How 9/11 changed surveillance and more news from the states

Good morning. It was a newsy night, so let’s jump right in. 

In Rhode Island, Democratic Gov. Dan McKee became the first incumbent to lose his primary reelection bid in more than 30 years, falling to challenger Helena Buonanno Foulkes in an upset. In other results, a progressive challenger beat the incumbent in the primary for Providence mayor, and a businessman who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol won the Republican nomination in the 2nd Congressional District. 

President Donald Trump headlined the first night of the first Republican midterm convention, seeking to rally his base ahead of the November elections and dangling a $5,000 “Trump dividend” to voters if his party retains control of Congress. The trillion-dollar partisan promise is dubious; in November 2025, Trump promised $2,000 tariff refunds that never materialized.  

In perhaps the night’s most surprising turn, Pennsylvania Democratic U.S. Sen. John Fetterman made an appearance in a video praising fellow Pennsylvania Sen. Dave McCormick, a Republican, and vowing to work with Trump to shore up the steel industry, States Newsroom’s D.C. Bureau reports. 

In the continuing whiplash over Missouri officials’ efforts to use a GOP-gerrymandered congressional map in the November election, the issue is back at the U.S. Supreme Court. And Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins has been called to the state Supreme Court for a contempt hearing this morning. 

Tennessee: Memphis Safe Task Force agents are continuing to harass and intimidate people who record their activities, according to a new federal court filing by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Louisiana: Republican Attorney General Liz Murrill made a return appearance before a federal appellate court Wednesday in her effort to strike down a Biden-era health policy that allows abortion drug prescriptions without an in-person doctor’s visit.  

Arizona: Democratic U.S. Rep. Yassamin Ansari conducted a surprise oversight visit of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Phoenix after reporting by the Arizona Mirror showed that detainees are staying longer and in larger numbers than in previous years. 

New Mexico: Attorneys for the state and Facebook made their opening arguments before a jury in a trial over the Cambridge Analytica data breach of users’ personal information, which was used for political advertisements leading up to the 2016 election. 

Florida: TikTok is seeking dismissal of the state’s lawsuit declaring it a public nuisance, arguing that a 2024 law limiting social media use by teenagers is vague and infringes on the First Amendment.

Oregon: Supporters of campaign contribution limits who have been stymied at the state Legislature started work on a proposed 2028 ballot measure that aims to block corporations, unions and other groups from directly spending money on elections.

South Dakota: Thousands of drivers who have habitat conservation license plates have not actually made a financial contribution to protect habitat for wildlife because of the state’s unusual two-step process to make the donation. 

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.

Twenty-five years later, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, did more than reshape the nation’s approach to terrorism. They changed the architecture of American intelligence and policing, Stateline reports. They expanded how government agencies collect, share and analyze information, and brought national security tools deeper into ordinary law enforcement.

Now, artificial intelligence is adding another layer: systems that can sift through those vast stores of information, connect previously separate databases and generate analyses in seconds.

Some surveillance and privacy experts say that the amount of information available to the government — and its ability to make sense of it — has fundamentally changed since 9/11. 

That has taken on new urgency as surveillance systems have moved further into everyday life. Automated license plate readers can track where people drive. Facial recognition can help identify people in crowds. Commercial data can reveal where and how people live and travel. And increasingly, artificial intelligence can analyze and connect these streams of information at a speed no human investigator could match. 

Those capabilities have raised concerns among some experts and advocates about how surveillance could be used to monitor protests, track immigrants and identify people seeking reproductive healthcare.

The lawn at the Utah Governor’s Mansion will become undone on Friday at the hands of water conservation advocates and public employees to make space for water-wise and pollinator-friendly plants amid one of the most severe droughts the state has recorded, Utah News Dispatch reports. 

“For years, Utahns have been waiting for someone else to go first, or for the conditions to be just right. But if we’re asking families to rethink what they do in their own yards, we have to be willing to start at our house first,” Utah first lady Abby Cox said in a statement. 

The plan is to replace turf with more than 1,800 water-wise and pollinator-friendly plants in the first phase of the project. 

Converting a water-thirsty lawn to more efficient landscaping could save about 27 gallons of water per square foot annually. That means that one 1,000-square-foot park strip could save about 27,000 gallons a year. 

“Every one of these projects is something a family, a city or a classroom can copy,” Tage Flint, executive director of Utah Water Ways and Slow the Flow, said in a statement. “That’s the whole idea — this is a demonstration, and the entire state is invited to participate.” 

The event is expected to be a milestone of a statewide service initiative from Sept. 10 to Sept. 19.