Carey L. Biron

Running U.S. elections has always been a complicated job for local officials, requiring the corralling of hundreds of volunteers, staying on top of ever-changing legal requirements, and now also combatting misinformation and disinformation.

Running elections "has become one of the most high-profile responsibilities that county government does," said Jennifer Liewer, deputy elections director for communications for Maricopa County in Arizona.

From pen and paper to AI and algorithms - the path to legal redress is growing faster for many poor Americans as artificial intelligence helps close a yawning U.S. justice gap.

Be it fighting evictions or domestic violence, the sort of bureaucratic logjam that often stymies low-income defendants could ease as AI bolsters overstretched legal aid teams once armed with little more than a lined, yellow pad.

When Asher first attended a Gamblers Anonymous meeting in 2022, only a dozen or so people were there, but now as many as 60 turn up with most newcomers dealing with addictions to online sports betting.

Asher, who asked that Context use a pseudonym to protect the privacy of his recovery group, was drawn into gambling by online poker.

Local government is getting into the U.S. grocery business - but can city officials ever hope to run a corner store the way Mom and Pop used to do?

With the demise of thousands of grocery shops - victims of hostile market forces that were hastened by the pandemic - "food deserts" have opened up and left many rural and urban neighbourhoods without good options.

Heat records have repeatedly been toppled in recent weeks, just when farms in some of the hottest parts of United States are at their busiest.

That has Lupe Gonzalo worried.

Across the United States, cities are seeking to tap into billions of dollars in new federal funding and create a "green jobs" industry that backers say holds the promise of creating entirely new local economies. 

The process is bringing together environmental and labour groups - long on opposing sides - and backers say it is now showing dividends that will extend far into the future.

It's a bird...it's a plane...no, it's an air taxi and it's coming in to land soon, prompting cities across the United States to get ready for airborne urban travel. 

Nobody yet knows exactly what an air taxi even is, how it might look or who will get to use it, but cities know it's on the way and want to be ready for takeoff.

What Auden Schendler calls the "Dr. Seuss machine" in his garage not only safeguards his home from the power outages that regularly strike his neighbours in the Colorado mountains, but in his view also helps others in his community and beyond.

"We have mudslides, fires, stores, ice storms, and the power goes down. But not my power," Schendler, 53, told Context.

A push for increased public ownership of electrical utilities and new opportunities for cities, states and nonprofits to get involved is helping propel a U.S. transition to green energy that puts local needs above private profits.

Interest in public power – its generation and distribution – has "exploded" in recent years, said Johanna Bozuwa, executive director with the Climate and Community Project think tank.

Nate Stone is dreading the next few weeks, when the digital inclusion work he has helped spearhead in Denver comes under sudden, serious threat.

Barring a last-minute save, this month a widely heralded federal programme to subsidise internet access for low-income and other households runs out of money – affecting more than 23 million people.