Nebraska

The Nebraska GOP is rejecting all Republican congressional incumbents in Tuesday's primary election

Published

2 years ago

May 13, 2024

The Nebraska GOP is rejecting all Republican congressional incumbents in Tuesday's primary election

OMAHA, Neb. — In one of the most closely watched congressional races this year, U.S. Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska is looking to defeat a fellow Republican in Tuesday’s primary election in his quest for reelection. He’ll have to do it without the support of the state Republican Party, which has endorsed his primary challenger.

Bacon, whose district includes the state’s largest city of Omaha, isn’t the only one being snubbed. The Nebraska GOP, which was taken over by those loyal to former President Donald Trump during a contentious state convention in 2022, has refused to endorse any of the Republican incumbents who hold all five of the state’s congressional seats.

The state party has endorsed primary challengers to U.S. Sen. Pete Ricketts and Rep. Adrian Smith, who represents the state’s vast rural 3rd Congressional District. And it has declined to issue endorsements in the primary races of U.S. Sen. Deb Fischer and Rep. Mike Flood, who represents the 1st Congressional District that includes the state capital of Lincoln. Both Fischer and Flood face primary challengers who entered those races after the Nebraska GOP announced its endorsement decision in January.

It’s an oddity that lays bare the bitter divide between Trump loyalists who control the Nebraska GOP, as well as several county Republican parties, and the more establishment-type Republicans who were previously at the helm, said John Hibbing, a longtime University of Nebraska-Lincoln political science professor.

“It’s not a good look,” Hibbing said. “You’d like the faces of your party, who would be your elected representatives, and the state party leaders to be on the same page.”

It’s even more perplexing when considering the voting records and campaign rhetoric of the incumbents, he said.

“I think they’re probably wondering: ‘What else can we do?’” Hibbing said. “These are solidly conservative individuals.”

Nowhere is the state party’s rejection more likely to leave a mark than in Bacon’s race. The incumbent faces a challenge from Dan Frei, who bills himself as to the right of Bacon. Frei previously ran for the seat in 2014 and came close to besting then-Rep. Lee Terry in the Republican primary.

Bacon is one of 16 Republican members of Congress representing districts that Democrat Joe Biden carried in 2020.

Nebraska eschewed a winner-take-all system of awarding presidential electoral votes more than 30 years ago and instead allows its electoral votes tied to its three congressional districts to be split. Bacon’s district has seen its elector vote go to a Democratic presidential candidate twice — to Barack Obama in 2008 and to Biden in 2020.

After the state GOP endorsed Frei, Bacon defended his record as “a common-sense conservative who is able to reach across the aisle and find areas of consensus.”

Bacon has said that “it’s sad to see the division in the party,” Danielle Jensen, communications director of the Bacon campaign, said Monday. “I can tell you, he does not think this is going to negatively affect the campaign.”

The campaigns of Fischer, Flood, Ricketts and Smith did not immediately response to messages seeking comment.

The state party said in an email Monday it didn’t endorse any of the Republican incumbents because they didn’t ask. The challengers who got the party’s endorsement did ask, and a vote of the more than 160 elected governing body members of the party gave them that endorsement, said Todd Watson, political director of the state GOP.

Watson denied that the move was solely about Trump, but said most Nebraska Republicans are fed up with what they see as attacks on Trump, the state party’s new direction and “our way of life.”

“What we believe in is the Constitution, conservative principles, and God,” he said.

A former state Republican Party official, Kerry Winterer, excoriated the state party in an opinion piece published in the Nebraska Examiner last week, saying the party’s primary purpose is to elect Republicans but that it has instead become bound solely to Trump.

“A political party bound to one candidate cannot possibly fulfill its purpose of electing candidates that share a common political philosophy,” Winterer wrote.

Watson countered that “the old leadership” of the state GOP has it wrong.

“Objectives of the party are achieved in our mind when we elect constitutional and platform Republicans to office,” he said. “Electing Republicans that are not committed to the objective of the party … to defend the Constitution and advance our principles as stated in our written platform and plans have been a real problem for this party and country.”

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Nebraska

2026 NSAA Girls State Basketball Championships Scores & Highlights (Saturday)

Published

12 hours ago

March 7, 2026

Press Room

2026 NSAA Girls State Basketball Championships Scores & Highlights (Saturday)

LINCOLN, Neb. (KOLN) – The NSAA Girls Basketball Championship is underway. The event is March 4 to March 7, with the finals at Pinnacle Bank Arena.

Tickets for the event can be purchased on the Gofan.co website.

State basketball scores and highlights

Below is the schedule for Saturday’s games. Check back throughout the day for updated scores and highlights.

