Lawyer Sidney Powell pleaded guilty to reduced charges Thursday over efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election in Georgia, becoming the second defendant in the sprawling case to reach a deal with prosecutors. 

Powell, who was charged alongside Trump and 17 others with violating the state’s anti-racketeering law, entered the plea just a day before jury selection was set to start in her trial. She pleaded guilty to six misdemeanors related to intentionally interfering with the performance of election duties. 

As part of the deal, she will serve six years of probation, will be fined $6,000 and will have to write an apology letter to Georgia and its residents. She also agreed to testify truthfully against her co-defendants at future trials. 

Powell, 68, was initially charged with racketeering and six other counts as part of a wide-ranging scheme to keep the Republican president in power after he lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden. Prosecutors say she also participated in an unauthorized breach of elections equipment in a rural Georgia county elections office. 

The acceptance of a plea deal is a remarkable about-face for a lawyer who, perhaps more than anyone else, strenuously pushed baseless conspiracy theories about a stolen election in the face of extensive evidence to the contrary. If prosecutors compel her to testify, she could provide insight on a news conference she participated in on behalf of Trump and his campaign shortly after the election and on a White House meeting she attended in mid-December of that year during which strategies and theories to influence the outcome of the election were discussed. 

Powell was scheduled to go on trial on Monday with lawyer Kenneth Chesebro after each filed a demand for a speedy trial. Jury selection was set to start Friday. The development means that Chesebro will go on trial by himself, though prosecutors said earlier that they also planned to look into the possibility of offering him a plea deal. 

Barry Coburn, a Washington-based lawyer for Powell, declined to comment on Thursday. 

A lower-profile defendant in the case, bail bondsman Scott Graham Hall, last month pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor charges. He was sentenced to five years of probation and agreed to testify in further proceedings. 

Prosecutors allege that Powell conspired with Hall and others to access election equipment without authorization and hired computer forensics firm SullivanStrickler to send a team to Coffee County, in south Georgia, to copy software and data from voting machines and computers there. The indictment says a person who is not named sent an email to a top SullivanStrickler executive and instructed him to send all data copied from Dominion Voting Systems equipment in Coffee County to an unidentified lawyer associated with Powell and the Trump campaign. 
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Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin places more than 2,000 military personnel on heightened alert this week with a prepare-to-deploy order. The Pentagon tells VOA that should the president activate the units, they will boost the U.S. military’s air defenses, medical and logistical capabilities, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance abilities in the Middle East. VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb reports.
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Hamas blames Israel for Tuesday’s devastating explosion at a Gaza hospital. Israel, however, places the blame on the group Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which denies the accusation. In Lebanon, few doubt Israel’s responsibility and protesters have been expressing their rage at the U.S. Embassy, viewing the United States as Israel’s main backer. Jacob Russell reports from Beirut.
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The chief suspect in Natalee Holloway’s 2005 disappearance in Aruba admitted he killed her and disposed of her remains, and has agreed to plead guilty to charges he tried to extort money from the teen’s mother years later, a U.S. judge said Wednesday,

The disclosure came during a plea and sentencing hearing for Joran van der Sloot, 36, in a federal courtroom in Alabama — just a few miles from the Birmingham suburb where Holloway used to live.

“You changed the course of our lives and you turned them upside down,” her mother Beth Holloway said in court, standing a few feet from van der Sloot. “You are a killer.”

Van der Sloot is not charged in Holloway’s death. The Dutch citizen was sentenced Wednesday to 20 years in prison for extortion and wire fraud, but as part of his plea agreement, that sentence will run concurrently with his sentence in Peru, where he’s serving a 28-year prison sentence for killing Stephany Flores in 2010.

U.S. Judge Anna Manasco said she considered van der Sloot’s confession to Holloway’s murder and the destruction of her remains as part of the sentencing decision.

“You have brutally murdered, in separate instances years apart, two young women who refused your sexual advances,” the judge said.

Holloway went missing during a high school graduation trip with classmates. She was last seen leaving a bar with van der Sloot. He was questioned in the disappearance but was never prosecuted. A judge declared Holloway dead, but her body has never been found.

Manasco said the plea deal required van der Sloot to provide all the information he knew about Natalie Holloway’s disappearance.

The case has captivated the public’s attention for nearly two decades, spawning extensive news coverage, books, movies and podcasts. A heavy media presence assembled outside the federal courthouse nearly three hours before the hearing.

