.There are still multiple avenues of support available, although in some cases the actual delivery of that support has been problematic.States with higher levels of unemployment can use the $350 billion worth of aid they received from the relief package to expand their own jobless payments, as noted by an Aug. 19 letter by Walsh and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.Federal rental assistance funds remain available, though the money has been slow to get out the door, leaving the White House and lawmakers pushing state and local officials to disperse funds more quickly to both landlords and tenants.The investment bank Morgan Stanley estimated Thursday that the economy will grow at an annual pace of 2.9% in the third quarter, down sharply from its prior forecast of 6.5%. That decline largely reflects a pullback in federal aid spending and supply chain bottlenecks.And the economy still faces hurdles. Union officials says sectors like hotel housekeepers and office janitorial staffs have been the slowest to recover.“Our industry is the tip of the spear when it comes to COVID,” said D. Taylor, president of UNITE HERE, a union that represents hotel housekeepers — a field that is “primarily staffed by women and people of color.”Many of those housekeepers never returned to full employment even as Americans resumed traveling and hotel occupancy rates swelled over the summer.Taylor said several major hotel chains have moved to permanently cut down on labor costs by reducing levels of service under the guise of COVID. Taboniar’s hotel in Hawaii for example has shifted to cleaning rooms every five days unless the guest specifically requests otherwise in advance. Even as the hotel was at more than 90% occupancy in August, she was only employed for half her usual pre-pandemic number of days.The delta variant of the coronavirus also poses a challenge, threatening future school closures and the delay of plans to return workers to their offices.Walsh called the delta variant “an asterisk on everything.”The sudden lapse of a crucial element of the pandemic safety net has fueled calls for a re-evaluation of the entire unemployment benefits system. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the chairman of the Finance Committee, said in an interview it’s crucial that Congress modernizes the unemployment insurance system as part of the package.“It’s heartbreaking to know it didn’t have to be this way,” Wyden said.One of the changes he proposes is to have jobless benefits more linked to economic conditions, so they won’t expire in times of need. “We got to take the unemployment system into the 21st century,” he said.

 Pandemic safety nets ending impacting millions

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The U.S. Navy has identified five sailors who died when a helicopter crashed in the Pacific Ocean off of Southern California. 

The MH-60S helicopter crashed on Aug. 31 about 70 miles off San Diego during what the Navy says were routine flight operations. 

Those killed were identified Sunday as: Lt. Bradley Foster, a pilot from Oakhurst, California; Lt. Paul Fridley, a pilot from Annandale, Virginia; James Buriak from Salem, Virginia, who was a naval aircrewman 2nd Class; Hospital Corpsman 2nd Class Sarah Burns from Severna Park, Maryland; and Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Bailey Tucker from St. Louis, Missouri. 

The cause of the crash is under investigation.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The U.S. Navy has identified five sailors who died when a helicopter crashed in the Pacific Ocean off of Southern California. The MH-60S helicopter crashed on Aug. 31 about 70 miles off San Diego during what the Navy says were routine flight operations. Those killed were identified Sunday as: Lt. Bradley Foster, a pilot from Oakhurst, California; Lt. Paul Fridley, a pilot from Annandale, Virginia; James Buriak from Salem, Virginia, who was a naval aircrewman 2nd Class; Hospital Corpsman 2nd Class Sarah Burns from Severna Park, Maryland; and Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Bailey Tucker from St. Louis, Missouri. The cause of the crash is under investigation.

US Navy IDs 5 killed in helicopter crash off California

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Authorities say they are investigating the homicide of a 28-year-old man in an apartment in Lincoln, Nebraska. 

The Lincoln Police Department said in a news release that officers responding to a report of a shooting at about 7:19 a.m. Sunday found the man suffering from apparent gunshot wounds. 

He succumbed to his injuries despite medical intervention. 

Investigators are interviewing a witness and will be at the scene throughout the day collecting evidence. 

