# Fox Watershed
> Local news and reporting from Winnebago to the mouth of the Fox. 
Public Ghost content for AI and LLM tooling. This file includes a bounded export of public pages first, then recent public posts.
Append `.md` to any post or page URL to get the content in Markdown (for example, `/example-post.md`).
## Pages
_No public content available._
## Posts
### Missouri's Congressional Map Flips Twice in One Afternoon
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/missouris-congressional-map-flips-twice-in-one-afternoon/
Last updated: 2026-09-09T02:35:48.000Z
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who fields emergency requests out of Missouri, turned down the state's bid to reinstate its Republican-drawn congressional map before the November midterms.¹ He didn't explain why, which is normal for these orders, but the denial left in place a unanimous Missouri Supreme Court ruling from last week.¹ That ruling found the state's new map, known as HB 1, never legally took effect because a valid referendum petition had blocked it.³

Minutes later, a different court reversed the outcome. Chief U.S. District Judge Stephen Clark, sitting in St. Louis, issued a 14-day restraining order requiring Missouri to use HB 1 after all.² He signed it seven minutes before the state's ballot deadline, in a separate lawsuit filed by Republican congressional candidates.² Clark's order noted Kavanaugh's denial directly.²

The fight over this map has run for nearly a year, and it isn't close to over. Lawmakers passed HB 1 last September to reshape Rep. Emanuel Cleaver's Kansas City district, part of President Trump's push to get Republican-led states to redraw their maps outside the normal census cycle.³ Voters responded with more than 300,000 signatures demanding a referendum. Secretary of State Denny Hoskins rejected the petition anyway, on the same day as the state's primary in August.³ The state Supreme Court reversed him last week and called his rejection wrong.³

Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway said Tuesday the state would follow Clark's order rather than the state court's.² Gov. Mike Kehoe called it "much-needed clarity" for voters and candidates.⁴ Opponents of the map have already filed notice to appeal Clark's ruling to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The legal fight hasn't ended. It's just switched courtrooms.

Candidates who won their primaries in August ran under HB 1's district lines. Whether those lines survive to November now depends on a two-week clock and whatever the 8th Circuit does with it.

#### Sources & Credits

Photo by [Brittney Butler](https://unsplash.com/@britjanae?utm%5Fsource=ghost&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcampaign=api-credit) / [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/?utm%5Fsource=ghost&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcampaign=api-credit)

1. [Supreme Court rejects Missouri Republicans' request to use new congressional map](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/rejects-missouri-republicans-request-use-new-congressional-map-midterm-rcna596454?ref=foxwatershed.com)
2. [Federal judge revives Missouri GOP gerrymander right after Supreme Court rejects state's emergency bid](https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/federal-judge-revives-missouri-gop-gerrymander-right-after-supreme-court-rejects-states-emergency-bid/?ref=foxwatershed.com)
3. [Missouri court blocks Trump-backed US House map and orders it to be put to a vote](https://www.local10.com/news/politics/2026/09/03/missouri-court-blocks-trump-backed-us-house-map-and-orders-it-to-be-put-to-a-vote/?ref=foxwatershed.com)
4. [Temporary federal order tells Missouri to use redrawn voter map after SCOTUS declines to get involved](https://www.komu.com/news/state/missouri-redistricting-court-decisions-land-as-2026-ballot-deadline-passes/article%5Ff506b6ad-093f-47aa-b10b-42c1b8a9cabe.html?ref=foxwatershed.com)
### Anthropic IPO Coming Soon
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/anthropic-ipo-coming-soon/
Last updated: 2026-09-09T02:30:46.000Z
Anthropic is closing in on a $15 billion revolving credit facility, according to people familiar with the matter cited by Bloomberg.¹ That's one more box checked before the Claude maker's public listing. It's also six times the $2.5 billion line the company locked in last year, and well past the roughly $10 billion target reported back in August.² Morgan Stanley is leading the process. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Citigroup hold prominent roles too, and Bloomberg reports the same four banks are leading the IPO itself.¹

The ask is tiered. Anthropic's most active lenders are being asked for about $1.25 billion each, with a second tier around $1 billion and everyone else settling for $750 million or less.³ Barclays, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, Royal Bank of Canada, and UBS are all expected to join in, part of a syndicate that reportedly runs 17 banks deep.⁶ The whole setup borrows from SpaceX, which grew its own revolver from $1.5 billion to $5 billion in May, about a month before it went public.⁵ That IPO raised $75 billion and priced the company at $1.77 trillion, the biggest debut in market history.⁴ Anthropic is reportedly hoping to match that number or top it.⁵

The banks have reasons to line up. Anthropic's annualized revenue crossed $65 billion in August, more than seven times where it sat at the end of 2025.⁶ It was running at $14 billion when the company closed its $30 billion Series G in February, then jumped to $47 billion by the time a $65 billion Series H round pushed its valuation to $965 billion in May.⁷ ⁸ Some investors are already floating a public valuation north of $2 trillion.⁵

The timeline has shifted right alongside the financing. Reuters reported Friday that Anthropic's IPO marketing won't start before mid-October, with the listing landing just days ahead of the November midterms.⁹ Anthropic says it's using the extra weeks to finish financing and paperwork, not because anything about the plan has changed. Neither the company nor its banks have confirmed a date publicly.⁹

The $15 billion facility is small change next to what Anthropic is actually spending. It has committed more than $100 billion to Amazon Web Services over the next decade for compute, and it's reportedly negotiating a five-year Google Cloud deal worth close to $200 billion.¹⁰ ¹¹ Meanwhile OpenAI is weighing broad price cuts to slow Anthropic's enterprise gains, and DeepSeek has permanently slashed its own token prices by 75 percent.¹² Anthropic hasn't followed all the way down. Its top model, Opus, still runs $5 and $25 per million tokens, several times DeepSeek's cheapest rate.¹³

#### Sources & Credits

Photo by [Brecht Corbeel](https://unsplash.com/@brechtcorbeel?utm%5Fsource=ghost&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcampaign=api-credit) / [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/?utm%5Fsource=ghost&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcampaign=api-credit)

Sources

1. [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-03/anthropic-nears-finalizing-15-billion-pre-ipo-credit-facility](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-03/anthropic-nears-finalizing-15-billion-pre-ipo-credit-facility?ref=foxwatershed.com)
2. [https://www.techtimes.com/articles/326608/20260904/anthropic-15b-credit-line-banks-commit-1b-plus-each-lock-ipo-roles.htm](https://www.techtimes.com/articles/326608/20260904/anthropic-15b-credit-line-banks-commit-1b-plus-each-lock-ipo-roles.htm?ref=foxwatershed.com)
3. [https://theedgemalaysia.com/node/816841](https://theedgemalaysia.com/node/816841?ref=foxwatershed.com)
4. [https://cdapress.com/news/2026/jun/03/spacexs-ipo-is-set-to-be-the-biggest-ever-and-could-make-elon-musk-a-trillionaire/](https://cdapress.com/news/2026/jun/03/spacexs-ipo-is-set-to-be-the-biggest-ever-and-could-make-elon-musk-a-trillionaire/?ref=foxwatershed.com)
5. [https://qz.com/anthropic-15-billion-credit-facility-ipo-090426](https://qz.com/anthropic-15-billion-credit-facility-ipo-090426?ref=foxwatershed.com)
6. [https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmarkman/2026/09/07/anthropic-delays-ipo-to-mid-october-locks-in-15-billion-credit-line/](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmarkman/2026/09/07/anthropic-delays-ipo-to-mid-october-locks-in-15-billion-credit-line/?ref=foxwatershed.com)
7. [https://www.longtermwiki.com/wiki/E405](https://www.longtermwiki.com/wiki/E405?ref=foxwatershed.com)
8. [https://www.techmarketview.com/ukhotviews/archive/2026/05/29/anthropic-closes-in-on-a-trillion-dollar-valuation](https://www.techmarketview.com/ukhotviews/archive/2026/05/29/anthropic-closes-in-on-a-trillion-dollar-valuation?ref=foxwatershed.com)
9. [https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/05/anthropic-ipo-launch-shifts-toward-mid-october-reuters.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/05/anthropic-ipo-launch-shifts-toward-mid-october-reuters.html?ref=foxwatershed.com)
10. [https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-amazon-compute?cam=claude](https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-amazon-compute?cam=claude&ref=foxwatershed.com)
11. [https://letsdatascience.com/blog/anthropic-200-billion-google-cloud-five-year-commitment-may-5](https://letsdatascience.com/blog/anthropic-200-billion-google-cloud-five-year-commitment-may-5?ref=foxwatershed.com)
12. [https://decrypt.co/370854/openai-price-war-anthropic-deepseek-china?amp=1](https://decrypt.co/370854/openai-price-war-anthropic-deepseek-china?amp=1&ref=foxwatershed.com)
13. [https://thenextweb.com/news/deepseek-v4-pro-75-percent-price-cut-permanent](https://thenextweb.com/news/deepseek-v4-pro-75-percent-price-cut-permanent?ref=foxwatershed.com)
### Merge Urban Development Group Counter-sues City
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/merge-urban-development-group-counter-sues-city/
Last updated: 2026-09-09T02:17:14.000Z
The Iowa firm filed its formal answer to the city's lawsuit late Monday, denying it defaulted on the riverfront development deal and arguing the site was never "build ready" to begin with.¹

