* Texas…

Before thousands of anti-abortion protesters at the Texas Capitol in 2023, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott brazenly touted his party’s passage of draconian abortion laws as “life-saving.” “We promised we would protect the life of every child with a heartbeat, and we did. I signed a law doing exactly that,” Abbott told the crowd at the annual Texas Rally For Life event. “All of you are life savers, and thousands of newborn babies are the result of your heroic efforts.”

Abbott’s words now ring particularly hollow in light of a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics that reveals infant deaths in Texas starkly increased following SB 8, which barred care at the first sign of embryonic cardiac activity, typically around six weeks of pregnancy, and carried a private enforcement provision that deterred the vast majority of care in the state. The 2021 law stood as the most restrictive abortion ban at the time.

Researchers with Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that infant deaths rose by nearly 13 percent in 2022. Comparatively, these deaths, defined in the study as occurring under 12 months old, increased less than 2 percent in the rest of the United States.

“We found that infant mortality increased pretty substantially in Texas but not in the rest of the country,” Alison Gemmill, assistant professor in the Bloomberg School’s Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health and one of the study’s lead authors, tells The Nation. “It speaks to how these restrictive laws can have horrific and devastating effects on infant health, pregnant people, and on families overall—unintended or not.”

* ProPublica…

Year after year, while Roe v. Wade was the law of the land, Texas legislators passed measures limiting access to abortion — who could have one, how and where. And with the same cadence, they added millions of dollars to a program designed to discourage people from terminating pregnancies.

Their budget infusions for the Alternatives to Abortion program grew with almost every legislative session — first gradually, then dramatically — from $5 million starting in 2005 to $140 million after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the right to an abortion.

Now that abortion is largely illegal in Texas, lawmakers say they have shifted the purpose of the program, and its millions of dollars, to supporting families affected by the state’s ban. […]

But an investigation by ProPublica and CBS News found that the system that funnels a growing pot of state money to anti-abortion nonprofits has few safeguards and is riddled with waste. […]

In some cases, taxpayers are paying these groups to distribute goods they obtained for free, allowing anti-abortion centers — which are often called “crisis pregnancy centers” and may be set up to look like clinics that perform abortions — to bill $14 to hand out a couple of donated diapers.

* NPR…

Transgender people under 18 face laws that bar them from accessing gender-affirming health care in 25 states — just a few years ago, not a single state had such a law.

The Supreme Court has agreed to consider a case from Tennessee in its next term that challenges that state’s gender-affirming care ban for young people.

“Pressure had been mounting for the Supreme Court to weigh in here,” says Lindsey Dawson, director for LGBTQ Health Policy at the health research organization KFF. […]

Most of the state bans have been challenged in court, Dawson notes, with 20 state bans currently in effect. “We’d seen split decisions in the appeals courts, which is always an indication that an issue might be ripe for the Supreme Court.”

* Florida…

On Monday, a new law allowing volunteer chaplains in Florida public schools took effect. The Satanic Temple was ready.

“The Satanic Temple’s chaplains can now serve in Florida’s public schools, thanks to Governor Ron DeSantis!” the church posted Tuesday on its social media accounts.

DeSantis said that would not be happening.

“We’re not playing those games in Florida,” DeSantis said when he signed the bill in April. “That is not a religion.” […]

Under HB 931, volunteer school chaplains may “provide support, services, and programs to students as assigned by the district school board or charter school governing board.” Parents must consent and may choose from a publicly available list of chaplains and their religious affiliations, if any. [….]

“Any opportunity that exists for ministers or chaplains in the public sector must not discriminate based on religious affiliation,” The Satanic Temple’s director of ministry, who goes by Penemue Grigori, said in an email to the USA TODAY NETWORK - Florida while the bill was being deliberated. “Our ministers look forward to participating in opportunities to do good in the community, including the opportunities created by this bill, right alongside the clergy of other religions.”

* Louisiana…

Opponents of a new Louisiana law requiring that a version of the Ten Commandments be posted in public school classrooms have asked a federal court to block implementation of the requirement while their lawsuit against it progresses and before the new school year starts.

A group of parents of Louisiana public school students, representing various faiths, filed the lawsuit last month, soon after Republican Gov. Jeff Landry signed the new law. In motions filed Monday, their attorneys asked for a preliminary injunction blocking the law. And they sought an expedited briefing and hearing schedule that would require the state to respond to the request for an injunction by July 19 and for a hearing on July 29. Public schools open in August.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Baton Rouge, says the law violates First Amendment clauses protecting religious liberty and forbidding laws establishing a religion.

Backers of the law argue that it doesn’t violate the Constitution and that posting the Ten Commandments is appropriate and legal because they are part of the foundation of U.S. law.

* Oklahoma…

In Oklahoma, public schools have been ordered to incorporate the Bible into lessons for grades 5 through 12 by State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters.

Walters called the Bible an “indispensable historical and cultural touchstone,” in a June 27 statement about the announcement.

Without “basic knowledge” of the Bible, Walters claimed, “Oklahoma students are unable to properly contextualize the foundation of our nation which is why Oklahoma educational standards provide for its instruction. This is not merely an educational directive but a crucial step in ensuring our students grasp the core values and historical context of our country.” […]

Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU), told ABC News that she doesn’t oppose the idea of teaching religion as a part of history. However, her organization objects to teaching the Bible as truth or “core values,” as Walters stated, “because that’s favoring one set of religious views over others and over non religion, and that’s expressly prohibited by our Constitution.”

* Texas…

After a 2021 winter storm laid bare how unprepared the state was for severe weather, Texas had been on the prowl for ways to ensure that it was producing enough electricity during times of disaster.

Their solution: new fossil fuel power plants.

But while the state says these new power plants meet the demand caused by severe weather and population growth, a new ERCOT forecast says that as the state’s power demand doubles over the next six years, most of the demand will come from water and energy-guzzling data centers for artificial intelligence supercomputers and crypto processing. […]

Despite analyses showing that clean energy sources like wind and solar are largely more reliable and cheaper to produce there than energy from fossil fuels, in the aftermath of last summer, the state decided to subsidize $10 billion worth of new gas power plants.

Across the country, low-income Black people are exposed to the most pollution from power plants and have the highest risk of death from such pollution. In Texas, more than 75% of the state’s gas power plants are in areas where the population has an above-average share of people of color, according to a Capital B analysis of EPA data.