Union membership up — in some places — and more news from the states

Good morning. We have an abbreviated newsletter for you on this Labor Day holiday. 

To start, we’ve got a report on the state of union membership across the country — which swings dramatically based on the politics of state legislatures, according to researchers.

Over the weekend, at fairs, block parties and parades across the country, politicians met with residents and courted their votes as the political season kicks into high gear. Election Day is less than 60 days away.

And in case you missed it, there were some developments in the courts, including in Idaho, where the state Supreme Court unanimously agreed that an abortion rights ballot question must be rewritten, after supporters argued the language drafted by state officials was “misleading” and “confusing.” In Nebraska, a county judge heard arguments in a voter’s challenge to an anti-transgender ballot question. In Alaska, an appellate panel dismissed illegal voting charges against an American Samoan woman, defining a high standard for future charges. And on Sunday, the Trump administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court to — once again — allow it to move forward with new vote-by-mail rules that are being challenged by states and voting rights groups.

Primaries are nearly over, but we’ll have coverage this week from New Hampshire (on Tuesday) and Rhode Island, which shifted its election by one day to Wednesday because of the holiday. 

Subscribe to our state newsletters to read the latest news in the places you care about.

Labor union membership continues to climb in the United States, though the increase remains sharply divided by the politics of individual states, Stateline reports. 

Last year, the nation added more than 411,000 union members — the largest annual growth since 2008, according to a study by the Illinois Economic Policy Institute and the Project for Middle Class Renewal at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 

At the end of last year, more than 14.6 million American workers belonged to a union — about 10% of the workforce, the study said. 

While union membership grew across the country, the State of the Unions report found that states that have sought to protect or strengthen collective bargaining rights added three times as many union members as so-called right-to-work states, which prohibit mandatory union membership or dues as conditions of employment.

“What seems to be the number one driver is the state of the state,” said one of the study authors, Robert Bruno, who leads the labor education program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “If the policy is anti-union, it suppresses worker will. Where the law allows worker will to flourish, as I would argue it should, then you see higher numbers. So you can’t ignore politics. You can’t ignore policy.” 

Related: Policy experts ask Michigan to strengthen workers rights as state grapples with economic challenges

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Each Monday, States Newsroom publishes The Rundown, a weekly roundup of what’s happening across the nation on issues such as voting laws, legal challenges facing elected officials, the state of democracy and more.

A federal judge has ruled that conservation group American Prairie can keep grazing bison on three federal allotments as a lawsuit continues to play out, Daily Montanan reports. 

The decision blocks, for now, a Bureau of Land Management rule that would have removed 900 bison from the allotments where American Prairie, which aims to protect natural lands and restore Great Plains bison populations, currently grazes herds. 

The lawsuit, filed by American Prairie against the Bureau of Land Management and the Department of the Interior, seeks to stop a rule from the second Trump administration that would drastically shift how bison can be grazed in the United States. 

In May, the agency canceled six of American Prairie’s permits, which comprised more than 60,000 acres, using a new interpretation of the federal Taylor Grazing Act requiring livestock be “production-oriented” in order to use federal land.

Montana’s all-Republican federal delegation, and its statewide Republican officials, have heavily opposed bison grazing on federal grazing land. 

American Prairie CEO Alison Fox said in a press release: "Bison belong on this landscape, and today’s ruling gives them a chance to stay.”