• ELECTION INTEGRITYDeep Red Utah Wants to Keep Voting by Mail

    By Matt Vasilogambros

    When it comes to voting by mail, Utah is not your typical deep red state. As Republican-led states seek to limit mail-in voting, Utah stands by its system. Conspiracy theories questioning the integrity of voting by mail in the tumultuous aftermath of the 2020 election never rang true for most Utahns. They’d been testing the system for years and found it trustworthy and convenient.

  • TEXAS WILDFIRESHow Climate Change Primed Texas to Burn

    By Naveena Sadasivam

    Over the past 10 days, five wildfires in the region have burned more than 1.2 million acres. The largest of them — dubbed the Smokehouse Creek Fire, for a creek near its origin — stretches across an area larger than Rhode Island. The state’s high plains get a month more fire weather now than they did in the 1970s.

  • TEXAS WILDFIRESTexas Requires Utilities to Plan for Emergencies. That Didn’t Stop the Panhandle Fires.

    By Emily Foxhall

    Experts say utilities need to be ready for extreme weather, which could be a challenge in a state where discussing climate change is often taboo. A review of portions of the state’s electricity code shows utilities have to plan for maintaining their equipment and responding in emergencies, but how they do so is largely left to the companies.

  • BORDER SECURITYAppeals Court Reverses Order Blocking Texas Immigration Law, Setting Up Supreme Court Showdown

    By Uriel J. García

    The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals late Saturday reversed a lower court’s ruling that halted a new state law allowing Texas police to arrest people suspected of crossing the Texas-Mexico border illegally. If the U.S. Supreme Court doesn’t intervene in the coming days, the law making illegal entry a state crime could go into effect this weekend.

  • IMMIGRATIONFederal Judge Blocks Texas Law Allowing Police to Arrest Migrants Suspected of Being in Country Illegally

    By Uriel J. García

    Senate Bill 4 was Texas’ latest attempt to deter people from crossing the Texas-Mexico border amid a surge in migration. SB 4 was scheduled to take effect Tuesday. “SB 4 threatens the fundamental notion that the United States must regulate immigration with one voice,” Judge David Ezra wrote.

  • IMMIGRATIONNew York Appeals Court Strikes Down Law Allowing Non-Citizens to Vote

    By Christian Wade, The Center Square

    The law, pushed through the Democratic-controlled Legislature last year, was expected to add another 800,000 new eligible voters in New York City, which has a population of nearly 8.5 million. “As there is no reference to noncitizens, and thus, an irrefutable inference applies that noncitizens were intended to be excluded from those individuals entitled to vote in elections,” the court said.

  • LAW-ENFORCEMENT TECHNOLOYChicago Is the Latest City Rethinking Disputed Technology That Listens for Gunshots

    By Matt Vasilogambros

    More than 150 U.S. cities use ShotSpotter, but now Chicago has joined a growing list of cities that have cut ties with the controversial company that tries to reduce urban gun violence with 24/7 technology that listens for the crack of gunshots and immediately notifies police.

  • ELECTION INTEGRITYOngoing Conspiracies Pushed Out the Elections Staff in This Texas County. The New Director Won’t Budge.

    By Natalia Contreras, Votebeat

    Jim Riley, who took the job as elections administrator in Gillespie County more than a year after the entire staff there quit, says he won’t give in to demands from voter fraud activists who want to ditch electronic voting equipment and hand count ballots.

  • WATER SECURITYIn $100 Million Colorado River Deal, Water and Power Collide

    By Alex Hager

    The Colorado River District plans to buy the water rights that flow through Colorado’s Shoshone hydropower plant. The acquisition is seen as pivotal for a wide swath of the state, and has been co-signed by farmers, environmental groups, and local governments.

  • NYC & MIGRANT BENEFITSNYC to Launch Debit-Card Pilot Program for Migrants

    New York City announced it was launching what it described as a cost-saving pilot program to provide 500 migrant families with prepaid debit cards to buy food and baby supplies. The debit-cards will be loaded with an average of $12.52 per person, per day, for 28 days, and the city says the program will save $600,000 per month and $7.2 million annually relative to the current system of providing boxes with non-perishable food.

  • NYC & MIGRANT BENEFITSNYC’s EBT System for Benefit-Delivery System: Backgrounder

    In choosing to use the Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) system to deliver benefits to migrants, New York City has chosen a tried and proven benefits-delivery system. Over the past two decades, the EBT system has become the cornerstone of efforts by the federal, state, and local governments to deliver social benefits effectively, efficiently, and at a lower cost to the tax payer.

  • BORDER SECURITYOperation Lone Star Border Security Funding Totals More Than Multiple State Budgets

    By Bethany Blankley, The Center Square

    The Texas legislature has allocated more than $11.6 billion to border security efforts over a four-year period, the most in state history. It totals more than multiple state fiscal year budgets and more than what the Trump administration allocated to federal border security efforts in Texas.

  • NUCLEAR POWERFederal Money Could Supercharge State Efforts to Preserve Nuclear Power

    By Alex Brown

    A plant in Michigan might become the first to reopen after closing. The Palisades plant in southwest Michigan could be revived by a $1.5 billion loan from the U.S. Department of Energy.

  • PRIVACYDozens of Rogue California Police Agencies Still Sharing Driver Locations with Anti-Abortion States

    In October 2023, California Attorney General Rob Bonta clarified that a 2016 state law, SB 34, prohibits California’s local and state police from sharing information collected from automated license plate readers (ALPR) with out-of-state or federal agencies. Despite the Attorney General’s definitive stance, dozens of law enforcement agencies have signaled their intent to continue defying the law by sharing ALPR information with law-enforcement agencies of states with restrictive abortion laws, putting abortion seekers and providers at risk.

  • CRITICAL MINERALSIs the Southwest Too Dry for a Mining Boom?

    By Wyatt Myskow

    Critical minerals for the clean energy transition are abundant in the Southwest, but the dozens of mines proposed to access them will require vast sums of water, something in short supply in the desert.