Green Bay and its Redevelopment Authority sued Merge in Brown County Circuit Court on July 23, claiming the developer defaulted back in March on an agreement to build a mixed-use apartment complex along the Fox River.² The suit says Merge never lined up financing, never broke ground, and never hit the assessed-value benchmark the deal required, even after the city gave written notice and multiple chances to fix it. The city wants its 5.6-acre property back, plus damages.²

The deal goes back to 2021, when the city council approved Merge's plan for a $21 million, 225-unit project with ground-floor retail.⁴ Green Bay sold the land for a single dollar after sinking more than $1 million into site prep, betting the project would add at least $15 million in new taxable value.³ Construction was supposed to start in 2022 and wrap by the end of 2025\. Neither happened, and the deadline got pushed twice before the city and Merge started arguing over a third extension this past February.⁵

Merge's response points the finger right back at City Hall. The filing says the city and RDA never finished redesigning Arndt Street, one of the roads bordering the site, and never delivered final grading plans showing how the property connects to it.¹ Under the 2021 agreement, those street upgrades were the city's job, not Merge's.⁴ Merge says that left the firm holding a lot it couldn't build on, and it's now counter-suing for $671,173.02 in costs it blames on the delay, tallied through mid-June.¹

Merge wants the case dismissed. The city hasn't filed its reply yet, and no hearing is on the calendar. The rest of the Shipyard site isn't waiting around for the lawyers. The council voted Aug. 18 to award 8Pine a $13.35 million contract for the project's second phase, a park with a dog park, splash pad and river overlook.⁶ Looks like the picnic tables might beat the apartments to the finish line.

#### Sources & Credits

📷 [Michael Barera](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Green%5FBay%5FJuly%5F2024%5F089%5F%28Green%5FBay%5FCity%5FHall%29.jpg?ref=foxwatershed.com), [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0?ref=foxwatershed.com), via Wikimedia Commons

1. [https://fox11online.com/news/local/shipyard-development-civil-lawsuit-merge-response-city-green-bay-delays-waterfront-mixed-use](https://fox11online.com/news/local/shipyard-development-civil-lawsuit-merge-response-city-green-bay-delays-waterfront-mixed-use?ref=foxwatershed.com)
2. [https://fox11online.com/news/local/green-bay-sues-developer-after-years-of-shipyard-delays-and-another-extension-request-fox-river-mason-street-merge-urban-development-redevelopment-apartment](https://fox11online.com/news/local/green-bay-sues-developer-after-years-of-shipyard-delays-and-another-extension-request-fox-river-mason-street-merge-urban-development-redevelopment-apartment?ref=foxwatershed.com)
3. [https://www.wbay.com/2026/07/24/city-green-bay-suing-developer-over-riverfront-development-construction-delays/](https://www.wbay.com/2026/07/24/city-green-bay-suing-developer-over-riverfront-development-construction-delays/?ref=foxwatershed.com)
4. [https://gopresstimes.com/2021/05/26/agreement-for-shipyard-apartments-approved-in-green-bay/](https://gopresstimes.com/2021/05/26/agreement-for-shipyard-apartments-approved-in-green-bay/?ref=foxwatershed.com)
5. [https://wislawjournal.com/2026/07/27/green-bay-sues-developer-over-stalled-shipyard-project/](https://wislawjournal.com/2026/07/27/green-bay-sues-developer-over-stalled-shipyard-project/?ref=foxwatershed.com)
6. [https://dailyreporter.com/2026/08/19/8pine-awarded-contract-green-bay-shipyard-park-phase-two/](https://dailyreporter.com/2026/08/19/8pine-awarded-contract-green-bay-shipyard-park-phase-two/?ref=foxwatershed.com)
### Menasha Pulls the Plug on Flock, Neenah Looks Ready to Follow
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/menasha-pulls-the-plug-on-flock-neenah-looks-ready-to-follow/
Last updated: 2026-09-02T10:06:35.000Z
Mayor Austin Hammond ordered every Flock license plate reader in the city covered by the end of the day, then said he'll ask the city council to kill the contract outright at a meeting later this month.¹ He blamed privacy, saying there's a real concern over "how the data is accessed and shared."¹ The Menasha Police Department tried bolting on extra safeguards earlier this year. It wasn't enough to keep Hammond on board.

The timing isn't exactly subtle. Two weeks ago, a judge sentenced former Menasha officer Cristian Morales to six months in jail for misconduct in office after he used the department's Flock account to track his ex-girlfriend's car five times over one week in October.³ Morales pleaded no contest. The judge rejected a plea deal that called for half that time, fined him $250, and barred him from law enforcement work or touching a Flock system again.³ He's serving the sentence now and this week lost a bid to stay out of jail while his appeal plays out.⁴

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Neenah's next in line. Police Chief Aaron Olson said Tuesday he'll recommend the city council end its Flock contract too, though he's declining interviews until the council actually votes. He wants the process kept "clean, orderly, and respectful of the Council's role," as he put it in an email to reporters.¹ Neenah residents have been raising privacy concerns about the cameras for months.²

Grand Chute got there first. The town finished swapping Flock for a rival vendor, Axon, the same day Menasha covered its cameras, months after voting in June to walk away.¹ Police Chief David Maas said Flock had left the department with security concerns and cameras that kept breaking, while Axon promised more transparency on how the data gets used.¹ Appleton ended its own Flock contract in May and shut the cameras off by the end of June. Oshkosh rescinded its contract too, joining the same wave over privacy concerns.²

Grand Chute isn't necessarily solving the problem by switching, though. The American Civil Liberties Union said this week that Flock's rivals aren't much better. Axon and Motorola run the same kind of AI-powered plate scanning, and the ACLU argued that swapping vendors "won't necessarily solve any of the privacy and other civil liberties problems" that got Flock kicked out of so many cities in the first place.⁵ Axon does at least run its data sharing on a smaller scale. In Boston's pilot program, Axon blocked officers from pulling data captured by its cameras in other cities, a real contrast to Flock's sprawling nationwide network.⁵

That narrower reach doesn't erase every concern. Axon still bundles its plate readers with Tasers, body cameras, and cloud contracts built to run for years, the kind of deal that makes it harder for a city to walk away later.⁵ The company also holds its own multimillion-dollar contracts with the Department of Homeland Security, separate from anything Flock has going.⁵ Grand Chute's Chief Maas said the switch respects residents' privacy more than Flock did. Maybe so, but there is no evidence to show they are any different than Flock. Regardless of the company behind the lens, if the goal is creating mass-collecting information, organizations like the ACLU will object to their existence and rightfully claim violations of the 4th amendment.⁶

#### Sources & Credits

📸 [User:Royalbroil](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Menasha%5Ftown%5FTownhall.jpg?ref=foxwatershed.com), [CC BY-SA 2.5](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5?ref=foxwatershed.com), via Wikimedia Commons

