Chairman Willis, Vice Chairman Daniels, Ranking Member Grim,
Thank you for the opportunity to provide written testimony in support of House Bill 773, which expands access to E15 gasoline to Ohioans and drivers across the country while traveling on the Ohio Turnpike. Growth Energy is the nation’s largest association of ethanol producers, representing 98 U.S. plants that each year produce more than 9.5 billion gallons of cleaner burning, renewable fuel, including five of Ohio’s seven biorefineries. We also represent groups such as the Ohio Corn and Wheat Growers Association, working with them and thousands of ethanol supporters across the country to bring better and more affordable choices at the pump, diversify our energy portfolio, create more energy jobs, and sustain family farms.
Today, 98 percent of all gasoline sold in the U.S. contains 10 percent bioethanol. E15, a lower cost fuel containing up to 15 percent bioethanol and approved for use in more than 96 percent of cars on the road today, is now available at more than 5,100 retail locations in 34 states. In Ohio, there are currently only 192 retail fuel locations selling E15; less than four percent of the state’s estimated 5,833 retail fuel locations offer E15. Compare this to Minnesota, with half of Ohio’s population, that has more than 500 retail locations offering E15.
That means, that while Ohio is among the top corn-growing and ethanol-producing states in the country, Ohioans do not have access to more affordable fuel options drivers in other Midwest states have, which is evident in the attached informational sheet recently shared with the U.S. House urging representatives to support pro-E15 legislation.
We applaud Representatives Williams and Klopfenstein for introducing HB 773, which would formally adopt a pro-E15 and pro-Ohio agriculture posture for rest stops and fuel retailers along Ohio’s Turnpike. This is especially important as Ohio corn farmers continue to face higher and higher input costs amid global trade uncertainty and lower commodity prices.
As Representative Williams said during the previous committee hearing, HB 773 “supports Ohio’s agricultural output without placing financial burdens on the state while also helping address the high fuel prices families across the Midwest continue to deal with.” Additionally, we agree with Representative Klopfenstein that the state can expand “access to E15 through one of Ohio’s most visible public-private partnerships: the Ohio Turnpike.”
HB 773 ensures the state of Ohio can do its part to support its agriculture community by promoting the expanded use of E15, a gasoline blend using a higher percentage of corn ethanol. We urge the committee to support this legislation as a means of supporting Ohio’s agriculture and ethanol industries, bolstering thousands of jobs and family farms across the state.
Given our experience with retailers around the country offering ethanol blends, we are happy to assist the committee with technical questions as it considers initiatives that help strengthen domestic demand for Ohio-raised corn and Ohio-made ethanol.
A group of protestors hold a banner saying “Black Voters Matter” with a quote from Allen v. Milligan, a 2023 case that required Alabama to draw a second congressional district to give Black voters an opportunity to elect their preferred leaders, on May 4, 2026 at the Alabama Statehouse in Montgomery, Alabama. (Photo by Brian Lyman/Alabama Reflector)
The Congressional Black Caucus on Tuesday urged American corporations to condemn efforts to dilute Black voting strength, as Southern states eliminate congressional districts where most residents are Black.
The CBC’s attempt to mobilize the business community comes as Black representation in Congress potentially faces its most severe threat since the end of Reconstruction following the Civil War. But some business leaders have taken a friendlier tone with President Donald Trump, who backs the gerrymandering.
A U.S. Supreme Court decision in April, in a case called Louisiana v. Callais, sharply weakened the federal Voting Rights Act, which had blocked states from breaking apart majority-minority districts. It limited the use of race in redistricting, prompting several Southern states to advance new maps targeting these districts, which are mostly held by Black Democrats.
“These actions are not routine political exercises,” the letter reads. “They are coordinated efforts to silence Black voices at the ballot box and strip communities of representation in American democracy.”
The message is addressed to more than 200 corporations and business groups that signed on to a 2021 letter in support of voting rights, as well as an unnamed number of other corporate leaders. Among the signatories were Amazon, Apple, Cisco, Facebook, Intel, Microsoft, Nike, PepsiCo, Starbucks, Target, Tesla and Unilever USA.
That letter called on Congress to update the Voting Rights Act, including changes that would restore the federal government’s ability to review changes to election and voting laws in states and local governments with a history of discrimination, a practice called preclearance that the Supreme Court effectively halted in 2013.
On Tuesday, the CBC said those companies should issue individual or joint public statements opposing efforts to dilute Black voting strength and dismantle protections in the Voting Rights Act.
The lawmakers also want companies to report on corporate political spending and relationships connected to attacks on voting rights and “discriminatory redistricting schemes.” Companies should accept an invitation to participate in a national gathering alongside civil rights leaders and advocates to discuss voting rights and Black political power, the lawmakers wrote.
The letter asks businesses to respond by June 9.
“Five years ago, corporations across America publicly affirmed that democracy, racial equity, and voting rights matter. Today, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Callais decision, those commitments are being tested in real time,” Rep. Yvette Clarke, a New York Democrat who chairs the CBC, said in a statement.
“Corporations that have profited from Black consumers, relied on Black workers, and benefited from Black communities cannot remain silent while Black political representation is dismantled in plain sight,” Clarke said. “Silence in this moment is not neutrality — it is complicity.”
