States’ agreements with ICE and more news from the states

It’s finally Friday! And we’re wrapping up the week with more news you don’t want to miss.

Yesterday, the Trump administration sought a federal court order to force California to purge 20,000 people from its voter rolls over claims they are not U.S. citizens, a major development less than three weeks before the midterm elections, States Newsroom’s D.C. Bureau reports.

In data center news, Oracle Corp. announced plans to cut emissions from the Project Jupiter data center’s proposed power source by 35%, citing feedback it’s received from New Mexico’s environmental department and the public.

And in case you missed it, at a rally in Wasilla, Alaska, President Donald Trump and Republican U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan said America’s war with Iran is worth the resulting increased cost of fuel and food for Americans.

This weekend, our newsrooms will be covering the latest No Kings movement rallies taking place in cities and towns across the country. Follow States Newsroom on Bluesky and Instagram to stay up to date on the latest.

National: The sheer size of investment in data centers is drawing concern as it surpasses all other historical booms and crowds out other more job-creating ventures. Until now, no industry had driven the U.S. economy with such force since the railroad expansion of the late 1800s.

National: Officials in 39 states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit focused on privacy and safety concerns after a chatbot service that allows users to converse and role-play with AI characters filed for bankruptcy. The platform, Character.AI, announced that it would be filing for bankruptcy and selling $20 million in assets to Disney.

Utah: Of at least 6,191 voters whom state election officials have notified to tell them they need to provide proof of their U.S. citizenship before November’s elections, only 1,827 have responded and confirmed their citizenship.

Arizona: The state’s highest court is set to determine whether the Clean Elections Commission has the power to investigate whether two Green Party candidates fraudulently obtained millions in public campaign funds and then claw back the money if it concludes they did. 

Maryland: Democratic Gov. Wes Moore is asking an independent state agency to take a closer look at sexual assault policies on college campuses in the state amid a national reckoning precipitated by allegations of a gang rape at Cornell University in New York.

Oklahoma: Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond has dropped a lawsuit against a state board after it rejected a proposed Jewish charter school for the second time. The lawsuit accused the Statewide Charter School Board of deliberately rigging its March 9 vote to reject the Jewish charter school solely because of its religious character. 

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.

Florida Republican gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds says that under the U.S. Constitution, states “have” to work with the federal government in enforcing immigration laws. But that is not always the case, Florida Phoenix reports.

Nine states have adopted laws forbidding compliance with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainers, and 12 states overall haven’t reached enforcement agreements with the agency.

Donalds made those remarks during a roundtable discussion with members of the business community in Jacksonville, Florida. A local homebuilder asked about a scarcity of construction workers able to build affordable housing in the state “because of the methods of ICE enforcement raiding our job sites.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed a sweeping package of immigration laws aimed at carrying out the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda just weeks after Trump’s second inauguration in January 2025.

It includes directives for Florida counties — but not municipalities — to enter into 287(g) agreements, which allow state and local authorities to work with federal immigration authorities.

Plans to roll back roadless rule threaten a New England forest

The federal Roadless Area Conservation Rule has been in place since 2001, but is under threat. In August, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced her agency’s plans to rescind the rule “in its entirety.”

The roadless rule currently prohibits road construction, logging and mining on about 30% of the nearly 200 million acres of land managed by the U.S. Forest Service. The rule mostly applies to forested areas of the West, but a unique area in the White Mountains along the border of Maine and New Hampshire could have its landscape changed.

In Episode 50 of the Stories From The States podcast, a Maine Morning Star reporter discusses the concerns of New England conservationists who think the rollback of the roadless rule would hurt one of the few unbroken stretches of wilderness in the region.

Subscribe to Stories From The States on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube.

A diamond ring that had been stashed in an abandoned safe-deposit box for more than a decade sold for $15,307 — nearly twice its appraised value — in an online auction organized by the Nebraska State Treasurer’s Office, which by law takes custody of such forgotten property and tries to get it back into the hands of owners or heirs, Nebraska Examiner reports.

Items that remain unclaimed for a period of time can be auctioned, and the state treasurer held such an eBay event Oct. 6-14.

Materials contained in roughly 80 safe-deposit boxes involved in the auction resulted in gross proceeds of $57,305, the treasurer reported. That’s $20,331 above the appraised value of all items up for bid.

Treasurer Joey Spellerberg told the Nebraska Examiner that he didn’t know what to expect, but considered the auction a success.