Midwest
Nebraska fisherman reels in new fish species in state: 'Bright orange with turquoise'
A new fish species has been recorded in Nebraska after a fisherman reeled in the colorful creature.
“We hear about new species in Nebraska from time to time, but most of them are unwanted, invasive species,” Daryl Bauer, Fisheries Outreach program manager of the state’s Game & Parks Commission, told Fox News Digital.
“I get reports almost every year of aquarium fish that were illegally released in our waters and then found dead or even caught by anglers.”
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But last week, Bauer got a call from his friend Scott Buss, an avid angler who caught a 5¼-inch, 2-oz. longear sunfish.
It’s a bright orange fish with turquoise markings that is native to Kansas.
This longear sunfish was caught by Scott Buss in the Little Blue River in Nebraska. (Nebraska Game & Parks Commission)
“This was the first time in all my career I had ever heard of a longear sunfish in Nebraska,” Bauer said.
“They are beautiful fish and I was thrilled to get a message from Scott Buss and then see his photo. It got even better when he was able to bring the fish to show me.”
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The catch was made with a rod and reel and a nightcrawler worm.
“I do a lot of fishing and a lot of multi-species fishing, so I like to catch a little bit of everything,” Buss of Norfolk, Nebraska, told Fox News Digital.
Scott Buss, pictured here, said he knew he’d caught something special when he pulled the bright and colorful sunfish out of the water. (Scott Buss)
“I certainly wasn’t specifically fishing for the sunfish, but I was using a small hook and small bait, which gives you a chance to catch a lot of different stuff than just your typical catfish.”
Buss said he was floating around a piece of worm, a small hook and a bobber when he got a bite and pulled the fish from the river.
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“Immediately, I said, ‘Whoa, that’s different,’” Buss said.
“It’s a very cool-looking fish. I looked at it and said, ‘That’s a longear,’ and I knew it hadn’t been officially documented here. So, I kind of struggled with what to do.”
Buss was the first person to catch this species of fish in Nebraska. (iStock )
Buss kept the potential record-setting fish in an aerated bait cooler and brought it to the commission office, where it was officially documented and recognized as the first state record for the species in Nebraska.
“By far the most exciting thing about the fish was that none [of these] have ever been caught in Nebraska before, and how beautiful it was,” Bauer said.
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“You just never know what you’re going to catch,” Buss said of his fish.
“An old 50-inch muskie, a 10-pound walleye or 2-ounce sunfish. It’s all exciting.”
Daryl Bauer, Fisheries Outreach program manager for the Nebraska Game & Parks Commission (not photographed with longear sunfish), said this was the first time in his entire career that he has heard and seen a longear sunfish. (Nebraska Game & Parks Commission)
Buss reeled in his longear from the Little Blue River, which is a typical eastern Nebraska prairie stream, Bauer said.
“[It’s a] relatively shallow, sandy, muddy bottom with some rock and gravel, lots of woody debris,” Bauer added.
“Right now, mid-summer, flows are low,” he said. “Typical fish species in the Little Blue would be channel and flathead catfish, a variety of minnows and suckers, some sunfish like bluegills, green sunfish and orange spotted sunfish, but no longears.”
Longears are like typical sunfish, but have not been documented in Nebraska before this. Bauer believes the longear swam up from Kansas during the high flow in the Little Blue River. (Scott Buss; Nebraska Game & Parks Commission)
Bauer said that earlier this year there were some periods of high flow in the Little Blue River and during those times a longear sunfish might have made its way up from Kansas.
Longears are typical sunfish, a lot like bluegills that are common in waters all across Nebraska and often the very first fish young anglers catch, Bauer said.
They readily bite on small hooks, bobbers and worms.
When it comes to the sport he loves, Buss offered some clear advice.
“Just go fishing,” he said. “Get out outside and have some fun because you never know what you might catch.”
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Article Summary
- The U.S. Department of Justice is suing Illinois for access to its complete, unredacted voter registration database.
- Documents filed in federal court suggest the agency wants the information so it can purge the names of suspected noncitizens using a federal database that many have criticized for being inaccurate.
- Similar suits have been filed in 29 other states and Washington, D.C. Judges in six states have granted motions to dismiss the suits. No judge has yet ruled in favor of DOJ’s request.
This summary was written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
SPRINGFIELD — The Trump administration’s lawsuits seeking access to sensitive voter registration data in Illinois and dozens of other states is one part of a broader effort to purge state voter rolls of suspected noncitizens, according to documents filed recently in federal court in Springfield.
