NEW: After Dobbs, voters in ten states enshrined abortion and reproductive rights in their states' constitutions. @uclarepropolicy.bsky.social's @cathrencohen.bsky.social and Diana Kasdan analyze how the wording of these amendments impacts their promise and potential to protect reproductive freedom.

GOP lawmakers cite Georgia’s experiment as a model for the federal Medicaid work requirements set to take effect in 2027. A new report by a government spending watchdog found that the nation’s only Medicaid work requirement program spent twice as much on administrative costs as on health care.

While the federal government carries out its deeply unpopular immigration agenda, state lawmakers are confronting masked agents and getting arrested after demanding entry to overcrowded ICE detention cells. talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/state-l...

My latest in @talkingpointsmemo.com — state legislators are putting their literal bodies on the line to protect the rule of law and their communities. States are the frontlines and a deeply hopeful story is unfolding if we know where to look. The next step is more coordination to make it a movement.

Breaking News: Eleven Democratic elected officials were arrested in New York City after demanding access to ICE’s migrant detention cells.

"They're politicians, what are they supposed to do? Literally fight in the streets?" Unashamed to say this made me cry.

Trump & Co are horribly anti-worker. But "blue states have extraordinary untapped power, especially if they choose to wield it together." For #LaborDay2025, @gabygoldstein.bsky.social & I wrote in @talkingpointsmemo.com w/ ideas for bold pro-worker state action. talkingpointsmemo.com/news/a-labor...

Trump stinks for workers. Here's how blue states can fight back together. By @gabygoldstein.bsky.social and me in @talkingpointsmemo.com for #LaborDay2025. talkingpointsmemo.com/news/a-labor...

Louisiana has to build three new natural gas power plants to accommodate the "AI" data center that Meta just crammed through because said center will use *Three Times* as much electricity (and, thus, attendant resources) as the *Entire City Of New Orleans*, every year. Y'all this isn't sustainable.

For @talkingpointsmemo.com, I wrote about how powerful states are, how progressives have been generationally reluctant to embrace that power, and how we can and must wring our state power dry right now to fight back and fight forward.

We will stand up for the dignity and right to privacy of all Washingtonians. This is an important win, especially for our immigrant communities and mixed-status families, who are already being targeted by the Trump administration.

For @talkingpointsmemo.com, I wrote about how powerful states are, how progressives have been generationally reluctant to embrace that power, and how we can and must wring our state power dry right now to fight back and fight forward.

I LOVE seeing helpful tools emerge to study state constitutions! Carrie Ann Donnell highlights stateconstitutiontool.org in a new piece in @statecourtreport.org. Read up on what it does and how to use it! statecourtreport.org/our-work/ana...

The GOP budget law cut unobligated $ for many IRA programs that would improve air quality + build climate resilience + lower energy bills. New CBO #s shows cuts to $14b in climate related programs supporting states and communities www.cbo.gov/publication/...

The harmful Republican megabill slashes climate programs. @climatexchange and @evergreenaction share options for states to preserve progress: climate-xchange.org/2025/07/reco... Here are some of my favorites below. 🧵

ICYMI: After the Supreme Court gutted federal wetland protections, states like Illinois are scrambling to fill the gap. But without action, hundreds of thousands of acres could be paved over—and once they're gone, they're gone for good. www.sierraclub.org/sierra/state...

Amid federal cutbacks affecting local election officials, state governments need to provide wide-ranging support to ensure smooth and secure elections. www.brennancenter.org/our-work/ana...

I have spent most of my life making government work for people. But the institutions I love have been losing faith with the public for a long time. If we love government, then when we rebuild it we’ll have to be willing to break some glass to make it deliver like FDR did.

Good news: the largest state in the country, which is all on its own the 4th largest economy in the world (having recently overtaken Japan), now gets the largest amount of its electricity from solar, and that trend is set to continue.

Extremely bad university governance changes coming in Texas www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Now, you might think--if teachers are pushed out of public schools, private schools can fill in the gaps. But private school teachers are actually paid, on average, substantially less than public school teachers. Because they don't typically have unions to help fight for the pay they deserve.

"We don’t make enough money to put up with this." Last year, US K-12 schools opened short 55,000 teachers. Between book bans and political attacks on schools and educators, it's looking like this year's shortages will be even more dire, especially in red states. newrepublic.com/article/1967...

Trump's unconstitutional seizure of more than $6 billion in federal education funds to states is meant to impose all four harms.

The federal government is suing Los Angeles because the city is not helping with immigration enforcement. But under the American system of federalism, LA is under no obligation to do so. bit.ly/44l4kBu

In light of state and local law enforcement doing more immigration enforcement, I’m re-upping this article via @justsecurity.org that highlights the rise of “287g” agreements between #DHS and state/local police and National Guard > 800 agreements and rising! www.justsecurity.org/114395/the-m...