1. [https://fox11online.com/news/local/menasha-mayor-calls-to-terminate-flock-contract-neenah-seeking-similar-actions](https://fox11online.com/news/local/menasha-mayor-calls-to-terminate-flock-contract-neenah-seeking-similar-actions?ref=foxwatershed.com)
2. [https://www.nbc26.com/news/local-news/in-your-neighborhood/menasha/2-more-fox-valley-cities-move-to-drop-flock-cameras-over-privacy-concerns](https://www.nbc26.com/news/local-news/in-your-neighborhood/menasha/2-more-fox-valley-cities-move-to-drop-flock-cameras-over-privacy-concerns?ref=foxwatershed.com)
3. [https://wtaq.com/2026/08/17/judge-rejects-plea-deal-gives-ex-menasha-officer-6-months-for-tracking-ex-with-flock/](https://wtaq.com/2026/08/17/judge-rejects-plea-deal-gives-ex-menasha-officer-6-months-for-tracking-ex-with-flock/?ref=foxwatershed.com)
4. [https://fox11online.com/news/local/former-officer-denied-bid-to-stay-out-of-jail-during-appeal-of-misconduct-verdict](https://fox11online.com/news/local/former-officer-denied-bid-to-stay-out-of-jail-during-appeal-of-misconduct-verdict?ref=foxwatershed.com)
5. [https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/08/27/business/axon-motorola-boston-flock/](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/08/27/business/axon-motorola-boston-flock/?ref=foxwatershed.com)
6. [https://epic.org/vehicle-fingerprinting-through-pervasive-camera-surveillance-likely-violates-fourth-amendment-court-finds/](https://epic.org/vehicle-fingerprinting-through-pervasive-camera-surveillance-likely-violates-fourth-amendment-court-finds/?ref=foxwatershed.com)
### Oniatari:io
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/oniatari-io/
Last updated: 2026-08-30T12:40:22.000Z
President Trump signed an executive order Thursday renaming Lake Ontario "Lake America," his latest jab in a trade war with Canada that collapsed into open hostility last week.¹ The order tells the Interior Department to update federal maps and databases within 30 days, the same 30-day playbook Trump used last year on the Gulf of Mexico.² It has zero legal reach north of the border. Canada, and everyone else, is free to keep calling the lake whatever it's called it for the last several hundred years.

Trump signed the order in the Oval Office next to two poster boards spelling out the new name, telling reporters the change was "something I've been thinking about for a long time."² He blamed Canada for years of what he called unfair trade treatment and offered no deeper message behind the timing. He'd floated the idea for days, ever since talks between Washington and Ottawa broke down and spilled into a public spat with Ontario Premier Doug Ford.³ Ford called him a bully. Trump kept going.³

The order also makes a factual claim worth a second look. It argues that because most of the lake's deepest water sits on the American side, the U.S. effectively holds the bigger share of Lake Ontario's total volume.⁴ That's not how the boundary is usually described. The international line runs through the center of the lake, splitting it close to evenly, and while the deepest basin does sit nearer the Rochester, New York shore, proximity alone doesn't add up to a volume majority.⁵ Neither the order nor the Interior Department has published any math to back the assertion up.

The name just erased from federal use predates the government doing the erasing by well over a century. People lived along Lake Ontario's north shore for something like 11,000 years before any of this became a border dispute, and the Wendat built a homeland there that lasted until Iroquois raids pushed them out in the 1640s.⁶ European mapmakers started writing "Ontario" onto their charts around 1641, borrowing the word from the Indigenous nations who'd been using it long before anyone drew a map at all.⁷

Exactly which language it came from is still argued over. The Chiefs of Ontario, a coalition of First Nations leaders, trace it to a Mohawk word, Oniatari:io, translated as "beautiful lake." Wyandotte linguists point instead to Wendat roots, where yǫtáreʔ means lake and 'io means great.⁸ Either way, the name has outlasted French colonization, British rule, and 250 years of American independence.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney made a version of that point within hours of the signing, writing that the name is "more than 400 years old, predating both the Confederation of Canada" and the country now trying to overwrite it.⁴ New York Governor Kathy Hochul was just as blunt back home. "New York won't be calling it that," she wrote, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the whole move juvenile.⁹

None of this is new territory for Trump. He renamed the Gulf of Mexico and swapped Denali back to Mount McKinley through the same kind of order last year, and outside a handful of U.S. agencies, most of the planet still calls the gulf what it's always called it.¹⁰

#### Sources & Credits

Photo: [Keith Pomakis](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lake%5FOntario%5FDusk.jpg?ref=foxwatershed.com), [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0?ref=foxwatershed.com), via Wikimedia Commons

1. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/08/27/trump-signs-order-changing-name-lake-ontario/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/08/27/trump-signs-order-changing-name-lake-ontario/?ref=foxwatershed.com)
2. [https://abcnews.com/Politics/trump-signs-executive-order-renaming-lake-ontario-lake/story?id=136009323](https://abcnews.com/Politics/trump-signs-executive-order-renaming-lake-ontario-lake/story?id=136009323&ref=foxwatershed.com)
3. [https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-lake-ontario-america-9.7322947](https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-lake-ontario-america-9.7322947?ref=foxwatershed.com)
4. [https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trump-orders-lake-ontario-renamed-lake-america-canada-trade-war-rcna594750](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trump-orders-lake-ontario-renamed-lake-america-canada-trade-war-rcna594750?ref=foxwatershed.com)
5. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake\_Ontario](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake%5FOntario?ref=foxwatershed.com)
6. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroquois\_settlement\_of\_the\_north\_shore\_of\_Lake\_Ontario](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroquois%5Fsettlement%5Fof%5Fthe%5Fnorth%5Fshore%5Fof%5FLake%5FOntario?ref=foxwatershed.com)
7. [https://www.museumofindigenouspeople.org/post/what-is-in-a-name-ontario](https://www.museumofindigenouspeople.org/post/what-is-in-a-name-ontario?ref=foxwatershed.com)
8. [https://ictnews.org/news/trump-calls-for-renaming-lake-ontario-to-lake-america/](https://ictnews.org/news/trump-calls-for-renaming-lake-ontario-to-lake-america/?ref=foxwatershed.com)
9. [https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2026/08/28/trump-s-lake-ontario-rename-draws-criticism-from-new-york-leaders](https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2026/08/28/trump-s-lake-ontario-rename-draws-criticism-from-new-york-leaders?ref=foxwatershed.com)
10. [https://theconversation.com/lake-ontario-to-lake-america-who-gets-to-decide-what-goes-on-maps-290698](https://theconversation.com/lake-ontario-to-lake-america-who-gets-to-decide-what-goes-on-maps-290698?ref=foxwatershed.com)
### Nepal Flash Floods
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/nepal-flash-floods/
Last updated: 2026-08-30T07:15:28.000Z
The death toll from Nepal's catastrophic flash floods passed 750 people by Sunday, with more than 3,000 still missing, as rescue crews raced against fresh flood warnings on the same rivers they've been searching for four straight days.

The disaster started Wednesday, Aug. 26, when a chunk of glacier near Langtang Lirung peak sheared off the mountainside along the Nepal-China border.¹ The collapse hit hard enough to register as a magnitude 5.2 seismic event, and the resulting mix of rock, ice, and meltwater tore down river valleys at roughly 120 miles per hour, wiping out bridges and entire settlements.¹ ²

Rescue work remains a slog four days later. Helicopter flights are grounded until the weather clears, and ground crews are still digging through feet of mud at a hydropower site in Rasuwa district, where officials believe more than 100 workers remain trapped in a flooded tunnel.¹ More than 3,700 people have been pulled out alive in Nepal so far.¹

0:00 

/1:09 

1× 

Video of the flash flood occurring. Taken from Nepalese CCTV

The rivers aren't finished causing trouble. A new lake formed upstream from debris left by the initial collapse and started overflowing Friday, forcing search teams to pull back.¹ ³ On Sunday, Nepali officials issued fresh warnings after water levels rose again on the Bhotekoshi River, sending alerts to residents' phones after Chinese authorities reported increased flow upstream, on their side of the border.⁴ In the town of Galchhi, residents climbed onto a bridge to watch the swollen Trishuli River roll past, pointing out boulders the first flood had carried downstream.⁴

Scientists are still working out exactly what triggered the collapse, but they point to a warming Hindu Kush Himalayan region, where roughly 78% of glacier area sits in an elevation band highly exposed to rising temperatures, worsened by a monsoon season that's already left the ground saturated.¹ ⁵ For now, the death toll keeps climbing and the missing count keeps shifting. Whether that barrier lake breaks again will decide how much worse this gets.

#### Sources & Credits

Photo: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

1. [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nepal-flash-flood-death-missing-americans-rescue/](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nepal-flash-flood-death-missing-americans-rescue/?ref=foxwatershed.com)
2. [https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/26/world/live-news/nepal-flash-flooding-floods-intl](https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/26/world/live-news/nepal-flash-flooding-floods-intl?ref=foxwatershed.com)
3. [https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/28/is-nepal-facing-another-devastating-flood-from-a-new-lake](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/28/is-nepal-facing-another-devastating-flood-from-a-new-lake?ref=foxwatershed.com)
4. [https://apnews.com/article/nepal-china-flood-galchhi-warning-afec20e612514ca3598c65b29f485303](https://apnews.com/article/nepal-china-flood-galchhi-warning-afec20e612514ca3598c65b29f485303?ref=foxwatershed.com)
5. [https://www.npr.org/2026/08/28/nx-s1-5945799/nepal-floods-climate-change-himalayas](https://www.npr.org/2026/08/28/nx-s1-5945799/nepal-floods-climate-change-himalayas?ref=foxwatershed.com)
### Round Two in Assembly District 90
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/round-two-in-assembly-district-90/
Last updated: 2026-09-01T19:54:45.000Z
Amaad Rivera-Wagner and Jessica Henderson are doing this again. Two years after Rivera-Wagner beat Henderson by 1,224 votes to win Wisconsin's 90th Assembly District, the two are back on the same ballot for the Nov. 3 general election.¹ Assembly District 90, which covers central Green Bay, has voted Democratic by comfortable margins across most of the past decade. Although there was significant redistricting, the margin in 2024 came in tighter than that history, which is worth a look before the two campaigns run it back.