Corporate leaders warm to Trump
But political attitudes in parts of corporate America, especially among tech firms, have shifted since 2021.
When businesses signed the July 2021 letter, they were acting after the May 2020 murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis, and the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters. Six years later, some titans of American business have taken a more conciliatory approach to Trump and the Make America Great Again movement.
Elon Musk, who leads Tesla, spearheaded the Department of Governmental Efficiency, or DOGE, initiative in 2025 that resulted in the firings and layoffs of thousands of federal workers. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has spoken positively about the president. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, called Trump “more mature” in his second term.
Trump has also led a push against diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. In March, the president signed an executive order targeting DEI practices by federal contractors. The directive followed another anti-DEI order in January 2025 that encouraged the private sector to “end illegal DEI discrimination and preferences.”
Since the Supreme Court’s decision in Callais, some Republicans have portrayed eliminating majority-minority districts as a constitutional imperative. The current districts should be tossed because they were drawn with their racial makeup in mind, they say.
“I don’t think race should be used to help a person because of his race, and I don’t think race should be used to harm a person because of his or her race,” Sen. John Kennedy, a Louisiania Republican, said at a Senate hearing on racial gerrymandering last week.
Rapid remaps
Since the release of the Callais decision on April 29, Florida and Tennessee have changed their maps and Louisiana is expected to follow soon. South Carolina lawmakers tried but failed to advance a new map and Alabama has taken steps to implement a 2023 gerrymander after the Supreme Court lifted a lower court order that had blocked it.
A panel of three federal judges on Tuesday issued a new order halting the Alabama map, which would likely force out one of the state’s two Black Democratic members of Congress if enacted. The judges found that the map was racially discriminatory, even in light of Callais.
Alabama has appealed the decision to the Supreme Court.
“I applaud the three-judge panel for upholding the rule of law and reaffirming that racial discrimination has no place in our redistricting process,” Rep. Terri Sewell, an Alabama Democrat who also signed Tuesday’s CBC letter, said in a statement.
“While we know that this legal battle is far from over, today’s ruling sends a clear message: Black voters in Alabama cannot and will not be silenced.”
Demonstrators rallied outside the Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday, May 12, 2026, as judges weigh challenges to a GOP-supported congressional map. The number 305,968 references the number of signatures of voters seeking to force a statewide referendum vote on the lines (Photo by Jonathan Shorman/States Newsroom)
JEFFERSON CITY, Missouri — Control of the U.S. House may run through a courtroom in Missouri.
In a red brick courthouse across the street from the state Capitol, the seven black-robed judges of the Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday morning weighed the fate of a Republican gerrymander aimed at ousting U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a 11-term Democrat from Kansas City.
In the afternoon, they upheld the map.
Its opponents “failed to show the 2025 Map clearly and undoubtedly violates the requirements” of the state constitution, the court ruled hours after holding oral arguments.
After the U.S. Supreme Court’s late April decision sharply curtailing the use of race in redistricting, much of the legal fight over gerrymandering is moving to state courts. The decision, Louisiana vs. Callais, gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which limited states’ ability to divide districts where a majority of residents belong to a racial minority group.
Southern Republican states have rushed forward new maps over the past two weeks that take advantage of the landmark opinion, adding to a handful of others, including Missouri, that already drew new lines in recent months at President Donald Trump’s behest before the midterms elections this November. Another wave of gerrymanders across the rest of the country will likely follow next year ahead of the 2028 election.
State supreme courts may have the final word on some of the maps. Even if the maps don’t involve issues decided in Callais, like the challenge in Missouri, many states have constitutional or statutory provisions that curb gerrymandering and limit last-minute changes to elections — providing gerrymandering opponents with grounds to challenge new district boundaries.
With federal redistricting lawsuits increasingly difficult, state laws offer gerrymandering opponents another path.
Thirty states have some form of a constitutional requirement for free elections, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. And at least 10 state supreme courts have found that state courts can decide cases involving allegations of partisan gerrymandering, according to a 2024 review by the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
“I think state courts are primarily going to be the place where future fights around these maps are playing out in a post-Callais landscape,” said Alicia Bannon, director of the judiciary program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.
Legal challenges abound
The elevated importance of state courts was on full display Friday, when the Virginia Supreme Court invalidated an election in which voters narrowly approved a Democratic map. The decision leaves a new map in California as the party’s only successful response so far to the GOP redistricting onslaught. Democrats have made a longshot request to the U.S. Supreme Court to block the Virginia ruling.
Lawsuits have already been filed in state courts over new maps in Florida and Louisiana. Alabama’s new map could also face a legal challenge in state court, even after the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for the gerrymander to take effect.
At stake in these courtroom fights is which party will control the U.S. House over the next two years, earning the power to advance or thwart legislation. While Democrats remain generally favored to retake the chamber in the November midterm elections, Republicans will likely emerge from the gerrymandering war with at least a handful of seats secured.
Suddenly, every state supreme court decision — including over a single seat in Missouri — takes on greater significance.
Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Redistricting Foundation, which is helping challenge the Missouri map, told reporters on Monday that the state’s high court had a “spotlight on” it.
