Stacker-Government & Politics

Four years after far-right Republicans helped elect Monae Johnson as South Dakota secretary of state, she’s backing a Democrat to replace her. The cross-party endorsement is unusual. But the more interesting story is how Johnson got to this point, Votebeat reports. Johnson ousted a GOP incumbent in 2022 with support from activists who distrusted electronic vote-counting

“It would go right about … there.” Joaquin Peña nods under a straw hat, motioning to a piece of pipe sticking out of his land roughly 100 feet from the banks of the Rio Grande. Leggy sunflowers bob in the wind against a mountainous backdrop that resembles an old Western movie set. Two dogs named

Voters in four states will decide housing-related ballot measures in November, providing testing grounds for different strategies to boost affordable homes.  The six measures across California, Hawaii, Massachusetts and Rhode Island are the highest number in a single election year in at least two decades, according to Ballotpedia, a nonpartisan election research organization. As Stateline reports,

As prediction markets have exploded in popularity over the past two years, they have also become increasingly controversial, setting off a lobbying-fueled power struggle for regulation of the platforms.  Amid allegations of insider trading, bets on military operations, and deceptive marketing practices, some states are seeking to sue or ban prediction markets. But the federal government has

In January, as the Trump administration launched an immigration crackdown in Maine, Juan Sebastián Carvajal-Muñoz was intercepted on his way to work. The civil engineer from Colombia told officers he had a visa through his employer, but the immigration agents who arrested him did not seem to care. According to the federal lawsuit he later

After federal immigration agents ended their aggressive enforcement blitzes in the streets of Minneapolis and Chicago, President Donald Trump promised mass deportations with “a little bit of a softer touch.” Less focused on targeted cities, this quieter approach has led to a surge in immigration arrests across the country, The Marshall Project reports. Arrests began

Like many parents, Arielle Roth has concerns about her children’s screen time at school. But unlike her peers, she’s in a position to influence the issue at nearly every school in America. Roth heads an obscure federal agency within the Commerce Department that serves as the president’s top policy adviser on telecommunications issues. In that

When two Oglala Lakota scouts heard drilling was expected to begin on Pe’ Sla, the sacred prairie in the Black Hills of South Dakota, they set out on back trails. They needed to find out where. That’s when they saw a deer break ahead, and a red-tailed hawk soar above them — less like coincidence

Most homeschoolers now piece together a variety of classes and outings for their kids. In the north Pittsburgh area, that often includes enrolling in Roots Learning Academy. Known as a hybrid program, Roots serves roughly 150 families who split their time between home instruction and on-site academic or extracurricular courses in rented church spaces. But

In mid-August, 2026, the Trump administration filed a proposed rule and draft environmental impact statement (EIS) to rescind the Roadless Rule — a 2001 ruling that protected inventoried roadless areas from further development. The rescinding of the Roadless Rule would open up around 45 million acres of public lands for road construction, logging, mining, and

In April 2025, the Election Truth Alliance was a three-month-old Nevada nonprofit with a growing audience in anti-Trump online spaces and a claim that something about the 2024 presidential election did not add up. The group had released an analysis of the results in Pennsylvania and sent letters to officials there and in Wisconsin asking

  Behind recent news stories about a controversial land swap are plans for a major new gateway resort on the western border of America’s most traffic-stressed national park On August 28, the online site NOTUS broke the news that officials at Yosemite National Park and the U.S. Department of the Interior had been quietly conferring

  According to AdImpact, the 2026 election spending will reach a record high of $11.6 billion. The money shows that political advertisers are chasing the long-running assumption that younger voters live online, while older voters are looking through the mailbox. A new survey, however, shows Gen Z’s attention is elsewhere during campaign season. UPrinting’s 2026

  A U.S. Postal Service whistleblower is warning that the agency’s efforts to develop systems to restrict mail ballot delivery for the November election have been rushed through testing, are unreliable, and could prevent millions of Americans from receiving mail ballots this November, Votebeat reports. The anonymous whistleblower’s concerns were detailed in a 20-page complaint

  Flock Safety has poured more than $2 million into federal and state lobbying since 2025 as the fast‑growing surveillance company faces mounting scrutiny from lawmakers in both parties and privacy advocates over its ever-expanding network of license‑plate‑tracking cameras. The company spent nearly $1.3 million between January 2025 and July 2026 on federal lobbying and

  Three years ago, a handful of Maine school districts struggling to meet students’ mental health needs applied for a federal grant to help them hire school counselors and social workers. The grant applications included a commitment to hiring staff that represented their particular community and understood its needs, Maine Morning Star reports. The grant

  “Freedom doesn’t ring, it revs!” That was the tagline of the first-ever IndyCar street race held in Washington, D.C., over the weekend of Aug. 22-23. From UFC fighters knocking each other out on the White House lawn to ongoing fitness face-offs between Cabinet leaders, the Freedom 250 Grand Prix represents the latest high-profile political

  The sun was still rising as nearly 60 “mothers and others” boarded an Omaha bus recently and headed across the state to protest what goes on at the ICE detention facility in rural McCook. Their nearly 10-hour round trip marked a year since Gov. Jim Pillen announced the deal he made with U.S. Immigration

  Campaign fundraising in the 2026 Senate battlegrounds has become overwhelmingly nationalized, leaving most high-stakes candidates far more reliant on out-of-state donors than the voters they hope to represent. Continuing a decades-long retreat from locally sourced campaign money, an OpenSecrets analysis of 17 candidates across nine key battleground states shows that two-thirds of the $289