Anna Claire Vollers

A coalition of 22 states told a federal court that the Trump administration appears to have violated a court order that limited the types of health data that could be shared with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation proceedings.

More than a third of state ballot measures that voters will be asked to consider this year relate to democracy, with questions on voting rights, election processes, redistricting and similar issues.

Republican lawmakers and candidates across the country have escalated their anti-Islam rhetoric in recent months, a strategy aimed at energizing voters by claiming without evidence that Muslim culture and religious tenets threaten American political values.Political observers say Republicans are seizing on anti-Islamic sentiment to gin up enthusiasm among their voters as they head into the 2026 midterm elections. It’s been a successful campaign strategy in the past.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s new decision gutting a key provision of the federal Voting Rights Act clears the way for state officials to drastically reshape not only Congress but also state legislatures, county commissions, city councils and even local school boards.

Charlotte Cravins’ son Landry turned 2 in January. He’s a smiley little boy who loves singing “Itsy Bitsy Spider” and recently got his first pair of glasses.Landry was born with Down syndrome and has impaired vision. He receives publicly funded therapies that have helped him learn to crawl, to pull himself up to stand, and to use American Sign Language.

Nearly 200 residents at the St. Joseph’s Center nursing home in the affluent Connecticut suburb of Trumbull were evacuated last year after Legionella bacteria was found in the facility’s water system. Two months later, they were evacuated again over critical failures in the building’s fire safety systems.Three years earlier, residents at another Connecticut nursing home, the Quinnipiac Valley Center, were relocated after two resident deaths triggered a state health investigation.

As the U.S. Supreme Court pulls back from the landmark federal law designed to safeguard the voting rights of minorities, more states are stepping in to prohibit discrimination in state and local elections.State versions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act include some of the federal law’s approaches to fighting discrimination, including prohibitions against voter intimidation and vote dilution — that is, drawing electoral maps that distribute racial minorities across districts in a way that denies them the opportunity to elect their candidates of choice.

A half dozen Republican governors are pushing alternative labels for June, which is widely recognized in the United States as Pride Month.Without explicitly tying their efforts to a replacement of Pride Month — which celebrates the LGBTQ+ community — GOP governors in states including Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Nebraska, Tennessee and Utah have labeled June with conservative-friendly monikers that celebrate one type of family unit: a man and woman who are married with children.

At least nine states have passed voting laws this year that will make it more difficult for some voters to cast their ballots during the midterm elections in November.

It wasn’t billed as a takeover.