## Amaad Rivera-Wagner

### Central Count

Rivera-Wagner's path to the Capitol runs through Green Bay City Hall. Born in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1981, he worked as a policy advisor to U.S. Sen. Ed Markey before landing in Wisconsin on Mayor Eric Genrich's staff.³ He was still fairly new to City Hall in November 2020 when he found himself in the middle of the most contested local election story in the country that year.

Rivera-Wagner helped coordinate logistics at Green Bay's central count, the single site where the city processed its absentee ballots, an operation that ballooned that year because of pandemic-driven mail voting.⁴ Organizing poll worker shifts usually make anyone famous. But this was November 2020, and Green Bay's central count became one of the handful of sites Trump allies pointed to as evidence the election had been stolen. Rivera-Wagner, the city Chief of Staff, with a visible role that night, became a specific target. He's said publicly that what followed included doxxing, stalking and death threats serious enough that his family needed police protection, and that people confronted his husband at work because they didn't believe he was real.⁵

City Attorney Vanessa Chavez spent months investigating what actually happened at central count, interviewing 22 city employees along with outside witnesses. Her 19-page memo, released in April 2021, found what nearly every serious inquiry into 2020 election claims in Wisconsin has found: nothing. "No issues affecting the integrity of the election have been found," she wrote.⁴ That should have settled it. It didn't.

Five years later, the same story is still trailing Rivera-Wagner into an election year, just from a different direction. In early June, Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Tiffany went on Milwaukee's WTMJ radio and ran through the old claims almost point for point: the outside grant money, an out-of-state operative who ended up holding keys to the ballot-counting room, an elected city clerk pushed to the side.⁶ It's the same narrative a 2021 Assembly hearing chased and the same one a state-funded investigation led by former Justice Michael Gableman spent months and millions of taxpayer dollars pursuing, before Gableman was fired and later disbarred without ever finding fraud.

Mayor Genrich fired back on social media, telling Tiffany to "keep our city's name out of your mouth" and to call Gableman for pointers, since "he can't charge by the hour anymore." Rivera-Wagner, by then a sitting state representative, was blunter in comments to the news outlet The Recombobulation Area. "It's bullshit," he said, "and it led to real people's lives being threatened, harassed. Millions of taxpayer dollars wasted." In a follow-up statement, he put a specific figure on it, $2.3 million in taxpayer costs tied to the various investigations.⁶

### Amaad's Legislative Record

Set against that, his actual legislative record is adequate, which is above average for a freshman in the legislative minority. He's credited with two bipartisan bills signed into law during his first term: AB454, which set up low-interest financing to help working families close the gap to homeownership, and a measure letting DACA recipients obtain professional licenses in fields like health care and education.⁷ He sits on the Assembly's Local Government and Consumer Protection committees, introduced a package of election-worker-protection bills last September after years of harassment aimed at Green Bay clerk's office staff by self-appointed "observers,"⁸ and says he's hosted more than 30 town halls in the district since taking office.⁷ He announced his reelection bid on April 27 with a kickoff at the Meyer Theatre, campaigning on housing costs, a higher minimum wage and holding health insurers accountable for how often they deny claims.⁷

## Jessica Henderson

### Personal Life

Henderson entered politics for the first time in 2024 as a private citizen with a day job, which makes her the more interesting unknown in this race. She describes herself on her campaign site as a case manager focused on housing insecurity and mental health access for "minority and vulnerable communities," says her family's roots in the Green Bay area go back to the 1700s, and says she earned dual bachelor's and two associate's degrees from Wichita State University in 2010, studying restorative justice and mental health.⁹ The one externally documented piece of her work history, according to a nonpartisan candidate database, is a stint as a mental health associate at a Green Bay treatment center from 2015 to 2016.¹⁰ Those education and career details come from Henderson's own campaign and haven't been independently verified beyond what she's published herself.

### The Policies 

On the actual issues, Henderson has said more than her low public profile might suggest, once someone asks her directly. When Wisconsin Public Radio pressed both AD 90 candidates in October 2024 on childcare costs, a top concern for voters at a Green Bay listening event WPR held that fall, Henderson wouldn't commit either way on using state money to fund Child Care Counts, the pandemic-era subsidy program Madison Republicans and Gov. Evers have fought over for years. "We're all supposed to be good stewards of the funding that we receive and how it's spent," she told WPR, before adding that she wouldn't object to helping families afford care, drawing on her own experience as a young mother facing the same cost pressures. Instead, she floated a narrower idea of her own: a state program that would repay tuition for people studying early childhood development once they've worked in the field a few years, aimed at recruiting and keeping good staff.¹¹

She's taken a clearer position on criminal justice. When the Wisconsin Examiner surveyed Assembly candidates that same September, Henderson was one of the only Republicans in the region who responded at all. She told the paper she'd support closing both Green Bay Correctional and Waupun "as long as it does not mean releasing violent offenders into the community," and argued, drawing on her professional background, that expanding mental health care access does more to bring down incarceration than keeping old prisons running.¹²

She's also broken from Republican orthodoxy on at least one issue. In October 2024, Henderson signed American Promise's candidate pledge backing a constitutional amendment that would let states and Congress set limits on campaign spending, a position aimed at overturning Citizens United that's more often associated with Democratic candidates than Republican ones.¹³ It's a small data point next to everything else, but it's one of the few places where Henderson's record actually breaks from her party rather than just not engaging with an issue.

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## Campaign Finances

None of that has translated into much of a public campaign. Wisconsin Watch's 2024 voter guide summed up her presence bluntly: she "has a social media page, but it includes no information about her campaign."¹⁶ That was true in the fall of 2024, and it's largely still true now. On money, the gap between the two campaigns is stark. Rivera-Wagner's committee raised $50,622 in the 2024 cycle, according to Ballotpedia's tally of his state filings.¹⁷ A separate district-level count Ballotpedia pulls from the Follow the Money database puts the two campaigns' combined 2024 fundraising at $55,177, which would leave Henderson's entire operation that year at somewhere around $4,500, a fraction of what her opponent spent.¹ Heading into this cycle, the pattern hasn't budged. Rivera-Wagner's committee reported $12,175 raised through late July, per the state's most recent pre-primary filing.² Henderson's committee doesn't show up in that filing with any recorded activity, which under Wisconsin law usually means a campaign has claimed an exemption for staying under $2,500 in total receipts and spending, or simply hasn't filed yet.

## Agreement

The one substantive issue both candidates staked out positions on in 2024, the fate of Green Bay Correctional Institution, has mostly stopped being a partisan fight at all. Rivera-Wagner talked about bail reform and marijuana legalization alongside closing GBCI. Henderson wanted assurances about violent offenders before she'd sign off. Two years later, both of those hedges look almost beside the point, because closing GBCI has become official, bipartisan state policy.

Gov. Tony Evers has made shutting down the aging, overcrowded prison a top priority before he leaves office, and the State Building Commission released $15 million in October 2025 to begin planning the transition.¹⁸ Republican state Rep. David Steffen of Howard, whose district borders Rivera-Wagner's, has called the closure "a top priority" for the whole Legislature, and Democratic state Sen. Jamie Wall of Green Bay has been working the same file from the other side of the aisle.¹⁹ Nobody's locked in a firm date beyond "by 2029," and the fights over what replaces GBCI and where its roughly 1,100 displaced men end up are far from settled. But the basic premise, that the facility needs to close, isn't something Rivera-Wagner and Henderson actually disagree about. In a Legislature that agrees on very little these days, that counts for something.

