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Evening Wrap

Your daily analysis of trending topics in state government. The snark is nonpartisan.

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I still don't have a gavel

The U.S. Supreme Court took a rare opportunity to Not Be The Literal Worst, which it (briefly) seized by declining Monday to hear a legal challenge against Washington state’s ban on conversion therapy. (More on who managed to be The Worst Court this week shortly). The decision allows the law to remain in place but does not guarantee its long-term survival, according to a pair of dissents penned by the perennial buzzkill duo of Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, who argued that the law restricts speech by silencing one side of the “debate,” which should warrant “careful scrutiny,” the Washington State Standard reported

One slightly-less-awkward step at a time

“Criminal justice system” is somewhat of a misnomer, as it’s less a centralized network than a patchwork of policies and agencies spread across the federal government, all 50 states and thousands of counties and cities. This is partly why wholesale reform has proven so elusive. Without a real system, it’s pretty hard to enact system-wide changes.

Political safari

Sometimes, that journey comes with a roadmap — or a neon flashing sign warning you of the danger ahead. On Thursday, that alert came from former members of Congress, who warned about the increasing potential for political violence ahead of the 2024 election, our D.C. bureau reported

Weirdest of the weird

Among the strange policies we tend to accept at face value is the widespread practice of depriving convicted felons of their right to vote, a practice otherwise known as felony disenfranchisement. Like so much of American history, the policy is rooted in white supremacy. Southern states enacted the first disenfranchisement laws in the late 1800s, when Black men were granted the right to vote; in many places, the policies were a precursor to things like poll taxes and literacy tests. By 1912, 42 states had adopted similar laws.

'Tis the Season

Many reporters dread doing budget stories – all those numbers make our heads hurt. (If we were good with numbers, we’d be in a more lucrative business, we tell each other.) But in many ways, budget stories are among the most important stories political journalists tell.

Law and disorder

In theory at least, laws are there to make life easier and more orderly. In reality, laws are often there to obstruct, obfuscate and obscure.

Herd immunity

For example: New Mexico’s rate of maternal mortality remains well above the national average, even though those deaths are “overwhelmingly preventable,” according to an annual report presented to lawmakers last week. Stemming the tide, according to public health experts, will require expanding access, particularly for people of color and patients struggling with substance abuse, Source New Mexico reported.

Just enough good stuff

The news was much less of a mixed bag for George Santos, a New York Republican who became a former member of Congress Friday after a bipartisan coalition of House lawmakers voted to remove him from office, our D.C. bureau reported. The expulsion — only the sixth in the chamber’s history — capped months of drama that began when reporters uncovered discrepancies in Santos’ biography and grew to include a 23-count federal indictment, a damning 56-page Ethics Committee report and plenty of fodder for late-night comedians.

Burning daylight (and fossil fuels)

We talked about schools yesterday, and we’re back in the classroom today — specifically, a (hypothetical) classroom in rural New Hampshire, where school districts are struggling to address historic shortages of educators. Teacher shortages are nothing new for the state (or the country), but the situation is particularly dire in poor and rural districts, where salaries are limited by budget constrictions that simply don’t exist in wealthier areas, the New Hampshire Bulletin reported.

It's simple, but complicated

Vouchers are a conundrum wrapped in an enigma cocooned in a question mark. They’re simple, but they’re also inherently confusing, based as they are on the contradiction of allocating public money to help students attend private schools. By definition, that means shifting taxpayer money to private institutions with opaque admissions policies and little to no oversight. This is all a long way of saying that vouchers don’t really make sense.

State of humanity

The reason modern man has been able to exist on Earth for 200,000 years is that, at some point, we figured out our chances for survival were better if we were simply decent to one another. I can’t help but wonder: What finally got through the thick skull of Ardipithecus? Did Australopithecus just get bored with clubbing his best friend over the head with a tree branch and then — poof — homo sapien takes center stage?

A not-so-optimistic roundup about a world on fire. Yay!

A new national report shows tough times ahead for the Southwest United States, reports the Nevada Current. Over the next 10 years, residents will want to buckle in as the “rapidly warming climate drives food shortages, intensifies droughts, floods, wildfires, diseases, and jeopardizes public infrastructure like roads and dams.”