* South Dakota…

Whether it’s a hat or shirt with Donald Trump’s famous slogan, or apparel featuring any other candidate, [Minnehaha] County Auditor Leah Anderson says you can wear it when you show up at the polls.

“In the past, we didn’t allow campaigning at the polling place within 100 feet, so in the past that’s been viewed as not being able to wear something like if a person comes to vote and they have a particular hat or t-shirt that has a candidate’s name on it or issue in the past we’ve asked them to take their hat off or turn their t-shirt inside out,” Anderson said.

But that won’t be the case this year.

“Our states attorney’s office has done some research on that and followed some other case laws and has determined that could likely violate a person’s first amendment rights, so we are teaching our workers that it’s okay if a person comes into vote and has something on that’s not deemed as campaigning,” Anderson said.

* Texas…

Texas’s Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Democratic U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration on Tuesday, saying the federal government was not providing the help it needed in assessing the citizenship status of some of its registered voters.

The lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas accuses the Biden administration and specifically the Department of Homeland Security of refusing to help it determine the citizenship status of 450,000 of the 17.9 million registered voters in the state. […]

Paxton’s office said he sent a letter earlier this month asking the U.S. government to verify the citizenship status of people who may be unlawfully registered to vote in Texas by Oct. 19. His office said he proceeded with a lawsuit when his request was not answered.

His office said there were nearly half a million voters whose citizenship status has not been verified but acknowledged that the majority of those voters were likely citizens and hence eligible to vote.

* Alabama…

In August, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) conducted a survey that received 2,924 responses from educators across the South, including Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas. Around 60 percent of the respondents indicated that their state was not a desirable place to work in higher education.

The responses among Alabama educators were particularly damning of the state, with 57 percent of Alabama’s respondents saying that they would not recommend their state as a place to work to work in higher education. About 29 percent of Alabama professors who responded to the survey stated that they have applied for jobs outside of the state since 2022.

Respondents were also able to indicate why they were concerned about being employed in higher education in their respective states. 56.5 percent of respondents cited salary as a concern, while 53.3 percent of respondents listed overall political climate as a motivator for seeking employment elsewhere. 49.6 percent reported concerns over academic freedom writ-large, and around 30 percent of the respondents specified concerns about tenure; diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI); and shared governance. LGBTQ+ issues, reproduction rights/abortion access, and cost of living were also noted as concerns among more than 20 percent of the respondents.

Reduced academic freedom in the face of new “anti-DEI” legislation was of particular concern among Alabama’s 88 survey respondents. SB 129, which went into effect on Oct. 1, prevents any state institution in Alabama from using public funding for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. The law also restricts classroom discussions on gender, race, and sexual orientation — listing them as “divisive concepts.” The law has resulted in campuses across the state closing or rebranding their DEI offices and campus resource centers.

* Florida…

Just this month a new law in Florida — that bans sleeping on public property anywhere in the state — took effect. While the law includes exceptions during emergencies like major storms, those protections end when the hurricane order is no longer in place.

In practical terms, this means that when Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis or a county official lifts Florida’s emergency hurricane order, Floridians who were homeless before Helene and Milton — roughly 31,000 people — could face new criminal penalties. Local homeless advocates say there are countless questions and rumors circulating about how the new law will be interpreted and enforced in the wake of climate disasters.

Most people experiencing homelessness were aware the new anti-camping law was set to take effect, according to Martha Are, the executive director at the Homeless Services Network of Central Florida. “Some people are already trying to relocate their encampments to harder-to-find areas,” she told me in mid-September, about a week before Helene made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region. […]

“It’s going to be a challenge for how leaders actually enforce these [anti-camping] laws, like if I’ve lost my house from a hurricane and I’ve lived in that town for a decade, will I be found in violation of the law and are they going to arrest me?” asked Noah Patton, the manager of disaster recovery at the National Low Income Housing Coalition. “These laws create significant complications, will really make aid more difficult to sort out, and what I have been saying is it makes a community less resilient to disasters.”

* Idaho…

A trial to determine whether Idaho’s abortion law should be blocked for individuals facing pregnancy complications will begin on Nov. 12 in Boise. […]

The lawsuit is named for the lead plaintiff, Jennifer Adkins, who sought an abortion in Oregon because her 12-week-old fetus was diagnosed with a condition that would have resulted in a miscarriage or stillbirth, and likely jeopardized her own health. The three other plaintiffs, Jillaine St.Michel, Kayla Smith and Rebecca Vincen-Brown, also had fetal complications that were likely to affect their health.

Idaho has a near-total ban on abortions without exceptions provided to preserve the health of the pregnant patient, only to prevent their death. Physicians have said the law is unclear about when that exception would apply so that they could be safe from criminal prosecution.

The plaintiffs are asking the court to clarify what circumstances qualify under the “medical emergency” exceptions in the states’ abortion bans.

In some cases, pregnant patients have been airlifted out of Idaho emergency rooms to seek abortions in neighboring states, as doctors fear legal consequences for performing the procedure, even in medical emergencies, States Newsroom previously reported.