#### Sources

1. [https://ballotpedia.org/Wisconsin\_State\_Assembly\_District\_90](https://ballotpedia.org/Wisconsin%5FState%5FAssembly%5FDistrict%5F90?ref=foxwatershed.com)
2. [https://jdjohn215.github.io/wi-legis-26-preview/State-Assembly/AD90.html](https://jdjohn215.github.io/wi-legis-26-preview/State-Assembly/AD90.html?ref=foxwatershed.com)
3. [https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2025/legislators/assembly/2902](https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2025/legislators/assembly/2902?ref=foxwatershed.com)
4. [https://patch.com/wisconsin/across-wi/tale-two-elections](https://patch.com/wisconsin/across-wi/tale-two-elections?ref=foxwatershed.com)
5. [https://www.wpr.org/news/green-bay-election-bracing-november](https://www.wpr.org/news/green-bay-election-bracing-november?ref=foxwatershed.com)
6. [https://milwaukeecourier.com/news/2026/06/04/green-bay-mayor-to-tom-tiffany-keep-our-citys-name-out-of-your-mouth](https://milwaukeecourier.com/news/2026/06/04/green-bay-mayor-to-tom-tiffany-keep-our-citys-name-out-of-your-mouth?ref=foxwatershed.com)
7. [https://wtaq.com/2026/04/27/green-bay-state-rep-amaad-rivera-wagner-announces-bid-for-reelection/](https://wtaq.com/2026/04/27/green-bay-state-rep-amaad-rivera-wagner-announces-bid-for-reelection/?ref=foxwatershed.com)
8. [https://www.wispolitics.com/2025/rep-rivera-wagner-introduces-pro-democracy-legislative-package-to-protect-workers-empower-voters-and-strengthen-wisconsins-elections/](https://www.wispolitics.com/2025/rep-rivera-wagner-introduces-pro-democracy-legislative-package-to-protect-workers-empower-voters-and-strengthen-wisconsins-elections/?ref=foxwatershed.com)
9. [https://www.henderson4wisconsin.com/](https://www.henderson4wisconsin.com/?ref=foxwatershed.com)
10. [https://www.ballotready.org/people/jessica-henderson](https://www.ballotready.org/people/jessica-henderson?ref=foxwatershed.com)
11. [https://www.wpr.org/news/green-bay-state-senate-assembly-senate-candidates-child-care-crisis-election](https://www.wpr.org/news/green-bay-state-senate-assembly-senate-candidates-child-care-crisis-election?ref=foxwatershed.com)
12. [https://wisconsinexaminer.com/2024/09/20/republican-and-democratic-legislative-candidates-share-views-on-criminal-justice-reform/](https://wisconsinexaminer.com/2024/09/20/republican-and-democratic-legislative-candidates-share-views-on-criminal-justice-reform/?ref=foxwatershed.com)
13. [https://americanpromise.net/candidates/jessica-henderson/](https://americanpromise.net/candidates/jessica-henderson/?ref=foxwatershed.com)
14. [https://www.jayselthofner.com/ad-90-rivera-wagner-vs-henderson/](https://www.jayselthofner.com/ad-90-rivera-wagner-vs-henderson/?ref=foxwatershed.com)
15. [https://civicmedia.us/shows/lean-local/2024/09/15/2024-09-15-lean-local-2](https://civicmedia.us/shows/lean-local/2024/09/15/2024-09-15-lean-local-2?ref=foxwatershed.com)
16. [https://wisconsinwatch.org/2024/09/wisconsin-voter-guide-2024-assembly-90/](https://wisconsinwatch.org/2024/09/wisconsin-voter-guide-2024-assembly-90/?ref=foxwatershed.com)
17. [https://ballotpedia.org/Amaad\_Rivera-Wagner](https://ballotpedia.org/Amaad%5FRivera-Wagner?ref=foxwatershed.com)
18. [https://fox11online.com/news/local/green-bay-correctional-closure-has-bipartisan-support-tony-evers-david-steffen-prison-reform-gbci-department-of-corrections](https://fox11online.com/news/local/green-bay-correctional-closure-has-bipartisan-support-tony-evers-david-steffen-prison-reform-gbci-department-of-corrections?ref=foxwatershed.com)
19. [https://www.yahoo.com/news/state-legislators-share-green-bay-100434541.html](https://www.yahoo.com/news/state-legislators-share-green-bay-100434541.html?ref=foxwatershed.com)
### Green Bay's "Punks for Palestine" Raises Money for Gaza, Third Year Running
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/green-bays-punks-for-palestine-raises-money-for-gaza-third-year-running/
Last updated: 2026-08-24T09:12:06.000Z
Green Bay's DIY punk scene turned out again Sunday for the third annual Punks for Palestine benefit show, packing into the Green Bay UFO Museum Gift Shop and Records to raise money headed to Gaza. By the time the last band packed up its gear, the show had pulled in enough to cover 122 pounds of it.

The GBUFO isn't just a record shop with a name that never quite explains itself. It's become one of the more reliable all-ages venues on Green Bay's east side since former Exclusive Company staff opened it in 2022,¹ and it's hosted plenty of shows built around a cause instead of a cover charge, including a past all-ages bill where the price of admission was a donation to Planned Parenthood.² Sunday's show fits that same pattern, just with a recipient about six thousand miles away.

"Punks for Palestine" has become a loose name DIY scenes across the country have picked up independently of each other since the war in Gaza began in October 2023, benefit shows organized by whichever local promoter figured a mosh pit could double as a fundraiser.³ Three years in, Green Bay's version has become as much a fixture of the city's small circuit as the venue hosting it. 

Flour carries more weight in Gaza than the price tag suggests. In February 2024, Israeli forces opened fire on Palestinians gathered around an aid convoy on al-Rashid Street, killing at least 118 people and wounding more than 760 while they tried to get food, an incident that's been called the Flour Massacre ever since.⁴ More than a year after an October 2025 ceasefire eased the worst of it, the hunger crisis in Gaza hasn't gone away. As of July, roughly two-thirds of the population, more than 1.4 million people, was still living with crisis-level food insecurity or worse, according to the latest UN-backed assessment.⁵

#### Sources

1. [https://recordstoreday.com/Store/24513](https://recordstoreday.com/Store/24513?ref=foxwatershed.com)
2. [https://fsm.ink/the-gbufo-fest/](https://fsm.ink/the-gbufo-fest/?ref=foxwatershed.com)
3. [https://lataco.com/punks-for-palestine-bring-your-own-meat](https://lataco.com/punks-for-palestine-bring-your-own-meat?ref=foxwatershed.com)
4. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flour\_Massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flour%5FMassacre?ref=foxwatershed.com)
5. [https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/07/1168006](https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/07/1168006?ref=foxwatershed.com)
### The Indian "Cockroaches" Recently Beat their Government
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/the-indian-cockroaches-recently-beat-their-government/
Last updated: 2026-08-23T08:12:52.000Z
**In May, India's Chief Justice compared a generation of unemployed young people to cockroaches. By August, those same young people had built a movement that marched by the thousands on Parliament and pushed a sitting cabinet minister out of his job.**

The remark came from Surya Kant, sworn in as Chief Justice of India the previous November. During a Supreme Court hearing on May 15, while discussing lawyers who'd used fake degrees, Kant said some of the country's unemployed youth were, in his words, "like cockroaches" who don't get jobs and instead turn to journalism or activism.¹ He later said he'd been misquoted and was only talking about credential fraud.² Nobody much cared. A day after the hearing, 30-year-old political communications strategist Abhijeet Dipke, who studied at Boston University, registered a website and made some social accounts for something called the Cockroach Janta Party.¹ Within a week, it had more Instagram followers than the Prime Minister's actual party.³

It began as a joke, satire on Prime Minister Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party built around reclaiming an insult.⁴ It didn't stay a joke for long. Weeks earlier, officials had cancelled India's National Eligibility Entrance Test, the exam more than two million students take each year for a shot at medical school, after finding that the questions had leaked and circulated before the test even started.⁵ Students who'd spent years and their families' savings preparing for one morning had to do it all again. At least 21 of them killed themselves in the weeks that followed.⁶ CJP gave that grief somewhere to go.

By June, protesters were camped out at Jantar Mantar, a New Delhi park with a long history as a protest site, demanding Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resign.⁷ Late that month, 59-year-old activist Sonam Wangchuk joined them and began a hunger strike that ran 26 days before police hospitalized him against his wishes.⁸ That's what tipped the standoff into its worst week. On July 20, more than 10,000 protesters tried to march from Jantar Mantar to Parliament. Delhi Police, who'd refused the march a permit, met them with tear gas and batons.⁹ Police reported nearly 180 injuries, 60 protesters and 118 of their own officers.¹⁰

Within days, the government folded. Pradhan resigned on July 25\. Officials promised compensation for the families of students who'd died by suicide and agreed to drop charges tied to the protests, though arrests have continued in party-run states, including Assam and West Bengal, disproportionately targeting Muslims.¹¹ Modi's new education minister, Pralhad Joshi, has spent decades in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the Hindu nationalist group widely described as the BJP's ideological parent.¹² So the underlying fight over who runs India's exam system, and toward what end, is nowhere close to finished.