NEW: Illinois is poised to adopt a reform into law that'd bring some relief to the state's stretched-thin public defenders. Illinois is one of the only states with no state office to help public defenders, leaving them at the mercy of local budgets & whims. This starts changing that:

The state legislature has made it so you can no longer major in religion, Italian or French at Indiana University.

"Eight states—AL, AZ, FL, GA, ID, IN, NE and NC—saw their real per-pupil education expenditures decline even while their per capita GDP went up. These eight states had the capacity to expand educational opportunities for their state’s children but have gone in the opposite direction instead."

“This bill includes a lot of money to fund state and local governments and their collaboration with ICE. There’s at least $14 billion that will go towards that,” says Adriel Orozco, senior policy counsel at the American Immigration Council. boltsmag.org/how-the...

If state election officials refuse to comply with Trump’s unlawful edict to share their voter rolls with Elon Musk, the attorney general could withhold law enforcement grants. “He’s going after the voter rolls in big cities, in blue states.” https://trib.al/k6IfYQn

Lawmakers in at least 27 states have introduced bills that would require voters to provide citizenship documents like a birth certificate or passport to vote. Such rules would block huge numbers of American citizens from voting. bit.ly/3FVtayx

The Trump administration violated federal privacy laws when it turned Medicaid data on millions of enrollees over to federal deportation officials last month, says California Attorney General Rob Bonta.

More than 880,000 workers will get a raise this summer due to state minimum wage increases. Anyone upset about this should consider the following: If the minimum wage had kept pace with worker productivity gains since the 1960s, it would now be nearly $26 an hour.

While Congress considers the SAVE Act, lawmakers in states across the country are trying to pass legislation that would similarly require a birth certificate or passport to vote. bit.ly/3FVtayx

States have 3 main options to try to weather this devastating bill: cut health and food assistance, raid other areas like education, or raise taxes. AZ can't raise taxes without an all-but-impossible 2/3 supermajority — meaning the pain will be real. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/04/u...

Huge sleeper issue is how states will (or won’t) be able to absorb huge SNAP cuts in BBB. www.inquirer.com/politics/pen...

How do partisan legislatures target state attorneys general? @nyulaw.bsky.social's Dylan Erikson explains how gerrymandering has produced more polarized, less representative legislatures that manipulate the powers of state AGs depending on their politics.

North Carolina Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey has approved homeowners insurance rate hikes multiple times and defended “consent to rate” legislation, which enables insurers to charge consumers more than the state-approved maximum. Read more ⬇️

Based on new USDA data released today, 44 states would have to pay tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars under Senate Republicans' #SNAP cost-shift plan. If a state can't fully pay, they would have to cut many low-income families off SNAP or end their program altogether.

“Just this past session, we worked with state Sen. Danica Roem… to establish the Hunger-Free Campus Food Pantry Grant Program... If the federal budget passes, all of the progress we have made on local food access initiatives and school meal expansion would be at risk.“ richmond.com/opinion/colu...

UPDATE: The Indiana legislature announced that, across the state's public universities, it will immediately eliminate 75 programs, suspend/teach-out 101, and force 232 to consolidate or be eliminated. Not surprisingly, these closures disproportionately affect arts, humanities, and social science.

Health care advocates warn that proposed Medicaid work requirements would result in millions of Americans losing health insurance — not because they aren’t working, but because of the bureaucratic hoops they would need to jump through to prove employment. By @savmargaret.bsky.social

The budget bill’s plan is to shove social service costs to the states. In N.C. the president pro tem of the Senate applauds it, which means they’re going to slash services as they like to do.

The state and local health departments that rely on CDC funding say the money is not coming in on time and no one can tell them why. Some are laying off staff.

Oklahoma Republicans have adopted new barriers to citizen initiatives, adding to the string of GOP-run states that have undercut direct democracy this year by piling on onerous new regulations and raising the threshold for signatures. boltsmag.org/oklahom...

This is very, very bad. A new state law will likely force the closure of hundreds of low-enrollment programs at Indiana University. The cutoff is 15 graduates/year for undergrad majors, 7 for Masters programs, and 3 for PhD programs, averaged over 3 years. wfiunews.wordpress.com/2025/06/24/h...

MIT researcher publishes study before peer review publication bc concern about policymakers allowing ChatGPT kindergarten. Too late - Mississippi has just entered a partnership w/ NVIDIA to spread artificial intelligence learning in K-12 schools. www.clarionledger.com/story/news/p...

Unexpected: US states are visiting Brussels to get advice on climate policy despite President Trump famously calling climate change a "hoax". www.ft.com/content/5aed... w/ @attractamooney.bsky.social

Based on my examination of Chenowith and Stephan’s data, 1.5% is the fraction of the population needed for a mass protest to have a 50-50 shot of succeeding. This movement is growing and the size of the crowds today is a favorable sign. Analysis: samwang.substack.com/p/how-to-rec...

In our survey, more than 40 percent of local officeholders said they were less willing to run for reelection or higher office because of abuse. Fifty-three percent of state legislators believed that abuse had deterred their colleagues from taking on controversial topics. 4/6