Holloway’s family has long sought answers about her disappearance. Van der Sloot gave different accounts over the years of that night in Aruba. Federal investigators in the Alabama case said van der Sloot gave a false location of Holloway’s body during a recorded 2010 FBI sting that captured the extortion attempt.

Prosecutors in the Alabama case said van der Sloot asked for $250,000 from Beth Holloway to reveal the location of her daughter’s remains. Van der Sloot agreed to accept $25,000 to disclose the location, and asked for the other $225,000 once the remains were recovered, prosecutors said. Van der Sloot said Holloway was buried in the gravel under the foundation of a house, but later admitted that was untrue, FBI Agent William K. Bryan wrote in a 2010 sworn statement filed in the case.

Van der Sloot moved from Aruba to Peru before he could be arrested in the extortion case.

The government of Peru agreed to temporarily extradite van der Sloot so he could face trial on the extortion charge in the United States. U.S. authorities agreed to return him to Peruvian custody after his case is concluded, according to a resolution published in Peru’s federal register.

“The wheels of justice have finally begun to turn for our family,” Beth Holloway said in June after van der Sloot arrived in Alabama. “It has been a very long and painful journey.”
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A new survey finds that most American adults perceive Afghanistan as an adversary rather than an ally of the United States, and two-thirds believe the nearly 20-year Afghan war was not worth fighting.

The nationwide poll’s findings from the Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research come two years after the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in August 2021 and the return of the Taliban to power. The U.S. had invaded the South Asian nation to punish the then-Taliban rulers for harboring al-Qaida leaders who planned the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Many of those surveyed were skeptical about how successfully the U.S. achieved its key objectives, such as eliminating the threat from extremists or improving opportunities for women in Afghanistan.

While 46% of adults believed the war successfully captured or killed those responsible for the 9/11 terror strikes on the U.S., only 16% said that Washington had succeeded in developing a functioning Afghan government. Less than a quarter of adults, or 22%, said the U.S. successfully improved opportunities for women in Afghanistan.

“The findings show that few think the U.S. succeeded during the war in improving opportunities for Afghan women, but most still view advancing the rights of Afghan women as an important foreign policy goal,” said Sheila Kohanteb, Forum Executive Director at The Pearson Institute for Study and Resolution of Global Conflict.

“The public clearly believes the U.S. should try to help improve the situation of Afghan women, and many continue to hear about the restrictions being placed on women in Afghanistan,” Kohanteb added.

The Taliban have imposed their strict interpretation of Islamic law across the impoverished country since reclaiming power and installing their men-only government in Kabul. They have restricted women’s rights to education and work. Women are forbidden from visiting public places, such as parks and gyms, and undertaking long road trips without a close male guardian.

The U.S. survey reveals that 41% of adults think Afghanistan is an enemy, and another 42% say it is unfriendly, while only 14% report it is an ally or friendly nation.

Regarding current foreign U.S. policy goals in Afghanistan, 77% of adults say it is at least somewhat important to eliminate the threat of Islamic extremists taking shelter in the country, and 74% support advancing the rights of women and girls.

The survey indicated that 59% were unaware of the Taliban retaking control in 2021, and 64% had not heard about the restrictions on women.

The poll showed that 68% of U.S. adults had heard at least something about the U.S. troop withdrawal, but fewer had heard about the treatment by the Taliban of Afghan citizens who worked with the United States during the war. Only 52% had heard a lot or some information, while 47% said they had heard little or nothing.

While withdrawing its troops in August 2021, the U.S. also airlifted tens of thousands of Afghans from Kabul airport, who worked closely with international troops during their two-decade-long presence in Afghanistan. But many more are still trying to flee the country, fearing retribution from the Taliban and urging Washington to meet what they say is its moral responsibility to ensure their safety.
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The remains of at least 189 people have been removed from a Colorado funeral home, up from an initial estimate of about 115 when the decaying and improperly stored bodies were discovered two weeks ago, officials said Tuesday.

The remains were found by authorities responding to a report of an “abhorrent smell” inside a decrepit building at the Return to Nature Funeral Home in the small town of Penrose, about 160 kilometers (100 miles) south of Denver. All the remains were removed from the site as of Oct. 13, but officials said the numbers could change again as the identification process continues.

The updated count comes as families who did business with the funeral home grow increasingly concerned about what happened to their deceased loved ones. Local officials said they will begin notifying family members in the coming days as the remains are identified.