“Is the court going to do what it has done in the past in a nonpartisan way that is faithful to their own precedent,” she asked ahead of the decision. “Or are they going to roll over?”
Missouri case
The Republican-controlled Missouri General Assembly in September approved a map intended to leave the state with just one Democrat in Congress, in the St. Louis area. Kansas City was divided among three districts, splitting apart its Democratic-leaning and racially diverse core.
Demonstrators near the Missouri Capitol on Tuesday protested a proposed congressional map aimed at ousting a Democratic congressman in Kansas City. The Missouri Supreme Court held arguments on legal challenges to the map. (Photo by Jonathan Shorman/States Newsroom)
The Missouri Supreme Court considered three challenges to the map. Two similar lawsuits argue that some of the congressional districts don’t follow the state constitution’s requirements that districts be as compact as possible.
A third lawsuit argues that the map shouldn’t be in effect for the 2026 election because opponents in December submitted more than 305,000 signatures seeking to force a statewide referendum vote on the lines. In the past, state officials have paused the implementation of measures subject to a referendum until a vote is held, but in this instance they say the new lines are active.
During Tuesday’s oral arguments, the judges sat almost entirely stone-faced as they listened. Only one judge asked a single question during arguments that stretched for more than an hour, offering no sense of how the court would rule.
“There is no such thing as a perfect map or a perfect district,” Missouri Principal Deputy Solicitor General Kathleen Hunker said.
Jonathan Hawley, an attorney representing Missouri voters who argue the referendum means the map isn’t in effect, said his case will decide whether the people of Missouri “still have a meaningful referendum.”
“The referendum right is the people’s veto,” Hawley said.
The Missouri Supreme Court hours later ruled against both challenges to the maps — allowing the new lines to be used this year.
“Had the drafters intended a referendum petition filing to automatically suspend any act of the General Assembly at issue in the referendum petition, they would have so stated,” the court’s opinion says.
Florida’s GOP gerrymander
Only two Southern states, Florida and Kentucky, allow courts to decide partisan gerrymandering cases.
Kentucky, which has a Democratic governor, hasn’t taken up redistricting this year. But a Florida Supreme Court decision striking down a new map there would effectively offset Democrats’ loss at the Virginia Supreme Court.
Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law a map passed by the state legislature during a special session on the same day as the Callais decision. The new congressional boundaries are designed to hand Republicans up to four additional seats.
Several voting rights groups have sued, alleging the map violates the Florida Constitution. A 2010 amendment approved by voters prohibits districts drawn with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party or incumbent.
“Instead of abiding by this law, the Legislature is defying the will of voters and backing a map that was crafted entirely with partisan intent,” Simone Leeper, senior legal counsel for redistricting at Campaign Legal Center, said in a statement.
The Campaign Legal Center and the UCLA Voting Rights Project have sued jointly over the map.
DeSantis’s office told state lawmakers ahead of this year’s special session that the 2010 amendment requires the state legislature to account for race when drawing districts — and that the provisions regarding race can’t be severed from the rest of the amendment. In effect, DeSantis contends the whole amendment must be thrown out.
“I have a ton of comfort because the Callais decision came out,” Florida state Rep. Alex Andrade, a Pensacola Republican, said. “I got to read it, and it perfectly summarizes exactly why we could, and should, change our 2022 maps.”
Map opponents’ chance of success at the Florida Supreme Court is unclear. The court as recently as 2015 blocked a congressional map as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander, but it has moved to the right in the years since. Six of the seven current justices were appointed by DeSantis and the other was appointed by a different Republican governor.
“The composition of the Florida Supreme Court has changed dramatically since that earlier ruling,” Bannon, the Brennan Center expert, said. “So I think there are questions about will the court be as open to those arguments.”
Process challenges
In other Southern states, map opponents are turning to arguments beside partisan gerrymandering.
The Tennessee chapter of the NAACP has sued Republican Gov. Bill Lee and the state General Assembly to block a gerrymander passed last week from taking effect. The organization alleges Lee violated the state constitution in how he called a special session for a new map.
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, a Republican, has urged a court to dismiss Lee and the legislature from lawsuit because they don’t conduct elections.
Alabama Democrats and voting rights groups are weighing a legal challenge to a new map that would focus on a 2022 amendment to the state constitution. The amendment requires election law changes to be made at least six months before a general election — a deadline of May 3 this year. Alabama’s redistricting special session began the next day.
In Louisiana, state lawmakers have not yet passed a new map after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the state’s current lines as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander because the legislature had previously created a second majority-Black district. Lawmakers are expected to advance a map aimed at ousting one of the state’s two Democratic House members, who are both Black.
After the Callais decision, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry suspended the state’s congressional primary elections although roughly 42,000 absentee ballots had already been cast. Lawsuits challenging the suspension have been filed in both federal and state court.
Too late to change?
Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, a Republican, speaks to reporters on Tuesday. Hoskins predicted disarray if the Missouri Supreme Court blocked a GOP-favored congressional map from being used for the 2026 election, which the justices did not do in a decision published in the afternoon. (Photo by Jonathan Shorman/States Newsroom)
In Missouri on Tuesday, lawyers for Republican state officials took the opposite approach, urging the state supreme court to keep the map in place for the 2026 election, even if the judges strike it down. Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, a Republican, told reporters afterward that preventing the state from using the map now would lead to confusion, even as 12 weeks remain before the primary election.