Police say further information will be released Tuesday.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Authorities say they are investigating the homicide of a 28-year-old man in an apartment in Lincoln, Nebraska. The Lincoln Police Department said in a news release that officers responding to a report of a shooting at about 7:19 a.m. Sunday found the man suffering from apparent gunshot wounds. He succumbed to his injuries despite medical intervention. Investigators are interviewing a witness and will be at the scene throughout the day collecting evidence. Police say further information will be released Tuesday.

Lincoln police investigating shooting that killed man in apartment

News Release Nebraska State Patrol

LINCOLN, Neb.-One person has been arrested after a multi-vehicle crash that claimed the lives of two people Saturday morning in Lincoln.

The crash occurred at approximately 9:25 a.m. Saturday on Interstate 80 near the 27th&nbsp;Street interchange in Lincoln. Units from the Nebraska State Patrol, Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office, Lincoln Police Department, and Lincoln Fire and Rescue all responded to the scene. The crash involved eight vehicles that were all traveling westbound on Interstate 80.

After preliminary investigation, investigators believe a semi, driven by Yorkwind Crawford, 50, of North Miami Beach, Florida, rear-ended another vehicle east of the 27th&nbsp;Street interchange. The semi then continued driving westbound for more than a mile and struck several other passenger vehicles west of the 27th&nbsp;Street interchange.&nbsp;

A father and son, traveling together in a Chevrolet Colorado pickup, were both killed in the crash west of 27th&nbsp;Street. The victims have been identified as Mark Kaipust, 41, and Taylor Kaipust, 7, of La Vista. Five other people were transported to Bryan Health West Campus with non-life-threatening injuries.

Investigators believe speed and inattention were the primary causes of the crash. The driver of the semi, Yorkwind Crawford, has been arrested for two counts of motor vehicle homicide. He was lodged in Lancaster County Jail. The crash remains under investigation.

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2021/9/1630874375620.png" alt="Crawford" />
 <figcaption>Crawford</figcaption>
 </figure>News Release Nebraska State PatrolLINCOLN, Neb.-One person has been arrested after a multi-vehicle crash that claimed the lives of two people Saturday morning in Lincoln.The crash occurred at approximately 9:25 a.m. Saturday on Interstate 80 near the 27th&nbsp;Street interchange in Lincoln. Units from the Nebraska State Patrol, Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office, Lincoln Police Department, and Lincoln Fire and Rescue all responded to the scene. The crash involved eight vehicles that were all traveling westbound on Interstate 80.After preliminary investigation, investigators believe a semi, driven by Yorkwind Crawford, 50, of North Miami Beach, Florida, rear-ended another vehicle east of the 27th&nbsp;Street interchange. The semi then continued driving westbound for more than a mile and struck several other passenger vehicles west of the 27th&nbsp;Street interchange.&nbsp;A father and son, traveling together in a Chevrolet Colorado pickup, were both killed in the crash west of 27th&nbsp;Street. The victims have been identified as Mark Kaipust, 41, and Taylor Kaipust, 7, of La Vista. Five other people were transported to Bryan Health West Campus with non-life-threatening injuries.Investigators believe speed and inattention were the primary causes of the crash. The driver of the semi, Yorkwind Crawford, has been arrested for two counts of motor vehicle homicide. He was lodged in Lancaster County Jail. The crash remains under investigation.

Florida man arrested in crash that killed father, son in Lincoln

WASHINGTON (AP) — The government is collaborating on a <a href="https://www.getctc.org/en">new internet site</a> to help more Americans apply for and receive the expanded child tax credit, a monthly payment of as much as $300 per child that was part of the coronavirus relief package.

<a href="https://www.getctc.org/en" target="_blank">GetCTC.org</a>&nbsp;was developed by Code for America in collaboration with the White House and Treasury Department, according to a statement Wednesday. The goal is to provide a straight-forward, online form that can be accessible via mobile phones for people who are not legally obligated to file taxes to apply for the tax credit because they don’t earn enough money.