What's strange is what CJP chose to do with its win. Earlier this month, its leadership met in Maharashtra and voted against turning into an actual political party, opting instead to stay a "pressure group" focused on jobs, education, and government accountability.¹³ By mid-August, the movement had climbed to nearly 27 million Instagram followers, more than double the BJP's.¹⁴

---

### Photo Credits

Header Photo: [Sudipta Maulik](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Doors%5Fof%5FJantar%5FMantar.jpg?ref=foxwatershed.com), [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0?ref=foxwatershed.com), via Wikimedia Commons

### Sources

1. [https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2026/5/20/cockroach-janata-party-top-indian-judges-comment-sparks-satire-protest](https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2026/5/20/cockroach-janata-party-top-indian-judges-comment-sparks-satire-protest?ref=foxwatershed.com)
2. [https://m.thewire.in/article/law/completely-misquoted-says-cji-surya-kant-on-his-cockroach-remarks](https://m.thewire.in/article/law/completely-misquoted-says-cji-surya-kant-on-his-cockroach-remarks?ref=foxwatershed.com)
3. [https://edition.cnn.com/2026/05/22/india/india-cockroach-janta-party-gen-z-intl-hnk](https://edition.cnn.com/2026/05/22/india/india-cockroach-janta-party-gen-z-intl-hnk?ref=foxwatershed.com)
4. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockroach\_Janta\_Party](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockroach%5FJanta%5FParty?ref=foxwatershed.com)
5. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026\_NEET\_controversy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026%5FNEET%5Fcontroversy?ref=foxwatershed.com)
6. [https://www.yahoo.com/news/world/articles/fault-indias-exam-paper-leak-233604923.html](https://www.yahoo.com/news/world/articles/fault-indias-exam-paper-leak-233604923.html?ref=foxwatershed.com)
7. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026\_Delhi\_Jantar\_Mantar\_protests](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026%5FDelhi%5FJantar%5FMantar%5Fprotests?ref=foxwatershed.com)
8. [https://www.britannica.com/topic/What-Is-the-Cockroach-Janta-Party](https://www.britannica.com/topic/What-Is-the-Cockroach-Janta-Party?ref=foxwatershed.com)
9. [https://www.courthousenews.com/india-police-use-tear-gas-to-stop-march-on-parliament-by-cockroach-movement-supporters/](https://www.courthousenews.com/india-police-use-tear-gas-to-stop-march-on-parliament-by-cockroach-movement-supporters/?ref=foxwatershed.com)
10. [https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/7/21/indias-cockroach-protest-movement-halts-marches-after-police-violence](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/7/21/indias-cockroach-protest-movement-halts-marches-after-police-violence?ref=foxwatershed.com)
11. [https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/7/26/what-next-for-indias-cockroach-movement-after-education-minister-sacked](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/7/26/what-next-for-indias-cockroach-movement-after-education-minister-sacked?ref=foxwatershed.com)
12. [https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/7/26/who-is-indias-new-education-minister-pralhad-joshi](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/7/26/who-is-indias-new-education-minister-pralhad-joshi?ref=foxwatershed.com)
13. [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-06/india-s-student-movement-shuns-politics-stays-pressure-group](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-06/india-s-student-movement-shuns-politics-stays-pressure-group?ref=foxwatershed.com)
14. [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-18/cockroach-janta-party-why-india-s-gen-z-movement-is-a-challenge-for-modi](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-18/cockroach-janta-party-why-india-s-gen-z-movement-is-a-challenge-for-modi?ref=foxwatershed.com)
### Additional Fitness Competition Fills East Town Mall's Last Big Vacancy
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/additional-fitness-competition-fills-east-town-malls-last-big-vacancy/
Last updated: 2026-08-25T08:59:19.000Z
- *VASA Fitness opens its fourth Wisconsin club on August 15 at 2430 E. Mason Street, the former Shopko that sat empty for seven years.*
- *The 58,000-square-foot club is expected to create about 70 jobs and puts a second national gym chain within a two-minute walk of an existing Planet Fitness.*
- *The opening caps a slow turnaround for the surrounding East Town Mall property, which survived a Ponzi scheme scandal, receivership, and years of empty storefronts before developers started filling it back in.*
- *VASA is backed by a Denver-area private equity firm and has quietly become one of the country's largest gym chains.*

---

VASA Fitness opens its newest club on Saturday, August 15, in the building that used to house Shopko at 2430 E. Mason Street.¹ It's the company's 73rd location nationwide and its fourth in Wisconsin, joining clubs in Racine, New Berlin, and, just three months ago, Menasha.² The 58,000-square-foot facility claims it is expected to create around 70 local jobs and comes stocked with a three-lane pool, a half basketball court, and an indoor cold plunge, on top of the usual weight room and cardio floor.³ Memberships start at $14.99 a month.³

> "\[Green Bay is\] a community that values hard work, family and living an active lifestyle."  
> — Michael Osanloo, VASA Fitness CEO

The building has a longer story than the gym moving into it. It opened as a Shopko in July 1989, in the city where Shopko itself was headquartered until the chain collapsed into bankruptcy in 2019 and closed every store at once, including this one.⁴,⁵ The 105,923-square-foot box sat empty next to East Town Mall for roughly seven years.⁶ VASA's lease covers a little more than half of it.

![Shopko location in Ashwaubenon from October 20th, 2011.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ed/b4/edb4fd27-66fb-4967-8c7f-ec1cf54dfb05/content/images/2026/08/Shopko_Store_2.jpg)

Shopko location in Ashwaubenon from October 20th, 2011\. No freely accessible photo from the East Town Mall location. [HawksCrest2023](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shopko%5FStore%5F2.jpg?ref=foxwatershed.com), [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0?ref=foxwatershed.com), via Wikimedia Commons

## A Slow Comeback for East Town

East Town Mall next door has had a rougher few decades than most Green Bay shoppers probably remember. It opened in 1982 as the city's first fully enclosed mall, lost its original Prange Way anchor to bankruptcy in the mid-1990s, and spent much of the 2010s better known for its ownership scandal than its stores.⁷ Massachusetts regulators accused the mall's former owner of running a Ponzi scheme that drained more than $9 million from local investors, many of them retirees who had each put in $213,000 for a small ownership stake.⁷ The mall landed in receivership before Lexington Realty International and Case Equity Partners bought it in 2016.⁷ We reached out to local leaders to get their thoughts on the new development.

> "VASA coming to Green Bay is another sign of our community’s economic strength and growing commitment to healthy living. As someone who enjoys lifting, I’m excited to see more fitness options for the public and more businesses choosing to invest in Green Bay.”  
> — Rep. Amaad Rivera-Wagner, WI Assembly 90

The real turnaround started in 2021, when local developer Garritt Bader bought part of the property and began converting it from an indoor mall into an open-air power center, the kind where stores face the parking lot instead of a food court.⁸ Cousins Subs, Chipotle, and Shoreline Credit Union all moved into the redeveloped corridor over the following years.⁹ So did Planet Fitness, which took over part of the old mall interior in the fall of 2021.⁸ VASA's arrival, five years later, fills one of the last big vacant boxes left on the property.

## Who's Actually Behind VASA

VASA isn't the local firm the press release's language might suggest. It started in 1996 as a Gold's Gym franchise operator in Utah, and in 2014 the private equity firm Silver Oak Services Partners bought in and relaunched the brand as VASA.¹² The company now bills itself as one of the top 20 largest health club operators in the country, and it's grown fast through the Midwest lately, adding four Wisconsin clubs in the space of a couple years.² Whether that pace holds up is a separate question. Private equity-backed gym chains have a mixed track record nationally, though VASA has so far avoided the bankruptcies that hit some competitors during and after the pandemic.

