Across the country, ICE is converting warehouses into immigrant detention centers. This story is a great look at how locals are using environmental regulations and land use restrictions to stop them. boltsmag.org/ice-warehous...

“Honestly, when people come up to me and say they’ve heard that ranked-choice voting is really confusing, I just put a ballot in front of them and, invariably, they can fill it out,” says a ranked-choice voting advocate.

Florida Republicans today unveiled a new congressional map that would make it easier for the GOP to gain four Democratic-held seats this fall.

Last month, New Jersey banned local partnerships with ICE. “As the Trump administration attempts to erode due process protections, it is more important than ever that New Jersey affirmatively stands up for them,” says an immigrant rights advocate.

Last November, the city of Verona, Wisconsin, pulled out of a sprawling surveillance network run by Flock Safety. The company waited months to remove its cameras installed around town, only doing so when the city finally covered them with plastic bags.

NEW in Bolts: Roxbury, New Jersey, is pushing back on plans for a new detention facility, claiming DHS is violating environmental regulations. Other towns nationwide are making similar arguments.

Many trans Kansans whose licenses were cancelled by a recent state law now face a kind of poll tax: To vote, they’ll have to pay $16 for a replacement license with a gender marker that doesn’t match their identity.

Republicans have unveiled a new congressional map of Florida that they want to pass this week. The map's goal is to deliver *four* new seats to the GOP. (Meaning the GOP's goal here is a delegation that's 24-4, compared to 20-8 now.) Via Fox News: www.foxnews.com/politics/ron...

In 2025, Democrats gained 25 state Senate and House seats held by the GOP, out of 118 that were up for election. That’s a haul reminiscent of 2017, when Dems flipped 20 percent of GOP-held legislative seats in the run-up to the 2018 midterms.

Conservatives have an opportunity to erase the liberal lean of Montana’s supreme court this year, and extend their dominance in North Carolina and Ohio. Read more in our new guide to judicial races:

Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger endorsed a constitutional amendment to automatically restore voting rights to people with felony convictions when they leave prison. State lawmakers passed the amendment and it will now appear on the state ballot.

For years, private parties—citizens and organizations alike—have been able to sue government officials for violating the VRA. But a federal appeals court has said they cannot, and the U.S. Supreme Court will soon consider the issue.

Can Ohio's one remaining Democratic justice survive this year? Jennifer Brunner, a former secretary of state, is seeking a second term and will face a GOP challenger who will be selected by voters in the May primary.

“State constitutionalism makes it easy to consider Roberts Court jurisprudence white noise,” Hawaii Justice Todd Eddins wrote in a ruling last year that assailed the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority.

In Oregon, district attorneys often resign just before their term ends, which allows the governor to appoint an interim replacement who then runs as the incumbent in the next election. Uncontested DA elections in the state are now the norm.

“We’ve learned a lot in terms of, how has rapid response worked in other places, and what does that mean in terms of the role of the city?” says one New York City resident who is spearheading a series of audits of the city’s sanctuary policies.

In Virginia, people can be pressured to accept plea deals that waive their Fourth Amendment rights. “This is the only right where that happens, where people are out in the world and they're missing one of their fundamental rights under the Constitution.”

An NYPD union is suing a civilian review board for publishing misconduct allegations, Gothamist reports:

“People are more willing to talk about banning a hypothetical 287(g) with a hypothetical police department than they are a real 287(g) with the Massachusetts Department of Correction,” says an attorney who represents detained immigrants in Massachusetts.

New Mexico’s parole board granted Jesse Tooker parole for the life sentence he received at 17 years old because of the state’s Second Chance Act, passed in 2023. But they still wouldn’t let him leave prison. “It was just devastating,” his sister says.

A proposed rule in North Carolina could force some voters to show up at government offices to prove their citizenship, NC Newsline reports:

A good investment and an important read.

Clashing, inconsistent testimony and a threadbare defense landed Anthony Boyd on Alabama’s death row. Boyd, who maintained his innocence, was executed with nitrogen gas last fall.

In Kansas, two supreme court justices appointed by former Democratic governors are up for retention. Conservatives have tried to gain influence on the court and this year they’re looking to change how justices are selected.

The 13th Amendment banned slavery, but it included a carveout sanctioning it as a punishment for people convicted of crimes. Many state constitutions include the same loophole; seven states don’t pay anything for most prison jobs.