“Our research really shows the simpler you make the process, the more likely people are going to actually successfully make it through,” David Newville, senior program director for tax benefits at Code for America, said in an interview.

Based on a demonstration provided to The Associated Press, it’s possible for a parent to complete the form over the course of just 20 or 25 slides. Code for America has in the past worked with more than 100 partner organizations to help people prepare tax returns. The government previously estimated that at least 88% of children were already able to receive the tax credit when payments began in July.

President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion in COVID-19 aid included an expansion of the child tax credit, extending it to families without any tax obligations. Parents of a child under the age of 6 can receive $3,600 annually, some of which can be paid out monthly at $300. Each child from the age of 6 to 17 qualifies for $3,000 annually, or $250 per month.

The expanded child tax credit is set to lapse after a year, though Biden has proposed extending it through 2025 and would like it to be made permanent.

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2021/9/1630512415006.png" alt="" />
 <figcaption></figcaption>
 </figure>WASHINGTON (AP) — The government is collaborating on a <a href="https://www.getctc.org/en">new internet site</a> to help more Americans apply for and receive the expanded child tax credit, a monthly payment of as much as $300 per child that was part of the coronavirus relief package.<a href="https://www.getctc.org/en" target="_blank">GetCTC.org</a>&nbsp;was developed by Code for America in collaboration with the White House and Treasury Department, according to a statement Wednesday. The goal is to provide a straight-forward, online form that can be accessible via mobile phones for people who are not legally obligated to file taxes to apply for the tax credit because they don’t earn enough money.“Our research really shows the simpler you make the process, the more likely people are going to actually successfully make it through,” David Newville, senior program director for tax benefits at Code for America, said in an interview.Based on a demonstration provided to The Associated Press, it’s possible for a parent to complete the form over the course of just 20 or 25 slides. Code for America has in the past worked with more than 100 partner organizations to help people prepare tax returns. The government previously estimated that at least 88% of children were already able to receive the tax credit when payments began in July.President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion in COVID-19 aid included an expansion of the child tax credit, extending it to families without any tax obligations. Parents of a child under the age of 6 can receive $3,600 annually, some of which can be paid out monthly at $300. Each child from the age of 6 to 17 qualifies for $3,000 annually, or $250 per month.The expanded child tax credit is set to lapse after a year, though Biden has proposed extending it through 2025 and would like it to be made permanent.

New online site helps you get child tax credit

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — The Lincoln Public School district has settled a lawsuit filed by a woman who said she wasn't hired for special education teaching positions because she is disabled. 

Rachel Veenendaal is partially paralyzed and uses crutches. 

Lincoln Public Schools said it agreed to pay Veenendaal $300,000 to avoid the cost of litigation but it denied any wrongdoing. 

Veenandaal was a substitute who was offered a job as a part-time special education teacher in May 2017.

 She said she was told by district officials that she was a hazard on crutches and her disability would endanger children.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — The Lincoln Public School district has settled a lawsuit filed by a woman who said she wasn't hired for special education teaching positions because she is disabled. Rachel Veenendaal is partially paralyzed and uses crutches. Lincoln Public Schools said it agreed to pay Veenendaal $300,000 to avoid the cost of litigation but it denied any wrongdoing. Veenandaal was a substitute who was offered a job as a part-time special education teacher in May 2017. She said she was told by district officials that she was a hazard on crutches and her disability would endanger children.

Lincoln schools settle disabled woman's discrimination suit

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A 20-year-old Lincoln man has pleaded no contest for unintentionally shooting and killing his friend and roommate last year. 

Zachariah Serna accepted the plea deal on a manslaughter charge Friday in the death of 20-year-old Gavin Hall on July 4, 2020. 

Prosecutors said Serna told them he and Hall were struggling over the gun when it went off. But prosecutors said a blood spatter expert would testify at trial that Hall and Serna were at least 4 feet apart when the gun went fired. 

