Gas-powered data center concerns and more news from the states

Good evening. Tonight we begin in Nevada, where demand for methane gas power plants is increasing as the electrical grid struggles to keep up with data center development. 

In Minnesota, a coalition of former state and federal judges is urging the end to the Trump administration’s misconduct complaint against the federal bench there. An appellate court in California heard rare oral arguments over the weekend, as the Department of Justice seeks to intervene in the state’s vote-counting. 

In Wisconsin, a “billionaire loophole” has allowed political parties in the state to spend unlimited amounts to support campaigns since 2015. Now, following a Supreme Court ruling, that loophole is going national. Learn more about the issue in our latest video collaboration with Evident Media. And don’t forget to follow us on Instagram, to get our state news on the go. 

Utility regulators will consider whether to approve a third private methane gas power plant specifically for data center use in Nevada as the state's primary electric utility struggles to keep up with a surge of new demand, Nevada Current reports. 

The move comes as a proposed gas pipeline expansion in northern Nevada could increase the amount of natural gas flowing into the region by as much as five times.

Data center operators looking to expand energy capacity in regions with grid constraints are increasingly proposing their own private on-site power plants — or “behind-the-meter” systems — mostly powered by natural gas.

Switch, a major data center developer in Nevada, is seeking approval for a 510-megawatt natural gas-fired power plant at the former Sierra Biofuels Refinery in the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center. If constructed, the plant could produce as much as 2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually, equal to the CO2 produced by roughly 453,000 gasoline-powered passenger vehicles driven for one year.

Related coverage: 

In Minnesota, 174 former federal and state judges sent a letter Monday requesting the dismissal of a misconduct complaint filed last month by the U.S. Department of Justice against nearly every federal judge in the state, Minnesota Reformer reports. 

The DOJ filed the misconduct complaint after judges spoke to the New York Times in September about the impact of Operation Metro Surge on the courts. U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz, who was until recently the chief judge for the District of Minnesota, said the government’s actions during the immigration crackdown — mass arrests of non-criminals, a lack of resources for the courts and local prosecutors, and failure to follow more than 200 court orders — “created a grave threat to the rule of law.”

“Instead of dealing with the government’s defiance of judicial orders, the government filed disciplinary charges against the Minnesota judges who lawfully called out their misconduct,” said Nancy Gertner, former U.S. district judge for the District of Massachusetts, who signed the letter. 

Rhode Island: The state is the first in the nation to sue Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, over its alleged role in profiting from scam ads. 

Tennessee: After some residents casting early ballots said their selections defaulted to a different candidate than they intended to vote for, the Secretary of State’s office urged voters to avail themselves of safeguard measures.

Utah: A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Trump administration against the state’s top election official, Republican Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, which sought voters’ sensitive private information. 

Arizona: The state’s Democratic top election official and attorney general dropped a lawsuit after the voting rights of 25 people who were falsely flagged as noncitizens by a federal database were restored. 

Pennsylvania: Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro on Monday signed a bell-to-bell cellphone ban for the state’s 1.7 million K-12 students in public and private schools. 

Florida: Republican Attorney General James Uthmeier sued a company that issues climate change assessments of property risks including flooding that the state alleges are deceptive, deviate from the federal flood insurance assessments, and are depressing home sales.

Maine: The state Ethics Commission  fined Republican gubernatorial candidate Bobby Charles more than $22,000 for violating state campaign finance laws.

New Mexico: Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Monday announced that President Donald Trump had approved a federal disaster declaration following widespread flooding.

West Virginia: Berkeley County Schools plans to sue the state over public school funding as pressure mounts in the courts to deal with the issue. School systems are strained by declining enrollment and funding, as lawmakers have avoided changing state funding formulas. 

Virginia: A prosecutor’s recent decision not to charge a police officer for sharing license plate reader data with federal authorities without authorization could spur reform efforts in the commonwealth.

