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White House budget director Russell Vought speaks with reporters inside the U.S. Capitol on July 15, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom) WASHINGTON — White House budget director Russ Vought testified before a U.S. House panel Tuesday that his agency needs lawmakers to increase its annual budget, even though he hasn’t spent much of the $100 million Republicans approved in their “big, beautiful” law. That earlier funding, he said, is intended to help the agency keep track of fraud throughout the federal government and to oversee a substantial increase to the annual defense budget should Congress agree to provide the $1.5 trillion requested.  “That would be one of those portfolios that we feel like we have nowhere near the number of (full-time employees) to be able to provide accountability for,” Vought said of the proposed defense budget. “And we are trying to invest in tools that would allow us to use technology to do OMB’s work better.” The Office of Management and...

A detainee stands silhouetted in a window of the Delaney Hall detention center in Newark, N.J., on May 28, 2026. Many federal judges are freeing immigrants held under a mandatory detention policy. (Photo by Anne-Marie Caruso/New Jersey Monitor) Gilberto Pacheco was driving to work for a construction job in California when he was pulled over in what court papers called a “traffic stop” in January. He was not accused of any crime, not even a traffic infraction, but he was imprisoned without bond for months because he arrived illegally in the United States more than 30 years ago from Mexico. Cases like that of Pacheco, who has applied for legal status through three U.S. citizen children, are what the Supreme Court has to consider when it rules next year on the Trump administration’s mandatory detention policy.  Justices are expected to hear the case as soon as October after the U.S. solicitor general requested the court to resolve conflicting rulings on the matter from appeals courts....

A voter drops off his ballot at the Salt Lake County Government Center in Salt Lake City as votes are cast in Utah’s 2024 primary election. Utah and at least eight other states enacted voting laws this year that will make it more difficult for some voters to cast their ballots during the midterm elections in November. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch) At least nine states have passed voting laws this year that will make it more difficult for some voters to cast their ballots during the midterm elections in November. Lawmakers in Florida, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Utah and West Virginia passed laws between January and May of this year restricting access to voting, according to an analysis of publicly available data by the Brennan Center and the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. Champions of such laws say they protect election integrity and ensure that only U.S. citizens vote in elec...

Democratic U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, speaking alongside other senators and an advocate in the U.S. Capitol in 2022, announces bipartisan legislation to update the Violence Against Women Act. Despite protections in the law, immigrant survivors may have a harder time applying for a legal status under new guidance introduced by the Trump administration. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) In March, Michigan attorney Ruby Robinson received a denial notice for legal status for his client — an immigrant woman suffering physical abuse from her husband.  Her husband had choked her, Robinson said. Shoved her. Forced unwanted touch. Controlled the finances. The woman and the man married in the United States after being in a relationship for many years. Robinson’s client submitted the marriage certificate and letters from a long-time friend and the man’s daughter, vouching that the marriage had been in good faith, meaning they genuinely wanted to be together. As a domestic violen...

A teacher holds a student’s baby while his class completes coursework at a high school for young parents in Spokane, Wash. U.S. Health and Human Services sent termination letters to 53 of 67 grantees under the Office of Population Affairs’ Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program on Friday, June 26. (Photo by Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report) A spokesperson for U.S. Health and Human Services confirmed to Stateline on Friday that the agency is canceling 53 out of 67 grants, worth about $68 million, under the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, affecting grantees in more than two dozen states. A list obtained by Stateline of canceled grants includes those awarded to universities, community organizations, city and state health departments and Planned Parenthood affiliates in states such as Arizona, Montana, Michigan, Texas and West Virginia. The grants were canceled two years before their expiration dates because the programs did not align with agency priorities, according to one of the grant...

The Alabama Department of Youth Services updates several policies related to filing grievances and disseminating public information.(Photo: John Partipilo) The Alabama Department Youth Services (DYS) board approved a set of five policies at its meeting  Friday that outlines how the department  will operate and the control center will function. Board members updated policies earlier in the day, which dealt with use of outside sources and agencies, communication between staff and youth, disseminating information to the public, and how youth can file medical grievances. “It is part of the annual review, but we are also looking to make sure that everything is up to date with what we are currently doing,” said Steven P. Lafreniere, executive director of DYS. The Youth Services Policy Review Committee voted to recommend the update prior to the full board approving the updates en masse. Some of the details relate to the responsibilities of staff and specific procedures for various circums...

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, known as the Lynching Memorial, in Montgomery, Alabama. Robin White, lynched outside of Wetumpka on July 2, 1901, was one of at least 4,400 victims of lynching in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. (Ted Vaden) We mark our nation’s 250th birthday on Saturday. Thursday will be the 125th anniversary of a lynching in Elmore County.  That story, halfway between the Revolution and today, doesn’t reflect our ideals. But it shows our reality. One where American violence proved stronger than justice. Where racism exerted its centuries-long veto over our ideals. GET THE MORNING HEADLINES. SUBSCRIBE It began with a petty dispute. In 1901, Robin White and his brother Abe, both of whom were Black, farmed property near Tallassee in central Alabama. They had a white neighbor nam...

A few hundred activists marched to the White House on Saturday, June 27, 2026, for the Next250 rally. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom) WASHINGTON — Activists rallied, danced and marched in the nation’s capital Saturday as they laid out their vision for the future of the United States beyond this year’s semiquincentennial.    Speakers and performers at the Next250 rally in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, June 27, 2026. (Video by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom) The Next250 demonstration, organized by a coalition of advocacy groups, featured a massive “Declaration of Interdependence” requiring more than a dozen people to hold it during a march past the northern barricaded perimeter of the White House, where President Donald Trump was present this weekend. Marchers carried a “Declaration of Interdependence” during a Next250 demonstration in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, June 27, 2026. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom) Event organizers...

William J. Samford Hall at Auburn University in in Auburn, Alabama. The Auburn University Board of Trustees earlier this month voted to dissolve the university's faculty senate. New laws in Alabama and other states give greater power to politically appointed state university boards and administrators while weakening tenure protections and faculty sway over curriculum and university leadership. (Photo by Anna Barrett/Alabama Reflector) Jennifer Brooks, a history professor at Auburn University, had barely unpacked from a trip out of town earlier this month when the messages started blowing up her phone. Texts from colleagues and rumors on social media delivered the unsettling news: The Auburn Board of Trustees had voted to dissolve the school’s faculty senate and give itself ultimate authority over academic decisions, including curriculum. “What was really surprising … is the lack of knowledge that most of our faculty leaders had about the decision,” said Brooks, who’s been teachi...