This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. When Oregon’s short legislative session convenes in early February, conservation advocates will once again try to convince lawmakers to pass a major funding bill that could provide nearly $30 million annually to protect the state’s biodiversity. The 1% for Wildlife bill, sponsored by state Reps. Ken Helm (D-Beaverton) and Mark Owens (R-Crane), would increase the state’s current hotel and lodging taxes by 1.25 percent, creating a new revenue stream for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife to support long-neglected habitat conservation programs. Last session, the bill passed the House, but two Republicans blocked it in the Senate. > “The bill is a very innovative concept, and there are probably 49 other states > that are watching closely to see if it’s successful.” Oregon’s federally required State Wildlife Action Plan identifies species at risk of extinction or decline due to habitat loss, climate change, and other threats. In 2025, as the plan was being updated, dozens of species were added, including the Crater Lake newt, the California condor, and the North American porcupine, bringing the total to more than 300. “It’s a blueprint of the most imperiled species and habitats in the state,” said Sristi Kamal, deputy director of the Western Environmental Law Center, which supports the bill. “But a plan is only as good as the funding to implement it.” Though Oregon’s Fish and Wildlife Department receives some state funding, most of its budget comes from hunting and fishing licenses and federal taxes on guns and ammunition via the Pittman-Robertson Act of 1937. The majority of Oregon’s federal funds, about $20 million annually, are earmarked for big game species and sport fish. Other federal grants primarily support species already protected by the Endangered Species Act. That means that Fish and Wildlife, like most state wildlife agencies, has little money to prevent species from becoming endangered in the first place. Between 2023 and 2025, it spent just 2 percent of its budget on wildlife conservation programs. Increasing hotel and lodging taxes would leverage the state’s robust eco-tourism industry, which annually attracts tens of thousands of out-of-state and international visitors. If the bill passes, Oregon’s statewide hotel tax rate would be 2.5 percent—the third-lowest rate in the US and less than half of what Washington, Montana, and Idaho charge. The 1% for Wildlife bill could provide a new model for state-level conservation funding, said Mark Humpert, director of conservation initiatives at the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, which advocates for state agencies at the federal level. “Ninety-five to 99 percent of species that states are responsible for have no dedicated funding from the federal government. We sometimes joke that state agencies have to offer bake sales to fund this work,” Humpert said. Some states sell specialty license plates; others use a small percentage of sales taxes on outdoor equipment. The “gold standard,” Humpert said, is Missouri, where a state constitutional amendment dedicates one-eighth of 1 percent of its sales tax to its Department of Conservation. According to a 2016 study by the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies and its partners, fully implementing every State Wildlife Action Plan in the country would cost around $1 billion annually. But for years, Congress has failed to pass the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act, a bipartisan bill that would bolster states’ conservation funding. Now, as the Trump administration slashes federal conservation and climate funding, advocates say that the 1% for Wildlife bill could provide the stable funding needed to implement Oregon’s wildlife action plan. “The bill is a very innovative concept, and there are probably 49 other states that are watching closely to see if it’s successful,” Humpert said. In northeast Oregon’s high-desert region, Jamie Dawson, the Greater Hells Canyon Council’s conservation director, hopes the bill can fund wildlife crossings on Highway 82. “This section of the Blue Mountains is an absolutely critical habitat connectivity corridor—of continental importance,” Dawson said. Deer, elk and other species use it to migrate between the Rocky Mountains and the Cascades Range in western Oregon and Washington. But the route is a wildlife collision hotspot, with hundreds of animals killed by vehicles over the past few years. Elsewhere, the funding could support studies of migratory bird habitats like eel grass estuaries and wetlands, said Joe Liebezeit, conservation director for the Bird Alliance of Oregon. In spring 2025, local birdwatchers and radar data indicated that half as many birds as usual migrated through the state, though the reasons for this are unclear. > “The goal of this funding is to keep common species common, and that’s > something sportsmen can get behind.” As the state’s general fund waxes and wanes, so does the wildlife department’s budget, which is rewritten every two years. The lack of stable conservation funding prevents it from focusing on long-term solutions for species conservation, said Davia Palmeri, the agency’s federal policy director. “We do monitoring for these species when we can—when there’s a grant or short-term funding—to get pulses on species like reptiles or amphibians.” For over a decade, advocates have fought to secure state funding for conservation. “At one point, there was a proposal to put a tax on birdseed,” said Danielle Moser, wildlife program manager at Oregon Wild. “There was the idea of a gear tax—things you buy at REI.” But none of these ideas would have raised enough, and ultimately, they fizzled. Last year, two Republican senators, Daniel Bonham and Cedric Hayden, killed the bill by refusing to allow the final committee vote that would bring it to the governor’s desk. Now, conservation advocates from across the political spectrum are determined to pass it. “You won’t always see all these logos on the same page,” says Amy Patrick, policy director at the Oregon Hunters Association, which is working with conservation groups like Oregon Wild to shape the bill. “The goal of this funding is to keep common species common, and that’s something sportsmen can get behind. There’s a real sense that this is an investment that will benefit all of our wildlife and habitats.” The current 1.5 percent tourism tax funds the $45 million annual budget of Travel Oregon, which promotes the state’s tourism industry. Travel Portland, an independent nonprofit that works with Travel Oregon, opposes the bill, arguing that the additional tax would discourage large conferences and events. (Travel Oregon said in a statement that it does not take positions on bills.) The Oregon Restaurant and Lodging Association called the bill a “Pandora’s box” of future tax increases. “We don’t see an end in sight, with all the other state agencies that would love a new revenue source,” said Jason Brandt, the association’s president. Brandt and others note that the bill’s original text only provided a 1 percent tax increase for the wildlife agency, but amendments tacked on 0.25 percent for conservation efforts by other departments, including the Department of Agriculture’s invasive species management and anti-poaching efforts at the Department of Justice. The association’s political action committee donated more than $17,000 to Bonham during his time in state office. Bonham, who resigned from the Senate in October when he was nominated to a federal position, did not respond to a request for comment. Kamal and other advocates say the tourism industry’s opposition is ironic, given that revenue from the new tax would be reinvested in some of the state’s most popular attractions. Travel Oregon’s surveys show that scenic beauty is the top draw for 90 percent of out-of-state visitors. “A lot of people come to Portland for business, but then they go to our beaches, or the mountains,” said Kamal. “The tourism industry is standing on the back of these natural resources. If you don’t invest in it, the pressures on these resources will make that legacy crumble.”