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## Features of the Fitness Center

The club runs 4 a.m. to midnight on weekdays, 4 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Saturdays, and 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Sundays.³ KidCare, VASA's supervised childcare add-on, keeps shorter hours and is closed entirely on Sundays.³ VASA Fitness offers the standard cardio, free weights, strength training machines, and bench presses; but also features a hot tub, cold plunge, sauna, steam room, basketball court, and InBody scans. 

| Tier    | Price     | What you get                                |
| ------- | --------- | ------------------------------------------- |
| Basic   | $14.99/mo | This club only                              |
| Fitness | $24.99/mo | All 70+ VASA clubs, some group classes      |
| Studio  | $39.99/mo | All clubs, unlimited premium studio classes |

#### Sources

Photo: Ethan Rouse / Properganda.media

1. [https://vasafitness.com/press/vasa-fitness-opens-new-green-bay-east-town-club/](https://vasafitness.com/press/vasa-fitness-opens-new-green-bay-east-town-club/?ref=foxwatershed.com)
2. [https://insider.fitt.co/press-release/vasa-fitness-expands-wisconsin-presence-with-new-menasha-wi-club-bringing-high-quality-affordable-fitness-experience-to-the-fox-valley/](https://insider.fitt.co/press-release/vasa-fitness-expands-wisconsin-presence-with-new-menasha-wi-club-bringing-high-quality-affordable-fitness-experience-to-the-fox-valley/?ref=foxwatershed.com)
3. [https://vasafitness.com/locations/wi/green-bay-east-town/](https://vasafitness.com/locations/wi/green-bay-east-town/?ref=foxwatershed.com)
4. [https://malls.fandom.com/wiki/Shopko/Locations](https://malls.fandom.com/wiki/Shopko/Locations?ref=foxwatershed.com)
5. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopko](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopko?ref=foxwatershed.com)
6. [https://www.commercialcafe.com/commercial-property/us/wi/green-bay/former-shopko-east-town-mall/](https://www.commercialcafe.com/commercial-property/us/wi/green-bay/former-shopko-east-town-mall/?ref=foxwatershed.com)
7. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East\_Town\_Mall](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East%5FTown%5FMall?ref=foxwatershed.com)
8. [https://fox11online.com/news/local/green-bay/redevelopment-underway-for-green-bays-east-town-mall](https://fox11online.com/news/local/green-bay/redevelopment-underway-for-green-bays-east-town-mall?ref=foxwatershed.com)
9. [https://www.wearegreenbay.com/news/local-news/east-town-mall-area-in-green-bay-sees-resurgence/](https://www.wearegreenbay.com/news/local-news/east-town-mall-area-in-green-bay-sees-resurgence/?ref=foxwatershed.com)
10. [https://www.planetfitness.com/gyms/green-bay-east-wi/](https://www.planetfitness.com/gyms/green-bay-east-wi/?ref=foxwatershed.com)
11. [https://www.greenbayymca.org/join/24-7-access/](https://www.greenbayymca.org/join/24-7-access/?ref=foxwatershed.com)
12. [https://www.silveroaksp.com/news-article/silver-oak-services-partners-leads-recapitalization-of-vasa-fitness](https://www.silveroaksp.com/news-article/silver-oak-services-partners-leads-recapitalization-of-vasa-fitness?ref=foxwatershed.com)
### Election Results: Wrightstown Rejects Datacenter
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/election-results-wrightstown-rejects-datacenter/
Last updated: 2026-08-13T07:36:15.000Z
On Tuesday, voters in the Village of Wrightstown told a datacenter company chasing a gigawatt of power no.¹ The advisory referendum asked whether the village should use its infrastructure, utilities, or public facilities to help build a large-scale data center. Of the 1,184 people who showed up, 1,033 said no.² That's 87%, the kind of margin most candidates only dream about.

The vote doesn't bind anything. But it puts a hard number on the village's opinion of the project, something they had been dodging for months. Turns out, Wrightstown wants nothing to do with Cloverleaf Infrastructure's roughly one-gigawatt data center.³ That puts the project in the ballpark as the data center now under construction in Port Washington, the one Cloverleaf helped get off the ground and has used as a sales pitch to other Wisconsin towns.⁴

Open records showed Cloverleaf and Village Administrator Travis Coenen had been talking since January, months before residents heard so much as a rumor.⁴ Once they did hear, the complaints sounded familiar: heavy water use, constant noise, and farmland that doesn't come back once it's paved over.⁵ The same list keeps showing up in data center fights across the state. A Marquette Law School poll from earlier this year found 70 percent of Wisconsin voters think data centers cost more than they deliver.⁶

Enough signatures landed on the village clerk's desk that trustees passed a one-year moratorium on data center projects in July, unanimously.⁷ They did it the same night board members discussed a legal challenge from NetChoice behind closed doors. NetChoice is a Washington DC trade group representing Amazon, Meta, and TikTok, and it had tried to keep the referendum off the ballot altogether, arguing it broke state law.⁸

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#### Sources & Credits

Photo: [User Royalbroil on en.wikipedia](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WrightstownWisconsinWIS96.jpg?ref=foxwatershed.com), [CC BY-SA 2.5](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5?ref=foxwatershed.com), via Wikimedia Commons

1. [https://spectrumnews1.com/wi/milwaukee/news/2026/08/12/voters-wrightstown-referendum-large-data-center-developments](https://spectrumnews1.com/wi/milwaukee/news/2026/08/12/voters-wrightstown-referendum-large-data-center-developments?ref=foxwatershed.com)
2. [https://www.nbc26.com/homepage-showcase/village-of-wrightstown-voters-say-no-to-data-center-development](https://www.nbc26.com/homepage-showcase/village-of-wrightstown-voters-say-no-to-data-center-development?ref=foxwatershed.com)
3. [https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/wrightstown-overwhelmingly-opposes-ai-data-051554449.html](https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/wrightstown-overwhelmingly-opposes-ai-data-051554449.html?ref=foxwatershed.com)
4. [https://www.wpr.org/news/residents-speak-out-against-possible-data-center-in-northeast-wisconsins-village-of-wrightstown](https://www.wpr.org/news/residents-speak-out-against-possible-data-center-in-northeast-wisconsins-village-of-wrightstown?ref=foxwatershed.com)
5. [https://wtaq.com/2026/05/20/wrightstown-residents-share-concerns-about-possible-data-center-transparency-from-village/](https://wtaq.com/2026/05/20/wrightstown-residents-share-concerns-about-possible-data-center-transparency-from-village/?ref=foxwatershed.com)
6. [https://www.wpr.org/news/superior-joins-growing-number-of-wisconsin-communities-to-pass-data-center-moratorium](https://www.wpr.org/news/superior-joins-growing-number-of-wisconsin-communities-to-pass-data-center-moratorium?ref=foxwatershed.com)
7. [https://www.nbc26.com/news/local-news/wrightstown-adopts-a-one-year-moratorium-on-data-center-projects](https://www.nbc26.com/news/local-news/wrightstown-adopts-a-one-year-moratorium-on-data-center-projects?ref=foxwatershed.com)
8. [https://www.wearegreenbay.com/top-stories/wrightstown-data-center-referendum-question-challenged-by-d-c-trade-association/](https://www.wearegreenbay.com/top-stories/wrightstown-data-center-referendum-question-challenged-by-d-c-trade-association/?ref=foxwatershed.com)
9. [https://www.seehafernews.com/2026/08/11/voters-in-wrightstown-determining-data-center-issue/](https://www.seehafernews.com/2026/08/11/voters-in-wrightstown-determining-data-center-issue/?ref=foxwatershed.com)
### Four Democrats Remain in the Fight for Wisconsin Governor
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/four-democrats/
Last updated: 2026-09-02T09:57:41.000Z
Four Democrats are left standing in Wisconsin's primary for governor, and one of them is polling well ahead of the others.

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### Four Republicans & an Independent
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/four-republicans-an-independent/
Last updated: 2026-09-02T09:57:41.000Z
In a unique partisan makeup, four Republicans and one independent candidate have emerged to run for Wisconsin's 1st state senate seat

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### Birthright Citizenship
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/birthright-citizenship/
Last updated: 2026-09-02T09:57:41.000Z
_This post is for subscribers only._
### Green Bay's Out of Patience
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/green-bays-out-of-patience/
Last updated: 2026-09-02T09:57:41.000Z
Five years after Merge, LLC agreed to build a "transformative" riverfront apartment complex on land the city sold it for a dollar, the company still hasn't poured a foundation

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### Green Bay's Revival of the Economic Bill of Rights
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/green-bays-revival-of-the-economic-bill-of-rights/
Last updated: 2026-09-02T09:57:41.000Z
FDR proposed that the original Bill of Rights was inadequate to the pursuit of happiness. Alder Shelton submitted a document committing, as a city, to what we stand for and to be a guiding light.

