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

When Wisconsin voters flipped the ideological balance of the state’s supreme court in 2023, abortion was very much on their minds. Specifically, abortion opponents were arguing that with the demise of Roe v Wade the year before, the state’s 1849 near-total abortion ban—invalidated by Roe but never overturned by lawmakers, so still technically on the books—should go into effect. The Wisconsin Supreme Court would be the ultimate decider—and thanks to the retirement of a conservative justice, the court was evenly split along partisan lines, 3 to 3. The race for the open seat between Democratic-aligned circuit judge Janet Protasiewicz and conservative former Supreme Court justice Daniel Kelly was hard-fought and, with over $45 million spent, the most expensive judicial race in US history to that point. The final vote left no doubts about voters’ mindset on abortion: Protasiewicz won by more than 11 points.  On Wednesday, the now liberal-leaning court did what voters had wanted and struck down the state’s 176-year-old “zombie” abortion law, which made it a felony for anyone other than the mother or a doctor in a medical emergency to destroy “an unborn child.” In a 4-to-3 decision, Justice Rebecca Dallett said the old law was no longer valid because the Wisconsin legislature had effectively repealed it by enacting a myriad of abortion restrictions since Roe was handed down in 1973. > We conclude that comprehensive legislation enacted over the last 50 years > regulating in detail the “who, what, where, when, and how” of abortion so > thoroughly covers the entire subject of abortion that it was meant as a > substitute for the 19th century near-total ban on abortion. Accordingly, we > hold that the legislature impliedly repealed [the 1849 law] as to abortion, > and that [the zombie law] therefore does not ban abortion in the State of > Wisconsin. Rejecting the claim that the zombie law should be revived, Dallett wrote, “A statute may be repealed either expressly, by enacting a subsequent statute that repeals the earlier one, or by implication.” She cited a number of regulations that Wisconsin lawmakers had passed during the Roe era, including a law criminalizing only those abortions performed after viability; laws requiring ultrasounds, a 24-hour waiting period, and parental consent; bans on government funding, and a 2015 law restricting abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, signed by the-then governor, Republican Scott Walker.  The court’s decision on Wednesday effectively upholds the 20-week ban, and Walker posted on X, “Had I not signed that law, there would be no real legal protections for the unborn in Wisconsin after this decision by the Wisconsin Supreme Court.”  The lawsuit against the Wisconsin zombie law was brought by Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat. Defending the 1849 law was Joel Urmanski, Sheboygan County’s district attorney, who argued that the Roe-era restrictions were consistent with the older ban. Without the change in the court, the ruling could easily have gone the other way; last year, the Arizona Supreme Court declared that state’s 1864 abortion law to be enforceable—a ruling later repealed by state lawmakers. In a concurring opinion, Chief Justice Jill Karofsky cited stories of women who died from unsafe, illegal abortions, including her own great-grandmother in 1929. “Like so many others,” Karofsky wrote, “she died because society did not recognize her as someone with the ‘dignity and authority to make these choices.'” The Wisconsin Supreme Court was the focus of another intense partisan battle this April, when Elon Musk spent more than $25 million trying to defeat progressive candidate Susan Crawford for a seat being vacated by liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley. Instead, Crawford beat Musk’s pick, Brad Schimel, to preserve the liberal majority on the high court through at least 2028. As my colleague Ari Berman wrote, the stakes go way beyond abortion: > “It’s a seismic event both inside and outside Wisconsin. On a state level, the > court could soon decide the fate of an 1849 abortion ban, a law restricting > collective bargaining for public sector unions, and Wisconsin’s gerrymandered > congressional maps—the latter of whichcould help determine which party > controls the US House in 2027. Crawford takes office in August. Bradley voted with the majority to strike down the zombie abortion law.