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The Village of Sauget in St. Clair County, Illinois, was founded in order to be polluted. Incorporated in 1926 by a group of Monsanto Chemical Company executives (and initially named “Monsanto”) it was and is an industry town: with deliberately lax manufacturing and emissions laws, it has played host to companies like ExxonMobil, Clayton Chemical, Gavilon Fertilizer, Eastman Chemical, and Veolia North America.  The 134 residents of Sauget—and the 700,000 people in the greater East St. Louis metro area that surrounds it—have often seen their needs come second to those of their corporate neighbors. In the 1990s, according to the last longitudinal EPA study done in the area, they inhaled high levels of lead, volatile organic compounds, and sulfur dioxide compounds that can increase the risk of cancer and respiratory illness. “We were basically incorporated to be a sewer,” the town’s mayor, Rich Sauget, told the Wall Street Journal in 2006.  > Trump aimed to “eliminate funding for the globalist climate agenda while > unleashing American energy production,” the White House noted. Since 1999, one well-known local polluter has been Veolia Environmental Services, a subsidiary of a French company that runs an incinerator, which stores and burns hazardous waste. The company is certified to burn toxic substances like PFAS, and people in the area have long complained of acrid or sewage-like smells near the facility.  Darnell Tingle, who leads United Congregations of Metro-East (UCM)—a group of faith communities working to address environmental and social justice issues in the area—says congregants at the half-a-dozen Illinois churches within 10 miles of Veolia often wonder if the incinerator is what’s making them sick.  According to Lucas King, Veolia’s Sauget Facility Manager, “Veolia North America is committed to safe operations, ensuring our processes are in compliance with all applicable regulatory requirements, and protecting the health of the communities where we operate. We are proud of Veolia’s record of safety, compliance and community partnership-building.” But Tingle claims, “we have some of the worst air quality in the country.” Children in East St. Louis suffer from asthma at much higher rates than the national average. But it’s hard for the 878 people who live within a mile of Veolia’s incinerator to prove anything. So, in 2023, UCM proposed a solution: they would install air quality monitoring stations on half-a-dozen local churches, pay scientists to analyze that data, and finance the whole thing with $500,000 in Community Change Grant funding, a landmark program of Joe Biden’s EPA.  Soon, Tingle hoped, they’d have the answers they were looking for. But in early 2025, his promised grant money was abruptly withdrawn by the newly inaugurated Trump administration—along with 105 similar grants, totaling at least $1.6 billion, from Alaska to Florida. The EPA’s new administrator Lee Zeldin, declared the grants “unnecessary,” and with the help of Elon Musk’s now-decommissioned DOGE, froze the money and closed the Office of Environmental Justice, amounting to losses of at least $37 billion.  Only two of the six planned air-quality monitors were installed in East St. Louis before the grants were terminated, Tingle said—and Tingle’s organization doesn’t have the money to pay scientists to analyze the data those monitors generate. In May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention completed an air quality study in Sauget, the main conclusion of which was that, because the EPA has not done adequate data collection, the CDC could not say much about the incinerator’s health impacts. In particular, the agency said, they were unable to conclude whether or not the volatile organic compound levels in the air were hurting people. So the community is still left with poor health effects and lots of suspicions about where they come from—but without concrete proof. > “For many communities, they’ve been going through the stages of grief.” This Community Change Grant program was unique in the realm of federal funding, said Zealan Hoover, former senior advisor to Biden’s EPA administrator Michael Regan. “Most EPA funding flows through the states, and that is a model that works well,” Hoover said. “But at the same time, money that flows top down through states takes longer to reach communities and is not always as responsive as grants directly to the frontline communities that have a very clear, well-defined scope of what they need to do.”  Zeldin and Trump asserted that freezing these grants—which, organizers say, happened without any forewarning from the EPA, sometimes in the middle of grant disbursal and sometimes without communities seeing any money at all—was justified as a way to end the “green new scam” and “eliminate funding for the globalist climate agenda while unleashing American energy production,” according to a White House fact sheet.  A year later, many other communities beyond Sauget are also experiencing the grant terminations in starker terms. In Pocatello, Idaho, some of the town’s unsewered neighborhoods still face the unsanitary hardships of nitrate contamination from septic systems in their drinking water source. In the South Bronx, New York, one community remains vulnerable to extreme flooding, in part because their plan to revitalizing a dilapidated waterfront park has been defunded. And in South Dakota, the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe’s plan to use $19.9 million in grant funding to (among other things) rebuild a long-unusable bridge, build resilience hubs, weatherize buildings, and install solar panels on the homes of community elders remains just a plan.  “For many communities, they’ve been going through the stages of grief,” said Hoover. “First was disbelief, because they know the merits of these projects. They know how badly it’s needed by the community. That has evolved over time into disappointment that the agency has been unwilling to reconsider, even after seeing cases like Kipnuk, Alaska, where EPA terminated a grant for flood prevention and then the town was washed away in a flood.”  The communities and organizations around the country who lost funding have responded in a variety of ways. Some, like UCM in East St. Louis, are hopeful that other forms of funding will turn up—and are refocusing on other projects. Other municipalities and nonprofits are still involved in litigation against the EPA, hoping to recoup some of the losses they’ve sustained in money and in time.  