Kansans Kill a Judicial Power Grab, Maryland Bets on November, and Five States Open the Primaries

Aug 07, 2026

A pile of political buttons sitting on top of a table — Photo by Marek Studzinski on Unsplash

It’s Friday, August 7, 2026, and time for your Democracy in the States’ Weekly Roundup.

Washington’s fight over control intensified this week. Todd Blanche’s nomination to lead the Justice Department advanced out of the Senate Judiciary Committee on a party-line vote, even as Maine’s Susan Collins broke with Trump to oppose his confirmation, and the price tag for the National Guard’s deployment to Washington, D.C. climbed to $1.4 billion more through 2029. Federal battles over power and accountability escalated this week, and state-level conflicts mirrored that intensity.

We’re covering these developments and more state-level changes to redistricting, primary elections, voter rolls, immigration enforcement, and the data center boom below.

Maryland Sends a Redistricting Rewrite to November Voters While Missouri Blocks a Vote on Its Own

Maryland Democrats used a two-day special session to push through a constitutional amendment rewriting the standards for how the state’s congressional districts are drawn. Missouri Republicans are using different tools to win a redistricting fight of their own: the secretary of state refused to certify a citizen referendum that would have let voters undo the state’s new GOP-drawn map, prompting a lawsuit from the campaign that gathered the signatures.

MARYLAND: House set to give final approval to redistricting constitutional amendment (Maryland Matters).
MISSOURI: Missouri redistricting referendum blocked by secretary of state, drawing lawsuit (Missouri Independent).
MISSOURI: Referendum campaign asks court to block new Missouri map from November election (Missouri Independent).

Five States Open the Midterm Primaries

Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Virginia, and Washington held primaries on Tuesday. Turnout ran high, a Kansas county’s mail-ballot mistakes drew scrutiny days before voters went to the polls, and Michigan’s marquee Senate primary became national news overnight.

KANSAS: Wyandotte County mail ballots printed with wrong address, returned to voters after they sent them in (Kansas Reflector).
ALASKA: Early voting opens for Alaska’s 2026 primary election — here’s what to expect (Alaska Beacon).
MISSOURI: Missouri turnout could hit 1.4 million as ballot measures drive primary interest (Missouri Independent).
WASHINGTON: Washington’s Top Two Primary Put Four Independent Veterans in the Parties’ Way (Independent Voter News).
VIRGINIA: Virginia votes Tuesday: Everything you need to know about the 2026 primary elections (Virginia Mercury).
SOUTH CAROLINA: US Senate candidate asks judge to put him on special GOP primary ballot (South Carolina Daily Gazette).
WISCONSIN: Green Bay explains how voters got sent multiple absentee ballots in two straight elections (VoteBeat).
MICHIGAN: High turnout shaped Michigan primary, boosting El-Sayed and Lawrence to victory (Michigan Advance).
WISCONSIN: Dane Co. judge says absentee voting system discriminates against people with disabilities (Wisconsin Examiner).

Voting Reforms in View

NATIONAL: The DNC Insider Leading the Push to Kill Ranked Choice Voting by 2028 (Independent Voter News).
WISCONSIN: Ranked choice voting would prevent wasted votes in Wisconsin governor primary (FairVote).
NATIONAL: Party Insiders Just Torched the Biggest Excuse Against Open Primaries (Independent Voter News).

Kansas Voters & Judicial Power

Kansas Republicans spent big to change how the state picks its judges — and lost. Voters rejected a constitutional amendment on judicial selection by a wide margin despite a flood of dark money and a mailer that Kansas Reflector’s own fact-check found misleading. Separately, a Kansas judge used equally blunt language to strike down decades of the state’s abortion restrictions.

KANSAS: Kansas voters reject constitutional amendment on judicial selection by wide margin (Kansas Reflector).
KANSAS: Dark money, misleading claims flood Kansas ahead of judicial selection referendum (Kansas Reflector).
KANSAS: Kansas judge says decision to strike abortion restrictions not ‘even a close call’ (Kansas Reflector).

Voter Rolls Remain a Battleground

Federal pressure on state voter data kept building this week, and pushback intensified as a result. Nearly two dozen Democratic-led states urged the Supreme Court to keep a block on Trump’s executive order targeting mail voting in place, a federal judge separately blocked the administration’s attempt to obtain Colorado’s voter data. Alaska admitted it had erroneously purged hundreds of eligible voters from its own rolls, which caused those voters to lose access until the error was corrected.