Lisa Boyer stands beside a sign opposing Valley Link, an energy transmission company, on her family’s 113-acre farm in Jefferson County, West Virginia. (Photo by Michael Chalmers for West Virginia Watch)

Under one proposed route for the Valley North Project, transmission towers would follow the road in the right side of the photo, cutting through the property behind her, which the family says would threaten farmland and wildlife habitat they’ve maintained for generations.

The proposed Valley North Project would span approximately 260 miles, carrying new 765-kilovolt transmission lines from the coal-fired John E. Amos Power Plant in Putnam County, West Virginia, to Frederick County, Maryland — a colossal infrastructure undertaking that could cut through 20 West Virginia counties and gobble up nearly 7,000 acres of farmland, forests, and residential property along the way.

For some West Virginians, the project presents an all-too-familiar predicament — sacrificing land and resources for the benefit of someone somewhere else.

Although regional grid operator PJM Interconnection selected the project to address electric grid reliability needs, the project’s future rests with state utility regulators in Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia. 

Read more from West Virginia Watch. 

President Donald Trump’s eleventh-hour campaign to intervene in California’s vote counting encountered the first signs of resistance in federal court over the weekend, with appellate judges expressing deep skepticism over the legality of the effort, States Newsroom’s D.C. Bureau reports. 

A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals held rare oral arguments on Sunday as the U.S. Department of Justice seeks a court order requiring California election officials to segregate and not count the ballots of some 20,000 voters, who federal officials say are suspected noncitizens, until those voters can prove otherwise.

As Election Day approaches, the Trump administration is mounting a furious final bid to assert authority over state and local election officials. 

On Friday, the administration preemptively sued Alaska over the future certification of its U.S. Senate race. Democrats and voting rights groups filed a flurry of court papers over the weekend opposing the Alaska lawsuit.

Sunday’s oral arguments in the California case, which lasted nearly two hours, marked the first courtroom showdown in the Trump administration’s new round of preelection legal action. One or both lawsuits could be before the U.S. Supreme Court within days, depending on the speed of lower courts.

Related: (Louisiana) DOJ confirms it’s sending election monitors to all 50 states

Americans’ growing frustration over high prices has defined many political campaigns ahead of November’s midterm elections, Stateline reports.

Rising costs of healthcare, gas and groceries during President Donald Trump’s second term have put Republicans on defense, not only in Washington, but in statehouse and gubernatorial races across the country.

As the political environment continues to sour for Republicans, a new analysis released by the Urban Institute on Monday concluded that an estimated 49% of families are unable to afford the basic costs of living. That’s according to the left-leaning think tank’s true cost of economic security calculation, which measures how much is needed to live securely.

More from Stateline: Brighter streetlights cut nighttime violence, but only for a while, study finds

The Iowa Food System Coalition is embarking on a project to study pasture-based livestock systems in the state to examine the community and economic benefits of the practices, Iowa Capital Dispatch reports. 

The coalition received a $40,000 grant from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, or ASPCA, to support the study as part of the animal welfare group’s initiative to end “factory farming” practices. 

Pasture-based livestock systems allow animals to graze freely — as opposed to being fed in a confined system. For beef operations, that might mean a grass fed or grass finished system, or a free-range operation for chickens. Tommy Hexter, the coalition’s executive director, said part of the research will be to determine what Iowa producers consider pasture-based. 

“We’re casting a really wide net to start to allow people to self-identify pasture-based livestock farming, and then we’ll kind of get a holistic picture of what people in the state view as pasture-based livestock farming,” Hexter said. 

The project also plans to develop a statewide map of these operations, which Hexter said would help build consumer awareness of pasture-based livestock farms. 

The 2026 Food & Farm Index survey from Iowa Farm Bureau found that a growing number of Iowans are interested in buying protein directly from farmers. According to the index, 84% of Iowa grocery shoppers had purchased directly from farmers, meat lockers or farmer networks and nearly 80% of respondents said they review labels for information about how products were raised or processed.