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Gas prices jump again as Trump turns to new plan for Strait of Hormuz

Fuel prices are displayed at a Brooklyn, New York, gas station on April 28, 2026. As negotiations over the war in Iran continue to stall and show few signs of a resolution, gasoline prices in the United States hit their highest level in four years on Tuesday. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images) WASHINGTON — Americans saw prices at the pump sharply rise in recent days as the nationwide average cost for a gallon of regular gas shot up 38 cents over the past week, according to GasBuddy. The motor club AAA clocked the average price of regular gas at $4.46 per gallon and diesel at $5.64, as Iran and the U.S. remain at a stalemate over opening the Strait of Hormuz, where one-fifth of the world’s petroleum passed through prior to the war. “Gasoline prices rose in every state over the last week, with some of the most significant and fastest increases concentrated in the Great Lakes, where states like Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois saw sharp spikes, while Wisconsin experienced more m...
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US Supreme Court issues temporary stay preserving nationwide abortion drug access

Mifepristone is one of two drugs that can be used before 10 weeks to terminate a pregnancy and to treat miscarriages.(Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) The U.S. Supreme Court issued a temporary stay on an appeals court ruling from Friday that was blocking remote access to an abortion drug, restoring access until at least May 11. The administrative stay, issued by Justice Samuel Alito, pauses Friday’s decision by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. That ruling blocked a 2023 rule adopted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration allowing mifepristone, one of two drugs used to terminate a pregnancy before 10 weeks and to treat miscarriages, to be prescribed without an in-person visit with a health care provider and also allowed it to be mailed to recipients in states with abortion bans. “The administrative stay is temporary, and I am confident life and law will win in the end,” said Louisiana Republican Attorney General Liz Murrill in a statement.  Thirteen states have near-total ...
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Supreme Court voting rights ruling set to reshape local power from statehouses to school boards

Community members arrive at their local polling location to vote in November 2022 in Atlanta. While intense national attention on the fallout from the recent Supreme Court decision gutting a key provision of the federal Voting Rights Act has focused on Congress, the new ruling also applies to state legislative districts and maps for county or municipal elections. (Photo by Megan Varner/Getty Images) The U.S. Supreme Court’s new decision gutting a key provision of the federal Voting Rights Act clears the way for state officials to drastically reshape not only Congress but also state legislatures, county commissions, city councils and even local school boards. The ruling, released last week in a case called Louisiana v. Callais, dismantled some of the final guardrails protecting the electoral power of Black, Hispanic and other racial minority voters that had been enshrined in the Voting Rights Act, a landmark 1965 federal civil rights law that bars racial discrimination in voting access...
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What Alabama lost is what Alabamians must remember

A statue of civil rights activist Rosa Parks is seen from behind on the grounds of the Alabama State Capitol on Nov. 14, 2025 in Montgomery, Alabama. The Alabama Legislature is scheduled to begin a special session on Monday that could eliminate one and possibly more majority-minority or near majority-minority districts. (Brian Lyman/Alabama Reflector) It’s spring in Alabama. But it’s winter for democracy. And we are left facing some cold truths. We do not live under the clear dictates of the U.S. Constitution. The only laws are the vindictive whims of the U.S. Supreme Court. We thought we were rebuilding, however haltingly and imperfectly, the multiracial regime lost after Reconstruction. But Alabama is still Alabama. And self-serving, self-justifying power is the state’s only civic virtue. GET THE MORNING HEADLINES. SUBSCRIBE So M...
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In Birmingham Democratic House primary, echoes of a tense mayoral election

Voters in the Birmingham Metro area will choose between Democratic candidates Rep. Juandalynn Givan, D-Birmingham, Alicia Escott Lumpkin and Nina Taylor on May 19. (photos courtesy of candidates, graphic by Andrea Tinker/Alabama Reflector) A Birmingham Democratic House primary features three candidates and the echoes of the city’s 2025 mayoral election. Alabama House District 60, which encompasses part of the Birmingham-metro area, including Fultondale, Smithfield and Ensley is currently represented by Rep. Juandalynn Givan, D-Birmingham, who has been in the Alabama Legislature since 2010. Givan faces Alicia Escott Lumpkin, a former city employee now focused full-time on campaigning, and Nina Taylor, a captain for Birmingham Fire and Rescue, in the Democratic primary. No Republicans qualified for the race.  The race has been rife with claims of it being a fight between the city’s mayor Randall Woodfin and Givan. Givan ran against Woodfin in last year’s Birmingham mayoral race, when t...
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More states consider dropping GLP-1 weight loss drugs from Medicaid

A woman takes out an Ozempic pen. More states are considering dropping GLP-1 drugs from their Medicaid programs. (Photo by Shalina Chatlani/Stateline) Massachusetts and Rhode Island are considering dropping GLP-1 drugs for obesity treatment from their Medicaid programs, continuing a trend of states that have stopped coverage of these expensive medications.  Thirteen state Medicaid programs are covering GLP-1 drugs for the treatment of obesity this year, down from 16 last year.  Medicaid programs in California, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and South Carolina have eliminated coverage of the drugs for weight loss, because the expense strained state budgets.  In Massachusetts, the governor’s proposed fiscal 2028 budget would not fund the state’s Medicaid program, MassHealth, to cover GLP-1 medications for weight loss alone, though the state would continue covering the drugs for diabetes and other conditions. The legislature is still debating the state budget.  Rhode Island ’s governor a...
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Immigration street sweeps led to more ‘collateral’ arrests of noncriminals

ICE agents search the passenger of a truck as they arrest both him and the driver during a traffic stop in February in Robbinsdale, Minn. Almost a quarter of ICE arrests in recent months have been "collateral," a category that has raised legal questions, rather than "targeted" arrests based on preexisting warrants or removal orders. (Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer) A quarter of immigration arrests since August were labeled by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as “collateral,” a type of arrest and detention that’s been challenged in court as an end run around civil rights. Public outrage and lawsuits over the arrests may be tamping down the large-scale sweeps that foster them, but tens of thousands were arrested this way between August and early March. Immigration arrests are usually based on warrants obtained ahead of time, showing either a removal order from immigration court or evidence of a crime or charge that makes the person subject to deport...
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