NATIONAL: Democratic state officials urge US Supreme Court to affirm pause on Trump vote-by-mail order (Colorado Newsline).
NATIONAL: Democrats warn Trump admin against promoting last-minute voter purges as ‘quiet period’ begins (Democracy Docket).
COLORADO: Trump administration’s attempt to obtain Colorado voter data shut down by federal judge (Colorado Newsline).
ALASKA: Alaska Division of Elections erroneously removed more than 600 citizens from voter list (Alaska Beacon).
OKLAHOMA: Flap over noncitizens on state voter rolls seen as unlikely to boost SAVE America Act (Oklahoma Voice).
PENNSYLVANIA: Pennsylvania asks Trump administration how exactly it identified potential noncitizen voters (Pennsylvania Capital Star).
NEW HAMPSHIRE: Election officials unfazed by Trump administration monitoring primaries in Manchester and Nashua (New Hampshire Bulletin).
MARYLAND: League of Women Voters, Campaign Legal Center Celebrate Victory as Court Blocks USCIS Rule (Campaign Legal Center).
NATIONAL: Victory! Nonpartisan Civic Engagement Groups Allowed to Educate and Register New Citizens (Campaign Legal Center).
NEVADA: Lawmakers eye proposals to shield elections from federal interference, speed up ballot processing (Nevada Current).
MICHIGAN: Antrim County clerk and her husband cleared of ‘criminal wrongdoing’ in computer case (VoteBeat).
RHODE ISLAND: Nearly 1 in 5 Rhode Islanders is Latino. The voter rolls haven’t caught up. (Rhode Island Current).

ICE Detention Expands as Legal Access Shrinks

Immigration detention capacity kept growing this week while legal access for detainees kept shrinking. Minnesota will open a new ICE detention center run by CoreCivic later this year, and advocates in Louisiana and Tennessee say ICE broke its own rules by separating nursing mothers from their infants, and a federal contract funding legal help for unaccompanied immigrant children is set to expire nationwide, ending legal support for those children.

MINNESOTA: ICE, CoreCivic to open Appleton immigrant detention center this year (Minnesota Reformer).
COLORADO: Colorado inspection law unfairly singles out ICE detention center, operator’s lawyers say (Colorado Newsline).
LOUISIANA: ICE broke its own rules when it sent a nursing mom to a Louisiana detention center, advocates say (Louisiana Illuminator).
TENNESSEE: ICE separated nursing mom from infant, toddler in Nashville, against its own rules, advocates say (Tennessee Lookout).
TENNESSEE: Memphis advocates call on private airport to stop servicing ICE detention flights (Tennessee Lookout).
MONTANA: Upper Seven Law seeks class action in immigration case (Daily Montanan).
RHODE ISLAND: Judge orders release of Providence man ICE seeks to deport to Cambodia (Rhode Island Current).
NATIONAL: Legal services contract expires, and unaccompanied immigrant children face deportation (Louisiana Illuminator).
NATIONAL: Trump administration rules out mass ICE enforcement at the polls in midterms (Kentucky Lantern).
NATIONAL: Trump official urges governors to help with immigration arrests of ‘worst of the worst’ (Stateline).

States Grapple With Data Centers, AI, and Surveillance

A boom in data center construction is continuing to drive state action and prompt policy debates. Kentucky’s Louisville mayor and governor responded to the industry’s impact on the power grid and local land use with new regulatory actions. Oregon Democrats proposed a three-year moratorium on new large facilities. North Carolina reporters uncovered a secretive $10 billion deal in a rural county.

Data centers

KENTUCKY: Louisville mayor calls for a data center moratorium as city considers regulations (Kentucky Lantern).
KENTUCKY: Beshear issues executive order to protect against ‘harmful impacts’ of data centers (Kentucky Lantern).
OREGON: Democratic lawmakers propose three-year moratorium on new large data centers in Oregon (Oregon Capital Chronicle).
NORTH CAROLINA: Inside the secretive deal for a $10 billion data center in rural North Carolina (North Carolina Newsline).
VIRGINIA: DEQ study throws cold water on data center development east of I-95 (Virginia Mercury).
LOUISIANA: As Meta data center expands, advocates push harder for transparency (Louisiana Illuminator).
ALABAMA: Data centers emerge as top Alabama election issue as community concerns grow (Alabama Reflector).

Surveillance and AI

WEST VIRGINIA: Huntington community organizers start ballot initiative to prohibit Flock cameras (West Virginia Watch).
MAINE: Local efforts to ban Flock cameras gain steam (Maine Morning Star).
KANSAS: Kansas lawsuit challenges Wichita law enforcement’s reliance on license plate reader cameras (Kansas Reflector).
NATIONAL: States begin banning ‘surveillance pricing’ that uses personal data to charge more (Stateline).
COLORADO: Colorado students want stronger state regulations of AI, social media (Colorado Newsline).

States Draw Lines Against Federal Overreach

Beyond elections and immigration, states are pushing back on federal power this week. North Carolina’s attorney general joined two dozen states suing over new Trump tariffs, Maine’s legal groups backed the state’s refusal to issue covert license plates to federal agents, and New Mexico’s attorney general said the Trump administration wrongly denied his request for fentanyl-trafficking records.

NORTH CAROLINA: NC Attorney General Jeff Jackson joins two dozen states in lawsuit over new Trump tariffs (North Carolina Newsline).
MAINE: Maine legal groups back state’s refusal to issue covert license plates to federal agents (Maine Morning Star).
NEW MEXICO: New Mexico Attorney General Torrez says feds wrongly denied his request for fentanyl records (Source New Mexico).
NEW MEXICO: NMDOJ says it has recovered $885M through lawsuits against Trump administration (Source New Mexico).
MARYLAND: Maryland joins two more lawsuits against the Trump administration (Maryland Matters).

Discussion about this post

Ready for more?