Conserving water in Colorado and more news from the states

Good evening. Tonight we begin in Colorado, where a new voluntary plan to conserve dwindling drinking water is highlighting the difficulties in creating a long-term, binding plan across states. 

In North Dakota, the state Supreme Court upheld the state ban on gender-affirming care for young people. And in Montana, which has strong privacy protections in place already, a lawmaker is eyeing more rules for license plate readers. 

States across the country are fighting to inspect federal immigrant detention facilities, as complaints about conditions and the number of people detained continues to grow. 

In Utah, a new state effort is underway to let residents know someone is always “in your corner.”

Colorado water regulators voted this week to move forward with voluntary water conservation efforts following a historically dry year in the Colorado River Basin, Colorado Newsline reports. 

The new state-run conservation program would fulfill the voluntary conservation efforts requested by federal officials this year, as the seven states that rely on the Colorado River continued to fall short of a long-term agreement on how to share its shrinking water supplies.

Colorado officials have faced mounting criticism and threats of litigation over the state’s refusal to agree to mandatory cuts like the ones the Lower Basin states are facing. But the Colorado Water Conservation Board’s rollout of the new voluntary plan put a spotlight on the internal political pressures and legal obstacles that stand in the way of more substantial conservation commitments in the Colorado River’s headwaters state.

Farmers are wary of the new program. Agriculture accounts for about 90% of all Colorado water use. Under the project criteria adopted by the board, the state will prioritize “participation statewide and across water sectors” — meaning municipal users, not just farmers and ranchers.

The North Dakota Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously found the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors constitutional, upholding a lower court’s ruling from last year, North Dakota Monitor reports. 

The 2023 law makes it a crime to prescribe puberty blockers and other treatments to adolescents.

The Supreme Court concluded that the North Dakota Legislature hadn’t abused its power in enacting the ban, and that it isn’t the court’s place to interfere with how lawmakers want to regulate the medical field.

Montana has some of the strongest privacy protections in the country surrounding the use of license plate recognition camera use in public places and by law enforcement, The Daily Montanan reports. 

In 2017, the Legislature passed a law prohibiting state agencies from using license plate readers on public highways, which has helped keep the cameras largely out of Montana during the last decade. 

Even so, readers can be found in private parking lots in many of the state’s large cities, and some municipalities use them to monitor parking violations. 

Now, with the daily debate over surveillance raging, state Sen. Daniel Zolnikov, a Billings Republican who sponsored the privacy legislation in 2017, said he’s planning to readdress the issue in the upcoming legislative session if he’s reelected. The bills he has planned would strengthen the state’s privacy laws and close some loopholes in existing law, including for municipalities.

“Back then, it wasn’t a big issue,” Zolnikov said. “It didn’t have the weight of society behind it, so people weren’t really paying attention.”

Related coverage: 

Idaho: The Constitution Party candidate in the state’s 1st Congressional District election has pleaded guilty to possessing “child sexually exploitative material.” He is still eligible for office under the U.S. Constitution. 

Missouri: The last legal battle over the state’s 2025 redistricting plan played out Thursday, with a panel of federal appeals court judges hearing from Republicans that they should reinstate the map designed to help the GOP flip a Democratic-held congressional seat.

Wisconsin: The state Supreme Court is considering two challenges to the constitutionality of the state’s congressional maps: that the district boundaries unfairly benefit Republicans and protect incumbents. 

Washington: The state Supreme Court invalidated a ballot measure approved by voters in 2024 that sought to slow the state’s shift from natural gas toward technology like electric heat pumps.

Maine: The Penobscot Nation received 11,000 acres of ancestral land back this week, the first phase of what is expected to be one of the largest land returns ever between a U.S.-based nonprofit and a tribe.  

Louisiana: Livingston Parish residents are speaking out against the construction of a carbon dioxide pipeline they say will bring risks right up to their backyards and near community schools. 

Arkansas: Families of children with disabilities urged Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders to take further action toward clearing a waiting list for supportive services.

Nevada: In 2024, Nevadans voted in favor of enshrining abortion rights in the state’s constitution. If Question 6 passes for a second time in November, it will take effect. 

North Dakota: The U.S. Department of Education and State Department are investigating the University of North Dakota for failing to properly report foreign gifts and contracts.