Those documents were filed Thursday, April 30, by attorneys representing the Illinois AFL-CIO and other groups that have intervened in the case seeking to prevent the Department of Justice from obtaining the information. They say it proves the agency’s stated reasons for seeking the data — to determine whether Illinois is complying with voter list maintenance requirements — is only a pretext and the agency’s suit against the state should be dismissed.
Read the filing
Several former DOJ attorneys who have worked in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division filed an amicus brief in the case in March, arguing the agency has no statutory authority to seek the information to conduct its own list maintenance program or to identify noncitizens.
The new documents filed Thursday include internal DOJ emails that the attorneys say were made available “in response to a public records request lawsuit.”
One of those was a June 16, 2025, email from Michael Gates, who was then a deputy assistant attorney general in DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, to his superior, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who oversees that division. In that email, Gates states that the division is seeking access to the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, database.
“This will be helpful to us because it will allow us to compare this SAVE database against states’ voter rolls, which we will get directly from states under the (National Voter Registration Act),” Gates wrote.
The next month, on July 28, DOJ sent its first letter to the Illinois State Board of Elections seeking access to Illinois’ complete, unredacted statewide voter registration list, indicating that it was part of DOJ’s efforts to enforce voter list maintenance provisions of NVRA. The letter was signed by Gates. It also bore the name of Maureen Riordan, acting chief of the Voting Section within the Civil Rights Division.
Gates has since left the Justice Department. He is currently a Republican candidate for California attorney general in that state’s upcoming June 2 primary.
SAVE database
The SAVE database was originally set up to help states verify the citizenship and immigration status of people applying for public benefits such as Medicaid and SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Some states also use it to verify people’s eligibility to vote.
But the program has also been the target of criticism because of its tendency to misidentify people as noncitizens due to its use of incomplete or inaccurate data.
On April 21, the watchdog groups Common Cause and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, filed a lawsuit against DOJ in federal court in Washington, D.C., alleging the agency wants to use state voter registration lists and the SAVE database to conduct what they call “a sprawling new voter surveillance and purging apparatus that endangers millions of Americans’ fundamental voting and privacy rights.”
A second document filed last week in the Illinois case is a Nov. 18, 2025, email from the acting chief of the Civil Rights Division’s Voting Section, Eric Neff, that appears to suggest how the agency should conceal its intentions when asked why it is seeking states’ voter registration databases.
“I believe our reply should always be: ‘We will use the data in a manner consistent with Federal law’ and say nothing more,” Neff wrote to fellow DOJ lawyers Jesus Osete and Matt Zandi. He also said of the Help America Vote Act, the Civil Rights Act and NVRA, “none of them require (us) to give the states information about what we are going to do with the data. No judge will have authority to limit us beyond a promise of Federal law compliance.”
Illinois lawsuit
Illinois has refused to hand over an unredacted voter registration list. Instead, it has provided DOJ with electronic copies of partially redacted files that do not include sensitive information such as dates of birth, driver’s license numbers or partial Social Security numbers.
In December, DOJ filed suit in the Central District of Illinois seeking access to the unredacted files. It also filed similar suits in 29 other states and Washington, D.C.
The Illinois AFL-CIO, Common Cause several and other groups have intervened as codefendants in the case.
Attorneys for the state and the intervening parties have filed motions to dismiss the DOJ lawsuit. Judge Colleen Lawless has not yet ruled on the motion. Similar suits have already been dismissed in six other states. No court has yet ruled in favor of DOJ’s request for access to the unredacted voter files.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
A man is dead following a May 4 collision on westbound Interstate 64 west of Corydon, Indiana, according to a news release from the Indiana State Police.
ISP Sgt. Carey Huls said the two-vehicle crash occurred around 5:45 a.m. when Zachary Burdin, 31, was traveling westbound on I-64, and his vehicle collided with the back of a truck with a trailer full of paving equipment.
Burdin was pronounced dead at the scene by the Harrison County Coroner. There were no other injuries reported. Officials do not attribute the crash to any weather conditions.
Huls said the crash was cleared from the highway by about 9 a.m., and there are no current issues.
DES MOINES, Iowa (KCRG) – Iowa gas prices have topped $4 per gallon for the first time since 2022, averaging $4.11 a gallon.
According to GasBuddy, prices jumped 15 cents from Sunday night to Monday, up from $3.84 on Wednesday. Prices have risen 61 cents in the past month.
Iowa gas prices are $1.18 higher than a year ago. The highest recorded average in Iowa was $4.77 per gallon in June 2022.
Nationally, Georgia has the lowest average gas price at $3.85 per gallon, while California has the highest at $6.08.
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