Grocery tax targeted and more news from the states

Good evening. Tonight we begin in Alabama, where there’s newfound bipartisan consensus on rolling back the state’s grocery tax. 

In November, Colorado voters will consider a statewide ballot question requiring local police to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. In Washington, Democratic U.S. senators said Monday that the Trump administration may have broken state laws in an effort to find noncitizens voting illegally. 

New Jersey families are pushing for insurance coverage for rare pediatric conditions, while medical experts are warning that misinformation could blunt the impact of new cancer vaccines. 

In New Hampshire, lawmakers and law enforcement celebrated today the passage of a bill to more closely regulate crypto ATMs.

Repeal of Alabama’s grocery tax, once an effective political impossibility, has become a bipartisan issue in the fall campaign, Alabama Reflector reports. 

Long touted by anti-poverty groups and championed by Democrats, Republicans have sponsored efforts to reduce the tax over the past four years. John Wahl, the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor, made the issue central to his primary campaign this spring and Democratic gubernatorial nominee Doug Jones has centered it in his pitch to voters.

Last week, Republican gubernatorial nominee Tommy Tuberville, who had largely ignored the issue during his primary campaign, endorsed it in his first ad of the general election, saying “elimination” of the tax would be the first step in a broader tax-cutting program.

Alabama has taxed groceries since the sales tax was introduced in 1939. The state is one of eight that still imposes a levy on food, and until 2023 was one of an even smaller number that fully taxed it.

Colorado voters will weigh in on a constitutional amendment this fall that would require law enforcement to more closely cooperate with federal immigration authorities, Colorado Newsline reports. 

If passed, Amendment 81 would compel law enforcement to figure out if a person charged with a crime is “lawfully present” in the country, and tell the U.S. Department of Homeland Security within three days if someone in their custody lacks proper legal status or if they are unsure after attempting to find out. It would apply to people charged with violent crimes or if the person has a previous felony conviction.

As a constitutional amendment, it needs 55% of the vote to pass.

It is one of six measures backed this year by Advance Colorado, a conservative “dark money” group that does not disclose its donors. Last August and September, national dark money group A Common Sense America spent about $460,000 gathering signatures to get the amendment on this year’s ballot. In an August 2025 post about “sanctuary policies,” the organization highlighted Colorado’s existing laws that limit cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities.

More immigration coverage:

Data centers are on the November ballot in 18 Ohio communities, Ohio Capital Journal reports. 

Nine petitions mirror a statewide effort to ban data centers that draw over 25 megawatts of energy per month. Organizers with Conserve Ohio are hoping the statewide petition will make the 2027 ballot after missing a signature deadline in July.

Ohio has the fourth-most operational data centers in the country, according to an analysis by Pew Research Center published in April, and tech giants and data center developers want to build dozens more across the state. Fourteen of the 18 communities with petitions filed for the November election have received formal proposals for new data center projects.

A Gallup poll in May found that over 70% of Americans oppose data center construction in their area, and a Bowling Green State University poll found that a similar percentage of Ohioans support a data center moratorium.

Related coverage:

Kentucky: Since being hospitalized more than 90 days ago, Republican U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell said he planned to return to the Senate on Monday evening. 

Missouri: A former top elections official, who was fired by Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, is accusing Hoskins in a lawsuit of changing local election results, trying to deceive a federal judge in a voting administration case and illegally using state funds to influence a county election. 

Arizona: Two beleaguered candidates facing civil and criminal investigations into whether they fraudulently qualified for millions in public campaign funding want a court to block the Clean Elections Commission from making them repay the money. 

Kansas: Candidates in the high-stakes race for governor engaged in a raucous debate Saturday at the Kansas State Fair, which was punctuated by chants and jeers from the crowd. 

Ohio: Campaign disclosures show that Heartland Bank gave $492,000 to Republican U.S. Sen. Jon Husted’s political committee after he joined its board of directors while he was sitting as lieutenant governor. 

South Carolina: After making changes to the state’s income tax structure and property tax relief for older homeowners this year, a state Senate panel is considering more sweeping reforms. 

Indiana: Two coal-burning power plants in the state remain open under an order from the Trump administration, but that could change following a federal appeals court ruling that threw out the order keeping a Michigan plant online. 