Serna currently is out of jail on $50,000 bond and faces up to 20 years in prison at his sentencing in October.

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2021/9/1630861387714.png" alt="Serna" />
 <figcaption>Serna</figcaption>
 </figure>LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A 20-year-old Lincoln man has pleaded no contest for unintentionally shooting and killing his friend and roommate last year. Zachariah Serna accepted the plea deal on a manslaughter charge Friday in the death of 20-year-old Gavin Hall on July 4, 2020. Prosecutors said Serna told them he and Hall were struggling over the gun when it went off. But prosecutors said a blood spatter expert would testify at trial that Hall and Serna were at least 4 feet apart when the gun went fired. Serna currently is out of jail on $50,000 bond and faces up to 20 years in prison at his sentencing in October.

Lincoln man pleads no contest in shooting death of friend

Nancy Campos’ back ached as she loaded more than 100 Amazon packages onto her truck. The 59-year-old grandmother, a mail carrier for the U.S. Postal Service, had worked 13 days in a row without a lunch break, and now she was delivering on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday to keep up with a never-ending flow of boxes.

At the end of her shift that January day, Campos filled out her time sheet. Then she took a picture of it — for proof.

“I knew what was going to happen,” said Campos, who delivers mail in Midland, Texas, “because it happens every pay period.”

Two weeks later, when she checked her paystub in the payroll system, she said she was missing six hours of overtime pay. That added up to about $201 in lost wages — a week’s worth of groceries.

Postal workers across the country share her frustration.

The Postal Service regularly cheats mail carriers out of their pay, according to a Center for Public Integrity investigation. Managers at hundreds of post offices around the country have illegally underpaid hourly workers for years, arbitrators and federal investigators have found.

Private arbitration records tell part of the story. From 2010 to 2019, at least 250 managers in 60 post offices were caught changing mail carriers’ time cards to show them working fewer hours, resulting in unpaid wages, according to a batch of arbitration award summaries obtained by Public Integrity for cases filed by one of the three major postal unions.

Supervisors found to be cheating were rarely disciplined — often receiving only a warning or more training. In four cities, arbitration documents show, post office managers continued to alter time cards after promising union leaders they would stop.

Since 2005, meanwhile, the Postal Service has been cited by the federal government 1,150 times for underpaying letter carriers and other employees, including one case that involved 164 violations, according to Labor Department data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. The agency determined that those workers lost about $659,000 in pay. But it allowed the Postal Service to pay back less than half after negotiations with the agency — a common practice at the Labor Department. About 19% of the cases did not indicate whether the Postal Service paid back employees.

These findings point to widespread wage theft at the iconic quasi-governmental institution. Yet they offer only a partial view of the problem. Not captured are any arbitration cases filed by other postal unions or wage theft grievances settled before reaching arbitration.

Cases keep cropping up as the Postal Service struggles to pay off $188 billion in debt and unfunded liabilities, accrued largely because federal law requires it to prepay retiree healthcare and pension benefits. The agency has cut nearly 142,000 jobs since 2007, and in March 2020, it needed a $10 billion emergency loan from Congress to help pay its bills.

Mail carriers say their supervisors face intense pressure to keep overtime costs down. At the same time, pandemic-fueled spikes in online ordering are overwhelming mail carriers with packages. And they can’t count on getting paid for all their work.

A spokesperson for the Postal Service, David Partenheimer, said the agency does not condone supervisors making unsupported timecard adjustments and takes such allegations seriously.

“This position is messaged to the postal workforce directly from postal leaders, including the Vice President, Delivery Operations, who periodically reissues policies regarding appropriate timecard administration for supervisors,” Partenheimer wrote in an email to Public Integrity. He declined to comment on specific cases.

Campos said the agency still owes her thousands of dollars for two other wage theft grievances they settled before she discovered the missing overtime pay in January. She said her boss promised to pay her back for working the holiday but never did.

