NY Times: “Florida’s days as a presidential battleground are bygone. No longer do candidates drop in every few days during campaign season. No longer do voters get bombarded with their ads. Nor is there more than a whisper of doubt that the state will vote Republican. Presidential elections in Florida used to be decided by…

Alternet: “One of Gov. Sarah Sanders’ first decisions after her election in 2022 was to undo part of the state government reorganization put in place by her predecessor, Asa Hutchinson. Instead of appointing both a cabinet secretary for the Department of Public Safety and a director of the Arkansas State Police, Sanders gave both jobs to the…

Political Wire: “A Texas woman died after the hospital said it would be a “crime” to intervene in her miscarriage, ProPublica reports. “Though proponents insist that the laws protect both the life of the fetus and the person carrying it, in practice, doctors have hesitated to provide care under threat of prosecution, prison time and professional ruin.””

Political Wire: “More than half a million people in Georgia who didn’t vote in the presidential election four years ago cast a ballot this month during early voting,” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. These voters “include new residents, Georgians who weren’t old enough to vote four years ago, as well as residents who have moved back after a time…

AP: “The Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Wednesday left in place Virginia’s purge of voter registrations that the state says is aimed at stopping people who are not U.S. citizens from voting. One Virginian, whose registration was canceled despite living in the state her entire life, called the purge “a very bad October surprise.” The high court, over…

NY Times: “When Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state in Georgia, had to pay more than half a million dollars from his own pocket to defend himself in a frivolous lawsuit about the 2020 election, he and his allies had a sudden fear. What if this happened to a local official? What if that threat of…

WaPo: “The rate of firearms deaths in several U.S. states is similar to their frequency in places around the world that are battling civil unrest or bloody gang wars, a new report shows. The report, published Wednesday by the Commonwealth Fund, an independent research group, found that theoverall rate of firearms deaths in Mississippi was nearly…

Politico: “It’s a tale about the rebirth in local manufacturing in this region, but it’s also the story of the Republican Party’s electoral resilience in North Carolina. Rural and exurban places like Davidson County may not be growing as fast as Charlotte’s Mecklenburg County and Raleigh’s Wake County, the two metropolitan engines of the state’s…

USA Today: “A Maryland Republican who leads a right-wing coalition in Congress says North Carolina’s legislature should consider awarding Electoral College votes to former President Donald Trump before citizens’ votes are counted, according to Politico. Rep. Andy Harris, the chairman of the Freedom Caucus, made the comments at a dinner on Thursday, saying the idea “makes…

NY Times: “Under Alabama prison rules, there are thin lines between work incentives, forced labor and “involuntary servitude” — which reforms to the Alabama Constitution in 2022 banned. From the viewpoint of Mr. Anderson and more than a dozen other Alabama inmates interviewed by The New York Times, the ultimate message, in practice, is straightforward:…