Stories From The States

Anxiety over artificial intelligence is growing. Will it replace humans and take jobs? How will it change our privacy? Will it impact our elections? The list of existential questions about AI goes on.  The technology has not been regulated on a national level. Congress has struggled to pass federal legislation , while the Trump administration has pushed to limit state oversight efforts. One expert...

Attorney Alexa Sendukas represents many unaccompanied children in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody and tries to reunite them with relatives in the U.S. She has started to see a startling tactic: Federal agencies are using the children to trap and detain the adults who come to detention centers to pick the kids up. It’s left many families scrambling and trying to figure out when they’ll...

When United Flight 93 crashed in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, on Sept. 11, 2001, Tim Lambert was on his way to work at a public radio station. In the newsroom, he saw the televised images of the wreckage in a field near Shanksville and thought the trees looked familiar. Later that night, his dad left a message on his answering machine saying, “Those trees are ours.” Lambert and his family, by ch...

In Colorado, officials in the city of Boulder and Boulder County have filed a lawsuit against Suncor Energy and Exxon Mobil. They are seeking monetary damages for costs incurred responding to wildfires, repairing transportation infrastructure, restoring watersheds and other devastation caused by climate change.  The officials are not seeking to regulate emissions or fossil fuel production, but the...

Since his loss in the 2020 election, President Donald Trump has continued to deny the official results and baselessly sow doubt about election integrity. With an executive order to restrict mail-in voting and lawsuits demanding states turn over their voter rolls, Trump and his administration have been pushing for more federal involvement in how elections are run. That has some state leaders prepar...

In states such as Colorado and New Jersey, record-high temperatures have led to a spike in heat-related illnesses. In agricultural states like North Dakota and Wyoming, farmers are struggling to grow crops amid withering drought.  Throughout the U.S., extreme heat days are becoming more frequent and more intense. State policymakers are now attempting to plan for extreme heat’s growing risks, which...

Earlier this year, the Trump administration terminated temporary protective status for hundreds of thousands of Haitian immigrants. Many communities are preparing for a possible surge of federal immigration enforcement.  However, Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, are being targeted and forced to wear ankle monitors, according to local advocates. The community became a focus of Donald Trump’s 2024 cam...

As community pushback against data center construction grows, new commercials are cropping up in an attempt to improve public opinion. If you live in Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas or Virginia, you might have seen the 30-second ads on social media or TV.  The ads are running in states where a growing number of local governments are considering and passing policies meant...

Nearly 57,000 students applied for Arkansas’ universal school voucher program, where any student in the state is eligible and can use that state funding towards private school.  However, there’s a gap between how much students are receiving and what private schools are charging. A study by the National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice showed private school tuition increased in st...

Across the country, joint ventures between private equity firms and healthcare nonprofits are growing increasingly popular. However many critics say investors and nonprofit care providers can be partners with fundamentally different missions. As these joint ventures grow, they will test a wave of recent state laws that were designed to increase oversight of private equity in healthcare.  In Episod...

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law by President Donald Trump a year ago, imposed stricter work requirements in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. With some exceptions, recipients must do at least 80 hours per month of work, training or volunteering. The law also increased the upper age limit for work requirements from 54 to 64.  About 2.5 million Americans lost food benefi...

Indiana election officials have canceled or rejected the voter registrations for hundreds of immigrant Hoosiers under a recent proof of citizenship law . One analysis found 981 existing voters had registrations canceled, and another 644 prospective voters have been rejected — or about 62% of the 2,602 people processed. Charrie Stambaugh was one of those people. Stambaugh has been a U.S. citizen fo...

Immigration and Customs Enforcement coming into Tremont Township in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania seems familiar to some people there – and not in a good way. Many residents had no idea a detention center could be built there until reading about it in a news article . They felt blindsided by their local politicians. Now community members worry their area will get taken advantage of again.  In Ep...

Tremont Township in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, has only one stop light, but the 300-person community is now at the center of the national immigration debate.  The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is planning to convert an old warehouse in the area into a 7,500-person detention facility. Many of Tremont’s most vocal residents are wary about whether their township can support the ICE facil...

For months, The New Hampshire Bulletin investigated case after case of abuse and neglect in the state’s intellectual and developmental disability care system, which relies on private agencies to provide care to individuals.  What they found exposed systemic failures in oversight and harm prevention, publicly reporting families’ stories of loss and trauma for the first time.  In Episode 33, you’ll...

After the U.S. Supreme Court’s Louisiana versus Callais decision gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, more than a dozen states moved to redraw their congressional district maps. Ten succeeded in quickly pushing through new lines. Louisiana’s state legislature passed a new map that redrew the majority-Black district seat currently held by Democratic Representative Cleo Fields of Baton Rouge....

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in January challenging trans athlete bans in Idaho and West Virginia. A decision is expected early this summer. In 2020, Idaho became the first state in the nation to implement this kind of ban, which prohibits transgender athletes in girl’s and women’s sports. In recent years, state lawmakers passed a wave of anti-LGBTQ+ bills . The measures have includ...

In recent months, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security spent more than one billion dollars buying nearly a dozen warehouses in several states. The plan is to convert them into immigrant detention centers as part of the Trump administration's mass deportation initiative.   Two are being pursued in rural Pennsylvania: Tremont Township in Schuylkill County, and Upper Bern Township in Berks County...

This year, nearly every state has introduced some form of AI regulation legislation. That’s according to a database from the National Conference of State Legislatures, a nonpartisan public officials’ association. Over in Michigan, the state is starting to use AI to process SNAP applications, and it’s sparking some concerns. And in Pennsylvania, counseling experts are pushing for AI legislation in...

It’s still uncertain if an abortion medication can be prescribed over telehealth. Mifepristone is one of two drugs used to terminate a pregnancy before 10 weeks and to treat miscarriages, but could require an in-person visit before it’s dispensed, depending on a U.S. Supreme Court decision.  In 2023, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a rule that allowed mifepristone to be dispensed thro...

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais altered Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.  The decision could upend American politics and hold sweeping consequences for how states and local governments draw district lines at all levels of government, from Congress to school boards . What does that mean for this year’s midterms, as well as future elections? In Episode 27, you’ll hear fr...

The U.S. Forest Service is reorganizing. The federal agency will move their headquarters from Washington D.C. to Salt Lake City, closing over 50 research stations in 31 states, and will restructure management to rely on states more.  All these changes are coming while state GOP leaders and the Trump administration are pushing for the sale or transfer of federal public lands. Montana voters of all...

In Louisiana, the starting pay of a plumber is pretty decent. But that’s only after an aspiring worker spends thousands of dollars for on-the-job training to get a plumber’s license.  One state lawmaker in Louisiana wants to fast-track this process and reorganize the state’s plumbing board. However, some tradespeople don’t think it’s a good idea. In Episode 25, we’re handing the reins to our State...

For years, Idaho lawmakers have set their sights on Medicaid. In their most recent session, they considered Gov. Brad Little’s call for $22 million in budget cuts and a bill to repeal voter-approved Medicaid expansion. Last year, the legislature slashed funding for a mobile treatment program for people with severe mental illness. The Idaho Sheriffs’ Association warned the changes risked public saf...

President Donald Trump’s second term has been marked by aggressive attacks on the press that have led to restrictions in access, the search of a reporter’s home, heated public exchanges and even arrests. Journalist Estefany Rodríguez was arrested and detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on March 4, 2026 in Tennessee. The Nashville Noticias reporter was held in ICE custody for 15...