New Laws Are Driving Red And Blue States Further Apart 49:34

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There's the green chili aroma in New Mexico. Mm-hmm. Right, that's the official state aroma. Wait, states can have official aromas? I don't want to ask what New York says. New York's not going to do it because nobody wants, you know, hot urine on the subway platform to be a state smell, so...

Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk. In our Federalist system, the saying goes, the states are laboratories of democracy. State governments test out different policies or even political strategies that may someday reach the whole country or drive red and blue states further apart.

The power of states is never more clear than when power in Washington is divided, national legislation is stalled, and state houses become the main drivers of political change in the country. This year, FiveThirtyEight is tracking what that looks like, what legislation is being proposed and passed, and how red and blue states are going about things differently.

As we've discussed on the podcast in the past, since the Dobbs decision, abortion legislation has been one of the most notable changes on the state level. Today, we're going to focus on some of the other areas, in particular, gun laws, tax and spending plans, and identity. Here with me to discuss our senior politics reporter, Monica Potts. Hello, Monica. Welcome to the podcast. Hi.

Hi, Galen. Also with us is senior reporter Amelia Thompson-DeVoe. Hey, Amelia. Welcome. Hey, Galen. And politics and tech reporter Kaylee Rogers. Welcome to the podcast. Hello. All right. Before we get into some of these specific buckets, Amelia, what sort of broad trends are we seeing across the country in terms of the kinds of legislation that states are prioritizing?

It's a huge question because states are trying to do so many things, and we'll talk about some of them. But in general, I've been struck by how we're seeing kind of a continuation of some of the themes we've heard about nationally get made into policy at the state level. So, for example, one of the big trends that we've seen nationally

this session is that lots of red states are passing bans on gender-affirming care for youth. And in some cases, some of those bills that are moving but haven't passed yet would even affect people into their 20s. We're also seeing some bills related to restricting DEI initiatives in higher education. Monica has written a lot about school vouchers and how that is something that's really taken off this year. And all of those things

fit under this bigger bucket of parental rights and kind of

control over liberal forces in education that has been a big theme the Republican Party has been pushing. On the other side, we see blue states moving quickly to protect abortion access. I mean, that's something we talked about previously on the podcast, but that was a big priority in states like Illinois and Minnesota. Also responding explicitly to some of what red states are doing on gender-affirming care.

Doing a lot on gun policy, and we'll talk more about that. And then something that all of the states have been dealing with is spending, having a lot more money than usual, and trying to figure out what to do with it. And even though that's a point of commonality between red states and blue states, they are approaching this very differently.

Now, I should say, and we'll talk about this more, but there are some places where we're seeing similar trends in red and blue states. TikTok bans are one of them. I guess it's like if there's one thing that brings politicians together in this fractious time, it is hatred of TikTok. But mostly what we've been following are these trends that are kind of pushing red states and blue states further apart, sometimes actively in response to each other.

Basically, as a team at FiveThirtyEight, we've been looking at all of the states. We've been pulling in each piece of legislation and going through and trying to categorize what each state is proposing, what these bills are actually going to do, how likely they are to pass, and starting to take a look at themes that are emerging online.

on specific issues that we're really interested in as a site and as a country. So things like guns law, abortion, identity politics, all of that stuff, we're tracking it state by state and working as a team to really figure out what trends are emerging.

Yeah. And so we have a database of basically every law that gets proposed in the country by state legislatures, and we can start to see what gets proposed versus what gets actually passed. So let's dig into the gun laws portion here. I think that's on people's minds in response to the mass shooting in Nashville this week at a school event.

guns, you know, has been a culture war issue in some ways for decades in America. But also the landscape has changed a little bit because of the Supreme Court decision in Bruin last summer. So Amelia, can you tell us a little bit about that and why that may change the scene on the ground in states around the country?

The Bruin decision last summer is a big one, particularly for state lawmakers, because essentially what happened is the Supreme Court changed the way that lower courts are supposed to evaluate court

lawsuits or challenges to gun restrictions. And one of the big changes is that now, if the government is arguing that a gun restriction is constitutional and not a Second Amendment violation, they have to show that it's consistent with the U.S.'s historical tradition of gun policy. And something like whether the law serves the public interest is

is no longer something that judges should be taking into account. So there are a couple of things that are happening now as a result of that. One is that this case, Bruin, was challenging a specific New York state concealed carry law. So there are a few other states, not a lot, but a few other states that had a similar concealed carry law to the one that was struck down in this particular case. Maryland is one of them.