In South Dakota, rather than making an appeal, the town of Flandreau ended up closing its application for a grant to bring solar power to the homes of some Flandreau Santee Sioux Nation members, according to Rhonda Conn, the associate director of Native Sun Community Power Development, the nonprofit which hoped to work with the town and tribe.  Native Sun has pushed on to seek funding sources for its other work. The organization secured some local and private funding, but nothing at the scale of the EPA Community Change money has materialized, Conn said. In the process, Native Sun has been forced to work on a very lean budget—no permanent office space, few workers, and few plans to expand. These days, they’re spending more time working on renewable energy workforce development with the state of Minnesota, as opposed to taking big, costly swings at new infrastructure projects.  “For us, the infrastructure stuff is not going to go away,” Conn said. “It’s just about where we’re balancing our energy right now.”  In green energy and disaster resilience work, organizations are competing under higher pressure for less money. “There are still some grant and loan programs operating at lower levels across the government, there are still sources of state, local, and private funding,” Hoover said. “But there are not multibillion-dollar sources of funding commensurate with what the Trump administration terminated.” “It’s very stressful,” Conn said. “Because everybody now is scrambling for the same pot of money, and there isn’t enough of it.” 

This story was originally published by Canary Media and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. California lawmakers are considering two bills that would slash red tape for households looking to add certain types of clean tech. Earlier this month, Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener, whose district includes San Francisco, introduced legislation that would make it easier for individuals to adopt all-electric, super-efficient heat pumps (SB 222) and plug-in solar panels (SB 868). “The cost of energy is too high,” Wiener told Canary Media.  “We want to lower people’s utility bills; we want people to be able to participate in the clean energy economy; and we want people to be able to take control of their energy future. And that’s what these bills do.” The proposals come as Americans are in the grip of a worsening cost-of-living crisis—of which energy is a key driver. > “We should empower people to use this technology. And right now, it’s too > hard.” Electricity costs have grown at about 2.5 times the pace of persistent inflation, and home heating costs are expected to surge this winter. In California, which has the second-highest electricity rates in the nation, the problem is particularly pressing. Heat pumps and plug-in solar panels could help. Heat pumps—air conditioners that also provide all-electric heat—are about two to five times as efficient as gas furnaces without those appliances’ planet-warming and health-harming pollution. Even in California, where gas is relatively inexpensive compared with electricity, a heat pump’s high efficiency can enable households to save on their energy bills, especially when tapping the sun for cheap, abundant power. Enter portable, plug-and-play solar panels. These modest systems, which users can drape over balcony railings or prop up in backyards, allow renters, apartment dwellers, and others who can’t put panels on their roofs to harvest enough of the sun’s rays to power a fridge or a few small appliances for a fraction of the day. A connected battery can save solar energy for use at night. The tech is booming in Europe. In Germany, for example, where people can order kits via Ikea, as many as 4 million households have hung up Balkonkraftwerke, or  “balcony power plants.” There, households can cover as much as one-fifth of their energy needs using these systems. In the US, an 800-watt unit for $1,099 can save a household as much as $450 annually in states with higher electricity prices like California, according to the Washington Post. But unlike those in Germany, US households typically need to apply for an interconnection agreement with their utility before they can install these systems—just as they would for adding a rooftop solar array. That process often requires fees, permits, and an inspection, and it can take weeks to months. Only one state allows residents to install plug-in solar without a utility’s permission: deep-red Utah. > Permitting in some cities  “is way too lengthy and onerous and expensive.” Lawmakers elsewhere are now stampeding to make plug-in solar available to their constituents. Besides Utah and now California, legislatures in more than a dozen states want to unleash the tech: Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington have all introduced bills, according to Cora Stryker, co-founder of plug-in solar nonprofit Bright Saver, which has been advising some states on their proposals. Based on conversations the organization has had with state representatives, Stryker said she expects a whopping half of US states to introduce bills this year. “We should empower people to use this technology,” Wiener said.  “And right now, it’s too hard. The idea that you have to get an interconnection agreement with the utility to put…plug-in solar on your balcony—it makes no sense.” Administrative hurdles are also holding back heat pumps. “The current permitting process is difficult,” Aaron Gianni, president of Larratt Brothers Plumbing in San Francisco, told state policymakers on January 6.  “As a contractor dealing with more than 109 different building departments in the Bay Area, we must navigate the nuances of each: different inspectors, changing paperwork requirements, high fees, and strict setbacks [that] sometimes make installation impossible.” The situation can be even worse when a customer lives in a unit governed by a homeowners association, Gianni said.  “Many HOAs have outright prevented new electric equipment from being installed.” Wiener, who is running for US Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s seat and boasts a tongue-in-cheek MAGA fan club, put it bluntly. Permitting in some cities  “is way too lengthy and onerous and expensive.” “The [heat-pump] bill creates a streamlined path to be able to get a quick, automatic permit,” he explained. It would also loosen restrictions on equipment placement, cap permit fees at $200, and make it illegal to ban heat pumps. Wiener’s heat-pump legislation, which has some industry detractors as well as grassroots supporters, has already passed out of the California Senate’s housing and local-government committees. The plug-in solar bill has yet to come up for any votes. Still, with energy affordability shaping up to be a decisive issue in the 2026 midterm elections, both proposals  “have, I think, a real possibility of passing,” Wiener said. “These technologies are a win-win-win, and enabling access to them is simply good government.”