There is no timeline to complete the work, which began last week with help from an FBI team that gets deployed to mass casualty events like airline crashes. Fremont County Coroner Randy Keller said he wanted to provide accurate information to families “to prevent further victimization as they continue to grieve.”

Officials have not disclosed further details of what was found inside the funeral home, but Fremont Sheriff Allen Cooper described the scene as horrific.

Authorities entered the funeral home’s neglected building with a search warrant Oct. 4 and found the decomposing bodies. Neighbors said they had been noticing the smell for days.

The owners of the Return to Nature Funeral Home had missed tax payments in recent months, were evicted from one of their properties and were sued for unpaid bills by a crematory that quit doing business with them almost a year ago, according to public records and interviews with people who worked with them.

A day after the odor was reported, the director of the state office of Funeral Home and Crematory registration spoke on the phone with owner Jon Hallford. He tried to conceal the improper storage of corpses in Penrose, acknowledged having a “problem” at the site and claimed he practiced taxidermy there, according to an order from state officials dated Oct. 5.

Attempts to reach Hallford, his wife, Carie, and Return to Nature have been unsuccessful. Numerous text messages to the funeral home seeking comment have gone unanswered. No one answered the business phone or returned a voice message left Tuesday.

In the days after the discovery, law enforcement officials said the owners were cooperating as investigators sought to determine any criminal wrongdoing.

The company, which offered cremations and “green” burials without embalming fluids, kept doing business as its financial and legal problems mounted. Green burials are legal in Colorado, but any body not buried within 24 hours must be properly refrigerated.

As of last week, more than 120 families worried their relatives could be among the remains had contacted law enforcement about the case. It could take weeks to identify the remains found and could require taking fingerprints, finding medical or dental records, and DNA testing.

Authorities found the bodies inside a 230-square-meter (2,500-square-foot) building with the appearance and dimensions of a standard one-story home.

Colorado has some of the weakest oversight of funeral homes in the nation with no routine inspections or qualification requirements for funeral home operators.

There’s no indication state regulators visited the site or contacted Hallford until more than 10 months after the Penrose funeral home’s registration expired. State lawmakers gave regulators the authority to inspect funeral homes without the owners’ consent last year, but no additional money was provided for increased inspections.
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A former New York stockbroker who fled his job and family to fight alongside Islamic State militants in Syria, and then maintained his allegiance to the extremist group throughout his trial, was sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday.

Ruslan Maratovich Asainov, who served as a sniper and instructor for the Islamic militant group at the height of its power, sat grinning in the Brooklyn courtroom, flashing a thumbs-up and stroking his bushy beard as a judge read out the sentencing.

His court-appointed attorney, Susan Kellman, declined to ask for a lighter sentence, noting her client was not interested in distancing himself from the Islamic State fighters in exchange for leniency.

“It’s rare that I start my remarks at sentencing by saying I agree with the government,” Kellman said. “This is who he is. This is what he believes, fervently.”

Asainov, a 47-year-old U.S. citizen born in Kazakhstan, was living in Brooklyn in late 2013 when he abandoned his young daughter and wife to fight alongside the Islamic State group in Syria.

After receiving training as a sniper, he participated in pivotal battles that allowed the militant group to seize territory and establish its self-proclaimed caliphate based on a fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic law. He rose to a rank of “emir,” or chief, then taught more than 100 aspiring snipers, acting as a “force multiplier” for the Islamic State group’s “bloody, brutal campaign,” according to prosecutors.

Asainov told law enforcement officials that he did not recall how many people he had killed. But he spoke proudly of participating in the violent jihad, bragging that his students had taken enemy lives.

“He chose to embrace killing as both a means and an end,” Matthew Haggans, an assistant United States attorney, said during the sentencing. “He holds on to that foul cause today.”

Asainov did not participate in his own trial, refusing to stand for the judge or jury. Inside the Brooklyn jail cell, he hung a makeshift Islamic State flag above his desk and made calls to his mother on a recorded line describing his lack of repentance.

Asainov was convicted earlier this year of providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization and causing at least one death, among other charges. He is one of dozens of Americans — and thousands of foreign fighters worldwide — who have heeded the calls of the Islamic State militants to join the fighting in Iraq and Syria since 2011.

Mirsad Kandic, a Brooklyn resident who recruited Asainov and others to join the Islamic State group, was sentenced to life in prison this summer.

