Communities confront school closures and more news from the states

Good morning! We’re back with an update on the legal skirmishes over mail-in voting.

Last night, the U.S. Supreme Court kept in place a lower court’s order blocking President Donald Trump’s embattled plan to place new restrictions on mail ballots for this year’s midterm elections. The order upheld a Massachusetts federal court’s injunction on a U.S. Postal Service rule until after Nov. 3 and did not decide whether the rule itself was lawful, States Newsroom’s D.C. Bureau reports. 

Today, Delaware voters are headed to the polls for the state’s primary elections. At the same time, a lawsuit filed by state Senate Minority Leader Gerald Hocker, a Republican, could throw the state’s absentee voting protocol into question. 

This November, the midterms will serve as a bellwether for Trump’s final years in office as voters weigh in on consequential and controversial policies from the first part of his term. 

Stay up to date with States Newsroom’s 2026 election coverage here.

National: The federal government is going after thousands of people suspected of stealing millions of dollars from taxpayers through their participation in a COVID-19 pandemic program meant to protect small businesses and workers, Vice President JD Vance said in a news conference at the FBI’s Kansas City field office.

Texas: Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has directed the state’s Water Development Board to penalize data centers that do not report their water usage. The directive comes as the state grapples with rapidly growing demand for water from data centers and other large industrial users.

Ohio: Anxiety among Haitians living in the state has been growing as the federal government has started flying people who lost protected status back to the troubled Caribbean country. Meanwhile, the aid organization International Rescue Committee reports that attacks are spreading in Haiti.

Kentucky: U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell returned to the chamber, the first time the Kentucky Republican has been seen in public since being hospitalized more than 90 days ago. McConnell, 84, was hospitalized in June and said on July 12 he would enter a rehabilitation center after a fall at home.

West Virginia: A group of lawmakers reworked a controversial piece of anti-child abuse legislation that sent the House into chaos during a debate over protecting children versus parents’ rights. The proposed bill would launch an immediate welfare check on a child leaving public school if there’s a past history of abuse or many missed school days.

North Dakota: A legislative planning committee advanced pay increases of 3% as a starting point for state lawmakers in each year of the upcoming two-year budget cycle. The Legislative Procedure and Arrangements Committee unanimously approved the numbers, which are for initial budgeting purposes and are not a final decision.

See the rest of the news of the day from all 50 states, plus our D.C. Bureau and Stateline, on News From The States.

Driven largely by declining birth rates but worsened by several other factors, district and school board decisions to close and consolidate schools can draw anger and anxiety from parents and students. Many states are stopping short of forcing mergers, but taking a variety of steps to encourage them, Stateline reports. 

The expiration of one-time federal pandemic relief funding has worsened the financial pressure on school districts.

The COVID-19 pandemic also accelerated interest in homeschooling, virtual education and other alternatives to traditional public schools, according to Megan Bowen, high school director at the U.S. Career Institute, a Colorado-based online education provider.

And the immigration crackdown may be playing a role in Colorado’s yearly decline in public school students, said Democratic state Rep. Julie McCluskie, who was a public school employee at Summit School District in one of the state’s rural resort towns before being elected and becoming House speaker. 

More than 1,000 public schools closed nationwide in the 2025-26 school year, according to preliminary National Center for Education Statistics data. It’s the fourth year in a row that school closures have gone up.

An image of a sunglasses-wearing Abraham Lincoln will appear near the top of Indiana election ballots this fall, Indiana Capital Chronicle reports.

That is the emblem submitted by the Lincoln Party to appear in the section for voters choosing to cast straight-ticket ballots — even though the newly formed party’s only candidate is Greg Ballard, who is running for secretary of state.

The Lincoln image appears alongside the Republican eagle and the Democratic rooster (neither of which is the traditional party mascot of an elephant and a donkey, respectively). Libertarians are represented by a Statue of Liberty emblem.

Nathan Gotsch, the Lincoln Party chair who is also Ballard’s campaign manager, declined to talk about how the emblem was decided upon.