Democrats’ resounding victories in the New Jersey and Virginia governor’s races got most of the headlines, but the most dramatic results in last month’s elections were downballot. In Virginia, Democratic challengers flipped 13 seats in the Virginia House of Delegates, to secure their largest majority in the chamber in four decades. New Jersey Democrats grew their margin in the assembly by five seats—winning their largest majority since Watergate. Coupled with the party’s string of upset victories and double-digit shifts in special elections last year, the results have some party leaders dreaming big.  How big? A new post-election analysis from the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which supports Democratic candidates in statehouse races, argues that the current electoral climate presents the best chance in years for Democrats to consolidate power in blue states, flip battleground chambers, and loosen Republicans’ grip on power in solidly red states like South Carolina and Missouri. > “This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to fundamentally transform > legislative power.” By the group’s calculations, Democratic candidates over-performed the partisan leaning of their districts this fall by an average of 4.5 points—a shift that would put as many as 651 state legislative seats in play across the country in a midterm election year, and position the party for a bit of long-awaited payback.  “This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to fundamentally transform legislative power,” said DLCC president Heather Williams. While the November results have many Democrats talking enthusiastically about a repeat of the 2018 blue wave, Williams goes back further: “We are looking at the makings of an environment that looks more like 2010 in reverse.” That year, powered by fallout from the Great Recession and the tea party wave, and assisted by tens of millions of dollars in spending down the stretch, Republicans picked up nearly 700 seats and flipped 22 state legislative chambers. Because those legislatures would go on to control the decennial redistricting process, Republicans were able to not just seize power, but hold onto it for a decade—or longer. The stakes for redistricting this time around are not as clear-cut, but still very much real. For the time being, thanks to Texas’ decision to redraw its maps at President Donald Trump’s request, and California’s own retaliatory effort, every legislative session is a potential redistricting session. In response to Republican efforts earlier this year, the DLCC pushed for Democrats to “go on offense” on redistricting in states they control. “At the end of the day, it is state legislators who are drawing these maps,” Williams says. “This mid-cycle process has both put a spotlight on that, but it’s also sort of clarified the fact that the way that you prevent this from happening in the future—or the way that you get Democrats in this room to have this conversation—is you elect them first.” When I last spoke with Williams, in 2024, the DLCC’s map looked quite a bit different. That year, facing the same headwinds that doomed Democrats at all levels, the organization went into the fall hoping to flip five legislative chambers but ultimately picked up none and—with the exception of an unsuccessful effort to break a Republican supermajority in Kansas—largely confined its efforts to presidential battleground states. This time around, it’s aiming to compete in 41 chambers in 27 states. That includes efforts to break Republican supermajorities in both chambers of the Florida and Missouri legislatures; the Iowa, Indiana, and Ohio, and South Carolina houses; and the North Carolina senate (where Republicans have been able to override some of Democratic Gov. Josh Stein’s vetoes). In November, Democrats already succeeded in breaking Republicans’ supermajority in the Mississippi Senate, after a court struck down the existing legislative maps for violating the Voting Rights Act. The goal, Williams says, is to get more state parties out of the “superminority” status and “into a place where you are at least in the negotiating room.” “Democrats in the states lost a lot of ground in 2010 and in the couple of elections after that, and in that rebuild process, the map changed a lot,” Williams says. “What we are saying in this update to the target map—and frankly, our broader strategy—is that we must show up in these red states. When you think about the long term trajectory of Democrats and our success as a party, we need to recognize these moments of power, and these states where Republicans have been competing, and we need to show up for voters.” But there are also a lot of chambers up for grabs. Part of what makes the map so encouraging for Democrats, Williams argues, is how thin the line currently is between conservative governance and Democratic rule. “Flipping just 19 seats on this map could establish four new Democratic trifectas and six new Democratic majorities,” she said. “The path there is not complicated—it’s really crystal clear.” The DLCC has its eyes on potential governing trifectas in Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin. And the group sees potential for new Democratic supermajorities in 10 chambers across eight states—both chambers of the legislature in Colorado and Vermont; the lower levels of the legislature in Delaware, Nevada, New Mexico, and Washington; and the senate in New York; Oregon; and Washington. In at least one way, though, this will be nothing like the tea party wave. This year, the DLCC is aiming to spend $50 million on its national effort in 2026—which the group is billing as the its largest-ever single-year sum. When Republicans swept the table in 2010, the DLCC spent just $10 million.

