Utah's expensive wildfire season and more news from the states

Welcome to Wednesday! With midterm elections just three months away, let’s jump into the results of yesterday’s primaries.

A month after the death of Lindsey Graham, his younger sister advanced to a runoff against South Carolina’s 5th District congressman for the chance to succeed her brother in the U.S. Senate for the next six years. Ralph Norman will join her on the Aug. 25 ballot.

In Minnesota, House Speaker Lisa Demuth won the Republican Party’s nomination for governor, beating President Donald Trump’s endorsed candidate, Mike Lindell, as well as Kendall Qualls — the choice of GOP state convention delegates. 

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley maintained a slight lead over state Rep. Francesca Hong late Tuesday evening in the Democratic contest for the nomination for Wisconsin governor.

Tuesday’s special Alabama congressional primaries had two things in common: few voters and few surprises. Those who cast ballots in four of the state’s seven congressional districts largely favored incumbents, familiar faces or establishment-backed candidates. 

Keep reading for more news on primary election results, immigration enforcement, an abortion ban and much more. See you back here tomorrow. 

Minnesota: Progressive Democrats notched another major victory over the moderate wing of the party Tuesday night, when Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan defeated U.S. Rep. Angie Craig in what’s believed to be the most expensive primary in state history.

Connecticut: Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont defeated liberal challenger Josh Elliott in a primary that tested Democrats’ allegiance to a more moderate incumbent, who guided the state through a pandemic and presided over an unprecedented string of budget surpluses and a major tax cut.

Vermont: Amanda Janoo narrowly won the Democratic primary for governor, according to The Associated Press, after a campaign that called for sweeping progressive policy changes and limiting how much the state relies on federal funding.

Texas: At least 60 children have been held in the Dilley detention center for 100 days or more — far exceeding the 20-day limit for detaining immigrant children, according to an analysis of federal government data.

Idaho: As campaigns for and against a citizen-led ballot initiative that would repeal the state’s strict abortion ban ramp up, the abortion law’s effect on the number of practicing OB-GYNs has become a talking point. But determining the true number of doctors providing obstetrician-gynecologist care in the state isn’t easy. 

National: Some classrooms may use artificial intelligence tools to flag a student struggling with classwork, track attendance or try to raise reading scores. But as school districts make decisions on which tools are safe and worth spending thousands or millions of dollars on, some officials feel overwhelmed by the array of choices.

Kansas: Phyllis Zorn, the reporter whose acts of journalism served as an excuse for the August 2023 police raid of the Marion County Record, will get $850,000 from the city of Marion to settle her federal lawsuit over the raid.

West Virginia: New Human Services Secretary Carl Ayers appeared before lawmakers to field questions about the Morrisey administration’s handling of the school clothing allowance program for low-income children. Some families are still waiting for the $200 assistance to buy school clothes.

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.

Utah has spent an estimated $33 million to fight raging wildfires this year, putting the state on track to outspend last year’s record total, Utah News Dispatch reports. 

Inflation is partly to blame. But the rising cost also reflects the sheer size of this year’s fires, their encroachment on communities, and the intense heat, drought and wind making them more resistant to containment, said Wade Snyder, deputy state fire management officer with the Division of Forestry, Fire & State Lands.  

Then there’s the fact that it’s only August, and firefighters often battle fires into September.

So far this year, more than 532,000 acres have burned across the state, making it Utah’s second-biggest wildfire year on record. In 2007, the season topped out at about 629,200 acres. 

This year has been a perfect storm. Record-low snowpack, warm winter temperatures and stubborn drought primed forests to burn hot and fast, state officials said. They were alarmed when a forest fire was smoldering in the Uinta Mountains in March, noting that slopes there are usually covered in snow that early in the year.  

Lobsters have long reigned as king among New Hampshire’s shelled sea creatures, but the chances of a coup are growing — and climate change is tipping the scales, New Hampshire Bulletin reports.

Indeed, said biologist Christopher Peters in an interview this summer, it may already be the case that “the lobster is no longer the king crustacean of the coast of New Hampshire.”

What kind of creature could hope to dethrone the lobster? Only, perhaps, a similarly large, jagged, claw-brandishing arthropod: the Atlantic blue crab, of Chesapeake Bay fame.

Blue crabs are 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.