Healing at the site of a national tragedy and more news from the states

Hello! We have much to cover, so let’s dive right in.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas and Republican former U.S. Sen. John E. Sununu will face off in November to be U.S. senator, after the two candidates prevailed in their respective New Hampshire primaries Tuesday. Read more about other races on News From The States. 

In Missouri, Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins must answer to a contempt charge at the state Supreme Court after he ordered election officials to use a GOP-gerrymandered map in the November election, as court battles persist. 

Rhode Island voters head to the polls today in the state’s primary elections.

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Indiana: State law enforcement officials are seeking nearly $30 million in federal funding for surveillance technology, vehicles and investigative tools that would bolster the state police agency’s work with federal immigration authorities.

Nebraska: A district court judge dismissed a last-minute legal effort seeking to disqualify a ballot measure that would cement sex-separate school sports requirements in the state constitution.

New Mexico: Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced that her office had sued the Federal Emergency Management Agency for failing to reimburse the state National Guard for at least $61 million in costs it incurred fighting a 2022 wildfire that the federal government inadvertently ignited.

Colorado: Two environmental groups sued the Trump administration, alleging the Bureau of Land Management violated federal law when it leased more than 134,000 acres of public lands in the state for oil and gas drilling earlier this year.

Utah: Creekstone Energy, the company behind a huge data center campus being built near Delta in Millard County, has announced that it’s in the process of patenting a “revolutionary technology” that can turn natural gas into water.

Maryland: Elected officials were demanding answers Tuesday after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement confrontation with protesters in Frederick turned violent over the weekend. 

Kansas: As Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s final term wanes, groups against the death penalty are pushing her to commute the death sentences of nine men convicted of capital murder in the state, favoring life in prison without the possibility of parole.

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.

As part of States Newsroom’s coverage of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Pennsylvania Capital-Star Editor-in-Chief Tim Lambert has written an essay about healing at the Flight 93 National Memorial.

Lambert, whose family owned a piece of land that was part of the crash site, writes:

Passing through two towering concrete walls, my eyes were focused on the overlook ahead. The expanse of fields of tall grasses, trees and flowers disappeared from view. I reached the end and stood in front of a waist-high glass window, marked with the phrase: “A common field one day. A field of honor forever.”

I was back at the Flight 93 National Memorial.

Instinctively, I glanced up at the blue sky. “It would have passed right over my head,” I thought as I looked out at the green field. A boulder marked the approximate area where United Flight 93 met the earth at more than 560 mph on Sept. 11, 2001. Forty innocent passengers and crew as well as four al-Qaida terrorists lost their lives there.

It was peaceful now. The sound of birds, crickets and cicadas merged as the wind picked up again. The grass had recently been mowed, and 60-foot-tall hemlock trees still stood around the area that’s come to be known as the “bowl.”

Has it really been 25 years since that horrible day?

For more than a decade, the descendants of sharecroppers and people once enslaved on South Carolina’s Redcliffe Plantation gathered each year inside the former slave quarters on the property — now a state historic site — that their ancestors once called home, South Carolina Daily Gazette reports.

Two remaining buildings out of four, arranged in a square, that served as the slave quarters at Redcliffe stood in the shade of a more than 200-year-old cherry bark oak.

But in September of 2024, when Hurricane Helene reached the state as a tropical storm with drenching rains and 75 mph winds, the tall oak fell. It leveled the nearly 170-year-old building that had hosted so many annual gatherings, where descendants shared meals, conversations and read through historic documents about how their ancestors had lived.

Now, the state park service is preparing to reconstruct the destroyed building, using $755,000 in federal historic preservation grant funds approved by a legislative panel last month.