The Indiana House voted on Friday to redraw the state’s congressional map with the aim to produce a 9-0 Republican delegation. Lawmakers approved the redistricting proposal 57-41, despite 12 Republicans joining the entire Democratic House caucus in opposition. The bill now goes to the state Senate, where the outcome is unclear. Republican leadership has insisted for months that they do not have the votes to pass it. But President Donald Trump, who has asked Republican-led states to redistrict, has been putting the heat on holdout legislators.   According to the Indiana Capital Chronicle, at least 14 of 40 Republican senators have publicly voiced disagreement with the new map. Indiana has 10 Democratic senators, which leaves the tally roughly equal—for now.  On Friday night, Trump weighed in with a vaguely mob boss-style social media post calling on his followers to pressure the stragglers: “I am hearing that these nine Senators, some of whom are up for Re-Election in 2026, and some in 2028, need encouragement to make the right decision: Blake Doriot, Brett Clark, Brian Buchanan, Dan Dernulc, Ed Charbonneau, Greg Goode, Jim Buck, Rick Niemeyer, and Ryan Mishler. Let your voice be heard loud and clear in support of these Senators doing the right thing.” This comes after at least 11 Indiana Republicans were the targets of swatting or other threats following a November Trump Truth Social campaign against the state’s reluctant GOP.  Indiana is just one of several states wrapped up in Trump’s redistricting crusade. On Thursday, the Supreme Court permitted Texas to use its new map in the 2026 midterm elections, which could hand Republicans five new seats. Missouri and North Carolina have also passed new maps that could enable the party to gain a seat in each state. Florida may be next up, as lawmakers held a hearing on Thursday to consider redistricting. Florida has a constitutional amendment that prohibits gerrymandering, but Gov. Ron DeSantis said earlier in the week that the new map should be drawn in the spring so that the inevitable court debate could factor in a possible Supreme Court ruling in a Louisiana redistricting case that would further weaken the Voting Rights Act.  Democrats are countering with their own map in California, and are beginning efforts in Virginia with the potential to flip two seats from red to blue.  Mid-decade drawings are relatively rare. According to the Pew Research Center, previous to this election cycle, only two states have passed new maps since 1970 for partisan gains on their own—Texas in 2003 and Georgia in 2005. Most other redistricting took place because courts threw out maps for legal violations.  This recent swell of gerrymandering is just one way the Trump administration is attempting to influence—and rig—the 2026 election. It has, for example, weaponized the Justice Department to pursue dubious claims of voter fraud to suppress specific voting groups. Notes my Mother Jones colleague Ari Berman, who has written extensively on the topic: “The sheer volume of threats to democracy can feel so overwhelming that some people may choose not to vote for fear that their ballot will not matter. And that may be part of Trump’s plan.”

Despite years of voter suppression efforts by the state’s Republican Party, Virginians have spoken: It’s time for GOP gubernatorial candidate Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears to “go somewhere and sit down.” Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat who represented the state’s 7th District in Congress until this year, defeated Earle-Sears in a highly anticipated race to become the first female governor in the Commonwealth’s centuries-long history. > VA Voter: Spanberger. She out there doing what she's supposed to do. That > other lady? She needs to go somewhere and sit down. pic.twitter.com/72dNcvPWCT > > — Acyn (@Acyn) November 4, 2025 Spanberger beat Earle-Sears by a staggering 12-point margin with close to 80 percent of votes counted, according to Associated Press projections. The 56-44 win—representing well over 300,000 votes—comes at a precarious time for the Democratic Party, with Virginia serving as a critical bellwether for the country’s feelings on President Donald Trump before national midterm elections next year. For years, Virginia Republicans have been working overtime to suppress the state’s Democratic voters, including a blatantly illegal voter roll purge in 2023 orchestrated by then-Gov. Glenn Youngkin. In 2024, the Supreme Court’s conservative bloc ruled in Youngkin’s favor, forcing nearly 1,600 voters to fight for their registration to be reinstated. A year later, shortly after Trump’s re-election, the Justice Department voluntarily dismissed a lawsuit originally brought forth by the Biden administration that once again challenged the purge. Spanberger’s victory is a promising sign for Virginia’s effort, alongside other Democratic-led legislatures, to redraw district lines after states like North Carolina and Texas were subjected to extreme gerrymandering by Republican legislators that functionally disenfranchised a huge swath of their voters. Alongside the governorship, all 100 seats in Virginia’s House of Delegates, the lower chamber of its state legislature, are also up for reelection—which will determine the GOP’s chances of leaving Democratic redistricting dead in the water.