“It’ll be disarray for the people that have been going to town halls and listening to candidates,” Hoskins said. “It would be disarray for the candidates that are running and going out and meeting voters in their district. And it’d be disarray for the local election authorities and county clerks that have already started instituting” the new map.
Hoskins’ fears turned out to be unfounded, as the court upheld the map.
Cleaver, who is running for reelection, has said that his work ethic or commitment to voters won’t change regardless of his district boundaries.
“If I have to serve the people who live just outside of Columbia and Jefferson City, then I’ll do that,” he said when he filed to run earlier this year.
Attorneys for the ACLU of Missouri, which supported challenges to the map, said it was unfair to Missouri residents for the state to create a problem and then argue it’s too late to change it.
At a rally outside the Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday, ACLU of Missouri Policy Director Tori Schafer expressed confidence the judges would side with map opponents — hours before they allowed the lines to move forward.
“But let me clear,” Schafer said, “democracy did not begin in a courtroom and it will not be saved in a courtroom.”
Florida Phoenix reporter Mitch Perry contributed to this report.
Tennessee Republican leaders unveil their “Immigration 2026” agenda at a news conference in January. Tennessee and other conservative states are mandating that state and local social service providers verify and report the immigration status of the people they serve — in some cases threatening stiff penalties for public employees who fail to comply. (Photo by John Partipilo/ Tennessee Lookout)
An increasing number of conservative states are mandating that state and local social service providers verify and report the immigration status of the people they serve — in some cases threatening stiff penalties for public employees who fail to comply.
Under federal law, immigrants who are in the United States illegally are generally barred from receiving public benefits such as nonemergency health care, food aid and housing help, though a handful of left-leaning states use their own money to provide such benefits.
Supporters of the new verification and reporting laws say they will help curb illegal immigration by making it more difficult for people who aren’t eligible for public aid to receive it.
Government-funded health care, housing aid and the right to have a driver’s license are a “pull factor that encourages illegal immigration,” said Cooper Smith, director of homeland security and immigration at the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank that has worked on policy development with the current Trump administration.
Government benefits, Smith said, are “an incentive for (immigrants) to come here and cross the border and make this their home, and we don’t want to see that.”
In Tennessee, legislators this week sent a bill to Republican Gov. Bill Lee that would require all state and local agencies to verify the immigration status of people who apply for federal, state or local government benefits, and to report those who are here illegally to the legislature and the state’s new immigration enforcement agency.
The measure, which the governor is expected to sign, authorizes the state attorney general to investigate possible violations, and threatens jail time or a loss of state funding for workers or agencies that fail to comply.
The potential penalties in Tennessee’s law are especially strict, but this year Indiana, Utah, and Wyoming also enacted laws requiring state and local agencies to verify the immigration status of people applying for certain benefits. In Indiana and Wyoming, agencies also must report immigrants who are here illegally to federal authorities. Louisiana enacted a similar verification and reporting law last year.
The Indiana and Wyoming laws go beyond the specific individuals applying for aid.
In considering an application for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the Indiana law requires agencies to notify federal authorities if they cannot verify the immigration status of any member of an applicant’s household. Similarly, the Wyoming law requires the state health department and the state department of family services to notify federal immigration authorities if they determine that anyone applying for public benefits resides in a household that includes a person who is here illegally.
Critics say the new state laws will dissuade many people who are eligible for benefits — especially those with family members who are here illegally — from getting help they are entitled to, and force state and local officials to perform an immigration enforcement role for which they are ill equipped.
“They have to do this verification process for everybody that walks in the door. This is something that slows down services for every Tennessean in the name of collecting data and trying to make assessments that folks are not trained to make,” Democratic state Sen. Jeff Yarbro said last month during the floor debate on the bill.
“There’s probably no one who understands enough of the rules to make that determination,” he said. “But we are forcing that decision upon every single government office in the state of Tennessee — it’s just a little bit insane.”
Tanya Broder, an attorney at the National Immigration Law Center, which advocates for immigrants, said the new laws represent an escalation of state anti-immigration efforts. She said the measures demonstrate that conservative states are moving in lockstep with the Trump administration.
“There are many, many states that impose restrictions on access to public to state and local public benefits, but some of these reporting requirements that states are proposing now likely do violate the law,” Broder said. “I think they are sowing a campaign of fear and misinformation.”
Broder added that the fear of penalties might prompt agency workers in Tennessee to overreport and potentially engage in racial profiling.
The Tennessee bill is part of a sweeping package of immigration enforcement measures the state legislature approved this year. Tennessee’s broad immigration agenda was crafted in coordination with the White House, specifically with Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, the architect of the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
Earlier this month, Lee signed a measure that requires state judges to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. And last month, the governor signed a bill that makes it a crime under Tennessee law for an adult to refuse or fail to leave the state within 90 days of a final order of removal. The law also makes it a crime for immigrants to try to enter the state if they have an outstanding deportation order.
