MA: Massachusetts governor asks legislature for M for emergency migrant housing
As Massachusetts contends with a growing wave of migration and resorts to housing hundreds of migrant families in hotels, Republican Gov. Charlie Baker is requesting million of additional funding for emergency shelter, but it wasn’t clear if lawmakers would act on it before Baker leaves office in January.
TX: More Texans turn to home schooling after the pandemic
According to data collected by the Texas Homeschool Coalition, a nonprofit that promotes home schooling in the state, about 30,000 Texas students withdrew from a public or charter school and switched to home schooling during the spring of 2021, an increase of 40% compared with the previous year.
NJ: Tough New Jersey concealed carry gun proposal moves closer to law after fierce debate at Statehouse
Over intense objections from Republicans, the Democratic-controlled New Jersey Assembly voted along party lines to pass a sweeping gun proposal that would revamp and strictly limit the concealed carry of guns in New Jersey in the wake of a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
MI: Michigan House Republican leader bristles at calls for 2022 election probe
A small group of Michigan Republican lawmakers has sought subpoena powers to investigate the 2022 election, six weeks before Democrats take control of the state legislature. However, state House Speaker Jason Wentworth, a Republican, criticized the idea in an email, suggesting it was “a shameless and half-baked political stunt performed on state time.”
DE: Delaware warns of increasing potbellied pigs on the loose
Delaware is experiencing a “significant increase” in potbellied pigs running at large, according to the Department of Agriculture. The agency gets calls about pigs at large at least once a day.
WY: Wyoming could ban corporal punishment in schools
The Wyoming Legislature’s Joint Education Committee voted to move forward a bill that could result in school staff members who physically discipline children to face criminal charges, such as battery, or civil lawsuits.
OR: Oregon cities sue state government over parking reform, climate mandate
Thirteen Oregon cities and one county will sue the state government over a climate-focused mandate to overhaul local transportation and land use rules.
AK: Alaska Native corporations take argument over carbon credits revenue to court
A new lawsuit threatens to upend a landmark, four-decade-old revenue sharing pact that’s guided the distribution of more than billion among Alaska’s Native corporations.
NY: New York opens one-year window on previously time-barred adult claims of sexual abuse
A one-year window will open in New York that will allow individuals who were sexually abused as adults to file previously time-barred claims against their alleged abusers, regardless of how many years have passed since the crime occurred.
MN: Clogged hospitals prompt warnings from Minnesota doctors
Leading Minnesota pediatricians urged parents to consider alternatives to emergency room visits for mildly ill children during an early and busy flu season that is clogging hospital beds.
MD: Maryland AG overturns racist rulings
Outgoing Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh, a Democrat, overruled decades of antiquated, racist legal opinions his predecessors had issued, wiping away some of the many vestiges of systems that denied equality to Black people.
IA: Iowa hospitals cited for abuse, dirty operating rooms and forcing a homeless vet onto the street
Over the past 12 months, Iowa hospitals have been cited for dozens of violations, including a dirty surgical suite, patient abuse, inadequate staff and discharging emergency-room patients with undiagnosed, life-threatening conditions.
FL: Endangered status sought for manatees in Florida as hundreds starve
Manatees that are dying by the hundreds mainly from pollution-caused starvation in Florida should once again be listed as an endangered species, environmental groups said in a petition filed with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service seeking the change.
MO: As legal weed comes to Missouri, lawsuits still pending over medical marijuana program
At the same time Missouri regulators are working to launch a recreational marijuana program, hundreds of lawsuits tied to the 2019 rollout of medical cannabis remain in legal limbo.
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