So Maryland lawmakers this year are proposing a whole bunch of gun regulations with the expectation that their law is not going to survive because it was so similar to the one that the Supreme Court just said was unconstitutional. But what's also happening, and we're starting to see early signs of this, is that gun rights advocates are bringing all kinds of laws back into the courts, challenging them under Bruin,

And what is different now than the last time lower courts had a big change in how they were supposed to evaluate gun regulations is that the judiciary is a lot more conservative. So they both have a new test that is arguably harder for the government to meet because finding that historical tradition can be hard for something like

red flag laws, which like, what is their equivalent in the 18th century? How do you argue that? It's difficult. So the standard is different. And the judges who are hearing these cases are friendlier to the idea of Second Amendment challenges in the first place. So I've spoken with some scholars who are tracking early cases. It's only been a few months, but we've already seen quite a few cases that have

ruled in favor of gun rights advocates. In particular, there was one somewhat recently, a federal appeals court said that the government cannot stop people who have restraining orders against them for domestic violence from owning guns. And so that was a pretty big deal. And now states are both responding to the Supreme Court, trying to pass new laws that they think will favor

fit under the Supreme Court's new way of deciding and also just trying to push forward laws that they've been trying to pass for years. So it's complicated.

Yeah, I mean, there's a fair amount of activity on this topic in very, very broad terms. One of the themes that we're seeing is efforts to expand access or loosen restrictions around concealed carry or having guns in public kind of generally. New Mexico has a bill that would allow concealed carry at bars and restaurants. North Carolina has a couple of bills about concealed carry. Lifetime permits, for example, something that's been proposed. They also just overturned the governor's veto on a law that eliminates back

background checks for handguns. Nebraska has one that would allow concealed carry without a permit at all. So in general, a lot of bills looking at concealed carry, especially in these red states. But we're also seeing more crackdowns from blue-led states. So Michigan has a whole suite of bills. They're looking to require universal background checks for gun ownership, safe storage laws,

Colorado want a three-day waiting period for buying a gun. They want to expand their red flag laws. And also they're looking at allowing civil lawsuits against firearm manufacturers from victims of gun violence, which is kind of a contentious one that a couple places have at least been talking about. So yeah, I mean, we're seeing kind of both sides of it. We're seeing some loosening of restrictions in some states and tightening of restrictions in others.

I would also say another trend that we see this year that's really a continuation of trends from other years is state preemption of city laws. And so gun policies are one of the things states often preempt. So a bluer city in a red state might want to pass a stricter concealed carry law or something like that, but there's already a law in the books.

that would prevent them from doing that. So that's another way we're seeing states divide. This year, preemption is going into new territory. In Georgia and Texas, the state government are considering mechanisms to essentially force DAs to enforce state laws, especially around abortion and stuff like that. So gun laws are already on the book. A lot of preemptive gun laws are already on the books. And so it's one of those things where we really see states dividing.

Yeah, I mean, it seems interesting to me, like the red flag laws in particular, it was a bipartisan measure that passed federally last year. Do we see red states, you know, following the push to enact red flag laws after that law was passed?

You know, it's interesting because red flag laws, if listeners don't know, are laws where either law enforcement or in some cases maybe family members can temporarily take firearms away from a gun owner if they think that they're a serious harm to themselves or to others. Maybe they're dealing with a mental health issue or something like that.

And these types of laws, like as a policy or in polling, it shows they're really popular across the political spectrum. Republicans are in favor of them just as much as Democrats. And, you know, it's a pretty neutral political stance to take on a type of gun control. This is an area where people kind of agree that, you know, these are individuals that temporarily probably shouldn't have access to guns. However, we're not really seeing that being pushed in these red states. We're seeing it in blue states, but

For the most part, the gun efforts being put forward in legislatures that are Republican controlled are all about loosing restrictions. They're not really taking a look even at these popular, more restrictive laws. Like I said, you're seeing it in some blue states. Michigan has one that just passed the Senate and there's a lot of momentum there. But I might be missing one, but I haven't seen as much appetite for that among red states.