The Arkansas constitution forbids officials who were appointed to a position from running to keep it when it next appears on the ballot. This spring, two state supreme court justices worked around that – by running for each other’s seats.

“It’s a solution to a non-existent problem. I don’t see where this is doing anything to help voters. It’s only going to disenfranchise people,” says an Ohio election official about the state’s new ban on grace periods for mail ballots.

ICE has arrested dozens of delivery drivers outside of a San Diego military base, Capital & Main reports:

A failed California reform last year would've helped domestic violence survivors erase previous convictions. “I can picture all the people it would help, all the people who aren’t going to be judged by the worst day of their life that took them to prison.”

Liberals have built large majorities on the supreme courts of the three “Blue Wall” swing states that play an outsized role in presidential elections: 5-2 in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and 6-1 in Michigan.

A decade ago, Derek Lee was sentenced to life in prison without parole. In an appeal, he argued that it is cruel to automatically condemn someone to die in prison for a killing they didn’t commit. Pennsylvania’s supreme court this month ruled in his favor.

A Chicago woman who was the victim of a botched police raid is now poised to join the city’s police oversight board:

No supreme court judge has ever lost a retention election in Florida history. This fall, Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz, who voted to uphold the state’s six-week abortion ban and allow the GOP’s gerrymander, is up for retention.

Last week, Virginia’s governor vetoed several criminal justice reforms, including one that would have expanded deferred sentencing in criminal cases and another that would have blocked felony charges for having trace amounts of controlled substances.

In this week’s newsletter: 32 states are holding supreme court races this year, and we break down what’s at stake in each one. Virginians approve a new congressional map favoring Democrats. Plus, New Jersey elects a new member of Congress, and more:

Nebraska Public Media reports on two nonprofits that are conducting voter outreach to people in county jails:

Christine Woods, a Black resident of Tennessee's Fayette County, sued her county over how it drew local political maps. She says, ​​“Maybe in their mind, the people they were elected to serve—maybe the people they think of don’t look like me.”

“Making incarcerated people pay for communication has a regressive effect on their well-being, on their improvement in prison, and after they are released,” says Wanda Betram, a spokesperson for the Prison Policy Initiative.

The district attorney elections in Oregon this spring stand out for the utter absence of challengers: Only one person has filed to run in each of the state’s 15 DA races.

This bill, severely limiting ICE’s ability to partner with local sheriffs and jails in Virginia, became law yesterday. It’s the latest example of how blue states are moving to restrict or outright ban ICE-local collaboration: MD, ME, NJ, and NM have all passed laws in the last few months.

Mississippi has the highest Black population share of any state but there have only ever been four Black justices in the state’s history, and none of them have ever served at the same time. A judge recently took issue with the state’s “bleak” history.

Last week, the chief prosecutor for Hennepin County, home to Minneapolis, filed felony assault charges against an ICE officer who brandished his weapon at two people during the Operation Metro Surge federal deployment to the Twin Cities.

JUST IN: Virginia adopted a new law yesterday to forbid sheriffs & local police from contracting with ICE — if ICE doesn't say it'll follow state laws & agree to let its agents be prosecuted. Everyone seems to agree ICE won't promise that, and that this spells the end of ICE contracts in Virginia.

Florida doesn’t allow for same-day voter registration, so those left off the rolls due to a late postmark won’t be able to cast a ballot. “Voters are unfortunately out of luck if they register late,” says the state director for All Voting is Local.

Democrats want to keep their large majority on Michigan’s supreme court, and they’re hoping to keep or gain a foothold in Ohio and Texas. Read more in our new guide to judicial races:

This is a very good resource. I don't know how @taniel.bsky.social does this but he makes highly technical stuff like this very easy to follow and use:

Noncitizen voting in local elections was common during the 18th and parts of the 19th centuries and some municipalities in the U.S. have revived the practice. New York City passed a law permitting it, but last year it was struck down.

The director of the LGBTQ Foundation of Kansas has seen an uptick in organizing across the country to challenge a wave of new anti-trans legislation. “I’m hoping that Kansas is a wake-up moment for other communities across the country.”

Last week, a federal judge granted a temporary injunction on Indiana's ban on using student IDs as a form of voter identification, but an appeals court lifted the stay on Monday.

It understandably won’t get the same attention as gerrymandering, but reminder that Virginia is going to hold another important, democracy-related statewide vote this year: boltsmag.org/virginia-con...