Other bills that would require local sheriffs to cooperate with federal immigration agents and make it illegal for people who are living in the U.S. illegally to operate a commercial vehicle or truck in the state are on Lee’s desk awaiting his signature.
Smith, of the America First Policy Institute, said Tennessee is “serving as a model for other states to follow.”
Republicans struggled this year to secure funding for the Department of Homeland Security, Smith noted, “so they know that their ability to get meaningful legal immigration reform, through both houses of Congress and signed by the president, is very, very unlikely,” he said. “So the next step is to do as much as you can at the state level.”
Julia Gelatt, an associate director at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank, agreed with Smith’s assessment of the political situation.
“There are things that the federal government can’t control, or that may be harder to achieve at the federal level, particularly with a Congress that isn’t passing bills,” Gelatt said.
“We know that Stephen Miller advised Tennessee on their immigration bills, and I think that his philosophy is that the federal government and state governments should make life in the United States so hard for people who don’t have legal status that they decide to go home.”
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
Editor’s note: This is the second article in The 50 vs. The One, an occasional series examining the current fraught moment and what evolving — and often deteriorating — state-federal ties mean for the country. Read the first article here.
President Donald Trump is wielding power in unprecedented ways to bring states to heel, marking a dark new chapter in the relationship between the federal government and the states.
Since taking office last year, Trump has punished Democratic-led states that anger him by withholding federal funding and slow-walking assistance. His administration has denied disaster aid to states whose governors are most critical of him, cut childcare and social services funding, launched investigations into blue states and poured immigration officers and military members into liberal cities.
Presidents and Congress have long leveraged federal power to influence the states, funding everything from welfare to highways. And presidents have long faced legal challenges from political adversaries.
But the Trump administration has begun wielding federal resources as a weapon against states, using dollars to cajole and threaten them into complying with its political agenda. Instead of working with Congress to nudge states, Trump is moving unilaterally, bypassing lawmakers and speaking plainly about punishing political rivals — defining an era in American history that scholars call “punitive federalism.”
“These guys are acting like autocrats and trying to destroy our democracy,” said Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, a Democrat. “And you have to understand the role that states play in this. There was a reason why our structure was set up the way it’s set up.”
Ahead of the 250th anniversary of the country’s founding on July 4, Stateline is exploring how the Trump era is transforming the relationship between the states and the federal government. This article is the second in an occasional series examining the fraught moment and what evolving — and often deteriorating — state-federal ties mean for the country, now and in the future.
“States have rights, and thank God we have those rights and the ability to push back, because this Trump agenda is just destructive for our country,” Welch told Stateline. “And I believe we’re going to survive because of our federalism system.”
The tense political moment has underscored the role of states as Democratic leaders across the country file scores of lawsuits and introduce state legislation in attempts to check the president’s actions. State lawmakers have proposed hundreds of new measures that would limit law enforcement and immigration activities to push back against the White House. But Democratic states have had the most success in the courts, where dozens of federal policies have been challenged.
Since Trump took office last year, Illinois alone has led or joined more than 60 lawsuits against the administration. Those suits run the gamut, challenging deployment of the National Guard, immigration enforcement and the withholding of disaster funding. Democratic attorneys general say they are winning in most of the cases that have reached court decisions.
Wendy Bobadilla, who runs a daycare in California, worries about how the president’s actions may harm the hardworking families who rely on her for childcare. (Photo courtesy of Wendy Bobadilla)
While some GOP members of Congress have balked at Trump’s targeting of blue states, many Republicans have stayed silent or defended Trump’s actions.
The White House did not respond to detailed questions for this story. In a statement, spokesperson Davis Ingle told Stateline that the administration “faithfully upholds our Constitution and the immortalized American principles of federalism, the rule of law, and the separation of powers.”
But Trump’s punitive federalism strategy has left real people and communities scrambling to respond to White House moves.
Wendy Bobadilla worries she and other California childcare providers will be forced to close their doors if the Trump administration succeeds in blocking childcare funds to a handful of Democratic-led states.
“I don’t think he understands what he’s doing and how he’s affecting our children,” she told Stateline.
A more powerful executive branch
Federalism is a uniquely American system created by the framers of the Constitution that provides for power sharing between Washington, D.C., and the states.
Since World War II, the federal government under Democratic and Republican presidents has grown in size and scope. But the White House itself has also accumulated more power, said Nicholas Jacobs, a professor of American government at Colby College in Maine.
“It’s not just that power has shifted from states to the federal government,” he said. “Power has shifted to the executive branch specifically and has become more raw in its overt partisan nature.”
Trump has embraced partisanship in new ways, moving beyond policy differences and into raw retaliation, Jacobs said.
“(President Barack) Obama had blue states and red states, and you can see that clearly, but he didn’t seem to openly celebrate the idea that he was penalizing red states and advancing the causes of blue states,” Jacobs said. “Donald Trump actually uses those terms.”
This increasing partisanship and Trump’s deep cuts to federal agencies has strained relationships between the federal government and states, which administer many federal policies and programs.
State and local governments need certainty to create, pay for and staff programs, said Marcia Howard, executive director of Federal Funds Information for States, which analyzes how federal policymaking affects states. But the Trump administration has injected uncertainty and tested the power of the executive by targeting funds that were explicitly appropriated by Congress, she said.