Tennessee: A Democratic state lawmaker plans to introduce a bill mirroring Hawaii’s effort to limit dark money in politics.

Alabama: The state’s lieutenant governor has a dwindling number of powers. The Democratic nominees on the top of November’s ballot want to change that.

Immigrant workers stand on rails inside Kenneth Anderson’s tobacco barn in Clark County, Kentucky, as they pass plants to be hung to dry inside the barn. (Photo by Liam Niemeyer/Kentucky Lantern)

Growing the cash crop is part of a family tradition that’s stretched across four generations for Anderson. 

But Anderson, now 69, has witnessed Kentucky agriculture’s dramatic shift when it comes to the crop he’s grown to know so well. Nearly 60,000 farms grew tobacco in the 1990s to now fewer than 1,000 as of 2022, according to federal agriculture census data. 

Read more from Kentucky Lantern. 

Related coverage: 

Concerned about conditions in federal immigrant detention facilities but often barred from entering them, some Democratic-led states are fighting to enforce their own health and safety standards at the sites, Stateline reports. 

The Trump administration, citing the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, argues that states don’t have the authority to regulate federal facilities.

Washington state’s health department says it has received more than 3,500 complaints about the Northwest ICE Processing Center, but has been denied access 10 times since 2023, despite a state law that directs state health officials to regularly inspect privately run detention facilities, including those holding immigrants. 

At least two other states have enacted similar laws this year. 

The states’ fight to inspect ICE facilities comes after the Trump administration shuttered the Office of Immigration Detention Ombudsman and as the number of people in detention soared to more than 65,700 in mid-July, compared to 37,000 two years ago. 

Related: White House yanks nominee to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement

Voting rights groups and Democratic officials are looking to defend against what they see as possible election interference from the Trump administration ahead of the upcoming midterm elections, now that they’ve won a major battle over mail ballots, States Newsroom’s D.C. Bureau reports.

Common Cause, a nonpartisan pro-democracy organization, announced a “voter protection” campaign Thursday that would place thousands of volunteers at polling sites in 25 states.

The initiative is designed to counter potential administration moves to intimidate voters, such as ordering troops or law enforcement officers to polling places.

The Democratic Party is also upping its voter protection efforts, launching its own initiative this week to deploy 10,000 volunteers to assist voters at polling locations in all 50 states plus seven U.S. territories.

Both efforts are described as preemptive efforts to head off any possible attempts by President Donald Trump to skew election results. Trump for years has alleged, without evidence, U.S. elections are beset by myriad attempts at fraud.

He has used that pretext in attempts to enact policies to restrict voting, including the order limiting vote-by-mail that the U.S. Supreme Court blocked for this election. 

Voters are “facing aggressive and deliberate threats from this administration and anti-voter forces that are tied to this administration,” Common Cause CEO Virginia Kase Solomón said. “Whether it be voter intimidation at the polls, the attacks on mail-in voting or attempts to collect your personal data, the barriers that voters are facing right now … are not only real, they are urgent. And they are intentionally designed to make everyday Americans give up.”

More from the D.C. Bureau: Bipartisan push to set rules for college athletes’ pay continues to advance in US Senate

Suicide prevention advocates and Utah state officials gathered Wednesday to declare September a month for awareness and to emphasize help available for anyone who needs to talk, Utah News Dispatch reports. 

Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, a Republican, said “a significant act of bravery is not only speaking up when we need help, but noticing and then acting when we see things in others.”

Republican state Rep. Steve Eliason said the national 988 “lifeline” has a Utah genesis. More than a decade ago, he and former Utah Sen. Daniel Thatcher made several attempts to bring about a three-digit mental health crisis line, he recalled, but they were unsuccessful.

So they took their idea to members of Utah’s congressional delegation, urging former U.S. Rep. Chris Stewart and the late Sen. Orrin Hatch to take on the cause. The Federal Communications Commission and Congress established 988 as the national crisis line in 2020, and the resource  launched nationwide in 2022.

At the news conference on Wednesday, he joined other officials and advocates in writing messages of encouragement and support on blue sticky notes. They posted them to two panels forming a corner of a partial, makeshift room in the Capitol rotunda, saying the display seeks to emphasize to Utahns that “we’re in your corner.”  

If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts or is in distress, call or text 988 to speak to crisis counselors 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.