Our colleague Maggie Kurth did some reporting on this and found that Florida was the one completely Republican-led state that passed red flag law along with eight states that had divided government. So I think probably in the past, not this year. Okay, okay. So there's one other area that you've looked into, Kaylee, which was how states are reacting to independent militias.

What's going on there? Yeah, so it's fascinating. In at least three states, so New Mexico, Oregon, and Vermont, there are bills being proposed that have some progress to...

further paramilitary groups, militias. Uh, in particular, they're concerned with these groups training, uh, at certain sites and also with them sort of patrolling in public. So you may have seen in the past at certain protests or rallies, uh,

that are part of private military groups showing up and saying, you know, we're here to protect the businesses or we're here to protect the statues, even though nobody's hired them or asked them to do this. And these laws would prevent that kind of activity from taking place. But at the same time, you've got a state like Idaho, which wants to repeal its one and only anti-militia law. Every state in the country currently has laws against a private militia law.

And Idaho wants to get rid of that. It's not really enforced right now, but it would still kind of send a signal that the state sort of embraces this kind of activity and doesn't see a problem with it, doesn't think it's unlawful, and in fact would be willing to get rid of the one law it has against it. So kind of really interesting different reactions to what Homeland Security and intelligence –

experts say is a growing threat in the country, which is domestic terrorism and in particular violence from extremist militia groups. This is going to be a trend that we hear again and again in this podcast, which is like red states are doing one thing, blue states are doing another thing and have very different views and approaches to the same issue.

And so I'm wondering, like, you know, the saying that the states are laboratories of democracy is pretty old. Like, this federalist system isn't new. We've long had very different laws surrounding all kinds of things like alcohol or sex or, you know, even marriage, how you drive, what age you can drive at, whether you have to wear a seatbelt sometimes. Is this path that states are going down right now unique? Are the states—

sort of going further and further apart? Or is this just like, this has been the way it has been all along? I mean, I kind of think this is pretty par for the course. Yeah, I think so. I think there might be times of more division and times of more unity, but just in general, where you live determines how you live. And America is a very different place. It's been different from the beginning. It's just enormous. And that's just part of it, I think.

And I think there's something else that's been happening in state legislatures that's worth talking about, which is that Republican state legislators are often more and more conservative, especially the new ones that have gotten elected more recently. And Democratic state lawmakers in very blue states are more and more liberal. And so they're coming in with policy priorities that are

further, closer and closer to, you know, not necessarily the extremes of the parties, but they don't like have as much of an incentive to meet in the middle. And the policies that they're pushing are, you know, either influenced by or are going to influence the way that the national parties are moving and the national parties are very far away from each other. So I think we're at a moment where these kind of like there are plenty of

points of crossover. But when you're talking about something as polarizing as gun policy, it's not surprising to see states going in such different directions because the national parties are themselves very far apart on this, the bipartisan bill last year notwithstanding.

I think that that is really key. We are at a moment of particularly high polarization between the two parties. And while, yes, of course, states have always had their own laws and different state by state, that's like the joy and one could argue the benefit of federalism.

Those laws weren't necessarily always being pushed by one party that had full control of the state legislature. There could have been more bipartisan support for certain ideas, especially regional things that were kind of just popular because of the state that they were in and didn't have anything to do with the party or the partisanship specifically. Whereas now it's hyper-partisan and

And I think you kind of see at the state level playing out the more extreme version of this polarization that we have federally.

Yeah, going off of that, Kayla, I mean, as people split their tickets less on ballots, it's less likely that you have a state where there is a Republican-led lower chamber, Democratic-led upper chamber, and then, you know, who knows who the governor is or whatever. Like, it's just more likely today that you'll have unified control of a state. And then you can do, as Amelia and you both just said, whatever you want, basically. Yeah.

I would also say, too, that it's still pretty early in that legislative session. And I think one of the things that you're seeing, too, is the state's moving very fast on some things. Our states where Republicans increased their majorities in the state houses or Democrats got a new trifecta.

So part of it is, I think, also just where we are in the legislative cycle, where we're just seeing what those priorities were for the people who got new or enhanced power. And so a state like Arkansas, which is even more Republican than it was before, has whittled down some intra-party fights that it was having in the state legislature and is moving really fast on some of that.

their new governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders' priorities. A state like Michigan, where Democrats have control for the first time in nearly four decades, they're moving really fast on some long-term priorities. So I think part of it is also a function of that. Yeah, no, that's an important point. And also the fact that it's early on in the session means that we don't know what of some of these proposals will actually become laws in the end. So I will meet you back here later in the year and we can talk about that.