“They are unprecedented,” she said of the administration’s moves. “In general, an administration takes an appropriations bill at its word, and adheres to it.”
Court challenges
In California, Bobadilla worries about how the president’s actions may harm the hardworking families who rely on her for childcare.
In January, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced it was withholding $10 billion in childcare and other social services from California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York. The agency suggested fraud played a role in the decision, though the administration hasn’t offered evidence.
With part-time help, Bobadilla cares for about 14 children out of her home in Palmdale, north of Los Angeles. About a dozen of those kids’ families pay with the help of subsidy programs. The local poverty rate there exceeds regional, state and national averages.
With families commuting up to 90 minutes per day, Bobadilla sometimes opens as early as 4 a.m. and closes as late as 9:30 p.m. to accommodate working-class parents with fluctuating schedules.
Asked what she would tell the president, Bobadilla said, “I would tell him that I’m working very hard, that I’m not committing any fraud, that I wake up earlier than anybody that I know.”
Quotation
States have rights, and thank God we have those rights and the ability to push back.
– Illinois House Speaker Emanuel ‘Chris’ Welch, a Democrat
A federal judge in late March ordered the Trump administration not to withhold the funds. A lawsuit over funding is ongoing.
“He has decided to break the law. He has decided to be blatant and brazen about it. He has decided to be consistent and frequent in his violations,” California’s Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta told Stateline. “He did some of this in Trump 1.0, but the speed and volume of unlawful actions, particularly vis-à-vis the states, is unprecedented.”
Bonta acknowledged the decisions of past presidents have been challenged in courts.
“But it wasn’t every week, time after time,” he said. “This is a different thing entirely, like this is the plan. The plan is to break the law.”
Trump has maintained his strategy of holding hostage congressionally approved funding despite court losses, according to a New York Times analysis of nearly 200 legal cases. Bonta said more than half of the 60-plus cases his office has filed against the administration aim to retrieve funding that was already appropriated by Congress.
“It’s like he’s a repeat offender,” Bonta said. “He’s incorrigible.”
Democratic and Republican state attorneys general do work across party lines on some bipartisan issues, including consumer protection and artificial intelligence. But the resistance to Trump’s expansion of federal power has almost entirely come from the left.
“Honestly, what I think they think is that they’re secretly cheering for us,” Bonta said of his Republican colleagues.
He said Republican states still benefit when Democratic attorneys general win constitutional challenges or get courts to reverse the administration’s funding cuts to states.
“And they get the benefit without having to dare to challenge their dear leader,” Bonta said.
The Republican Attorneys General Association says its members have remained focused on reducing crime in their states during Trump’s second term.
“Tax paying, law abiding citizens in blue states across America are flooding into red states because people care about their safety and their children’s future,” Adam Piper, executive director of the association, said in a written statement. “Republican Attorneys General have always been both freedom’s front line and America’s last line of defense against radicals seeking to upend the rule of law and the American way.”
Maryland Democratic Gov. Wes Moore inspects damage at a library in Westernport, Md., on May 15, 2025, in the wake of flooding in Western Maryland in the previous week. (Photo by Patrick Siebert/Governor’s office)
Disaster assistance
Last May, floods damaged hundreds of homes in Western Maryland, leaving behind more than $30 million in damages to roads, homes, businesses and utility systems in a swath of Republican-leaning counties that voted overwhelmingly for Trump.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency denied assistance for the floods, which hit a conservative region of a solidly liberal state.
Democratic Gov. Wes Moore — a Trump antagonist and potential presidential contender — noted that an aid request from neighboring West Virginia was approved, despite that conservative state submitting a lower amount of flood damages to the feds. He called Maryland’s denial “petty,” “partisan” and “deeply unfair” to the affected communities.
FEMA has said the law requires the agency to closely examine each disaster and the ability of local governments to respond. The agency told The Hill that Maryland’s flood “was not of such severity and magnitude as to be beyond the capabilities of the state and affected local governments to recover.”
Quotation
It’s not just that power has shifted from states to the federal government. Power has shifted to the executive branch specifically and has become more raw in its overt partisan nature.
– Nicholas Jacobs, American government professor at Colby College
Chas Eby, deputy secretary at the Maryland Department of Emergency Management, said the state’s application to FEMA substantiated more than three times the amount of damages needed to qualify for the federal agency’s assistance.
“We were surprised,” he said, noting that a federal disaster declaration could have made funds available to directly aid in the repair of private property.
Trump has rejected disaster aid for Democratic-led states at the highest rate in FEMA’s history, according to Politico, whose March analysis determined that it was three times harder for blue states to receive disaster aid than Republican-led states.
The Maryland denial not only affected those who suffered property damage, but it also has left the state uncertain about the future of disaster aid at large.
“Where we’ve relied on federal support in the past, this is a clear indicator that it may not be available in the future,” Eby said. “And therefore, how do we as state and local emergency managers meet the need? Because the expectations that I have to support disaster survivors and that Marylanders have in their government haven’t really changed.”
In the absence of federal support, Maryland awarded state disaster relief funding for the first time ever. But the initial funds — less than $500,000 — covered just a fraction of the tens of millions in documented needs, Eby said.
