GREENWOOD, Miss. — Since its opening in a converted wood-frame mansion 117 years ago, Greenwood Leflore Hospital had become a medical hub for this part of Mississippi’s fertile but impoverished Delta, with 208 beds, an intensive-care unit, a string of walk-in clinics and a modern brick-and-glass building. But on a recent weekday, it counted just […]
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RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina on Monday became the 40th state to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, the latest sign of how Republican opposition to the health measure has weakened more than a decade after President Barack Obama signed it into law. Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, signed legislation expanding the state’s Medicaid […]
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From a distance, it is hard to tell whether the three figures walking the salt playa are human, bird or some other animal. Through binoculars, I see they are pelicans, juveniles, gaunt and emaciated without water or food. In feathered robes, they walk with the focus of fasting monks toward enlightenment or death. This was […]
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Many of the minors crossed unaccompanied from Latin American countries and may not know when their employment violates the law. A 13-year-old who was burned with caustic chemicals while working for Packers Sanitation Services in Nebraska told investigators the accident occurred during a shift that lasted from 11 p.m. to 5 or 7 a.m., a […]
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Abortion will remain legal in Wyoming — at least temporarily — after a judge on Wednesday ordered that a newly enacted ban be blocked until further court proceedings in a lawsuit challenging it. After a three-hour hearing, Judge Melissa Owens of Teton County District Court granted a temporary restraining order, pausing a law that took […]
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In an insult to New Yorkers suffering from spiraling rents and home prices, both houses of New York’s Democratic-controlled Legislature rejected an ambitious set of proposals from Gov. Kathy Hochul last week that would begin to address the crisis in available housing. The legislators appear to be capitulating to the panic of their suburban members, […]
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WASHINGTON — The Biden administration will warn on Monday that a warming planet poses severe economic challenges for the United States, which will require the federal government to reassess its spending priorities and how it influences behavior. Administration economists, in an annual report, will say that reassessment should include a new look at the climate-adaptation […]
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Brought by the nonprofit organization Upsolve and the Rev. John Udo-Okon, a pastor in the South Bronx, the case focuses on debt collection lawsuits. Hundreds of thousands are filed annually in New York State, and millions more across the country. Many people sued in these cases cannot afford a lawyer. With help, many could defend […]
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NASHVILLE — The metropolitan government of Nashville sued the State of Tennessee on Monday, asking a judge to block a new law that would slash the size of its governing body to 20 members, from 40. The standoff has emerged as a particularly stark example of flaring tensions between liberal-leaning cities and conservative state lawmakers […]
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WASHINGTON — For just about all of the nation’s history, politicians would fight over redistricting for a short period after each once-a-decade census, then forget about congressional maps until the next reapportionment. Now, a string of lawsuits and in-the-works state referendums are poised to redefine the battles over state legislative and congressional lines and leave […]
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This is not just the doing of the I.R.A. To a degree hardly anyone but wonks really appreciates, green energy in the United States was a heavily red-state phenomenon before the legislation even hit Mr. Biden’s desk in August. Already, Texas produces more renewable energy than anywhere else in the country — in fact, almost […]
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One exception is Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, who addressed the complexity of the debate in an email: Higher ed and K-12 are different. States are on much firmer ground in seeking to establish or constrain what gets taught in K-12 education, where the concept of academic freedom simply doesn’t […]
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First to leave was Louisiana, followed by Alabama. Then, in one fell swoop, Florida, Missouri and West Virginia announced on Monday that they would drop out of a bipartisan network of about 30 states that helps maintain accurate voter rolls, one that has faced intensifying attacks from election deniers and right-wing media. Ohio may not […]
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Ms. Zurawski became pregnant in early 2022 after 18 months of fertility treatments. In her 17th week of pregnancy, and the day after she made the guest list for her baby shower, a scan found that her cervical membranes had begun to prolapse. Specialists told her that her fetus, which she had begun thinking of […]
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A few weeks after Republican attorneys general in 21 states sent letters threatening legal action against retail pharmacy chains if they dispensed the abortion pill mifepristone, Walgreens said it would not distribute the pill in those states. In January, after the Food and Drug Administration said it would allow retail pharmacies to become certified to […]
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OKLAHOMA CITY — On a stifling July day, Elon Musk sat across from the governor of Oklahoma under a small white pop-up tent, a red Tesla flag waving from a short pole in an otherwise unadorned field. That the billionaire was even in Oklahoma, seriously considering putting a gigantic new Tesla factory outside of Tulsa, […]