During Asainov’s trial, his ex-wife testified that he had once doted on their young daughter. But around 2009, she said, he became consumed by extremist interpretations of Islamic Law, quitting his job as a stock trader, throwing out his daughter’s toys and forbidding his wife from putting up a Christmas tree.

In late 2013, he boarded a one-way flight from New York to Istanbul, ultimately arriving in Syria with the help of Kandic. He maintained occasional contact with his wife, bragging about his connection to the “most atrocious terrorist organization in the world” and warning that he could have her executed.

He was captured in 2019 by Syrian Democratic Forces during the Islamic State group’s last stand in a tiny Syrian village near the border with Iraq, then turned over to the United States.

In their sentencing memo, federal prosecutors said Asainov should face the maximum sentence of life imprisonment for both the nature of his crimes and the fact that he has not shown “an iota of remorse, doubt, or self-reflection on past mistakes.”

On Tuesday, Judge Nicholas Garaufis said he agreed with prosecutors.

“It’s hard for the court to have any understanding or sympathy for what we have seen in this trial,” he said.
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Despite efforts to consolidate Republican support, hardline conservative representative Jim Jordan has fallen short of the majority needed to secure the speaker of the House position.

In the House of Representatives Tuesday, Jordan received 200 votes, but 20 Republicans voted for other people. Democrats were united in support of their nominee, Hakeem Jeffries, who received 212 votes. The House then went into recess. A candidate needs 217 votes to become speaker of the 118th Congress.

Some Republicans have pointed out possible alternative candidates, including Representative Tom Cole and No. 3 House Republican Tom Emmer. Other Republicans have suggested that Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry receive a temporary extension of his powers, through the November 17 deadline for government funding.

Jordan, a divisive figure on Capitol Hill, could become the third candidate to fail to unite the Republican Party, which has left the chamber leaderless following the ousting of former speaker Kevin McCarthy two weeks ago. Congressman Steve Scalise withdrew his name from contention after failing to garner enough support among Republicans.

VOA congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson contributed to this report.
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West African artist Amoaka Boafo has a new exhibit of portraits in the Western U.S. state of Colorado. VOA correspondent Scott Stearns has our story
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In the two weeks since former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was forced out of his job, the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives has been unable to coalesce behind an alternative, leaving several simmering issues unaddressed by lawmakers.

In the interim, a new crisis has erupted in the Middle East, the war in Ukraine has seen a major new offensive by invading Russian troops, and the United States has crept steadily toward a spending deadline that could force a government shutdown in November.

Experts say there are few, if any, historical precedents for one-half of the U.S. Congress being leaderless during such a fraught period in history. Some have expressed concerns about the message it sends to the American public and the country’s allies and adversaries around the world.

Roots of the problem

McCarthy’s tenure as speaker began in January with a tortuous 15-vote marathon on the House floor that saw the California representative offer concessions to hard-line members on the party’s far right. That included a rule that allowed a single member of the body to force a vote of the full House on a motion to “vacate” the job of speaker.

Representative Matt Gaetz invoked that rule on Oct. 3, and eight Republicans, as well as all House Democrats, voted in favor, ousting McCarthy from the job. The Republican advantage in the House is so slim that only about four of its members can break ranks if the Republicans are to maintain a majority on any given vote.

Since McCarthy’s ouster, Representative Patrick McHenry has been serving as acting speaker, a role that does not give him the authority to bring bills to the floor for a vote.

The Republican caucus is currently preparing to vote on the candidacy of far-right Representative Jim Jordan for speaker. The polarizing politician is a close ally of former President Donald Trump who, among other things, has supported the false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

No vote on Israel

On Oct. 7, the Hamas militant group launched a brutal assault on multiple communities across southern Israel, targeting and killing well over 1,400 people, including the elderly and young children. The group also took nearly 200 hostages into the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.

Under normal circumstances, the House most likely would have produced a joint resolution of support for the Israeli people and might also have taken steps to assure a flow of military and humanitarian aid to the Israeli government.

But without a speaker in place, the body has been unable to act on the crisis.

In an email exchange with VOA, William A. Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s governance studies program, said he has concerns about the message that a dysfunctional Congress delivers to the rest of the world.

“The continuing paralysis in the U.S. House of Representatives has prevented the passage of measures supporting Israel in its time of peril,” he wrote. “The inability of the U.S. government to act on this issue, aid to Ukraine, and a budget for the current fiscal year is weakening confidence in U.S. leadership around the world.”