Rhode Island: The state’s congressional delegation is demanding answers from the Trump administration over why the Federal Emergency Management Agency repeatedly denied a request for disaster aid following a historic blizzard.

Maryland: Long after it was first proposed and nearly a year after it was passed by lawmakers over the governor’s veto, the state is preparing to launch a Reparations Commission that will review how state institutions may have benefited from discriminatory policies. 

Virginia: State law allows attorneys serving in the General Assembly to obtain continuances in court proceedings when legislative duties interfere; a lawmaker has used the law to postpone the trial for a county supervisor charged with dozens of felonies.

Alissa Johnson and Curt Johnson hold a photo of their daughter, Louisa or “Lulu,” in their Maplewood, New Jersey, home. (Photo by Anne-Marie Caruso/New Jersey Monitor)

Lulu died by suicide in July 2021 while experiencing a flare-up of a rare syndrome known as PANDAS (pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with streptococcal infections). Outbreaks come on suddenly and result in obsessive-compulsive tics and potentially deadly psychotic symptoms.

Her parents are among a group of advocates urging New Jersey lawmakers to adopt legislation that would require commercial insurance companies to cover the disorder, as well as PANS, or pediatric acute-onset neuropsychiatric syndrome. 

A handful of Democratic and Republican lawmakers have signed on to support the legislation, first introduced in the fall of 2025, but it has yet to be posted for a hearing.

Alissa Johnson, a healthcare policy consultant, said bills related to these conditions have been introduced nationwide, and 17 states have adopted some form of coverage mandate.

Read more from New Jersey Monitor.

Both chambers of Congress return to Capitol Hill this week for a brief session before heading back to the campaign trail until mid-November, States Newsroom’s D.C. Bureau reports. 

The House will be in for one week and the Senate for three, giving Republicans little time to enact any laws or confirm nominees before voters decide whether to give them another two years in power. 

Lawmakers have already agreed to fund the government through Dec. 11, pushing off any need to reach bipartisan agreement on the dozen annual appropriations bills or risk a government shutdown. 

But they haven’t reached a compromise on several other measures — including on defense policy, the years-delayed farm bill, and AI regulation — and are unlikely to do so until at least the lame-duck session, which spans five weeks in November and December. 

More from the D.C. Bureau:

New cancer vaccines could be coming, but doctors and researchers are worried that rising vaccine hesitancy, fueled in part by the Trump administration, could blunt their impact, Stateline reports. 

In particular, they cite the false claim, which originated with mRNA COVID vaccines, that mRNA vaccines can super-charge tumors, creating so-called turbo cancer. 

Many point to the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine as a cautionary tale. The HPV vaccine is safe and extremely effective. But decades of misinformation, some of it spread by state and federal lawmakers, has reduced uptake: For four years in a row, vaccination rates for teenagers have not budged, and there is wide variation among states.

EDUCATION

New restrictions on cryptocurrency kiosks are an important “first step” in protecting New Hampshire residents from the widespread fraud the machines are often tied to, Gov. Kelly Ayotte said on Monday.

Ayotte, a Republican, spoke at a press conference at the Manchester Police Department, where officials, law enforcement officers, and AARP staff and volunteers celebrated the passage of Senate Bill 482, which creates new restrictions on the kiosks, New Hampshire Bulletin reports. 

Cryptocurrency kiosks are ATM-like machines often found at convenience stores or corner shops, operated by companies with names like Bitcoin Depot, CoinFlip, and Byte Federal. They are often used by scammers to defraud victims of their cash, law enforcement officers said on Monday, because they move funds in a way that is immediate and nearly impossible to trace.

“Over the last several years, I’ve seen scams involving crypto ATM machines increase to the point where they became one of the fastest growing fraud threats against our senior population,” said Detective Raymond Lamy, who investigates fraud for the Manchester Police Department.

SB 482 requires the companies that operate cryptocurrency kiosks to abide by certain protocols, including requiring them to provide a full refund of fraudulent transactions to a user if they report the crime to the operator and law enforcement within two weeks. 

It also institutes a two-day waiting period after a user’s first transaction, requires the operator to take steps to verify users’ identities, and sets a transaction limit of $2,000 per customer per day, among other requirements. The bill will go into effect on Dec. 16.