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### Monetizing the Moment
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/monetizing-the-moment/
Last updated: 2026-09-02T09:57:41.000Z
Why Wall Street Might Pay $100,000 a Month for Trump Media’s New Data Feed

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### Disaster Recovery Center to Open Monday in Green Bay
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/disaster-recovery-center-to-open-monday-in-green-bay/
Last updated: 2026-09-02T09:57:41.000Z
Beginning Monday, Brown County residents who were affected by April’s flooding can get in-person help with federal paperwork.

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### A Private Manager for a Public Airport
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/a-private-manager-for-a-public-airport/
Last updated: 2026-09-02T09:57:42.000Z
_This post is for subscribers only._
### Rent: The Math Was Never Going to Work Out in Your Favor
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/rent-math-not-favorable/
Last updated: 2026-07-13T00:28:52.000Z
There is a sentence real estate agents, landlords, and property management companies do not like to say out loud, so I will say it for them: renting will always cost you more than owning, because someone else's profit has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is you.

It's arithmetic. A landlord who charges you exactly what it costs to own and maintain the property is a landlord who is losing money on their time, risk, and capital. So rent gets set at profit, by definition. The mortgage gets paid down, the property appreciates, and both of those numbers land in the landlord's pocket, not yours. You are, in effect, paying for someone else's house, in installments, with no equity waiting for you at the end of thirty years. It’s not some quirky little hiccup in the rental market, but rather the objective plan.

I bring this up because the past few years have quietly changed who collects under that arrangement. It isn't your neighbor with a duplex for retirement income. It's increasingly a property on a company's spreadsheet in another state, or, closer to home, a tourist rental for Packers weekends.

## Wall Street Discovered the Starter Home

Institutional investors, companies that own more than 1,000 homes across at least 3 markets, were, by most estimates, a nonentity in the single-family rental market before the 2008 financial crisis. Before 2011, no single investor owned more than 1,000 single-family rentals nationally; by 2022, that number had grown to 32 institutional investors doing exactly that, collectively holding between 170,000 and 300,000 homes.¹ Nationally, they're still a modest slice of the overall picture: large institutional ownership sits at roughly 3 percent of single-family rentals, or under half a percent of the total housing stock.² That sounds small until you look at where they actually concentrate their buying. In Atlanta, large investors own an estimated quarter of the single-family rental market. In Jacksonville, roughly a fifth. In Charlotte, close to that too.² One economist tracking the industry projected that institutional investors could control something like 40 percent of U.S. single-family rental homes by 2030 if current trends hold.³

The mechanism isn't complicated. Big landlords buy in bulk, get better financing, spread fixed costs across thousands of units, and, this is the part that should bother you, increasingly use AI software that shares pricing data among competitors to help set rent, rather than actually competing for tenants.⁴ Concentrated ownership in a neighborhood doesn't need a smoke-filled backroom to behave like a cartel. It just needs the same rent-setting algorithm running on enough properties at once.

The response, for what it's worth, has been bipartisan and is unfolding right now. The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which would bar the largest institutional investors from buying additional single-family homes, among dozens of other housing provisions, passed the Senate 85 to 5 and the House 358 to 32 in late June, veto-proof margins by any definition.⁵ It's currently sitting on the president's desk, where the signing was abruptly postponed over an unrelated dispute involving voter-ID legislation. Economists disagree, sometimes sharply, about how much good the investor-purchase ban specifically will do, since the concentrated damage is happening in a handful of metros rather than everywhere at once. A 2026 Government Accountability Office analysis found investors already own more than a fifth of single-family rentals in Jacksonville, and that Dallas and Phoenix each added over 16,000 investor-owned homes between 2018 and 2024.⁶ But the fact that Congress passed this near-unanimously tells you something about how far "hedge funds shouldn't own your street" has traveled from a fringe complaint from leftists to an acknowledged structural problem.

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### Another Democrat Drops out from Wisconsin Governor Race
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/another-democrat-drops-out-from-wisconsin-governor-race/
Last updated: 2026-09-02T09:57:42.000Z
_This post is for subscribers only._
### Jam Rock Liquor License Denied
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/jam-rock-liquor-license-denied/
Last updated: 2026-07-08T22:56:06.000Z
Green Bay City brings in City Attorney Rachel Maes to discuss the history of police encounters and reported crimes at Bodart Street bar as the police recommend the removal of the liquor license.

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### How the Brown County Board Can Move Forward with an AI Data Center Moratorium
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/how-the-brown-county-board-can-move-forward-with-an-ai-data-center-moratorium/
Last updated: 2026-07-16T20:27:01.000Z
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### New Technology, New Branches, and a Busy Summer Ahead
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/new-technology-new-branches-and-a-busy-summer-ahead/
Last updated: 2026-06-04T23:28:17.000Z
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### Turns Out, You Can't Pay Bills With Hype
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/turns-out-you-cant-pay-bills-with-hype/
Last updated: 2026-07-16T20:26:50.000Z
The tech industry has poured huge investments into artificial intelligence, with companies eagerly promoting its game-changing potential in their marketing. Yet behind all the excitement lies a much more uncertain reality.

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### Slight Change in Board Leadership
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/slight-change-in-board-leadership/
Last updated: 2026-04-28T02:25:20.000Z
Green Bay Area Public Schools Board of Education Regular Meeting Summary

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### Civic Meetings This Week
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/civic-meetings-this-week/
Last updated: 2026-04-28T00:12:27.000Z
Civic meetings for the week of 4/26/2026 - 5/2/2026

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### Reflecting on Four Years of the Green Bay Public Market
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/reflecting-on-four-years-of-the-green-bay-public-market/
Last updated: 2026-04-20T22:12:56.000Z
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### Doubts Grow as Library Board Reconsiders Third on the Square
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/doubts-grow-as-library-board-reconsiders-third-on-the-square/
Last updated: 2026-07-16T20:26:42.000Z
The April meeting of the Brown County Library Board made one thing clear. The “Third on the Square” project is no longer moving forward with quiet confidence.

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### Pause on Third on the Square, Progress Elsewhere: A February Board Recap
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/pause-on-third-on-the-square-progress-elsewhere-a-february-board-recap/
Last updated: 2026-03-03T19:40:39.000Z
Brown County Library Board – February 19, 2026

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### Green Bay Alder Candidate Has Never Voted in Green Bay
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/jessica-has-never-voted/
Last updated: 2026-04-20T22:15:14.000Z
Alder candidate Jessica Radunzel is reportedly not registered to vote and has not voted in Green Bay.

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### Brown County Library Board Takes Emergency Action on Central Library Saturdays, Signals Security Changes Ahead
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/brown-county-library-board-takes-emergency-action-on-central-library-saturdays-signals-security-changes-ahead/
Last updated: 2026-02-23T00:25:54.000Z
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### Brown County Library Board Meeting Recap December 2025
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/brown-county-library-board-meeting-recap-december-2025-at-central-library/
Last updated: 2026-06-07T02:50:17.000Z
The Board received an update on the Central Library, ADRC, and Wisconsin Job Center project. Staff continue to meet with county and city partners to clarify operational details, including parking and access.

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### Pulaski Project Advances, Ashwaubenon Gains Long-Delayed Completion Date as Library Board Pushes Forward on Community-Centered Improvements
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/pulaski-project-advances-ashwaubenon-gains-long-delayed-completion-date-as-library-board-pushes-forward-on-community-centered-improvements/
Last updated: 2026-06-07T02:54:45.000Z
Board highlights workforce equity, rural access, and major capital projects during November meeting.

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### Brown County Library board advances projects, prepares Pulaski move, and lists Ashwaubenon branch for $695,000
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/brown-county-library-board-advances-projects-prepares-pulaski-move-and-lists-ashwaubenon-branch-for-695000/
Last updated: 2026-06-07T02:51:07.000Z
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### Francesca Hong Draws A Crowd At The Tarlton
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/francesca-hong-draws-a-crowd-at-the-tarlton/
Last updated: 2026-04-20T22:14:59.000Z
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### Brown County Library Board Weighs Growth, Safety, and Budgets in Busy September Meeting
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/brown-county-library-board-weighs-growth-safety-and-budgets-in-busy-september-meeting/
Last updated: 2026-06-07T02:51:30.000Z
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### Fireworks at the Brown County Supervisors Board Meeting
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/fireworks-at-the-brown-county-supervisors-board-meeting-on-9-17-25/
Last updated: 2026-02-25T06:54:56.000Z
Coverage of the Brown County Supervisors Board Meeting on 9/17/2025

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### Brown County Library Board Grapples With Equity, Expansion, and the Future of Public Service
URL: https://foxwatershed.com/brown-county-library-board-grapples-with-equity-expansion-and-the-future-of-public-service/
Last updated: 2026-06-07T02:51:52.000Z
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