A new California law will effectively ban a deceptive policing tactic used for years against the families of people killed by police and popularized by the nation’s largest developer of law enforcement policy manuals.  The legislation, signed Monday by Gov. Gavin Newsom, will require investigators for police agencies and prosecutors’ offices to tell the families of people seriously injured or killed by police what has happened to their loved one before questioning them.  Investigators will also be barred from lying to families or pressuring them into consenting to interviews, and will be required to allow the families to bring a support person to interviews. All California police agencies and prosecutors will be required to incorporate the new restrictions into their department policies by January 2027.  The law will not require investigators to take the same steps in circumstances where the family member is under arrest or the delay could result in the destruction of evidence. State Assembly member Ash Kalra, who represents the city of San Jose, co-authored the new law and has been pushing for a version of the legislation for two years. He said he hoped the new law would signal the need for law enforcement officers to respect the families of people who have died during police encounters.  > “I want you sending a uniform[ed officer], detective—I don’t care—somebody out > there to their friends and family to find out what they’ve been up to.”  “I think it’s time for law enforcement to relearn their processes and create a new process that’s respectful of all life and allows them to build more trust with their community,” Kalra said. “ It’s really about giving justice to these families, but more immediately, giving them the truth.” Kalra added that he would continue to monitor the rollout of the law and would consider introducing new legislation if law enforcement agencies resisted its implementation.   The legislation comes in response to a 2023 investigation by Reveal and the Los Angeles Times, which found that investigators routinely withheld death notifications from families while they collected disparaging background information about people killed by officers. The reporting confirmed 20 instances of investigators across the state using the tactic in the immediate aftermath of police shootings and in-custody deaths in order to collect information about the deceased, such as their mental health history, drug use or family feuds. In some cases, law enforcement agencies then used the information to justify their officers’ actions or argue for lower settlements in lawsuits by portraying the deceased as mentally disturbed, a deadbeat parent or a liability to their family. “I’m proud of all the families, and even the assembly and senate and the governor, for having the courage to make this law,” said Jim Showman, who has been campaigning for the new law for two years. “It’s good to know that you can push things through and make change for the better.” In the moments after a San Jose police officer shot his 19-year-old daughter, Diana, officers rushed Showman to a police station, where detectives isolated him from his ex-wife and questioned him in an interrogation room for 27 minutes before revealing that Diana had died.  The department’s attorneys later used the information from the interview to push for a zero-dollar settlement in the case, he and his attorney, Jaime Leaños, said. The tactic was popularized in a 2019 webinar hosted by Lexipol, a company that develops policy manuals for thousands of law enforcement agencies across the country, including nearly all of California’s police departments.  In the webinar, Lexipol co-founder Bruce Praet encouraged police officers to rush to the families of people killed by officers and question them about the person’s mental health, drug use and family conflicts.  “The grapevine has gotten lightning fast,” Praet said in the webinar. “Before the dust settles, I want you sending a uniform[ed officer], detective—I don’t care—somebody out there to their friends and family to find out what they’ve been up to.”  Praet then pantomimed an interaction between an officer and a confused mother, who tells the officer about her son’s drug use and family problems before the officer reveals he is dead. Shocked, the mother reverses course, calling her son an “Eagle Scout” before Praet makes a gameshow buzzer sound. > Praet encouraged officers to describe people experiencing mental health crises > as being on drugs so that future jurors would be less likely to sympathize. “Sorry lady, you’re married to that evasive concept called the truth,” he said in the video. Lexipol removed the webinar from its website in 2022.  In an email, Praet declined to comment on the new law or his advice, saying he preferred to “ allow the legislators to comment on their legislation.” Silicon Valley DeBug, a San Jose advocacy group comprised of families who have lost loved ones to police violence, teamed up with Kalra in 2023 to author the first version of the bill, which failed to clear the state Senate last year.  The families didn’t give up. Their coalition grew to include dozens of people from across the state. Members campaigned for the bill at the Capitol and visited dozens of legislators to share their stories of being tricked or pressured into giving interviews to investigators after their loved ones were killed.  Kalra introduced an overhauled version of the bill this spring, which passed the senate in September. Among the families who advocated for the new law was DeAnna Sullivan, whose son, David, was fatally shot by Buena Park police officers in 2019 after the 19-year-old stole merchandise and a car from a gas station where he worked while in the midst of a mental health crisis.  After the shooting, Sullivan said Orange County DA investigators questioned her and her daughter about David’s mental health, his struggle to lose weight and his decision to join the military.   When she and her family sued the Buena Park Police Department for the wrongful death of her son, Praet, who defended the department in the lawsuit, used the information that she gave investigators to argue that the shooting was justified.  Praet paired the background information with the discovery of apparent suicide notes among David’s belongings after the shooting to argue that he had committed “suicide by cop,” which Sullivan denies.  Praet declined to comment on the case, but directed Mother Jones to court records detailing the apparent suicide notes. A former law enforcement officer and long-time defense attorney known for defending police agencies in civil lawsuits, Praet has also spent years training officers across California. His advice has long centered on helping departments avoid or beat civil rights lawsuits.  