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Let's move on to taxes and spending. And I think states have over the past couple of years found themselves in a very, very unique position, which is that they are flush with cash. Many states have budget surpluses. And so it is, once again, a little bit of an experiment to see like when a red state has a bunch of cash in the bank and when a blue state has a bunch of cash in the state, like what does it do with it? Like, does it follow what it preaches sort of as a national party? You know, I know, Monica, you've been looking into this primarily. What have you found?

At the end of last year, a lot of states and a pretty bipartisan group of states, I think, according to an AP analysis, it was 33, passed some sort of tax cut when they were sitting on a lot of cash. 14 states, according to that same AP analysis, passed an income rate tax cut. So people are paying less income taxes now.

than they were before. But other kinds of states are passing tax cuts that are more targeted to low-income adults or to retirees, or they're fashioning them as refundable tax credits. So it kind of depends on what state you're looking at. But states ended last year with really record surpluses, and they ended last year cutting taxes, and some of them are going into this year considering more tax cuts.

Missouri has passed a tax cut. A lot of other states are considering tax cuts that haven't passed yet. And at this point, too, they're looking at, according to a tax policy center analysis, slowing revenue growth going into the future. So it's not really 100% clear where they'll end up at the end of this year. The fiscal picture is changing for a lot of states.

I think a lot of this has been fueled, as Monica was saying, the sort of push toward tax cuts by a desire to get money back into people's pockets quickly at a moment of inflation when people were really feeling like their salary isn't going as far as it should or their paycheck.

That's been one kind of interesting divide that I've seen between red states and blue states is that Republicans seem to be kind of using this moment to argue for permanent tax cuts, and Democrats have been saying, you know, no, this is illegal.

temporary relief, or we're going to, as Monica was saying, we're going to focus this on people who really need it. And so that's been an interesting trend to see which states are seeing this as a permanent change and which are seeing it as a response to this particular moment.

It's interesting living in New York state, we have had like certain targeted tax cuts here, but you know, another option for dealing with a surplus is to create new government programs or fund government programs to a greater degree or what have you. And that has also definitely happened in New York state. Like what trends have we seen there? Is it a blue state thing? Are red states also, you know, creating or expanding government programs that could be expensive into the future beyond this moment in time?

Well, we've seen a lot of talk of that. I mean, the Illinois and Michigan Democratic governors were both early in their terms. They were pushing universal pre-K, which would be an establishment of a new class in all of the state schools, just an entirely new level of education in the public school system. And those are very complicated and long proposals. They haven't really gone anywhere yet. It was in Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan's proposal.

budget proposal. And so they're still going around the state talking about it. And the concerns that people have are that it's a forever program. It's pretty massive. It requires things like new classrooms, new teachers, entirely new administrative levels in some senses. And so you do see sort of a hesitation, I think, on that score, because especially with the COVID surpluses, that was...

temporary money for the most part, although there were some incentives for states to create new early education systems and early education programs. In red states, four red states have passed universal voucher programs. They're called educational savings accounts. And they would essentially give parents the money that would otherwise be spent on their children in the public school system, vouchers to take to private or religious or homeschooling programs in most states.

That is a new program, and it's kind of new spending. And it's not 100% clear whether it just comes out of the education budget. In some states, there are proposals to keep the education budgets where they are so that those schools don't lose money. So I'm not 100% sure whether that's going to be new spending or transferred spending. Those education budgets will be set at the end of this year for next year.

While we're talking about education, one thing we have seen in both red and blue states is an acknowledgement of how underpaid teachers are and an effort to try to raise teachers' salaries, especially as a response to inflation. So that is something that we've seen pushes for across the country, and some of them are actually moving. And, you know, of course, that is something that

is a little bit unusual to see, but is noteworthy nonetheless. Yeah, I mean, that was sort of a big push from Ron DeSantis actually last year during Florida's legislative session. There was a proposal directly from him breaking maybe a little bit with

the Chamber of Commerce vision of the Republican Party and going more with the populist vision of the Republican Party. Right. And similar, like a bill is moving in Oklahoma, you know, states where you wouldn't expect salary increases to be a top priority, at least when it comes to education, they have been this year.

