New Mexico veterans increasingly turn to food banks and more news from the states

Good evening. In New Mexico, food bank officials detailed the increasing need they see from veterans following federal policy changes, prompting some lawmakers to call for reform. 

In Colorado, observers have joined a group of volunteers across the country who aim to track and document flights by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Across the country, Ukrainian and Sudanese residents face an uncertain future, with their humanitarian immigration status unsettled.

We’ve got coverage of No Kings events from across the country on Saturday, which focused on encouraging voters to get to the polls in November — or earlier.

New Mexico food bank officials told lawmakers that federal rollbacks to food assistance programs have impacted veterans’ food security, and left food banks across the state struggling to provide more help with fewer resources, Source New Mexico reports. 

Previously, veterans received an exemption from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program’s work-requirement rule. Under the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” signed into law last year, veterans now must prove they are working, volunteering, participating in job training or looking for work for at least 80 hours a month to keep their food assistance benefits beyond three months.

Veterans living in rural areas in New Mexico have been “disproportionately affected” by the federal changes, Jill Dixon, executive director of The Food Depot, a northern New Mexico food bank, told a legislative panel last week. 

Roadrunner Food Bank, whose distribution area includes both Cannon and Kirtland Air Force bases, saw a “shocking” 40% to 60% increase in the number of people seeking help this year, Katy Anderson, Roadrunner’s vice president of strategy, partnerships and advocacy,  told the committee.

Through a slatted fence at a private air terminal adjacent to Denver International Airport, volunteers work to document flights by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Colorado Newsline reports. The task isn’t always easy: a bus blocks the view of who is boarding and deplaning, sometimes security forces the observers to leave. 

But observers still regularly head to the airport to witness and count the people being boarded onto these flights and feed it into a national network of volunteer ICE flight observers called Habeas Flight Watch. That website hosts a live dashboard of confirmed ICE flights and volunteers rely on it to track when a flight lands in their city. Other “birders” in the network are able to take clear photos of passengers in an effort to connect people with lawyers and family.

Domestic ICE flights happen on a semi-regular basis out of the Denver airport. There were 118 flights between January and August this year, according to research from Human Rights First.

The observers in Denver, as well as other immigrant advocacy organizations, have called on city and airport leadership to increase transparency and local surveillance around ICE flights. They see an example in King County, Washington, near Seattle, where county officials in 2023 ordered the airport to log every flight and maintain a livestream to show ICE flight operations. The county recently hired a flight monitoring and outreach coordinator to count passengers and flag safety violations. 

More immigration coverage: 

With just over two weeks until the Nov. 3 general election, advocates, nonprofits and officials in Michigan are working to assuage anxiety about election integrity and the potential for federal interference, Michigan Advance reports. 

Different groups are taking different approaches to convincing Michigan’s voters that the ballots they cast on or leading up to Nov. 3 will be counted securely and fairly. 

Lansing City Clerk Chris Swope said during a press conference that the “sheer number of different municipalities” involved in Michigan’s largely decentralized election system provide an important check for election security. 

“There’s a separation of duties that provides additional security,” he said. “Not only do we have over 1,600 clerks in Michigan, but we have thousands upon thousands of election workers that are your neighbors working in the polling places on Election Day, and those are identified by party. And there are certain duties that have to be done by a Democrat and a Republican.”

Wisconsin: The state and environmental organizations announced a settlement that would require stricter environmental impact assessments of future data center developments and initiate a statewide review of how data centers use the state’s resources. 

Georgia: Candidates up and down the ballot are campaigning on an issue that has struck a nerve across the political spectrum: a wave of data center projects that have been met with outrage in many communities.

Nevada: Arizona has joined the state’s lawsuit challenging the federal government’s plan to drastically cut Lower Basin states’ share of Colorado River water.

Ohio: For the second year in a row, the state spent more than a billion dollars on private school vouchers. The total amount for Ohio’s five private school voucher programs was $1.173 billion.

Louisiana: Six years after a national sexual assault scandal roiled the state’s flagship university, lawmakers are questioning whether the reporting system implemented in its wake provides enough information. 