Since Praet co-founded it in 2003, Lexipol has grown into the nation’s largest private developer of policies for police agencies.  The company has fallen under scrutiny in the past for writing what some critics allege are vaguely-written, cookie-cutter policies that make it difficult to hold officers accountable. In a series of webinars that were on the company’s website until early 2022, he encouraged officers to describe people experiencing mental health crises as being on drugs in their police reports so that if they sued, Praet said, future jurors would be less likely to sympathize with “druggies.” He also told police to encourage wounded suspects to pose and smile in evidence photos as a method for preemptively undermining the suspect’s potential future lawsuits.  After reporting by Reveal and the Los Angeles Times exposed that advice, Lexipol distanced itself from its co-founder and apologized for Praet’s comments.  Lexipol representatives did not respond to requests for comment for this story.  Because Lexipol writes the policy manuals for the vast majority of California law enforcement agencies and updates many of those policies when relevant new laws are passed, the company will likely be responsible for updating those policies and effectively banning the tactic its co-founder helped popularize.  “That is irony, isn’t it?” Jim Showman said. Showman added that it also meant the families would need to remain vigilant as Lexipol began updating police policies to reflect the new law.  “I guess the fight’s not over,” he said. “We’ve gotta hold their feet to the fire to make sure they make policy with the spirit of the law.”

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In early July, flash floods along the Guadalupe River killed 138 people and caused an estimated $1.1 billion in damage, making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in Texas history. But just a week later, Texas found itself whiplashed into another crisis altogether: a high-stakes battle over voting districts.  As floodwaters receded and communities struggled to recover, President Donald Trump publicly demanded that Texas lawmakers redraw congressional maps to carve out five additional US House seats for Republicans. The twin pressures of a devastating natural disaster and Trump’s insistence prompted Governor Greg Abbott to convene a special legislative session.  During the first special legislative session, which began on July 21, Abbott tasked lawmakers with addressing 18 agenda items, including four related to flood preparedness. Lawmakers responded by introducing a flurry of bills that would require stricter building codes for youth camps in floodplains, shore up emergency communications, and create new relief funds. But the session quickly devolved as the political fight over redistricting overshadowed urgent conversations about how to better protect Texans from future floods. Over the next week, as partisan battles over redistricting intensified and Democrats fled the state for two weeks to deny Republicans a quorum, those measures stalled. Eventually, the session ended on August 15 with the Democrats still out of state, the flood legislation stranded on the floor, and both parties accusing the other of holding disaster relief funds hostage. Abbott called lawmakers back to Austin for a second special session. This time, Democrats returned, and lawmakers managed to pass a more narrowly tailored flood relief package through the Texas Senate. One bill proposes that the state direct $294 million to flood preparedness and recovery, including money to match FEMA aid; install outdoor warning sirens in vulnerable communities; expand river and rainfall forecasting tools; and build a swift-water training facility for first responders. > “Today marks 43 days since the flood—43 days without emergency aid from the > state.” Other bills require campgrounds in floodplains to develop evacuation plans and direct state agencies to determine which parts of Central Texas require flood warning sirens. Several others are in the early stages of consideration in the Texas House. But disaster recovery experts said that while these measures are an important step to assist Central Texas communities recovering from the July floods, they are too narrowly focused on the most recent disaster. For instance, instead of confronting tougher questions about whether summer camps should be built along rivers prone to flash flooding at all, the proposed Senate Bill 2 simply requires camps in floodplains to adopt evacuation plans, implement them when flash flood alerts are sent, and provide ladders for emergency rooftop access in cabins located within the flood zone. “They’re trying to stick a band-aid on the issue and say they did something,” said Julia Orduña, the Southeast Texas regional director at Texas Housers, a nonprofit advocating for fair and affordable housing. “We haven’t been able to dive into the [disaster recovery] conversation because of redistricting. The state is trying to say they did something to respond to the loss of life, especially because we lost so many children.” Orduña said the legislature was being shortsighted in its approach by focusing on relief measures squarely tailored to the Independence Day floods. The narrower focus is likely a result of the time pressure to move bills forward and the fact that so much political capital is being expended in the redistricting fight.  At a press conference last week, Texans affected by the floods implored Abbott to release emergency relief funds. Kylie Nidever, a flood survivor from Hunt, an unincorporated town among the worst hit by the flash floods, called on Abbott to use his emergency budget authority. “Today marks 43 days since the flood,” she said. “Forty-three days without emergency aid from the state.” Because Abbott issued a disaster proclamation after the floods, he has the authority to redirect state funds to assist with debris removal, provide mental health resources for residents, and distribute other aid. He has used this authority in the past for Hurricane Harvey recovery and to fund border wall construction. “We need to be able to decouple these emergency funds from the political theater and the power grab, which is now intertwined with redistricting,” said state representative Armando Walle, a Democrat from Houston, at the press conference. “It’s a travesty we’re having to do this.” Abbott, in turn, has blamed Texas Democrats for leaving the state and “abscond[ing] from their responsibility. As the fight over redistricting continues to play out, relief measures hang in the balance, and flood victims have become pawns in the blame game.  “We are not asking for handouts,” said Nidever. “We’re asking for a government that works.” 