Yeah, I think one other spending program that has gotten some attention, Amelia, that I know you've looked at is funding a child tax credit. Because we, of course, had a national child tax credit in response to as part of the COVID stimulus package, essentially. But that went away. And now blue states are – some blue states are thinking of bringing it back. How seriously are they thinking about it?

Some blue states are. And I mean, this is a sort of difference between blue states and red states. The blue states tend to have longer legislative sessions. And so they are just moving much more slowly than many red states. Some red states are already done with their sessions. Wyoming is finished. And some blue states are just kind of getting into gear. So I think it's early to say exactly what will end up passing. But

This was something that was interesting because it seemed a little bit bipartisan. Montana's Republican governor, as part of his budget proposal, was pushing for a child tax credit for lower income families that was quite generous. It would be twelve hundred dollars, which especially in a state like Montana is.

And the median income is a little bit lower. You know, that would be a significant amount of money. That bill appears to have stalled in committee. So it could always get unstuck. But it does seem like at least there, the momentum behind that proposal has slowed a little bit.

All right. So the next topic has probably gotten the most attention throughout the start of the state legislative sessions so far, and that is topics regarding identity, in particular race, gender, and sexuality. What are we seeing the most of? Like, what is the main kind of legislation that is being passed?

So with the caveat that two sort of big heavy hitters on this, Florida and Texas, were some of the late starters to the legislative session, so we're just starting to see what has real momentum there. I would say that gender-affirming care bans for youth have been one of the biggest themes this session, as I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast.

So far, they've passed in Mississippi, Utah, South Dakota, Iowa, and Tennessee. They're moving in other states. These bans take different forms in different states. Some of them are criminal, some of them are civil, but generally it refers to puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgical procedures. Those would no longer be available for minors in the states where these bans have passed.

And something that really stands out to me is that although the ones that have passed so far target minors, not all of the bans that are moving in other states do. So Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Kansas have proposed bans for people under the age of 21. And Texas's proposed ban targets people under the age of 26. So this is interesting because it's something that I've seen in the realm of abortion, but

legislation will start by focusing on minors and then kind of expand out so it includes more and more people. And it's interesting to see that kind of happening in real time across states in different legislative sessions. But this is something where it seems like a couple of laws got passed last year and

It really just took off and Republicans decided they were going to make it a big priority. And some of these bans, I should add, also restrict insurance coverage of gender affirming care, which, you know, can be a quite far reaching impact. I think it's just worth noting, too, that Arkansas passed a ban in 2021 that I think was the first in the nation against gender affirming care for minors. And it was blocked by the courts. It was there was a lawsuit filed immediately. And so it still hasn't gone into effect yet.

And that was a bill that the governor at the time, Asa Hutchinson, actually vetoed. And the state legislature overwrote his veto. But this has been sort of in the works for a while, so it's kind of not surprising to see states taking them up this year. These things tend to go in waves.

Yeah.

Like, I don't get it, but it's just such a small number of people that I'm vetoing this law. Yeah, we are still seeing a few efforts on sports, on bathrooms in particular. I've seen a few bills around sports.

you know, having all gender bathrooms in public spaces or allowing trans and non-binary people to use the bathroom that aligns with their gender. There's, and on both sides, some blue states are trying to protect those rights while some red states are trying to roll back some of that, those protections or prohibit some of that access. So those are also cropping up as well. It just hasn't been as

big of a theme and hasn't passed as much as the bans on gender-affirming care. One bill that I think has been really interesting that is moving is an effort in Montana to define male and female within the state code based on biological sex.

So, you know, this is obviously something that has big ramifications for a lot of things and could have downstream consequences that we don't even see right now. But it is moving in Montana. Absolutely.

I've also seen, too, just to note about the bathroom bills that I've seen them. It's not just in schools, which I think is where those bills started, but we're seeing them in public spaces and events where children might be in some states. So there's kind of expanding the places where those kinds of laws would apply as well.

