Idaho doctors dispute anti-abortion group’s claims and more news from the states

Good evening. Tonight we begin with a look at the debate over reproductive health providers in Idaho, as campaigns both for and against a state ballot question dispute whether state laws have driven doctors away. 

A Kentucky company is poised to receive a no-bid contract for electrical shock gloves to be used by immigration agents. 

The Trump administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court to quickly decide whether his executive order limiting vote-by-mail can go forward. 

In New Hampshire, crustacean populations are shifting. And Pennsylvania is the latest state to sue TikTok.

As campaigns for and against a proposed voter initiative that would repeal Idaho’s abortion ban ramp up, an anti-abortion advocacy group has begun to question whether OB-GYNs have left the state since it went into effect, Idaho Capital Sun reports. 

But determining the true number of doctors providing obstetrician-gynecologist care in the state isn’t easy. 

State data shared by the Idaho Family Policy Center — a Christian advocacy group that lobbied for Idaho’s criminal abortion ban — shows an increase in licenses from 2022 to 2024. However, those figures offer an incomplete picture of doctors actively practicing, a state official said. 

A 2025 Boise State University, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found Idaho had lost 35% of its OB-GYNs since 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and Idaho’s criminal abortion law went into effect.

Federal immigration agents may soon be outfitted with electrical shock gloves, Kentucky Lantern reports. 

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security plans to spend between $10 million to $20 million on the devices from Kentucky-based Compliant Technologies, according to a recent notice. The Associated Press first reported about the upcoming no-bid contract. 

The devices the department is seeking are called “G.L.O.V.E,” which stands for Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter. One review says the products “quickly and safely allow an officer to overcome the resistance of a non-compliant subject.” 

Eric King, a spokesperson for the ACLU of Kentucky, said in a statement the organization is “deeply concerned” about the plans to “provide ICE agents with another tool capable of inflicting pain on people in their custody or during enforcement encounters.”

More immigration coverage:

Wisconsin’s Democratic gubernatorial nominee David Crowley called on Democrats to unite as he accepted the party’s nomination, Wisconsin Examiner reports. 

The race was called in the early morning hours Wednesday, as Crowley defeated democratic socialist state Rep. Francesca Hong by a razor-thin margin. 

If elected in November, Crowley would be the first Black person to serve as governor of Wisconsin.

Democrats have their work cut out for them as they compete against Republican  U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, a three-term congressman endorsed by President Donald Trump who currently represents the state’s largest congressional district in the northern half of the state.

In Minnesota, where a record number of primary voters cast more than 1.1 million ballots, state House Speaker Lisa Demuth won the Republican Party’s nomination for governor on Tuesday, beating President Donald Trump’s endorsed candidate, Mike Lindell, as well as Kendall Qualls — the choice of GOP state convention delegates. Democratic voters nominated Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan for U.S. Senate, a victory for the progressive flank of the party.* 

More election coverage:

Utah: The state has burned through an estimated $33 million to fight raging wildfires this year, putting the state on track to outspend last year’s record total. 

New Mexico: Advocates urged the federal Department of Energy to move dozens of barrels of radioactive waste away from wildfire danger to relative safety underground.

Colorado: A record-breaking stretch of high temperatures late last month was the state’s worst heat wave in the 75 years that such records have been collected.

Michigan: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a permit for the controversial Line 5 project, authorizing a Canadian company to tunnel beneath the lake bed in the Straits of Mackinac, where Lake Michigan and Lake Huron meet. 

Alaska: The Trump administration pulled federal support from the Arctic Report Card, an annual, peer-reviewed report that has been published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration since 2006.

Missouri: The fate of two proposed ballot measures — a referendum on the state’s gerrymandered congressional map and a constitutional amendment limiting legislative power to alter laws passed by initiative — will go on trial next week.

Nebraska: A judge dismissed the lawsuit led by the Republican National Committee over eligibility of overseas voters in state elections. 

West Virginia: Lawmakers pressed state officials for answers about the handling of a state program meant to provide a $200 school clothing allowance for low-income children. 

