State launches Voter Protection Section and more news from the states

Good evening. Tonight we begin in Virginia, where the state’s attorney general has created a new office dedicated to protecting voting rights and state election laws. In Kansas, the incumbent attorney general has a history of using unreliable expert witnesses in high-profile cases.

In Nevada, a lawmaker plans to pursue a new law to improve investigations of missing  Indigenous people. In Florida, a new campaign disclosure on stock trading has become a central issue in a congressional campaign. 

Across the country, states rely on foreign-trained doctors to fill shortages, but Trump administration immigration policies could turn them away.

Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones on Tuesday announced a new Voter Protection Section, creating a team of dedicated lawyers to investigate voting rights violations and enforce state election laws three weeks before the Nov. 3 midterm elections, Virginia Mercury reports. 

The section will investigate improper voter registration cancellations, absentee ballot denials, voter intimidation and interference with election administration. 

Jones, a Democrat, said the moves comes as federal voting rights protections face challenges and President Donald Trump’s administration seeks greater control of how states conduct elections. 

“This work now has a permanent home, and a team focused every day on defending voting rights and enforcing Virginia law,” Jones said in a statement. “Virginia votes every year, and protecting the franchise must be a year-round responsibility. In Virginia, the right to vote will be defended.”

Related: Colorado targeted for ‘election integrity’ monitoring ahead of June primary, records show

Federal and state judges have deemed expert witnesses brought forth by Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, or on his behalf, not credible or unreliable in more than a dozen instances since 2016 across four court cases involving state laws, Kansas Reflector reports. 

The reelection campaign for Kobach, a Republican seeking a second term in November, attributed the courts’ rejection of his witnesses to political pandering from the bench.

A retired district judge found the pattern troubling.

“What’s concerning is he keeps using the same people over and over again,” said Kevin Moriarty, a retired Johnson County district judge.

“There is a pattern throughout the country,” he said, that indicates witnesses know what they’re going to say before they take the stand. 

“The only thing the judges agree on is, frequently, they don’t have the experience to testify,” Moriarty said.

South Dakota: Advocates are again asking Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden to support a summer food program that operates in 39 states but has been met with resistance in South Dakota. 

Louisiana: One of the state’s four remaining Medicaid plans might no longer cover treatment at the state’s largest healthcare network after Dec. 1, potentially affecting 70,000 people.

Florida: New this year, state congressional candidates must disclose whether they intend to trade stocks if elected, an issue that has become central to some campaigns. 

Michigan: A judge is considering whether to lift a state ban on fusion voting, which allows multiple political parties to nominate a candidate. The practice is only legal in a handful of states and only actively used in two. 

Montana: Democratic Party chairperson Shannon O’Brien resigned to endorse independent U.S. Senate candidate Seth Bodnar.

Colorado: Democrat Eileen Laubacher, who is challenging Republican U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, said during a debate that Democrats should not impeach President Donald Trump if they gain control of Congress in November. 

New Jersey: A state judge rejected the American Civil Liberties Union’s challenge to an investigation, prompted by prominent Republicans, into the residency of Democratic and unaffiliated voters in Ocean County.  

North Dakota: The state’s “stripper well” tax break is designed to keep low-producing oil wells alive and paying some tax rather than none. But it is more generous to the industry than other top oil states, and is projected to reduce state revenue by nearly $200 million this year. 

Pennsylvania: A 39-year old woman has reportedly died in Franklin County after being diagnosed with measles, according to the local coroner’s office.

New Hampshire: States are gearing up for an annual reassessment of grant funding by the federal Rural Health Transformation Program, which is meant to mitigate Republican cuts to Medicaid. 

Nevada Assemblymember Shea Backus (right), a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, speaks at a press conference on Oct. 12, known as Indigenous People's Day. Nunie Harjo, an enrolled member of the Muscogee Creek Nation, waves the Las Vegas Paiute Tribe flag. (Photo by Jeniffer Solis/Nevada Current)

Backus, a Democrat representing Las Vegas, announced she has requested a draft bill to establish a statewide Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples Alert.

The alert would function similarly to existing alert systems, like Amber and Silver alerts. 

Colorado, Washington, New Mexico, and California have similar alert systems for missing Indigenous people.

Read more from Nevada Current.

Three weeks before Election Day, the Trump administration’s sprawling project to send sensitive personal information on millions of voters to the Department of Homeland Security has been declared illegal by a federal judge, States Newsroom’s D.C. Bureau reports. 

The blistering court decision comes after the Department of Justice pressured or sued states for their voters’ information and then, according to court records and federal documents, turned over the data it obtained to Homeland Security Investigations — a sub-agency of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

The decision, issued late last week, marks the latest rebuke of the Trump administration during more than a year of legal confrontations with dozens of states and voting rights groups over President Donald Trump’s efforts to assert authority over voting ahead of the midterm elections. 

The Justice Department has already lost at least 23 district court lawsuits seeking to force states to provide voter data. The U.S. Supreme Court also blocked Trump’s plans to use the U.S. Postal Service to restrict voting by mail. 

And while the Supreme Court cleared states to use a supercharged Homeland Security computer program called SAVE to seek out noncitizen voters, its effects on the midterms have been minimal because most states are restricted by federal law from conducting mass purges of registered voters so close to an election.

As the nation’s physician shortage worsens, some fear the Trump administration’s immigration policies will dissuade or prevent doctors who earned their medical degrees in foreign countries from practicing in the United States, Stateline reports. 

The U.S. has long welcomed foreign-educated physicians as a way to ameliorate its doctor shortage. Already, an estimated 102 million Americans live in communities that don’t have enough primary care providers, a shortage that is projected to get worse over time. 

Both left-leaning and conservative states have taken steps to attract foreign physicians.

But Dr. Tarun Ramesh, a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and a health policy researcher at Harvard Medical School, said Trump administration policies will make it more expensive for hospitals and other healthcare employers to hire foreign physicians and might dissuade many international doctors from coming here at all.

More from Stateline: 

Days after the governor suspended North Carolina’s 41-cent per gallon gas tax, the attorney general put gas stations on notice to pass the savings along to consumers, NC Newsline reports. 

The North Carolina Department of Justice has launched a new online complaint form, N.C. Fuel Check, to help catch gas retailers who aren’t doing the right thing, Democratic Attorney General Jeff Jackson said Tuesday. 

When gas stations receive a new tanker truckload of gas, they pay the gas tax. Jackson said by now, most stations should be getting new deliveries of gasoline, and they will not be charged the state gas tax through the end of November.

“This is going to reduce the costs paid for by gas stations $0.41 per gallon,” Jackson said. “This law says that those gas stations are legally required to pass those savings on to families.”

There are normal day-to-day fluctuations in gas prices due to war, weather and other external factors, Jackson said. He believes most gas retailers are following the law, but some may not be. “We are now asking members of the public to help us to spot those outliers.”

Stations out of compliance could be charged with unfair and deceptive trade practices, with penalties up to $5,000 per transaction.