Another mega Meta verdict in New Mexico and more news from the states

Happy Friday. If If it’s the end of your workweek ... we made it! If not, there’s a gem of a story about “9 to 5 Day” at the end of the newsletter to help you get by. 

Today, a jury in New Mexico found Facebook violated state laws in its collection and use of user data leading up to the 2016 election. 

North Carolinians are still recovering from Hurricane Helene, two years later. New Jersey’s lieutenant governor resigned, and a Tennessee abortion law remains blocked, following an appeals court decision. 

If you’ve got time over the weekend, consider subscribing and listening to Stories From The States. On the pod this week, we discuss some of the biggest stories in the news and tackle the issue of regulating artificial intelligence.

A New Mexico jury on Friday found Facebook willfully violated state law and engaged in unfair and deceptive trade practices regarding collection of user data, Source NM reports. 

In total, the jury found that Facebook committed more than 43 million violations of New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act. First Judicial District Judge Francis Mathew will now decide how much the company will pay; attorneys representing the state have asked for the maximum $5,000 penalty per violation.

The state initially filed its case against Facebook in 2021, following news reports of the Cambridge Analytica data breach in which users’ personal information was used for political advertisements leading up to the 2016 election. The trial follows two high-profile courtroom victories for the state in unrelated cases against Meta, Facebook’s parent company.

In a statement provided to Source NM, a Meta spokesperson said, “We disagree with the verdict and will continue to defend ourselves against efforts to distort our record.”

Two years after Hurricane Helene brought catastrophic flooding and landslides to the Carolina mountains, communities are still working to rebuild, NC Newsline reports. 

Extreme Weather Survivors, a national network of individuals and families impacted by climate-fueled disasters, surveyed 300 North Carolina adults directly affected by Hurricane Helene.

What they found was that 1 in 4 still have not returned home, even though they plan to. Seventy-one percent personally know someone who is still struggling financially, nearly two years later. And 60% said they felt abandoned by the government during and after Helene.

On Friday, Democratic Gov. Josh Stein and the state’s recovery office were scheduled to unveil the Western North Carolina Economic Recovery Plan, a long-term framework to rebuild and grow the region’s economy. It’s intended to build on work already underway by counties, chambers and small businesses.

New Jersey: Democratic Lt. Gov. Dale Caldwell has resigned, less than 24 hours after Gov. Mikie Sherrill released a report alleging multiple ethical lapses by Caldwell.

Arizona: Law enforcement agencies outside of the state are some of the biggest users of Flock data gathered by the Maricopa County Sheriff Office and Lake Havasu Police Department, drawing privacy concerns. 

Michigan: Dozens gathered in Grand Rapids to demand justice for Mario David Coronado Juárez, a 35-year-old immigrant from Guatemala who died earlier this month after fleeing when ICE agents attempted to stop his vehicle.

New Mexico: Democratic Attorney General Raúl Torrez urged Congress to immediately regulate the artificial intelligence industry after an OpenAI program went rogue and attempted to hack into the University of New Mexico’s digital library.

Kansas: The state’s top foster care official said some contractors have continuously struggled to place children in housing, instead allowing them to sleep in unlicensed environments like offices. 

Tennessee: A state law preventing adults from giving information to minors about legal out-of-state abortions will remain blocked, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled.

Missouri: Since 2017, a D.C.-based nonprofit called the Fairness Project has poured more than $13 million into successful campaigns in the state. Now, it is the biggest donor in an effort to defeat an abortion ban on November ballots. 

Montana: The state Supreme Court vacated an earlier ruling that the Butte-Silver Bow elections office print a citizen’s initiative question on the ballots after learning the department had already mailed ballots to voters.

Six years ago, the waters of Lake Kanasatka in Moultonborough, New Hampshire, were the color of “Gatorade,” said University of New Hampshire Lakes Lay Monitoring Program Director Amanda McQuaid. A costly chemical treatment seems to have brought cyanobacteria blooms on the lake closer to historical norms — and returned the water closer to its ordinary blue color, as pictured on Sept. 24. (Photo by Molly Rains/New Hampshire Bulletin)

This year has been a “beautiful” one on the lake, said waterfront resident Kevin Kelly. Conditions have improved each year since the treatment was applied in 2024, after anguish and health concerns over recurrent cyanobacteria blooms peaked the year before.