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WASHINGTON — More than 20 state governments, flush with cash from federal stimulus funds and a rebounding economy, shared their windfalls last year by sending residents one-time payments. This year, the Biden administration added a sweetener, telling tens of millions taxpayers they did not need to pay federal taxes on those payments. That decision by […]
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WASHINGTON — When the Supreme Court hears arguments on Tuesday in a challenge from six Republican-led states to President Biden’s plan to wipe out more than $400 billion in student debt, the first question it will explore is not whether the plan is lawful. It will be whether the states are even entitled to sue. […]
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The attorneys general of a dozen Democratic-controlled states sued the Food and Drug Administration on Friday, asking a judge to remove special restrictions that the federal agency has long applied to the first of two drugs used in medication abortion. The suit, filed in a Federal District Court in Washington State, comes at a tense […]
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Bow-tied bankers do not often sue a state’s lawyer in chief. So when it does happen, it’s time to pop the popcorn and gather around to watch. In October, Kentucky’s attorney general ordered some of the nation’s biggest banks and investment firms to turn over piles of documents that had the word “climate” or “environmental” […]
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Taken together, those ideas make a “national divorce” seem, if not likely, then at least plausible. But there’s a problem. States are not actually singular political communities. There are partisan divides between states, even large ones, but they do not represent fundamental differences of culture and interest. And although states play an important role in […]
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Deaths in state and federal prisons across America rose nearly 50 percent during the first year of the pandemic, and in six states they more than doubled, according to the first comprehensive data on prison fatalities in the era of Covid-19. The tremendous jump in deaths in 2020 was more than twice the increase in […]
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For the first time since the fight over abortion access was kicked to the states after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, newly elected legislatures around the country are coming into session and are putting the polarizing issue at the top of their agendas. Around 300 bills in 40 states have been proposed so […]
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Consider concealed-carry permits. In the 1990s, when conservative states increasingly allowed gun owners to carry concealed handguns, there was widespread hand-wringing on the left that this would be a bloody catastrophe. The Times published a Page 1 article in 1995 citing critics warning of “modern-day Dodge City scenarios in which routine fender-bender accidents could escalate […]
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New York’s housing shortage has been building for years, and for just as long, state officials have done relatively little to address it. But now, as rents and home prices reach crisis levels, Gov. Kathy Hochul is racing to come up with solutions. She appears to have found one in California. And in Massachusetts. And […]
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JACKSON, Miss. — When the coronavirus first scythed through the nation in early 2020, few places needed help fighting it more than Scott County, Miss., a rural patch of chicken processing plants and pine forests an hour east of the state capital, Jackson. The poverty rate for the county’s 28,000 residents was far above the […]
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OSCEOLA, Iowa — So many of Deborah Krauss’s friends and neighbors have died of drug overdoses during the pandemic that she said she felt as if she had been living inside of a dream. The longest she has gone without someone dying, she noted, is three weeks. Her calendar grew cluttered with funerals. “I lost […]
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The Florida letter suggests discrepancies with the College Board’s account of events. Florida publicly announced that it had rejected the A.P. course in January, a few weeks before the College Board released its final guidelines — too little time, the board said, to make any politically motivated revisions. But according to the letter, the state […]
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For a month, the Pennsylvania legislature has been frozen by a handful of vacancies in the State House of Representatives that made the difference between Democratic and Republican control, and by representatives’ inability to agree on basic operating rules. Special elections on Tuesday could bring the General Assembly back to life. Those elections will fill […]
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American communities need robust law enforcement, and the vast majority of police officers are public servants performing dangerous work with dedication. The footage of Memphis police officers killing Tyre Nichols in early January, however, is all the more unbearable because Americans have seen the likes of it so many times before. Too many Americans today […]
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PHILADELPHIA — Members of the Democratic National Committee are expected to vote on Saturday on a major overhaul of the Democratic primary process, a critical step in President Biden’s effort to transform the way the party picks its presidential nominees, and one that would upend decades of American political tradition. For years, Democratic nominating contests […]
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