Allegany County, Maryland, which has an annual budget of about $150 million, has spent about $8 million so far to repair public infrastructure damaged in the floods, said county spokesperson Kati Kenney. None of that money has gone to individual households or businesses.
“That money was spent just to make it usable, not to make it back to par,” she said. “It was just like a Band-Aid.”
‘It’s not worse, it’s not better’
Many conservatives see the opposition from blue states as the latest pendulum swing of American politics rather than a more significant evolution in federal-state relationships.
“It’s not worse, it’s not better, it’s largely the same,” said Washington state Rep. Jim Walsh, a Republican.
Walsh said he viewed as more egregious the actions from the administration of President Joe Biden, who he said weaponized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in efforts to push coronavirus vaccinations.
The chair of the Washington State Republican Party, Walsh said many of the elected officials in his liberal state were “deep in the throes of Trump Derangement Syndrome,” a frequent pejorative description of the president’s opponents. He said Democratic politicians were wasting millions in the courts to challenge Trump, who he said has not encroached on state authorities.
“The problem in Washington state is not that the Trump administration punishes blue cities or blue states,” he said. “The problem in Washington state is we’ve got people just burning taxpayer dollars so they can get a press release out and a headline.”
Still, Democratic-led states continue to push back on the administration.
State legislators have proposed more than 250 bills in response to federal policies, according to State Futures, a nonprofit coordinating hundreds of Democratic lawmakers across the states. Some of those bills seek to limit federal immigration enforcement in sensitive places such as schools and hospitals, and to allow individuals to sue federal law enforcement for possible constitutional violations.
Democratic state leaders are also emulating some of Trump’s own tactics.
“We have to play their game. And I think the people in my state are beginning to understand this,” said Maryland state Del. David Moon, the Democratic majority leader.
Moon pushed for legislation allowing the state to retaliate against the federal government for withholding funds. The new law, signed by Moore last month, allows the state to place liens on federal property in Maryland or withhold revenue payments to Washington if officials determine the feds are withholding congressionally approved funds in defiance of court decisions.
“It’s going to be weeks of discussion and monitoring with our lawyers and whatever before we do something drastic like that,” he said, noting the ultimate decisions will be left up to the governor. “But we have to be ready.”
Moon acknowledged that the law is “constitutionally dubious” as it’s unclear whether it will be upheld in the courts.
“And I think folks have to admit that,” he said. “But the way this bill works, really, is you take the Trump approach: that you do whatever the F you want within your layer of government.”
Moon said his concerns about the Trump era reach far beyond the usual state-federal spats.
“I think we’re in big trouble, and it’s part of why I am resorting to more unusual thinking and tactics,” he said. “We’re at the 250 mark in the republic. This is when empires fail, and we are having a vast empire decline moment.”
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
A color-coded map illustrates state abortion access in the call center at Chicago’s Family Planning Associates, one of the largest independent clinics in Illinois offering abortion services. Nearly 1 in 4 people traveling to another state for abortion care went to Illinois, according to a recent report. (Photo courtesy of Dr. Allison Cowett)
At Family Planning Associates in Chicago, in the office where staff take phone calls from potential abortion patients, a U.S. map colored in with red and green dry-erase markers notes the latest status of abortion access in every state. The map can change at any time.
In the center of the map’s biggest sea of red is Illinois, outlined in green — showing it’s a state with strong abortion access — surrounded by several states that ban or severely restrict abortion. Illinois is the destination for nearly 1 in 4 people traveling to another state for abortion care, according to a report from the Guttmacher Institute, an advocacy and research organization that supports abortion access and tracks data nationwide.
“Illinois really became kind of a haven state for the Midwest and much of the South immediately post-Dobbs,” said Megan Jeyifo, executive director of the Chicago Abortion Fund, which provides logistical and financial support to people who need abortions.
The state’s geography explains part of its popularity; in five of the six border states, abortion is either banned or largely inaccessible. But Illinois also is among the states that have put in place new policies — along with millions of dollars — to welcome patients who aren’t their residents. Advocates and providers say other safe-haven states should replicate the investments.
Illinois really became kind of a haven state for the Midwest and much of the South immediately post-Dobbs.
– Megan Jeyifo, executive director of the Chicago Abortion Fund
That’s happened most recently in Maine and Washington state, where governors approved funding to support family planning and abortion care, including for out-of-state patients.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that overturned the constitutional right to abortion and allowed states to regulate the procedure, 13 states have implemented near-total abortion bans, and seven others have bans after six to 12 weeks. Although about one-quarter of people who need an abortion now obtain medication by telemedicine, many who live in states with bans still have to travel elsewhere for various reasons, including fear of prosecution.
Guttmacher’s data showed that fewer people traveled for care in the past two years than the peak of 170,000 who traveled in 2023, the year after Dobbs.
That number fell to about 155,000 in 2024, including 35,000 who went to Illinois, the data showed. Last year, an estimated 142,000 abortion patients traveled out of state, with a fairly consistent number, about 32,000, going to Illinois.
The next-highest destination after Illinois was North Carolina, followed by New Mexico and Kansas.
