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Articles written by Joshua Shimkus


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  • Ballroom Blitz: Union Pacific donates to White House ballroom while pushing massive merger

    JOSHUA SHIMKUS, Flatwater Free Press|Nov 12, 2025

    Union Pacific Railroad is the lone Nebraska-based company publicly known to have donated to the new White House ballroom championed by President Donald Trump. It's also a Nebraska-based company that will soon need a federal regulator to approve a massive merger that, if green-lit, would give the company control of more than 40% of rail freight traffic in the United States. Trump recently fired the most anti-merger board member of that federal regulator, the Surface Transportation Board, as he...

  • Milk and Money: Norfolk dairy plant racked up hundreds of violations. The city finally had enough.

    JOSHUA SHIMKUS, Flatwater Free Press|Sep 3, 2025

    Michael's Cantina has been serving Tex-Mex food to the residents here for more than 30 years. It feels timeless, except for an unwelcome newcomer: the stench. For the past two years, the restaurant and nearby residents have been bothered by the stink, which owner Heath Henery describes as a "sewer smell with almost a vomit smell." He blames the odor on the dairy processing plant across the street, a company long known as Milk Specialties Global that recently rebranded as Actus Nutrition. The...

  • 'Unintended consequence': E-Verify aimed to stop unauthorized workers. It might be fueling more fraud.

    JOSHUA SHIMKUS, Flatwater Free Press|Jul 30, 2025

    In the hours after federal immigration officers descended on Glenn Valley Foods, company officials and elected leaders made one point clear: Glenn Valley had worked to avoid the exact situation it found itself in. As proof, they pointed to the Omaha meatpacking plant’s use of E-Verify, a federal system meant to help employers confirm a person’s ability to work legally in the U.S. “We’ve done everything we’re supposed to do as a company,” Glenn Valley Foods President Chad Hartmann said at the time. A spokesperson for Immigration and Customs Enf...

  • Parched projects

    JOSHUA SHIMKUS, Flatwater Free Press|Jun 25, 2025

    In the sparsely populated Nebraska Panhandle, the City of Kimball is trying to grow. And thanks to investments from major local employers and the planned Air Force upgrade of missiles in nearby nuclear missile silos, the area soon could double in size. But to meet that growth, the city's water infrastructure needs attention - millions of dollars worth of attention: $2.5 million for sewer lines, around $1 million for updating the drinking water system and millions more for the wastewater treatmen...