ICE targeting home builders and more news from the states

Good evening. Tonight we begin with news out of New Mexico, where home builders and advocates say immigration agents are targeting workers at home-building sites. Meanwhile, the Trump administration argued in court that it should be allowed to proceed with another attempt to redefine the constitutional right to birthright citizenship. 

As election results continue to trickle in, it is becoming clearer how legislative chambers across the country will change in the new year. In Oregon, Gen Zers will bring down the average age in the House of Representatives. In Washington, the first openly transgender legislator is ready to be sworn in. 

On Capitol Hill, Democratic senators pushed for an end to funding the Iran war as part of negotiations to avoid a government shutdown next month, while a bicameral duo argued for a delay in new Medicaid work requirements. And collections are coming for millions of student loans in default.

New Mexico homebuilders are reporting a sharp increase of federal immigration raids at home construction sites across Albuquerque and Santa Fe in recent weeks, resulting in arrests and project delays across the industry during a statewide housing shortage, Source NM reports. 

Miles Dylan Conway, CEO of the New Mexico Home Builders Association, said he’s received about 20 calls or texts from developers in the last week reporting that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have descended on home construction sites, often in unmarked SUVs, and have arrested multiple workers at a time. Fear of ICE arrests has prompted workers not to show up to job sites, even in locations that ICE hasn’t targeted, Conway said. 

Source NM’s interviews with home developers, immigration advocacy groups and homebuilder organizations suggest at least five such operations netting more than a dozen arrests have occurred at construction sites over the last month. Social media video has also shown ICE agents leading handcuffed workers away from partially built homes.

More immigration coverage: 

When Oregon’s six-month legislative session begins in January, nearly a quarter of the 60-member House of Representatives will be millennials and Gen Zers, Oregon Capital Chronicle reports. 

Among two of the youngest will be Republican Claire Lynn, 27, and Democrat, Hank Sanders, 26, both former legislative staffers. 

Like many members of Generation Z, Sanders, a Democrat living in Hood River, recently turned 26 and aged out of his family’s health insurance plan. 

“That’s my weekend plan,” he said in a phone interview. “Nobody punch me. Nobody hurt me for the next couple weeks while I figure out my healthcare.”

The former journalist and legislative aide to his mother, state Sen. Lisa Reynolds, was elected to represent Oregon’s 52nd House District a week after his 26th birthday. He’s one of several 20-somethings who ran for the first time for state political office in November, and who will be among the youngest lawmakers in Oregon’s Legislature, where the average age is closer to 55. There will still be no Gen Z representation on the senate side.

Related coverage: 

Maine: Republican Paul LePage has formally won the state’s 2nd Congressional District, after the Secretary of State’s Office completed ranked choice tabulations Thursday. 

New Jersey: State regulators approved an interim “virtual power plant” program, which would remotely reduce the power draw of certain devices, like smart thermostats or electric vehicle chargers, during high demand, and compensate ratepayers for reduced electricity use.

Wisconsin: Democrats are signaling they’ll use their new control of state government to take action on a number of climate and environmental issues, including regulating forever chemicals and restarting the state’s land conservation program.

Ohio: House lawmakers approved a measure eliminating long-standing restrictions on firearm suppressors and short-barreled rifles. 

Kansas: Lawyers defending state laws that imposed restrictions on abortion care accused the judge who struck down those restrictions of discriminating against anti-abortion witnesses for their religious beliefs.

Oregon: Potato products giant Lamb Weston is the latest company to settle with Morrow County residents who cannot drink their nitrate-contaminated water.

Tennessee: Lawmakers will consider measures to cut grocery sales taxes in 2027, but the Senate’s nominee to be next chamber leader gave the idea a lukewarm reception.

West Virginia: Secretary of State Kris Warner, a Republican, called for uniformity in primary elections between the two major parties, suggesting the GOP should return to open primaries.