Crabs caught in a research trap are pulled from the briny waters of New Hampshire’s Little Bay into bright sunshine on the afternoon of Aug. 10. (Photo by Molly Rains/New Hampshire Bulletin)

Researchers are tracking the arrival of new species of crabs in New Hampshire’s waters, where climate change is contributing to shifts in important ecosystems.

Lobsters have long reigned as king among New Hampshire’s shelled sea creatures, but the chances of a coup are growing.

Biologist Christopher Peters said it may already be the case that “the lobster is no longer the king crustacean of the coast of New Hampshire.”

Instead, the Atlantic blue crab, of Chesapeake Bay fame, is thriving in the rapidly warming currents of the Eastern Seaboard, expanding northward and becoming more common in places once too cold for them to establish year-round populations. Meanwhile, other newcomers are making their debuts, too, such as the lopsided fiddler crab and aggressive lady crab.

Read more from New Hampshire Bulletin.

The Trump administration on Wednesday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to quickly decide a case over an executive order restricting voting, States Newsroom’s D.C. Bureau reports. 

The push comes a day after an order from U.S. District Judge Indiria Talwani blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order from taking effect anywhere in the country. 

The executive order would limit vote-by-mail, the primary method of voting in several states, especially in the West. 

Decisions in two cases at district and circuit courts have reached different conclusions about whether rulemaking to implement the order could continue in the lead-up to this fall’s elections. 

That means the Supreme Court’s decision, now on its emergency docket, will likely determine whether the executive order can move forward. A decision could come any day.

More from the D.C. Bureau: Trump press secretary Leavitt to leave White House 

A largely overlooked part of the executive order President Donald Trump issued this week scaling back the schedule for childhood vaccines threatens legal action against the four states that don’t allow personal or religious exemptions to school vaccine requirements, Stateline reports.

Those states — California, Connecticut, Maine and New York — are among the states with the highest immunization rates, and they are among those that have been most successful in controlling the worst measles outbreak in more than three decades.

Some health officials said that Trump’s order, which has questionable legal authority, is unlikely to prompt the states without nonmedical exemptions to change course. And any legal action would take years to wend its way through the courts.

But they criticized the executive order, and its legal threats, for contributing to the misinformation and skepticism that have lowered vaccination rates nationwide.

Related coverage:

A new federal rule will end Medicaid coverage for gender-affirming hormone therapies and procedures for kids under age 18, Stateline reports. 

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced Tuesday a rule that prohibits state Medicaid plans from covering gender-affirming procedures for minors and using federal Medicaid dollars for such care. 

The rule also prohibits Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, funds from being used for kids under 19. CMS is defining such care to include puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgical operations. The policy takes effect Oct. 13.

The Trump administration asserts that gender-affirming care is dangerous for kids, while many medical groups say it’s safe and can improve the mental health of children and adolescents. Surgical gender-affirming care operations are very rare for children.

Nearly 100 million Americans use TikTok, a popular app for sharing short-form videos, every day, but Pennsylvania joined a growing number of states questioning the platform’s protections for young users, Pennsylvania Capital-Star reports. 

Attorney General Dave Sunday, a Republican, alleges that TikTok “misrepresents its app as age appropriate for teens as young as 13,” even though content can include profanity, drinking, drug use and sexually suggestive situations. 

“To achieve a 13-plus age rating in app stores, TikTok claims mature content is infrequent on their apps. Our investigation reveals that this could not be further from the truth,” said Sunday. “That age rating gives parents the illusion of safety, but actually opens the door to putting content literally in the palm of our kids’ hands whenever they want it.”

Sunday said that mismatch violates Pennsylvania Consumer Protection Law, prompting a commonwealth lawsuit filed Tuesday.  

Additionally, the app is “intentionally designed … to be addictive to young people,” Sunday said, in a way “that can deteriorate and decay a child’s mental wellness.” 

“They want users to endlessly scroll while they rake in astronomical ad revenue,” he added. “When TikTok is constantly, infinitely in our kids’ viewstreams … we see TikTok as inhibitors of healthy adolescent development.”

According to the lawsuit, “addiction is TikTok’s business model.”

*After publication, this newsletter was edited to correct a Minnesota election outcome: U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar is the Democratic nominee for governor and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan is the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate.