Anti-ICE activists stand up to feds and more news from the states

Good evening. We start in Minnesota, where anti-ICE activists say they will not be intimidated by federal surveillance. Western states, meanwhile, are worried about a new federal plan to scrap rules protecting wilderness areas. And Ohio is cracking down on illegal addiction recovery houses.

In Iowa, the secretary of defense made a rare public visit, while in Maine, scientists are asking the public to help find a rare species of bumble bee.

In national news, states are suing fire truck manufacturers, complaining about soaring prices and long wait times. And preservationists are fighting the Trump administration over the planned White House ballroom.

We’re following primary elections today in Alaska, Florida and Wyoming, and a congressional special election in California. Check out our coverage this evening on News from the States or in tomorrow’s editions of Daybreak and Evening Wrap.

Unions, progressive organizations and churches that were the subjects of a wide-ranging surveillance operation by the Department of Homeland Security are presenting a unified message: We will not be intimidated, Minnesota Reformer reports.

The leaders spoke at a news conference Tuesday morning alongside three of the 15 people indicted in an alleged conspiracy to impede or assault federal agents. 

“The (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and Border Patrol agents who murdered Renee Good and Alex Pretti have been hidden away and protected, while DHS turns its attention towards spying on union members, civil rights organizations, churches and individuals who stood up for their community in whatever ways they were able,” said Gabriel Van de Water, an artist and community organizer who was among the 15 people indicted in June.

As part of its surveillance operation during Operation Metro Surge, Homeland Security agents secretly obtained financial records of a variety of organizations. Undercover agents attended meetings of anti-ICE organizers as they planned protests. The tactics were revealed by a defense attorney representing one of the 15 defendants in federal court documents last week. 

“These shams of political investigations — these are just acts of retribution and intimidation,” said the Rev. Jennifer Crow, senior minister of the First Universalist Church of Minneapolis, one of the churches where undercover agents infiltrated a meeting.

More immigration coverage:

The Trump administration will move ahead with plans to end more than 25 years of sweeping protections for tens of millions of wild, federally managed acres across the U.S., Oregon Capital Chronicle reports.

Brooke Rollins, head of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, on Tuesday filed a rule to rescind “in its entirety” the national 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which prohibits road construction, logging and mining on about 30% of lands managed by the U.S. Forest Service, mostly in forested areas of the West. Rollins had last year filed a notice of intent that the agency was considering “rolling back” some protections under the rule.

The Roadless Rule is intended to protect wildlife, watersheds and old-growth forests from human development and human-caused wildfires. But in her announcement, Rollins said she was rescinding the rules on nearly 45 million acres under the banner of wildfire prevention, saying the protections instead have led to “overgrown stands, insect outbreaks and disease” that have turned “healthy landscapes into tinderboxes.”

Rollins’ assertions are not borne out by research, including from Oregon State University Professor Chris Dunn, a forest ecologist and wildfire expert. Dunn and his colleagues found that most wildfires in Western national forests between 1984 and 2018 started near roads, showing an increased likelihood of wildfires where roads exist because the No. 1 cause of wildfires is people.

Abigail Dillen, president of the nonprofit environmental legal group Earthjustice, said in a statement that the group will likely sue to stop the rule changes from moving forward.

More environment coverage:

There were 356 substance abuse recovery houses in Ohio in 2022, and today there are more than 1,700 — a nearly 400% increase, Ohio Capital Journal reports. 

“With this rapid growth, oversight of this industry has been difficult to be able to keep up,” Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine said in signing an executive order that gives the Ohio Department of Behavioral Health the power to create a certification program for recovery housing operators. 

The state is seeing unregulated recovery houses operating without a certification and offering poor conditions for residents, including overcrowding, substandard plumbing and pest infestations.

The Ohio Department of Behavioral Health has taken legal action against many of the homes operating illegally, DeWine said. 

“But frankly, we have to do more,” he said. “Many of these unregulated recovery houses reportedly have unsafe living conditions. We’re particularly seeing this in southern Ohio, where communities were heavily impacted by the opioid epidemic.”

Nebraska: The top administrator of the state’s first designated “rural emergency hospital” has resigned amid allegations from the state auditor that he used hospital funds for “lavish personal entertainment.” 

Indiana: Members of the Black Legislative Caucus say Republican Gov. Mike Braun overstepped his authority when he issued an executive order last month targeting a state diversity program.

Oklahoma: Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt’s latest effort targeting Muslim groups is “political theater” meant to tap into a broader undercurrent of Islamophobia and create unwarranted fears during an election year, experts say.

Louisiana: Amazon and state officials say the company’s $12 billion data center hub under construction in Northwest Louisiana will be expanded to more than $18 billion. 

Kansas: A $1.25 billion biocontainment facility in Manhattan developed for cutting-edge research on the most dangerous animal diseases is not fully operational three years after its ribbon-cutting.

Wisconsin: A 32-year-old Menasha police officer was sentenced for misusing Flock license plate reader cameras for unlawful targeted surveillance of his ex-girlfriend. 