And even some very specific things. I mean, Indiana has had some legislation that has at least gotten some traction that would affect whether teachers can call kids by their preferred pronouns in school without parental permission. I mean, some of it is quite granular. And so I think also the piecemeal nature of it shows, you know, kind of two aspects of what happens in state legislatures, where some years you will see a

big push in a bunch of states to do kind of the same thing. But you will also see clearly something that state legislatures care about thematically as an issue, but they're trying to approach in very different ways. And if one is more successful than the other, then you might see it crop up in other states in following years.

Yeah, we're seeing that too with some of the book bans and sort of like book ban lights where I'm seeing legislation that will, for example, require all the school boards in a state to populate.

publicly list every single book that's available in their school libraries and classrooms, which isn't banning anything per se, but could be a big hindrance and could have the effect of teachers reducing the number of books in their classroom just because they don't have time to do a full inventory and post it online. And so we're seeing kind of different approaches getting at the same issue. Yeah. And I mean, I think

Maybe part of the reason we've seen a lot of focus on this is because if you look at the polling, Americans are in some ways divided, but in other ways, unknowledgeable or skeptical of things relating to trans individuals. I pulled up some Pew polling here. So, you know, a plurality of Americans said they favor requiring trans individuals to use the public bathrooms that match the sex they were assigned at birth, which is a

Or a plurality support making it illegal for healthcare professionals to help someone who's under the age of 18 with medical care for gender transition. So, you know, it's like, it's interesting to see how this plays out, given that in the early stages of some of these debates, Republicans seem to be on the side of, you

public opinion. You know, one area that has gotten a lot of attention but has stalled out a little bit, as you've reported on, Kayleigh, was these quote-unquote drag bans, which is trying to prevent children from being in the presence of drag performers. And that one of the main complications in writing legislation about this is, like, how do you actually define what a drag performer is? So what did you find, Kayleigh?

Yeah. So one state has passed a drag ban, that's Tennessee. And it specifically had to do with like adult performances. So, so more explicit sexual performances, uh, and, and specifically in front of minors, that's sort of the tack that some of these bills have taken. Um, a couple others, technically the bill passed, but after it was sort of rewritten to the point where it wasn't actually about, uh,

drag performers anymore. So Arkansas, for example, passed a bill that just had to do with sexually explicit performers, not drag performers. But yeah, I mean, we've seen a range of language. It's kind of difficult when you're trying to create a law that prohibits

drag performers, or let's say you want to ban drag time story hour. Well, what is, if, if, you know, if you just wearing a princess dress, uh, and you're a man, does that drag? Like what, where do we draw the line? And, and is, is you have to read a story to them or can you just be there? Like there's all, it makes it really complicated, honestly. And, uh, Republican legislatures who have been the ones pushing these bills have struggled to find the right language to that,

bans what they want to ban without also impeding on free speech rights for trans performers or for people doing a Shakespearean play or an opera or somebody who just doesn't dress like

quote unquote, in the gender conforming way. So if I go and do a live podcast and I happen to wear a suit, like am I in drag technically? According to some of these definitions, yes. So it's been a problem for them. They've definitely come up against

some issues. Again, like I said, a lot of them have focused or refocused on more sexually explicit content because that's a little easier to define and to ban because that's one area where our free speech laws do allow a carve out, you know, we're okay with

stopping children from seeing sexually explicit performances. So that's one area where they can kind of maybe find some leeway. But it's, yeah, it's been a bit of a dead end for some of these legislators because it's hard to find the right language. And that's why it's been abandoned by some states and kind of reworked in others.

A lot of what we've heard about in recent years has to do with, you know, diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in education, how race is taught about in schools. Is that still something that's getting a lot of attention from state legislatures this session? Has that kind of played out?

It hasn't played out. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, on her first day in office in Arkansas—I live in Arkansas, obviously, so I follow it very closely—she signed an executive order that basically reaffirmed no critical race theory in schools and those kinds of things. And so you do see it expanding to public education in Florida, that kind of ban or prohibition or discouragement from discussing controversial issues.

you know, quote unquote controversial things like critical race theory in public higher education institutions. And so reconsidering tenure for people who are under fire

There are big pushes along these lines in Florida, Ohio, and Texas right now that are sort of targeting DEI initiatives, also especially in higher education. Monica, you just mentioned tenure protections. That seems to be something that Republican lawmakers are increasingly interested in focusing on. And then I also think the sort of general idea that parents should be able to

know what their student, what their children are being taught and to be able to opt their kids out when they disagree with something is very much still alive in especially Republican state legislatures. You see a lot of what are usually called parental bills of rights passing and seen some of that at the federal level too, although obviously divided government, that's not going to go anywhere.