Ukraine, government spending

The House has been similarly unable to act on a number of other high-profile issues.  President Joe Biden’s administration is seeking additional authority to provide Ukraine with the weapons and other assistance it needs to fight off Russia’s full-scale invasion of its country.

In the days since the House lost its speaker, Russia has mounted a fierce new assault on the town of Avdiivka, north of the city of Donetsk, part of Ukrainian territory that Russia claims to have annexed.

In an appearance on CBS News’s “60 Minutes” on Sunday, Biden renewed his request for Congress to act on aid for both Ukraine and Israel. However, a portion of the House Republican caucus, including speaker-designate Jordan, has been highly skeptical about providing more aid to Ukraine.

At the same time, the U.S. is approaching a deadline to pass multiple government spending bills. Failure to do so would result in a partial shutdown of the federal government next month.

The House and Senate agreed to a stop-gap spending measure in late September that postponed the date of a shutdown into November. However, in the past two weeks, with the House consumed by the task of choosing a new speaker, little apparent progress has been made, increasing the likelihood of a shutdown.

‘Rudderless?’

“Broadly speaking, there are few historical precedents for this,” Dan Mahaffee, senior vice president and director of policy for the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, told VOA.

Mahaffee said the drama in the House is forcing Americans to ask themselves, “Is the institution rudderless?” An additional concern is what would happen if a more serious crisis befell the body.

“Heaven forbid we had an issue with the House where you had a speaker incapacitated or some harm came to them,” he said. “This demonstrates that it’s difficult to fill that [job] or to have an acting speaker do much in such an event.”

Lesson being learned

Tom Davis, a former Republican congressman who represented his Northern Virginia district in the House from 1995 to 2008, said what we are witnessing in the body today is a crop of relatively new legislators getting a lesson in how things work in Washington.

“When I was there, we had five- and six-seat majorities, and we operated just fine, because we recognized you had to operate as a team, and you had to compromise,” he told VOA.

Now, though, he said, “You have a new group of people in there that don’t know how government can work. They’re just sent there to say, ‘No,’ and stop the other guy.”

“So, it’s just got to work its way out,” he said. “It may take another week or so. Who knows? But they have to work that out within the caucus.”

Davis said that in the short term, the crisis is harming the “Republican brand.” In the longer term, however, he said that he doesn’t believe the current crisis will seriously hurt the party.

“The election’s a year from now, and once you nominate a presidential candidate, that generally tends to suck up all the oxygen in the room,” Davis said.
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A settlement filed Monday in a long-running lawsuit over the Trump administration’s separation of parents and their children at the border bars the government from similar separations for eight years while also providing benefits like the ability for their parents to come to America and work, according to the Biden administration.

The settlement between the Biden administration and the American Civil Liberties Union, which has been representing families separated from their children, still has to be approved by the judge. But if finalized, it would make it much more difficult for any administration including former President Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, to revive one of his most controversial tactics to halt immigration at the southern border if he wins next year’s election.

“It is our intent to do whatever we can to make sure that the cruelty of the past is not repeated in the future. We set forth procedures through this settlement agreement to advance that effort,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told The Associated Press.

The Trump administration separated thousands of children from their parents or guardians they were traveling with as it moved to criminally prosecute people for illegally crossing the southwestern border. Minors could not be held in criminal custody with their parents. They were transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services and then typically sent to live with a sponsor, often a relative or someone else with a family connection.

Faulty tracking systems by U.S. officials caused many to be apart for an extended time or never reunited with their parents. Facing strong opposition, Trump eventually reversed course in 2018, days before a judge put a halt to the practice after a lawsuit brought by the ACLU. During a CNN town hall earlier this year, Trump didn’t rule out once against separating families.

Lee Gelernt, lead counsel for the ACLU, praised the settlement.

“This settlement means that babies and toddlers will finally get to see their parents after years apart and that these suffering families will have an opportunity to seek lawful status. It also crucially bars an attempt by a future administration to reenact another family separation policy,” said Gelernt. “Nothing can make these families whole again but this is at least a start.”

President Joe Biden issued an executive order on his first day in office to reunite families. According to figures released by the Department of Homeland Security in February, 3,881 children were separated from their families from 2017 to 2021. About 74% of those have been reunited with their families: 2,176 before a Biden administration task force was created and 689 afterward.

Hundreds of families sued the federal government, seeking both monetary damages and policy changes.