Class A

1PM: North Star vs. Omaha North

Class B

6:15PM: Gretna East vs. Bennington

Class C1

Milford 66, Malcolm 52

11AM: Gothenburg vs. Fort Calhoun (third place game)

Class C2

4:15PM: Pender vs. Elkhorn Valley

1PM: Yutan vs. GACC (third place game)

Class D1

8:15PM: Bloomfield vs Howells-Dodge

3PM: Sutton vs. Elm Creek (third place game)

Class D2

FINAL: DCS 49, Wynot 39

9AM: Archangels vs Red Cloud (third place game)

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Nebraska

A 5-year-old boy was left alone in a hospital on the day of his heart surgery. His anesthesiologist adopted him.

Published

24 hours ago

March 7, 2026

Press Room

A 5-year-old boy was left alone in a hospital on the day of his heart surgery. His anesthesiologist adopted him.

Omaha, Nebraska — Surrounded by friends and family at his birthday party this week, 10-year-old True Beethe of Omaha, Nebraska, was on cloud nine, but his bliss had not come easy.

Back in 2022, at the age of 5, True needed a heart procedure for a serious congenital heart defect known as hypoplastic right heart syndrome.

He was under the care of social services at the time. On the day of the surgery, for an unknown reason, he was just dropped off at Children’s Nebraska, an Omaha children’s hospital.

Anesthesiologist Dr. Amy Beethe found him in pre-operative care.

“He was just sitting there all alone,” Beethe told CBS News. “No adult with him at all.”

True himself told CBS News he had “no idea” why he was alone. His case worker was sick with COVID that day, and True was transferred from a rehab hospital. It was unclear why no one else from social services was able to be with him.

The procedure lasted about seven hours, and through it all, Beethe said she just kept staring at the sweet face of the poor boy who, at that moment, had no mother, father or a stable home life.

That is when Beethe decided that, even though she already had six children, she just had to take in a seventh.

“After I dropped True off in recovery, I called my husband and I just said, ‘We need to have a talk when we get home. I need you to have an open mind,’” Beethe said.

Ryan Beethe said he was a little hesitant at first.

“But it didn’t take long to hear what was needed, and it just felt right,” Ryan Beethe said.

Dr. Jason Cole, a pediatric cardiologist and medical director of the Advanced Pediatric Heart Failure and Transplant Program at Children’s Nebraska, explained that True’s heart disease “is on the severe end of the spectrum,” and eventually his heart will fail and he will require a heart transplant.

“Without a successful, loving home life, a patient like True with extraordinarily complex congenital heart disease would not be able to survive,” Cole said. “To be even considered as a viable candidate for a heart transplant, you must be in a stable environment with consistent care so that the organ is not rejected.”

With that in mind, about 18 months later, the Beethe’s adoption of True was complete.

“So yeah, that’s how the story goes,” Amy Beethe said.

But it’s not how the story ends. Up until he was taken in by the Beethe family, True had been living with five other siblings in an unstable home environment. Amy knew she and Ryan couldn’t adopt all of them, so the good doctor decided to do the next best thing.

First, she got her sister and her husband to agree to adopt True’s sister TyLynn. Then her sister-in-law and her husband took in True’s sister Tyra.

Finally, she got a coworker and her husband to make Tacari and Malia part of their family.

“There was one left, and then I went back to my husband,” Amy Beethe said.

That’s how True’s sister Laney was adopted by the Beethe family, too.

And all of this because of a doctor who believed that saving lives wasn’t just her day job.

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Nebraska

Nebraska Baseball Weekend Preview: Michigan State

Published

2 days ago

March 6, 2026

Press Room

Nebraska Baseball Weekend Preview: Michigan State

Series Preview

Michigan State Spartans (3-8) at Nebraska Cornhuskers (7-5)

Location: Hawks Field at Haymarket Park, Lincoln, NE

Dates: March 6th-8th

Times (all CT): Friday @ 2pm, Saturday @ 1pm, Sunday @ 12pm

Head Coaches: Jake Boss Jr. (18th season, 496-450) & Will Bolt (7th season, 177-131-1)

TV/Stream: B1G+

Radio: All Nebraska games on Huskers Radio Network, Huskers.com, Huskers App

Nebraska baseball goes into conference play having won both of its mid-week games since returning home to Haymarket Park. It’s riding the hot bats of Dylan Carey, and Mac Moyer. Carey is fresh off a 5 for 5 game, the first 5 hit game for a Husker since Gunner Hellstrom in 2018. Carey is leading all Big Ten batters in both hits (28) and doubles (8) and is 2nd in avg. (.509). He is piling up the RBIs with Moyer reaching base at a .592 clip. He is tied for the Big Ten lead with 13 walks.