But basically trying to give parents more power over what their children are learning and more insight into what's happening in the classroom with the idea being that, you know, all of this kind of DEI stuff is getting snuck in under parents' noses and they have the right to know what their kids are being taught and object to it. So that I think is still very much a live issue. Yeah.

I would add, too, that a lot of the debates over education savings accounts, which are the universal school vouchers that give parents taxpayer money to take their kids to private school or religious school, the debates around those have really centered on the, you know, we don't want our children learning this social emotional learning or the critical race theory things that they say teachers are teaching now. And so the culture war kind of issues here.

go into that debate and that was part of it. And you do see Republican voters especially becoming more suspicious of public education and the role that it plays in society. And so all of these things are still very much alive, even though they might not be being passed in specific bills. It's kind of just leaking into all these other debates as well. Yeah. I mean, are we seeing blue states

take like a mirror image approach to this in that they are encouraging more education about race in American history or things like that? Or are blue states not engaging in this really in terms on a – from a legislative perspective? Yeah.

The main place where I've seen blue states engaging is on the issue of gender-affirming care. And again, it's actually really mirrored a lot of what we've seen with abortion. So Minnesota has particularly focused on this.

They are moving legislation that would protect people who come to the state for gender affirming care of explicitly saying, OK, all these red states say you can't go there. Well, you can come to Minnesota and be protected. Illinois passed similar legislation.

protections earlier this year, and that was wrapped up with protections for abortion. And just in my reporting and talking to abortion providers earlier today, I spoke with an abortion provider in Illinois who was telling me about the abortion care they offered and then also said, oh, and also we provide gender-affirming care. So it seems like those two issues, because

they're being restricted in similar places and are turning into these cultural and partisan flashpoints are increasingly getting wrapped together.

Yeah, there's also just with some of these issues, there's less action to be taken in blue states where things are already legal and accessible. And so sometimes you see more symbolic bills being put forward. There's one in Illinois, for example, that was like saying every school board has to have an anti-racist policy that's part of their school policies for all schools included.

And it's against racial harassment. Those are the kind of things you might see bubbling up instead because certain curricula is already taught in the schools. Gender affirming care is already legal. Abortion is already legal. There's kind of a little bit less action to be taken.

Yeah. We've covered a lot of ground. What have we left out? We teased TikTok at the start of this. So please take it away whoever wants to talk about the TikTok trends that we're seeing and if there's anything else.

Well, Alex Samuels wrote a great story about what was happening at the state level with TikTok. And it's a little bit more limited than I think you might believe from just seeing that a state passed a TikTok ban because they're mostly focusing on the use of TikTok or social media on government devices. So if you don't have...

a government-owned smartphone that you're using, you wouldn't be affected. But these have been passing in a lot of places. And I think Galen, as you were mentioning, clearly motivated by a kind of bipartisan approach

desire to show U.S. independence from China and try to prevent potential interference. And I think the farmland bills that you wrote about, Monica, are part of the same vein. Yeah, I would definitely add the farmland bills that have been introduced in a lot of state legislatures. Not many have passed at this point. Actually, I don't think

any have passed through the entire state legislative process, but a lot of states are considering banning foreign entities, foreign governments, or even foreign nationals from owning farmland across the country. And really their motivation is an anti-China motivation. Some states specifically named China and other states just say sort of any government that is an adversary to the United States, whatever that means. And they usually have different definitions of how that should be defined.

There was one more thing that I wanted to make sure that we got to before we leave, which you also reported on, Monica. And that was the repeal of right-to-work legislation in Michigan.

And that's in some ways because this reverses a many decades long trend. These kinds of laws rarely get repealed once passed. But it did happen. And someone already mentioned that, you know, Michigan is a newly trifecta state, newly blue trifecta state. And so maybe that is why we're seeing some of this rapid movement. But how did that play out?

It was a priority for the Democratic Party in Michigan, and they did it, and they passed it fairly quickly, and it was signed by the governor, which wasn't surprising to anyone. I think it was probably more surprising that it passed in Michigan, you know, 10 years ago. There was a big push in a lot of states that actually had higher union density than a lot of the southern states where right-to-work laws had been traditionally stronger.