Everything is bigger in Texas—except, apparently, memory of devastating mass shootings. In late June, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law a bill known as the Anti-Red Flag Act, which preemptively bans the creation or enforcement of extreme risk protective orders. Such orders are legal tools used to temporarily prohibit a person from having access to guns after a judge evaluates evidence of alarming behavior and deems that person to be a danger to themselves or others. Abbot and Republican state lawmakers have extensive knowledge of the harm that red flag laws are designed to prevent. Several of the worst gun massacres in recent memory took place in Texas, including when a suicidal 18-year-old slaughtered 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde in 2022. Three years earlier, a 19-year-old right-wing extremist murdered 23 people and injured 22 others at a Walmart in El Paso. In 2018, a high schooler fatally shot 10 and wounded 13 at Santa Fe High School near Houston. In 2017, a 26-year-old military veteran with a history of domestic violence massacred 26 people and wounded 22 others at a Sutherland Springs church. That’s only a partial list of these calamities in Texas over the past decade. (See also: the attack at an outlet mall in Allen; a rampage in Midland-Odessa; and a deadly ambush of police officers in Dallas.) Most, if not all, of these cases were preceded by observable warning behaviors from the perpetrators—red flags indicating that access to weapons made them dangerous. In his public remarks about gun violence and mass shootings, Abbott consistently has focused heavily on the role of mental illness, a tactic political conservatives often use to deflect arguments for stricter regulation of firearms. And while mental illness is not fundamentally the cause of mass shootings, the governor obviously is well aware that there can be identifiable individuals who should not have access to guns. “Anybody who shoots somebody else has a mental health challenge, period,” he said as the state and nation reeled from Uvalde. Following the massacres in El Paso and Midland-Odessa, Abbot pledged to work with the legislature on laws “to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals.” After the mall shooting in Allen, he spoke of the need to address “anger and violence by going to its root cause, which is addressing the mental health problems behind it. People want a quick solution. The long-term solution here is to address the mental health issue.” Abbott himself once urged the state legislature to “consider the merits of adopting a red flag law,” after the Santa Fe High School shooting seven years ago.   Texas legislators also know the reality behind these attacks—they were the first to publish an official investigative report on Uvalde, two months after the massacre, in July 2022. The 77-page state House report focused foremost on the disastrous tactical response, including how law enforcement officers waited more than an hour to confront the perpetrator inside the building. But it also summarized the perpetrator’s troubled background and detailed some of his warning behaviors leading up to the attack: A former girlfriend told the FBI that he’d been lonely and depressed and had “told her repeatedly that he wouldn’t live past eighteen, either because he would commit suicide or simply because he ‘wouldn’t live long.’” The perpetrator also began wearing black clothes and combat boots, the Texas House report said, and his online activity “reflected themes of confrontation and revenge.” It continued: > The attacker began to demonstrate interest in gore and violent sex, watching > and sometimes sharing gruesome videos and images of suicides, beheadings, > accidents, and the like, as well as sending unexpected explicit messages to > others online. Those with whom he played video games reported that he became > enraged when he lost. He made over-the-top threats, especially towards female > players, whom he would terrorize with graphic descriptions of violence and > rape. Yet despite those and other red flags, the perpetrator had been able to purchase an arsenal—legally—within just days of turning 18 years old. As the Texas House report also detailed: > An online retailer shipped 1,740 rounds of 5.56mm 75-grain boat tail hollow > point to his doorstep, at a cost of $1,761.50. He ordered a Daniel Defense > DDM4 V7 (an AR-15-style rifle) for shipment to a gun store in Uvalde, at a > cost of $2,054.28. On May 17, 2022, he bought a Smith and Wesson M&P15 (also > an AR-15-style rifle) at the same store in Uvalde, at a cost of $1,081.42. He > returned the next day for 375 rounds of M193, a 5.56mm 55-grain round with a > full metal jacket, which has a soft core surrounded by a harder metal. He > returned again to pick up his other rifle when it arrived on May 20, 2022, and > he had store staff install the holographic sight on it after the transfer was > completed. Four days later, 19 children and two teachers were dead. Opponents often make a blanket argument that red flag laws are unconstitutional and deprive citizens of due process. In reality, evidence of threatening behavior must be presented to a civil court judge, who rules on whether or not to remove access to guns on a temporary basis; to varying degree there is also a petitioning or review process for potential restoration of access. And while the US Supreme Court has not addressed red flag laws directly, in 2023 it ruled on a Texas case about gun rights and domestic violence restraining orders: “When an individual has been found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another, that individual may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment.” The core function of red flag laws, in other words, is not deprivation of firearms but rather the twin purposes of protecting the community and getting the troubled person help. > Violence prevention experts at the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Office told me that > the law has become “a key tool in a lot of, if not most of the threat > management cases that we’ve worked.” With the growth of these laws over the past decade—22 states and Washington, DC, now have some version of the policy—research in California and beyond has shown that they are effective for reducing suicides and targeted shootings. Last year, as I completed a deep investigation into the 2014 mass attack in Isla Vista, California—which gave rise to the state’s pioneering red flag law—violence prevention experts at the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Office told me that the law has become “a key tool in a lot of, if not most of the threat management cases that we’ve worked.” The senior US senator in Texas, Republican John Cornyn, was the lead cosponsor of the landmark Bipartisan Safer Communities Act authorized by Congress in 2022. Signed into law by President Biden but now jeopardized under President Trump, that legislation included $750 million in grant funding for states to implement crisis-intervention programs and policies, including red flag laws. Cornyn did not respond to my request for comment about his state’s Anti-Red Flag Act, which takes effect on Sept. 1. When the next major mass shooting occurs in Texas, it’s likely to be followed once again by a Texas-size round of “thoughts and prayers,” as Ted Cruz, the state’s other Republican US senator and a vocal opponent of red flag laws, can well attest. Likely even bigger, though, will be the missed opportunity to have prevented yet another round of carnage and devastation.