Nebraska should also be getting Will Jesske back after a week off due to feeling a twing in his hamstring Friday night at Auburn. Husker coach Will Bolt said he was going to pinch hit if needed the last inning against South Dakota State, but didn’t want him playing the field yet with the cold weather. Jesske has 3 home runs on the year, but with the amount of hits on the barrel he has had at some giant ballparks, he could be close to the Big Ten lead if he played all his games at a place like Haymarket Park.

The Spartans had the biggest upset of the first week of the season, taking the series from then #8 Louisville by winning the first 2 games 4-3 and 13-4. They have struggled mightily since, going 1-8 against a pretty rough schedule. They went from Louisville to #3 Texas and were swept by a combined score of 15-2 in 3 games.

They have a yearly “residency” as they call it, in Greenville, South Carolina early every year, thanks to a big alumni base in the area. They struggled to put up runs in those 2 weeks, never putting up more than 4. Their lone win was a 4-1 victory over Albany, and they ended the residency on a sour note, with a 7 inning run rule loss to #10 Clemson, 12-1. Husker pitchers will need to limit walks and hit batters, and should be able to manage the lineup if they can.

Pitching Probables

Game 1: RHP Ty Horn (0-0, 4.05 ERA) vs. RHP Aidan Donovan (0-1, 3.95 ERA)

Game 2: RHP Carson Jasa (1-1, 7.71 ERA) vs. RHP Carter Monke (1-1, 2.35 ERA)

Game 3: RHP Gavin Blachowicz (1-1, 2.31 ERA) vs. RHP Logan Pikur (0-2, 7.30 ERA)

It was a rough weekend for Husker starting pitching. In fact, in 2026 no weekend starter has turned in a quality start. Ty Horn started strong, piling up strikeouts in the first couple innings before a couple hits and an error jump started the Tigers’ offense. Still looking for him to work on getting through the order a couple times in a more efficient fashion. It would really behoove Friday starters to go longer so the bullpen is more available the next two days. That is just as big of a deal as being dominant for 5 innings.

Really nothing went right on Saturday for Carson Jasa. Well, he could locate his fastball for strikes, but that was about it, and Auburn quickly realized it. 2 walks and a hit batter went a long way to giving up 4 earned runs in his lone inning of work, but Auburn learned to just sit and hunt his fastball, and when you connect with a 97 mph fastball, it tends to go a long way. Regaining a feel for his cutter/change and slider is really all he can do.

Even the most steady of the starters for the first 2 weeks had a rough go. Gavin Blachowicz seemed to get out of an issue with minimal damage in the 2nd inning against Auburn in which an error led to a run being scored, but a wild pitch and then giving up a no doubter 3 run home run, opened the game up. Rather than let him work out of it, Nebraska had a couple strong options in the bullpen to turn to, so they let Kevin Mannell come out and get some work in to try and regain his confidence. Blachowicz needs to work on not letting a mistake turn into a big inning, and he should regain his form.

MSU had 2 starting pitcher and kinda filled in the Sunday position last season. They lost Big Ten Pitcher of the Year Joseph Dzierwa, and their Saturday guy was moved to a long relief role. Aidan Donovan was mostly a mid-week starter last season, but has moved into the Friday role. He showed a lot of promise as a freshman in 2025, with a 2-3 record and 4.70 ERA. He pitched well against Louisville and Texas, but struggled in his last outing against Illinois. Don’t look for him to pile up strike outs or go deep into the game, his season high is 5 innings and he has 10 strikeouts in his 13.2 innings so far.

Carter Monke is a grad transfer from Illinois State. He started 14 games in his 2 years at ISU, and had a 6.16 ERA, striking out 67 in 83 innings of work. Despite those numbers, he has pitched very well to start 2026. He started 2 of their 3 wins, and in his loss only gave up 1 earned run in 6.1 innings against Texas. Logan Pikur led the team in appearances the past 2 seasons, but has really struggled moving into the starting rotation. He has a career ERA over 7.00 and career batting average against of .315. Nebraska’s offense should be ready to roll Sunday.

Scouting Report

The Spartans returned a lot of position players, but from an offense that really struggled in 2025. They have far and away the fewest hits of any Big Ten team currently, a combo of their offensive struggles and their incredible strength of schedule. They have only 62 hits on the year. The next lowest is 83, and Nebraska by contrast, has 132. They have scored only 33 runs on the season. Nebraska is below average in the B1G, but still has scored 78 runs.

Everything starts with returning 2nd Team All-Big Ten second baseman Ryan McKay. Like everyone, he’s had a rough start to the year. A .250 average and only 1 double from a guy that hit .306 with 20 home runs a season ago. He epitomizes the team’s philosophy of working deep into counts, but not striking out. He has as many walks in his career as strikeouts. He also likes to run, already with 4 stolen bases despite the limited opportunities.