Alyssa Osani, who grew up in Port Allegany, Pennsylvania, is wondering if she has to leave her hometown to raise a family following a string of healthcare facility closures. (Photo by Whitney Downard/Pennsylvania Capital-Star)

Osani and her husband returned to the area after finishing college and both work as educators. But several months into her first pregnancy, she’s wondering if it’s time to leave her hometown.

The string of healthcare closures in McKean County feels “like everything around us is dying a slow death,” she said. 

“Our five-year plan is to try to get out of here because we’re worried about healthcare. When it comes to welcoming our son, what if he needs something? We have family who, when they have an emergency … they have to try Buffalo,” said Osani. “Or, God forbid, Pittsburgh.” 

The first option is a two-hour drive while the latter is more than three hours.

To make matters worse, remaining health providers struggle to coordinate care for people in high-level crises, because emergency services are tied up transporting patients to far-flung hospitals. 

Read more at Pennsylvania Capital-Star.

The possibility of a government shutdown next month increased somewhat Thursday as a group of U.S. senators said the stopgap spending bill must cut off funding for the Iran war, States Newsroom’s D.C. Bureau reports. 

Democratic Sens. Michael Bennet of Colorado, Tammy Duckworth of Illinois and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, as well as Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, wrote in a joint statement that a short-term funding bill “must include language that restricts the Trump Administration from using appropriated funds to continue his war against Iran.” Legislation must be enacted by Dec. 11 to avert a shutdown.

Two top Democrats in Congress are calling on the Trump administration to delay new requirements for people on Medicaid, arguing there is not enough time for states to prepare before the change takes effect on Jan. 1, the D.C. Bureau reports. 

House Energy and Commerce Committee ranking member Frank Pallone Jr., of New Jersey, and Senate Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden, of Oregon,  said officials must use their “discretion to give states additional time to implement work reporting requirements and protect eligible beneficiaries from losing coverage.”

Republican changes to Medicaid include a requirement that most recipients work, participate in community service, or attend an education program for at least 80 hours a month.

Related: 40K West Virginia Medicaid recipients not meeting work requirements, state estimates

The U.S. Postal Service faces renewed calls to drop restrictions ordered by President Donald Trump on mail ballots, setting up a major clash between states and the federal government ahead of the 2028 election, the bureau reports. 

Postal worker unions, civic groups and Democratic secretaries of state are demanding the Postal Service rescind a rule that imposes sweeping new requirements on states if they want ballots delivered through the mail. As part of the rule, states must submit the names of likely mail voters to the federal government.

The U.S. Supreme Court blocked the Postal Service from implementing the rule for the midterm elections. But the decision applied only to this year’s elections, leaving its ultimate fate unclear.

A long-postponed reckoning could be coming soon for millions of student loan borrowers who are now faced with garnished wages and seized tax refunds as soon as next year, Stateline reports. 

Since pandemic forbearance finally expired last year, more than 9 million borrowers already are in default, owing a collective $234 billion, and millions more are late in their payments. Those borrowers are likely to face severe collection measures such as wage garnishment and seizure of tax refunds next year. Such collections have been repeatedly paused, most recently this past January.

More than 100 years after he ran the longest stretches in a heroic dogsled mission to bring lifesaving medicine to snowbound Nome, Togo has returned to Alaska.

Or, to be more precise, Togo’s bones have returned, Alaska Beacon reports. 

The skeleton of the famous dog that led legendary musher Leonhard Seppala’s team for 261 miles of the 674-mile Serum Run in 1925, which delivered lifesaving medicine to a diphtheria-stricken Nome, is now at the University of Alaska Museum of the North in Fairbanks.

It is a fitting resting place for Togo’s remains, said Link Olson, the museum’s curator of mammals.

“He’s probably one of the most beloved dogs in the history of humankind,” Olson said.

Togo’s bones, which arrived at the museum on Sept. 1, were sent as part of a trade with the Peabody Museum at Yale University. While the Alaska museum gained the remains of the famous dog, the Peabody Museum gained more than 1,000 specimens of small mammals from Cambodia, including treeshrews, a bamboo rat and microbats.