A growing number of states are considering legislation to set up protections for patients who might be drug tested when they give birth. Three of the bills were introduced following an investigative series by The Marshall Project and Reveal that exposed the harms of drug testing at childbirth — including how many patients are often reported to child welfare authorities over false positive or misinterpreted test results, and how women have faced child welfare investigations and removals over medications the hospitals themselves gave them. In New York, a bill that would require hospitals to obtain consent from patients before drug testing has been advancing. Two proposed bills, in Arizona and Tennessee, failed to make it out of their legislative sessions.  “We know when there’s secret drug testing, families are often torn apart,” said New York state Rep. Linda Rosenthal, a Democrat from Manhattan, who noted cases of women who were reported to child welfare over positive tests caused by poppy seeds and prescribed medications. “This is not some theoretical discussion we’re having here. This is really something that occurs.” > “Can you imagine if someone took the baby from you out of your arms or never > even let you hold your child?” The New York bill, versions of which were first introduced by Rosenthal beginning in 2019, has faced years of resistance from state lawmakers. Similar efforts in Minnesota, Maryland and California also failed in prior legislative sessions. But in New York, The Marshall Project’s reporting on hospital drug testing helped convince more lawmakers to get on board, according to activists who lobbied for the legislation. If passed, the law would permit hospitals to drug test birthing patients and their newborns only if medically necessary. It would also require them to obtain informed consent from patients before drug testing them, which would include disclosing the potential legal consequences of a positive test result. Similar bills were introduced this year in Tennessee by both a Democrat and Republican. Sen. Janice Bowling, a Republican from Tullahoma who frequently advocates for parental rights, was first approached about the issue by a progressive advocacy group and quickly saw the bipartisan appeal. She said she was shocked to learn that women had been tested and reported over false positive tests caused by poppy seeds, the heartburn drug Zantac and other legal substances. “Can you imagine if someone took the baby from you out of your arms or never even let you hold your child?” she said. “Taking children from families because a state entity says they have the authority to determine whether or not you’re a fit parent, that’s a slippery slope.” After a particularly contentious legislative session, the bill failed to make it out of committee. Bowling said she plans to take up the bill again in 2026. In Arizona, lobbyists and activists said they plan to pursue a similar informed consent bill next legislative session, in addition to continuing to pursue a more far-reaching bill that was introduced but failed to advance this year. > “If the trust between a doctor and patient is broken, that will lead to much > more severe consequences for the child and the mother.” The Pro-Choice Arizona Action Fund and the reproductive advocacy group Patient Forward began pursuing the legislation following a Reveal and New York Times Magazine investigation in 2023 that detailed the story of an Arizona woman whose baby was placed in foster care after she was reported to child welfare authorities for taking prescribed Suboxone during her pregnancy. Current Arizona law requires healthcare providers to contact child welfare anytime a baby is born exposed to controlled substances, including legal medications such as Suboxone and methadone. “We were like, how does this happen? What are the mechanisms in place that allow this to happen?” said Garin Marschall, co-founder of Patient Forward. “We wanted to understand what we could do to make sure that it didn’t happen again.” The proposed legislation would have revised Arizona law to bar positive drug tests alone as a reason for a child welfare report or investigation. If healthcare providers have no concerns about abuse or neglect, the law would require hospitals to notify the health department instead of child welfare authorities. Other states, such as Massachusetts and New Mexico, have passed similar laws, while hospitals around the country have also made changes to their drug testing policies. In New York, advocates said their bill has historically faced resistance from lawmakers who worry that asking patients for consent to test them for drugs will lead more women to decline such tests. But healthcare providers interviewed by The Marshall Project have said it’s rare for patients to decline a drug test, and even so, drug tests rarely provide useful medical information. Doctors don’t typically need drug tests to identify or treat babies exposed to substances in the womb, and a positive test does not actually prove that a parent has an addiction, the experts said. Instead, studies have found that screening questionnaires, which collect certain information from patients, such as their partner’s history of drug use, are effective at identifying someone with an addiction without putting them at risk of needless child welfare intervention. Doctors have found that maintaining open communication with patients is also the best way to help them, whereas studies show more punitive policies lead women to avoid prenatal care altogether. “If the trust between a doctor and patient is broken, that will lead to much more severe consequences for the child and the mother,” Rosenthal said. “Everyone does better if that doesn’t happen.” This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project,  a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletters, and follow them on  Instagram, TikTok, Reddit and Facebook.