“I just had it. Enough is enough,” said Campos, who shared copies of her timesheets and pay stubs with Public Integrity. “We are depending on that money. When you get shorted, it’s the most horrible feeling.”

Every morning, Campos and thousands of other mail carriers across the United States swipe their badges at a local post office to clock in for work. They sort mail for their routes, check undelivered items and load up their trucks. They swipe their badge a few more times when they begin and end their delivery route and other tasks, and once again when they’re done for the day.

All of this is supposed to happen within an eight-hour shift for most carriers. That’s because the Postal Service doesn’t want to pay overtime, which is 50% extra per hour under federal law. The inspector general has repeatedly admonished the post office for spending billions of dollars in overtime each year and has urged managers to cut back.

But mail carriers say it’s impossible to get back in time. After all, the Postal Service is notoriously short-staffed at a time when carriers are delivering a record number of packages. In 2019 alone, they delivered 1.5 billion items for Amazon — nearly a third of the online retailer’s packages.

That means carriers log a lot of extra hours. And it’s not uncommon for managers to go into the system and delete some of them. Sometimes their changes show carriers ending their shifts earlier or taking an unpaid lunch break, according to Public Integrity’s review of private arbitration decisions maintained by the National Association of Letter Carriers, a labor union with nearly 290,000 members — about 45% of the agency’s total workforce.

In most of these cases, managers did not submit the required paperwork to explain the changes or notify the affected employee. Other times, supervisors just told carriers to clock out after eight hours and keep working without pay.

That happened regularly to Maverick Tran and some of his colleagues in San Jose, California, according to a 2019 decision by an independent arbitrator.

Tran told the arbitrator — who acts like a judge in this type of legal dispute — that two supervisors often told him to manually clock out at 6 p.m. if he was running late while delivering the mail.

“I still haven’t unloaded my truck or empty out anything, but I would be off the clock,” he said during a closed-door hearing at the main San Jose post office.

A co-worker said managers would regularly clock him out themselves before he returned to the station. Another carrier said they instructed him to punch out before the end of his shift to avoid “unauthorized overtime.”

One of those co-workers, Rafael Zambrano-Lay, said he was so scared about returning to his post office past 6 p.m. that he would skip meals, forego rest breaks and run while carrying mail to customers’ homes.

Zambrano-Lay did not respond to a request for comment and Tran declined to discuss the case.

Their union representative told the arbitrator that nearly every supervisor in San Jose’s 12 post offices had improperly manipulated employee hours each week for at least three years. In an eight-month period in 2017, the union found that these unauthorized changes shorted mail carriers out of 77 regular hours and 1,864 overtime hours, collectively costing them anywhere from $52,000 to $90,000 in lost wages.

In the arbitration hearing, a Postal Service representative did not explain why managers changed carriers’ time cards. He said the behavior was not widespread.

Nancy Hutt, the arbitrator, disagreed. After reviewing time cards for 240 mail carriers in San Jose, Hutt said she grew alarmed. The data “reflects a widespread practice by management of willfully and repetitively deleting and altering time records of Letter Carriers,” she wrote in her decision.

Other arbitrators expressed similar shock when reviewing such allegations.

“Heinous,” an arbitrator in Nashville, Tennessee, wrote in 2018 when presented with evidence that a manager deleted carriers’ work hours. “It’s an act, in my view, on the same level as theft.”

In Boston, arbitrator Katherine Morgan called the pattern of wage theft “systemic” and “egregious.” In a 2019 decision, she described the time card changes as serious federal offenses “which cannot be treated lightly, and which could lead to fines and even imprisonment.”

In all, arbitrators found that postal managers in at least nine states illegally altered mail carriers’ time cards in recent years, cheating more than 900 mail carriers out of pay. They ordered the Postal Service to stop falsifying time cards and pay back employees they cheated.