This settlement filed in federal court in San Diego does not include monetary damages. But it does provide key benefits including authorization for parents of separated children to come to the U.S. under humanitarian parole for three years and work in the U.S. The families receive some help with housing and medical and behavioral health benefits designed to address some of the trauma associated with the separations.

Mayorkas described how he’d met with a woman who had been separated from her daughter and how after they had been reunited, her daughter still struggled with the experience.

“We need to help these families heal. And that is an obligation that we carry because of the pain that we inflicted upon them,” he said.

They’ll also get access to legal services which will be vital as they may file asylum applications to stay in the United States on a permanent basis. The settlement also waives the usual one-year timeline limiting when someone can apply for asylum, and the parents can apply even if they were previously denied, Gelernt said. A special team of supervisors will review their cases.

Some of these benefits were already available to families under a Biden-administration created task force designed to reunite separated families. But Gelernt said the settlement goes beyond the task force’s purview in key ways such as the asylum assistance. The settlement also bars future separations, which the task force did not, and Gelernt said a future administration could have disbanded the task force whereas the settlement is binding.

Under the settlement, it would still be possible to separate children at the border from their parents or guardians, but under limited scenarios, as has been the case for many years. They include if the child is being abused or the parent committed a much more serious crime than crossing the border illegally.

The settlement requires the government to keep detailed documentation when it does separate children from parents so as to avoid the chaos that erupted during the Trump-era family separations where parents and children could not be reunited.

At one point in 2021, the administration was negotiating a possible payout of hundreds of thousands of dollars to each parent and child who was separated. Word leaked on negotiations and produced a political backlash.

Now that the government and the ACLU have agreed on a settlement plan, the judge will hold a hearing to decide whether to accept it. Before that, people opposed to the settlement can raise objections to the judge.
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All About America explores American culture, politics, trends, history, ideals and places of interest.

West Virginia (41%), Louisiana (40.1%) and Oklahoma (40%) are the states with the fattest populations in the nation, laying claim to the highest proportion of adults with a body mass index (BMI) of 40% or greater, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

“The latest data from CDC is looking grim,” says Jamie Bussel of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a health-based philanthropic organization. “Twenty-two states had an adult obesity rate at or above 35%. And that was up from 19 states the year before. And when we look back a decade ago, no states had an adult obesity rate at or above 35%. So yes, clearly, when you look at the numbers, they’re not going in the right direction.”

In addition to West Virginia, Louisiana and Oklahoma, the 22 states with an obesity rate of 35% or higher are Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin.

The highest prevalence of obesity can be found in the Midwest and South, followed by the Northeast and the West. Obesity rates trended higher among Blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans and Alaska natives.

Every U.S. state had an obesity rate of at least 20%. The CDC calls additional support for obesity prevention and treatment “an urgent priority.”

“Obesity is a disease caused by many factors, including eating patterns, physical activity levels, sleep routines, genetics and certain medications,” said Karen Hacker, director of CDC’s National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, in a press release. “This means that there is no one size fits all approach. However, we know the key strategies that work include addressing the underlying social determinants of health such as access to healthcare, healthy and affordable food, and safe places for physical activity.”

Bussel says more robust federal food programs are necessary to help families living in poverty.

“In February of 2023, the USDA proposed updates to the school meals to align them with a diet that was [in line with] the latest dietary guidelines, and some of those changes include limits on added sugar, reductions in sodium levels, etc.,” she says. “We believe that those types of changes are really important changes that could improve students’ health and diet quality.”

There have also been changes to the WIC program, a federally funded supplemental nutrition program for women, infants and children, aimed at filling key nutritional gaps.

“A year ago in November, the USDA proposed updates to the WIC food package that will aim to help families purchase more nutritious foods,” Bussel says. “So again, these are federal-level policies that we believe are really important in helping ensure that all kids and families can thrive and be healthy and access good, high-quality food.”

Sheldon Jacobson, a professor of computer science at the University of Illinois, has studied obesity and says the government should invest more in public transportation to get people moving.

“We are such an automobile-centric society. We build our communities centered around suburbs,” he says. “We focus on driving rather than bicycling or walking or even public transportation and, as a result, that basically contributes to the fact that this inactivity is forcing people to gain weight, whether we like it or not, because we do less.”

The states and U.S. territories with the lowest rates of obesity are the District of Columbia (24.3%), Colorado (25%), Hawaii (25.9%) and Vermont (26.8%).
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