Oregon: A Democratic Congress member is calling for $7.5 million a year in nationwide suicide prevention programs, peer support and counseling for first responders and firefighters.

West Virginia: Privacy advocates in Huntington will try to go to the ballot to block a $2.1 million city contract with Flock Safety to install license plate cameras.

New Hampshire: The state Pesticide Control Board is proposing to restrict the use of certain chemicals, used to kill rats and mice, that scientists say may be harming wildlife.

Florida: Despite being outspent 10-1 so far by his likely GOP rival, Democrat David Jolly insists he likes his chances of becoming the next governor.

Nevada: Sigal Chattah, who has remained atop the state’s U.S. attorney’s office even though her appointment expired a year ago, is illegally holding on to the post, a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled.

Republican U.S. Rep. Zach Nunn and U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pose for photos at a Nunn campaign event held at JR’s Southpork Ranch at the Iowa State Fair Aug. 17. (Photo by Robin Opsahl/Iowa Capital Dispatch)

Hegseth told Iowa State fairgoers Monday he honored the Iowa soldiers killed in Kuwait, while saying the U.S.-Iran conflict was necessary to keep Americans safe.

The defense secretary also spoke on the anti-DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) policies and other changes made at the department, renamed the Department of War since President Donald Trump took office for a second term. “At the Department of War, we do training, not tr***ies,” he said, using a slur to refer to transgender people.

“It is a day and night difference,” Hegseth said. “Training, lethality, accountability, discipline, readiness — the bedrock of what it means to be an American warrior — is the only focus of our department. Colorblind, gender-neutral, merit-based. That’s it.”

Hegseth joined Nunn at the Iowa State Fair for “Operation Top Nunn: Salute to the Troops,” an annual campaign fundraiser and event benefiting veterans support organizations. The event — with Hegseth as a special guest — was originally scheduled for March, but was postponed shortly after the deaths of two Iowa soldiers in an Iranian strike on a Kuwait facility.

Read more from Iowa Capital Dispatch.

Historic preservationists asked the U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday to deny Trump’s appeal to continue construction on his $400 million White House ballroom on the grounds of the demolished East Wing, States Newsroom’s D.C. Bureau reports.

In response to Trump’s application to the high court to overturn a temporary block by a lower court while litigation works through the courts,, the National Trust for Historic Preservation argued irreparable harm would result if construction continued, and that the project is “illegal” without authorization from Congress.

The Trust lawyers highlighted that the Trump administration has argued in court that the ballroom will be “virtually impossible to deconstruct” because it will be constructed out of nuclear power plant-grade concrete.

“That is the essence of irreparable harm,” the Trust argued in the 48-page filing.

Administration lawyers “make no secret of the fact that if the Court permits construction to continue, they will declare the case over,” according to the Trust, a private nonprofit chartered by Congress in 1949 to encourage the protection of historic sites.

More than 30 Democratic U.S. senators, U.S. House Democratic leaders and committee ranking members from both chambers filed a brief Tuesday in support of the Trust.

Municipalities and fire departments in every state are struggling with soaring prices and yearslong delivery times for trucks. It’s a crisis many cities and departments lay squarely at the feet of the country’s biggest fire apparatus manufacturers, Stateline reports.

“There must come a day of reckoning when the manufacturers of our most important tools are held accountable for runaway pricing and extended delivery times,” Dennis Rubin, the chief of the Kansas City Fire Department, told U.S. senators last fall at a hearing convened to investigate price increases and delivery delays on fire trucks.

Kansas City, Kansas is one of more than 60 cities, counties and fire departments across the nation — from Milwaukee to San Diego, Pittsburgh to Tampa, Florida — that says the country’s three biggest fire truck manufacturers have conspired to suppress competition, resulting in skyrocketing prices for fire trucks and repair parts, and yearslong manufacturing delays.

In April, a federal court rolled up their claims into a trio of antitrust class action lawsuits in a Wisconsin district court.

By some estimates, the three manufacturers together control 70-80% of the U.S. fire truck market. Fire engine prices have nearly doubled since 2020, from about $589,000 to more than $1 million, according to the International Association of Fire Fighters.

More from Stateline:

This summer, the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife is once again asking residents to look out for one of the state’s most elusive native species: the rusty patched bumble bee, Maine Morning Star reports. 

It’s one of two native species of bumble bee that hasn’t been seen in the state in years. It’s considered a rare species of special concern by the state, and was the first bumble bee species to be added to the U.S. Endangered Species List. 

“I’ve always felt that the best chance that we have for rediscovering the rusty patched bumble bee in Maine is somebody’s going to take a picture of it in their backyard garden, and that’s how we’re going to find it,” said Beth Swartz, a wildlife biologist specializing in invertebrates at the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. 

The search for the rusty patched bumble bee started in earnest in 2015, when the department began work on the Maine Bumble Bee Atlas. 

Over several years, volunteers with the community science project took photos of bumble bees around the state and submitted them to the department. The project helped raise awareness of bumble bees, and how to identify different species.

“Most people think that we only have one kind of bumble bee,” Swartz said. “A bumble bee is a bumblebee. They don’t realize that we have multiple different species.”