“It’s hard to believe,” said Jennifer Williams, a former mail carrier in the Atlanta area. “This is a government job. Nobody should go to work and wonder if they’re going to get paid.”

Williams, 36, said co-workers warned her to keep track of her hours when she was hired as a mail carrier in February 2020. She said she didn’t get her first paycheck and had to file a grievance with the union to get paid. When her second paycheck arrived, Williams said, she was missing five hours of overtime. Another supervisor told Williams that her boss had deleted the hours, according to a lawsuit she filed against the Postal Service in federal court.

When she brought up the missing overtime to her boss on the phone, she said her boss berated her. A few days later, Williams said the mail truck she was driving broke down and she was fired for not finishing her route. She sued in September 2020, claiming she was illegally fired for complaining about wage theft.

“I was really upset because I was depending on working at the post office to keep myself afloat,” said Williams, who said she had to take a low-paid job at a filter factory after she was fired.

Partenheimer, the Postal Service spokesperson, declined to comment on the lawsuit. But in court records, lawyers for the agency denied that a supervisor deleted Williams’ overtime hours or that she was fired for complaining about missing pay. Both parties settled the case in June, with the Postal Service agreeing to pay Williams $2,356 in damages and $3,143 in attorney’s fees.

Williams said she misses working for the post office. She once viewed the agency the same way thousands of other Black Americans have before her: as a stable job with good benefits and decent pay.

The Postal Service has long been one of the largest employers of African Americans in the United States. During the civil rights era, it was a place where Black workers could advance their careers without as many barriers as the private sector, said Frederick Gooding, an African American studies professor at Texas Christian University.

“The (Postal Service) was in many ways a beacon of hope and opportunity,” said Gooding, author of the book “American Dream Deferred: Black Federal Workers in Washington, D.C., 1941-1981.”

To this day, Black workers are overrepresented in the Postal Service. Though 12% of the overall U.S. workforce, they make up 19% of the agency’s mail carriers, 38% of its clerks and 31% of its mail handlers. Asians also represent a larger-than-average share of the postal workforce.

Wage theft within the agency might disproportionately harm these workers, but that’s unclear. Arbitration documents and Labor Department records don’t track each employee’s race or ethnicity. Yet the repeated paycheck theft tests the notion that the Postal Service is a desirable place to work.

“I would never have expected this from the post office,” said Campos, the Texas mail carrier. “This used to be an honorable job.”

Campos, who has worked as a carrier for three years, says she filed three grievances against her supervisors for unpaid work. They have since settled the complaints, she said, and management agreed to pay her a yet-to-be determined amount, including the extra hours she worked when delivering an “overburdened route” — a long one that regularly takes more time to finish than it’s supposed to.

Several of her co-workers are also waiting to be paid for similar reasons, she said, but she suspects that no one will be punished for ripping them off.

The arbitrator in the San Jose case told the Postal Service to pay employees what they’re owed. Tran, Zambrano-Lay and other carriers sued the agency in federal court a few months later. They want cash damages in addition to back pay. As of February, the Postal Service had paid back employees in that case a total of $570,000, attorneys for both sides reported to the court.

About two dozen employees gathered for a tense meeting at a San Antonio post office in February 2019. The station manager, Ruben Vela, was agitated. He told them that union outsiders were arriving to cause trouble.

When union steward Steven Ramirez showed up, Vela got in his face and berated him in front of everyone at the meeting, a witness said.

Ramirez had discovered that Vela and at least one other supervisor regularly deleted 25 employees’ work hours over a period of two years, according to an arbitration decision from later that year. In some cases, the arbitrator found, the other supervisor forged an employee’s initials approving the changes.

Employees who were at the 2019 meeting later said that Vela described the time card changes as a “simple mistake.”

Public Integrity was unable to reach Vela for comment.

Kirk Fraser, one of the mail carriers at the meeting, said he was devastated, according to the arbitration document. He called the practice an “immoral and egregious” breach of trust.