Democrats in the United States have approved a shakeup to their 2028 presidential primary calendar as the party looks to take back the White House.

During a meeting on Saturday in Austin, Texas, Democratic National Committee (DNC) members voted to overhaul which states have the first say in picking the party’s presidential nominee.

South Carolina will once again take centre stage as the party’s first official nominating contest, with its Democratic primary scheduled for January 22, 2028.

Nevada will go second on February 1, followed by New Hampshire on February 8. New Mexico, Michigan and Virginia will round out the early states over the course of that month.

The new calendar formalises a change that began during the last presidential election cycle in 2024, when the national Democratic Party similarly put South Carolina at the front of its primary lineup.

The 2028 primaries set up a more competitive calendar for Democrats, giving greater influence to states with more racial diversity, in an effort to better represent the party’s key constituencies.

Debate over primary calendar

But plans to reshape the primary calendar have been met with controversy in the past.

In 2024, for instance, local leaders in New Hampshire defied party leaders by holding a state-run primary ahead of the first party-led vote in South Carolina. As justification, New Hampshire officials cited a state law requiring their primary to be the first in the nation.

There was also pushback in Iowa, whose state caucus had ushered in the primary season for decades.

Iowa Democrats warned that moving the state lower in the party’s calendar could send the wrong signal to rural voters, who often feel overlooked in national politics and tend to lean rightward.

Still, proponents of the calendar change argue that it will help the Democratic primaries better mirror the overall population of the US.

South Carolina has normally been Democrats’ first contest in the southern US, and it has a significant population of Black voters. Roughly a quarter of the state identifies as Black, according to census estimates.

Nevada and New Mexico, meanwhile, have large Latino or Hispanic populations, with 31 percent and 49 percent of their residents identifying as such, respectively. All three states will be at the forefront of the primary calendar, come 2028.

DNC Chairman Ken Martin took to social media on Saturday to tout the changes as capturing the demographic shifts in the country.

“These states reflect the diversity of America and will help ensure our nominee is best positioned to take back the White House in 2028,” Martin wrote on X.

Ongoing party feud

Iowa and New Hampshire both have overwhelmingly white electorates, and critics have long argued the two states have played outsized roles in shaping presidential elections.

Notching early victories in the party primaries can help a candidate build momentum, and that, in turn, can help presidential hopefuls secure party nominations.

Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, who led the DNC from 2005 to 2009, told The Associated Press (AP) news agency that the calendar changes will make for a more representative nominating process.

“These states look more like the country,” Dean said, pointing to places like South Carolina and Nevada, “whereas Iowa and New Hampshire don’t”.

But it remains uncertain how the new calendar could affect the growing intra-party feud between progressive and more moderate, establishment candidates.

Democrats in Michigan, one of the states given a boost in the calendar shakeup, narrowly voted earlier this month to select progressive Abdul El-Sayed as their Senate nominee.

Given that Michigan will now have an earlier say in the voting process, some experts have speculated that the swing state could help progressives assert greater influence over the party overall.

But other states given more prominence in the 2028 lineup have a more moderate streak.

South Carolina, for instance, favoured then-candidate Joe Biden in the 2020 primaries over his more progressive opponents, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

“I think our primary voters up north are probably a little different than primary voters in South Carolina,” Boyd Brown, a former DNC member from South Carolina, told AP.

Here is the full list of the six states that will have the first say in Democrats’ 2028 presidential primaries:

• South Carolina: January 22, 2028
• Nevada: February 1, 2028
• New Hampshire: February 8, 2028
• New Mexico: February 15, 2028
• Michigan: February 22, 2028
• Virginia: February 29, 2028

A relentless stretch of thunderstorms has brought devastating flooding across the Midwest, with additional bouts of heavy rainfall expected through at least Sunday, the National Weather Service said.

The NWS is predicting widespread storms this weekend through the Ohio Valley, Midwest and central Appalachians, bringing additional precipitation to already saturated areas that had just started to see floodwater recede. At least three people have died and more than 150,000 were without power as of Saturday afternoon.

Indiana and Ohio have been among the hardest-hit states, with rainfall totaling more than 11 inches in some areas over the past week. The White River in Anderson, Ind., rose to a record 24.9 feet, surpassing a flood mark that has stood since 1913.

Flash flood and flood warnings were in effect across central Illinois and central Indiana, the NWS said Saturday, and flood watches were in effect from Iowa and Missouri eastward to central West Virginia.

“I will do everything in my power to protect Hoosier lives and livelihoods as we respond to this historic severe weather,” said Indiana Gov. Mike Braun, who has requested a presidential emergency declaration through FEMA for federal funding and resources. “I have mobilized state and local resources, declared a Statewide Disaster Emergency and deployed the Indiana National Guard.”

In addition to the deluge of rain, parts of Indiana have also endured periodic tornadoes and a derecho over the past several days.

Cyndee Gillmore, who owns and operates the Cornerstone Campground and Retreat Center in New Castle, Ind., said 5 feet of water swept across the property flooding the kitchen, banquet hall, youth center and all the center’s mobile campers.

“I’m standing in my house right now and it smells to high heaven, but it’s just stuff,” Gillmore said. “Everybody is pitching in and the community is supporting one another and it’s beautiful to see. We’re going to keep our focus on God.”

Still, she said, she worries about how the area will recover. Neither she nor most of her neighbors have flood insurance, and property insurance does not cover flooding.

(Gray News) – A website is allowing drivers to see if Flock surveillance cameras have searched for their vehicle.

HaveIBeenFlocked allows users to type their license plate number into a search bar to run through a series of “audit logs” within the Flock system, according to the website.

The data from the cameras is made available through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Those sources are made publicly available.

The results do not show if a vehicle passed by any of the Flock cameras, or what the devices may have returned, but rather what searches of a license plate were performed by agencies that use Flock cameras.

HaveIBeenFlocked also tracks reasons for Flock searches, still based on public records. The most common reason appeared to be related to drugs, closely followed by motor vehicle theft.

According to the website, license plate numbers entered in are not saved.

A growing controversy

The website was created in 2025 as Flock readers grow in popularity throughout the country, often used by law enforcement – and not without controversy.

According to the Associated Press, concerns have arisen about whether immigration enforcement can access the cameras.

Meanwhile, multiple reports of law enforcement officers misusing the cameras for personal searches have come to light. In North Carolina, for example, an officer was arrested for using the Flock system to track her boyfriend’s ex-wife more than 30 times.

She has since been fired.

Flock CEO Garrett Langley announced changes would be coming to the system, to be implemented by Jan. 1. Those changes include a tool to flag “abnormal search behavior,” AP reported.

The American Civil Liberties Union called it a “step in the right direction” in a blog post about the announcement, but also said that “Although Flock may not technically be the one unlocking the door to months of people’s private location data, it is responsible for building the door and handing out the keys.”