New Mexico: Hearing examiners for the state’s utility regulator issued two rulings that pave the way for proceedings to continue in the pending private equity takeover of the state’s largest electric provider.

North Carolina: Democratic Gov. Josh Stein said counties will face more administrative costs and staffing pressures as they prepare to implement new federal Medicaid requirements, after lawmakers rejected his request for the state to help cover those expenses. 

Arizona: Gun safety advocates are investing millions of dollars in Arizona and other battleground states, where they hope to convince voters to topple the state’s GOP legislative majority and elect candidates that will support stricter gun ownership laws. 

Tennessee: A Republican state senator says the Senate GOP caucus has “no basis” to expel her for endorsing an independent gubernatorial candidate as a Senate speakership vote approaches.

Minnesota: A conservative legal organization is representing homebuilders in a lawsuit aimed at invalidating parts of — if not all of — a 1,400-page, wide-ranging bill passed by Democratic lawmakers in 2024.

Gail Gilliam donned an early bird costume during a No Kings rally in Fargo, North Dakota, on Saturday, to encourage people to vote early this election season. (Photo by Dan Koeck/For the North Dakota Monitor)

More than 2,500 No Kings events were organized across the country on Saturday, with a primary focus to encourage voters to cast ballots in the midterm elections, which could decide control of Congress. 

Events included rallies at state capitols and in other cities, letter-writing campaigns and early voting. 

Read more from North Dakota Monitor. 

Related coverage: 

Immigrants living in the United States with humanitarian status from Ukraine and Sudan will retain their deportation protections and work authorizations for now, States Newsroom’s D.C. Bureau reports.

More than 100,000 Ukrainians and roughly 2,000 Sudanese with Temporary Protected Status will keep their protections until “such an announcement is made,” the Department of Homeland Security said over the weekend. 

It’s the same move the Trump administration made as the deadline for TPS renewal for more than 200,000 Salvadorans approached last month. If no decision is made, an automatic six-month extension kicks in, based on the TPS statute. But DHS has not confirmed whether any such extension is in place for Salvadorians, Sudanese or Ukrainians. 

After Monday, the last remaining country with TPS will be Lebanon, which is set to expire Nov. 27.

The second Trump administration has moved to wind down the TPS program established by Congress in the 1990s. So far, more than 1 million immigrants who have TPS have been stripped of their legal protections from the 17 countries that initially had the designation at the start of the second Trump administration.

With 2 weeks until the midterms, analysts project that Democrats carry momentum heading into the final days of the election cycle, even as the party is expected to flip fewer U.S. House seats than wave elections this century, the D.C. Bureau reports.

The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter predicts Democrats will gain a net of 10 to 20 House seats in the Nov. 3 elections, Erin Covey, the top House analyst at CPR, said Monday during a panel discussion hosted by the Brookings Institution.

The party needs to pick up just three seats to gain control next year.

The Senate is closer to a pure toss-up, with the likely range of Democratic pickups between two and six seats, experts believe. A net gain of four would give Democrats a majority in that chamber.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday establishing a Women’s Health Division within the National Institutes of Health, the D.C. Bureau reports. 

The order does not mention research into contraception or reproductive rights. The Food and Drug Administration is conducting an ongoing safety review into abortion medication. 

The Trump administration has sought to reshape NIH to align with its political priorities and has sought to cut its funding, prompting pushback from Congress. NIH, the country’s largest research agency, is housed under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Idaho’s newly refurbished replica of the Liberty Bell will be rededicated Nov. 23 during ceremonies at the State Capitol, Idaho Capital Sun reports. 

In January, the bell was sent to the Bell Foundry Christoph in Charleston, South Carolina, for cleaning and refurbishing in connection with this year’s America250 celebrations in Idaho.

The refurbished Liberty Bell made it back to Idaho in July for the America250 celebration, and then was sent on a tour of cities and towns in all 44 Idaho counties so that school children and the public could see and ring the bell. 

During the free, public rededication ceremony, the bell will be reinstalled at its home on the front steps of the Capitol. It is a replica of the original Liberty Bell that rang outside of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Idaho received its bell in the 1950s.