Yet experts, including McQuaid, have been clear that the treatment, which for Lake Kanasatka cost more than half a million dollars, is not permanent. Nor is it necessarily well-suited to all of the many other water bodies across New Hampshire dealing with similar bloom struggles.

Read more from New Hampshire Bulletin. 

An appeals panel Friday seemed inclined to agree that more than 100 Venezuelan men the Trump administration sent to a brutal prison in El Salvador are entitled to due process hearings to challenge their removal, which was made under an archaic 18th-century wartime law, States Newsroom’s D.C. Bureau reports. 

Arguing on behalf of the class of men who were removed under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, Lee Gelernt of the American Civil Liberties Union told the three-judge panel that the men, who were accused of being suspected members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, were entitled to hearings to challenge those accusations. 

But instead, Gelernt said, the men were denied their due process rights and spent four months in a brutal Salvadoran prison. 

The men were eventually returned to Venezuela in a prisoner swap exchange, but many who had pending asylum cases want to challenge their removal under the Alien Enemies Act and continue their immigration proceedings.

A new government watchdog report raises concerns about the U.S. Department of Education’s suspension this year of a comprehensive monitoring process, putting billions of K-12 dollars at heightened risk of undetected waste, fraud and abuse, Stateline reports. 

The nonpartisan U.S. Government Accountability Office report also raised concerns about the reliability of federal absenteeism data, noting that absenteeism rates were reported above 100% in some schools.

Education officials said the department suspended its consolidated monitoring of Elementary and Secondary Education Act requirements while it develops a new approach. But as of August, the department had not provided a timeline on an alternative for making sure states comply with federal law.

The change heightens the risk for Title 1 funding, which is about two-thirds of the nearly $27 billion in total Elementary and Secondary Education Act funding in 2025, the report said. 

As physicians continue to navigate care for patients with complex pregnancies in states with abortion bans, a group of maternal-fetal medicine specialists has developed new guidelines to help providers in those states navigate legal risks for themselves and medical challenges for their high-risk patients, Stateline reports. 

Ten states plus the District of Columbia allow abortion access without gestational restrictions, while 13 states ban abortion at all stages. Following the implementation of those bans since 2022, many hospital systems and clinics have offered different interpretations of how to avoid legal jeopardy under the bans and what qualifies under exceptions, leading to confusion and delays in care that have been documented in many states nationwide. 

Anxiety over artificial intelligence is growing. Will it replace humans and take jobs? How will it change our privacy? Will it impact our elections? The list of existential questions about AI goes on. 

The technology has not been regulated on a national level. Congress has struggled to pass federal legislation, while the Trump administration has pushed to limit state oversight efforts.

In Episode 47 of the Stories From The States podcast, you’ll hear from a policy analyst on the Center for Democracy & Technology’s state engagement team. She’ll break down how states are regulating AI and whether it’s too out of control for the federal government to set limitations on what the technology can do. 

Listen to Stories From The States below, or subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Youtube.

On “9 to 5” day, North Carolinians celebrated Dolly Parton and her love of literacy, NC Newsline reports.

Democratic Gov. Josh Stein declared Sept. 25, or 9/25, officially “Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library Day of Reading” across North Carolina in memory of the Tennessee musician, her hit song “9 to 5,” and her philanthropic generosity to Hiurricane Helene victims as well as young readers.

Parton’s Imagination Library, launched in 1995, has delivered more than 300 million free books to children around the globe. In North Carolina, the initiative has delivered 25 million free books to children in all 100 counties.

“I had an idea of just doing something in Dolly’s honor,” said Nick Blanchard, who with his friend Kelly Forbes, presided over a children’s book drive Friday. “She was so entrenched with children’s literacy. And I thought this would be a good opportunity for us to all get together and give books.”

The books collected by Blanchard and Forbes will end up in little box libraries in five neighborhoods across the city.

“You can’t get along with this world without reading,” said Blanchard. “Dolly really wanted to get people involved in reading from birth. And that’s why we’re collecting so many different kinds of books.”

Forbes said she welcomed the chance to be a part of the inaugural event.

“I do absolutely love [Dolly] and everything that she stands for,” said Forbes. “What a good person she was! And we love to honor her memory this way.”