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Gov. Kay Ivey schedules November execution for Michael Taylor

MIchael Shannon Taylor was sentenced to death for the murders of Ivan and Lucille Moore in their home in Gadsden in 1991. Gov. Kay Ivey Monday scheduled his execution for November. (Alabama Department of Corrections) Gov. Kay Ivey set a November execution date for a death row inmate convicted of murdering a Gadsden couple in 1991. Michael Shannon Taylor, 54, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Nov. 5 for his role in the murders of Ivan and Lucille Moore. It is one of two executions scheduled in the last quarter of the year, and could be the state’s third in 2026 if both are carried out. According to court documents, Taylor, then 19, was absent without leave from the Navy when he solicited a ride home from the Moores, whom he knew. Taylor asked to use the Moores’ telephone while inside. According to documents, Taylor beat the couple to death while in the house. Taylor was convicted of two counts of capital murder for the deaths of the Moores and another capital count ...

Democrats aim to emulate Republicans in building state power

Montana state Sen. Cora Neuman, a Democrat, speaks at a January news conference in the Minnesota Capitol surrounded by state lawmakers from across the country amid a surge in immigration enforcement there. Democrats say they are increasingly organizing lawmakers across state lines to better compete with the influence of organized conservative groups. (Photo by Michelle Griffith/Minnesota Reformer) Progressive activist Gaby Goldstein thinks her opponents are brilliant. Despite her deeply held liberal politics, she admires the work of conservative groups that for decades have built influence in state governments across the country. “We on the left have left a huge amount of power on the table,” said Goldstein, the founder and president of State Futures, a nonprofit launched last year that coordinates hundreds of Democratic lawmakers across the states. Few on the right have been as influential as the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. Founded in 1973, ALEC touts over 2,00...

‘Unbearable’ heat in uncooled Alabama prisons

At least one dorm at the Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, located in south Alabama, is uncooled. (Lee Hedgepeth/Inside Climate News) This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News , a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here . ELMORE — Tiffany Montellano can’t sleep. Instead, she lies awake, worried about her husband Andrew, 31, who is incarcerated at Elmore Correctional Facility just north of Montgomery. She worries because a few days ago, she received a call during her lunch break from Andrew, who had missed their usual call the night before. He told her he had become dizzy the previous day because of the overwhelming heat inside the un-air-conditioned, 200-person dorm where he’s housed. GET THE MORNING HEADLINES. SUBSCRIBE “He said th...

Voting rights struggle continues, advocates say at March on Washington anniversary

Demonstrators gathered at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, D.C., on Friday, Aug. 28, 2026, marking the 63rd anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom where the late civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom) WASHINGTON — Just over two months from midterm elections and four months removed from a U.S. Supreme Court decision that gutted Voting Rights Act protections for majority Black U.S. House districts, and 63 years after Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech there, thousands gathered again at the Lincoln Memorial Friday. Organizers focused the anniversary march around a “Defend the Vote” message. The event, co-chaired by civil rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton and King Jr.’s son Martin Luther King III and daughter-in-law Arndrea Waters King, featured appearances from union leaders, interfaith organizers, people whose parents attende...

To protect forests, I learned to burn them

A crew member uses a drip torch to ignite a prescribed burn in Southwest Washington. Leaders in Washington and other states want to empower more residents to lead burns like this on private lands. (Photo by Alex Brown/Stateline) AUBURN, Wash. — In the back row of a small community college classroom, I sip my coffee and consider a cumulus cloud, a puffy white pillar over an expanse of blue. I’m not staring out the window, but at a presentation on a screen at the front of the room. Cumulus clouds are a telltale sign of an unstable atmosphere, Matthew Dehr, wildland fire meteorologist with the Washington Department of Natural Resources, tells our class. Fifteen students, clad in hoodies and flannel, nod along. They know what an unstable atmosphere means: Smoke will disperse instead of settling over the ground. In other words, ideal conditions for setting stuff on fire. My classmates and I make up the fifth group to take Washington’s Certified Prescribed Burn Manager course. It’s put o...

GOP path to retaining US House majority narrowing as midterms near

U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries speaks at the Detroit NAACP Fight For Freedom Fund Dinner on April 26, 2026. Jeffries is in line to become House speaker if Democrats win control of the chamber in November. (Photo by Andrew Roth/Michigan Advance) WASHINGTON — With less than 70 days until midterm elections, Democrats remain favored to regain the majority in the U.S. House. President Donald Trump’s anemic approval ratings amid the war in Iran, concerns over the economy and a coalitional shift within the party mark some of the largest headwinds facing Republicans heading into November, according to election analysts and political scientists interviewed by States Newsroom. Though the GOP’s mid-decade redistricting push could help them shore up several seats and the battleground of competitive districts stands relatively small, Democrats maintain an edge to win the House, said Erin Covey, an editor specializing in U.S. House races for the Cook Political Rep...