And so we saw a push about 10 years ago motivated by groups like ALEC and some other legislative groups to get right-to-work in all kinds of states. And I should say, too, it's called right-to-work, and that's just generally how it's known. But it's primarily a law that makes it harder for unions to organize in those states because

They can't, in their contracts with employers, require employees who don't want to join the union to pay agency fees anyway because they're still covered under the contract that the union negotiates with the employer. And so they can't be compelled to join the union. They don't have to join the union, but they have to pay an agency fee that's equivalent to dues so that there's not a free rider problem.

And so there was a big push 10 years ago to expand right-to-work laws beyond the Southeast where they'd been traditionally strong. It worked in Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin. And so I think this had been on Democrats' radar in Michigan since then.

So it's not a surprise that it passed. It's just, it is what I think is surprising is how rare it is that these laws are repealed. I only counted four times in history that they were repealed twice in 1949 for laws that weren't that old. And then 1965 in Indiana before it passed a new one in 2012. So yeah, it was really a monumental change, I think. And unions are more popular than ever. Union density is still low for a lot of different reasons that we could talk about probably in a whole entire podcast.

But it was a different move, I think.

Yeah, we talked recently on this podcast about how something like two-thirds of Americans view unions favorably, which was the most popular I think they've ever been in the history of polling on the popularity of unions. All right, we've covered again – I'm not going to say a lot of ground again. All right, are we missing any other pieces of legislation? That is like the nerdiest question ever. Anyone want to shout out a law before we wrap up the podcast? No.

I mean, we're definitely missing pieces of legislation, but also like you want us to stop talking at some point, right? I mean, look, there's a lot of fun and funky ones that we've seen over time. There's, you know, Utah naming a state crustacean. A little bit of a surprise. What did it name? What was the state crustacean? Some kind of shrimp. Yeah, the brine shrimp. Oh, the brine shrimp. Oh, okay. I mean...

The brineship deserves some more love from Utah. I'm glad that happened. They're native to the Salt Lake, so Great Salt Lake. There's the green chili aroma in New Mexico. Right, that's the official state aroma.

Wait, states can have official aromas? I don't want to ask what New York says. New York's not going to do it because nobody wants hot urine on the subway platform to be a state smell. Wow, wow. What a downstate bias you have for an upstate resident. I'm not upstate. I'm in the Hudson Valley.

Okay, what about like the fresh breeze off the Hudson River? The oak trees. Mountain spring Catskill water. A lovely fresh scent. We're getting a new rat czar in New York City. That doesn't have to do with aroma. I don't know why I thought of that. I mean, rats contribute to the general...

aroma of the city. I mean, I'll say my big takeaway from this project has just been that states spend so much time regulating alcohol. That is a large portion of what many of the states I'm tracking are doing. And you know, it's good. Alcohol is a drug. It's regulated for a reason. But man, state lawmakers spend a lot of time on it.

Like what, okay, what is there left to do on alcohol? Like what kinds of legislation are you seeing? Because it's been around so long, you would imagine at this point that they figured out what they want to do with it. Oh, just like changing licensing requirements, changing, you know, like where in a restaurant you can have alcohol, like that kind of thing. Like little picky changes that clearly like the...

the restaurant industry of whatever state feels very strongly about and nobody else really understands or cares. But, you know, seems to, at least in the states I'm following, which is not all the states, so maybe I just got states full of enthusiastic alcohol regulators, but it surprised me. There's a lot to do around alcohol in Arkansas because it has a lot of dry counties. So there's always some, like,

issue about how to make a county not dry.

fights over that, those kinds of things. All right. Well, listeners, if you have a favorite piece of legislation or an intriguing piece of legislation that we left out, you can let us know about it. Maybe we'll talk about it when we come back to all of this when the legislative sessions have wrapped up this summer. But we're going to leave it there for now. So thank you, Kaylee, Amelia, and Monica. Thanks, Galen. Thanks, Galen. Yeah, please tweet me your favorite piece of proposed legislation. I would literally love to read that.

My name is Galen Druk. Tony Chow is in the control room and also on video editing. You can get in touch by emailing us at podcast.538.com. You can also, of course, tweet us with any questions or comments. If you're a fan of the show, leave us a rating or review in the Apple Podcast Store or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening, and we will see you soon. ♪