After weeks of delays, protests, and threats of arrests, the Republican-led Texas House on Wednesday passed a highly contentious redistricting plan that could give the GOP five additional seats in the US House. “This is racial gerrymandering at its worst. It is something that Jim Crow would be proud of, but it is something that John Lewis would be ashamed of,” Rep. Al Green told Mother Jones during the House proceedings, “That Dr. King would be ashamed of that. The former president of the United States, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who was from the state of Texas, would be ashamed of it.” As my colleague Ari Berman wrote, the Trump-backed plan amounts to an effort to “rig the midterm elections before a single vote has been cast.” More than 50 Texas Democrats fled the state for nearly two weeks to delay the vote’s proceedings, prompting Gov. Greg Abbott to threaten Democrats with arrest. But Texas Democrats had no other choice but to leave the state to prevent Trump’s Texas takeover. Here’s what former Attorney General Eric Holder told Ari: > “In this moment of democracy survival, people need to be prepared to do > anything in order to ensure that our constitutional system of government > continues to exist,” former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder told me on > Monday. “The authoritarian move that was dictated to Texas by the White House > needs to be opposed by any means necessary.” The Democratic protest eventually came to a close as Democrats returned to Austin on Monday. But new drama quickly unfolded, with Republicans prohibiting Democrats from leaving the Capitol building unless they were accompanied by a police escort. Rep. Nicole Collier refused these terms and was forced to stay on the House floor for two days. “Those of you who feel like this is okay, get ready for the fight,” said Rep. Barbara Gervin-Hawkins during her dissent. “Because the fight ain’t over. It’s not over until we’ve energized America to save Democracy.”

After weeks spent out-of-state in an effort to deny Texas Republicans a quorum for an extreme redistricting plan—designed at Donald Trump’s behest to give the GOP a five-seat advantage in the House of Representatives—the state’s Democrats are still refusing to back down. After the Democrats’ departure, Gov. Greg Abbott went as far as signing arrest warrants for the absent lawmakers—and when several of the Democratic legislators returned on Monday to Austin, the state capital, they were immediately met with GOP retaliation. On Monday, Republican House Speaker Dustin Burrows ordered that the returning lawmakers could only leave the House floor with written permission and a 24-hour police escort until the House reconvened on Wednesday. While many of her colleagues agreed to these terms, Democratic state Rep. Nicole Collier stood her ground. State Reps. Gene Wu and Vince Perez, who reportedly signed the agreement, joined Collier in her protest. She’s now suing the state legislature for unlawful imprisonment. “If you leave the Capitol,” House Administration Committee Chair Charlie Geren told Collier, according to the lawsuit, “you are subject to arrest.” On Monday night, state Reps. Collier, Wu, and Perez, who were among the returning Democrats, slept propped up on leather swivel chairs on the state House floor. > This was my night, bonnet and all, in the #txlege. #thisisme > pic.twitter.com/46YgqbMUk8 > > — Nicole Collier (@NicoleCollier95) August 19, 2025 If the GOP redistricting plan succeeds, it would not only help the party maintain its narrow control of the House in the 2026 midterm elections, but would also guarantee the disenfranchisement of Black voters, of whom Texas has more than any other state. > View this post on Instagram > > > > > A post shared by Mother Jones (@motherjonesmag) “My constituents sent me to Austin to protect their voices and rights,” Collier said according to ABC. “I refuse to sign away my dignity as a duly elected representative just so Republicans can control my movements and monitor me with police escorts.” She added, “My community is majority-minority, and they expect me to stand up for their representation. When I press that button to vote, I know these maps will harm my constituents—I won’t just go along quietly with their intimidation or their discrimination.” > It was very cold spending on the #txlege Floor! Rep. @VinceMPerez & I joined > @NicoleCollier95 in support of making #GoodTrouble! We know this is a > #riggedredistricting process. Democrats are not giving up! Thanks for the > support, standing with @TexasHDC, & we have coffee! pic.twitter.com/wlQTpYINTY > > — Gene Wu (@GeneforTexas) August 19, 2025 Several of Collier’s fellow representatives supported her refusal to sign the agreement, including Rep. Sheryl Cole, who was threatened with arrest by her police escort after he lost track of her on her morning walk. It appears that Collier is still trapped inside Texas’s State Capitol, as an ongoing livestream records her movements on the state House floor. > Rep. Collier in House Chamber Live https://t.co/NOIIzgRYMK > > — Nicole Collier (@NicoleCollier95) August 19, 2025