Guttmacher and other advocates attribute part of that decrease in the national numbers to wider availability of telehealth access to abortion medication that can be mailed to patients in other states. There were an estimated 1.1 million abortions across the United States in 2025, about the same amount as 2024 but the highest number since 2009, according to Guttmacher.
Shield laws protect health care providers in many states, including California, Illinois and New York. Those laws have prevented Republican attorneys general in other states, such as Texas and Louisiana, from trying to punish providers who prescribe the drugs.
Louisiana has unsuccessfully tried to charge and extradite doctors from California and New York, and is also suing the federal government to remove the provision that allows abortion medication to be prescribed by telehealth. A federal judge put the case on hold for now as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration completes a safety review.
Policy changes in Illinois
Illinois’ “haven” status is derided by anti-abortion groups, who call the state’s policies extreme.
“The abortion industry in Illinois is the wild west, which is clear by these numbers,” said Mary Kate Zander, president and CEO of Illinois Right to Life, to the Chicago Sun-Times, speaking about the Guttmacher report.
One state changing its laws to restrict abortion access can lead to a significant influx of patients traveling to clinics in other states. Dr. Allison Cowett, chief medical and advocacy officer for Family Planning Associates, said when six-week abortion bans went into effect in Florida and Georgia in May and October of 2024, respectively, many more patients from the South started coming to Chicago.
“Within the first few months after Dobbs, we had more than 1 in 3 patients coming from outside Illinois, and that has maintained for those three, almost four years,” Cowett said.
Illinois also borders Indiana, which has a near-total abortion ban in place. Cowett said Indiana residents were the largest percentage of out-of-state abortion patients at her clinic before 2022, and it has stayed that way.
Jeyifo said when she started as a volunteer with the Chicago Abortion Fund in 2016, the organization couldn’t financially support large numbers of out-of-state patients because Illinois didn’t invest in access the way it does now. The biggest change came in 2018, when Illinois allowed its state Medicaid program to cover abortion procedures.
“We would not have been able to expand our support outside of Illinois residents without that coverage,” Jeyifo said.
Nineteen other states allow their Medicaid program to cover abortion procedures, according to KFF, a health policy research group.
In 2023, Democratic lawmakers in Illinois allocated $10 million from the state health department to establish the Complex Abortion Regional Line for Access, known as CARLA, a hotline for the Chicago Abortion Fund and four area hospitals to help coordinate care. Jeyifo said more than 1,000 people have received assistance through that hotline in the years since.
The state has also helped fill in lost Medicaid funding after Congress passed a provision blocking federal Medicaid payments to certain abortion providers, mainly targeting Planned Parenthood, and it has helped pay for training and other programs that help connect people with care.
In January, the state launched a new partnership with the Chicago-based Michael Reese Health Trust to establish the Prairie State Access Fund, which will provide aid to out-of-state patients in need of reproductive and gender-affirming health care.
“(Illinois) is this model for other receiving states around the country to take up and learn about, because the proximity on a map is important, but the resources that are available once you get to a place are so much more important,” Jeyifo said.
Finding nearby states
The Guttmacher report showed 62,000 of the 142,000 people who traveled came from states with near-total bans, more than double the number who traveled from those states before 2022. But it has declined over the past year, down from 74,000 who traveled from those states in 2024.
The next-highest state for travelers, North Carolina, is relatively close to Georgia and Florida. The number of out-of-state travelers has remained steady there since 2024, even though North Carolina has a 12-week ban and a three-day waiting period for abortions.
In New Mexico and Kansas, about two-thirds of all abortions provided were for people traveling from outside the state, but those numbers are going down. New Mexico is often a destination for people from Texas, and Kansas borders Oklahoma, two states with strict bans. Kansas also borders Missouri; voters in 2024 passed a constitutional amendment legalizing abortion, but access has not returned, and lawmakers are trying to reverse the amendment in this year’s midterm elections.
A staff member at Family Planning Associates in Chicago gathers supplies from a room in the clinic stocked with toiletries, basic clothing, shoes and other items for patient care packages. (Photo courtesy of Dr. Allison Cowett)
Family Planning Associates is one of the largest independent abortion clinics in Illinois. It expanded its staff — including doctors, nurses and front desk workers — during the first year after Dobbs from about 40 people to more than 70 to handle the new patient volume, Cowett said. The clinic also expanded its physical space by about two-thirds.
Many of those who come from the South have never left their home state, Cowett said, and it can be overwhelming for them to come to a big city during an already emotional event. The abortion fund and others help supply a closet in the clinic that is stocked with toiletries, basic clothing, shoes and other items to assemble care packages for patients.
The state has also provided security infrastructure grants to nonprofits to protect against potential attacks, such as a clinic firebombing in Peoria, Illinois, in 2023, two days after Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker signed abortion protections into law. No one was in the building at the time.
Such aid was especially important for the Choices: Center for Reproductive Health clinic in Carbondale, a city at the southern tip of Illinois and the intersection of neighboring states with strong anti-abortion laws: Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee.
It’s a much shorter drive to Carbondale for people in those states than it is to Chicago, said Jennifer Pepper, Choices president and CEO, and it’s a more familiar, smaller area.
The state grant allowed them to harden the physical security of the clinic in Carbondale, Pepper said, which is something they haven’t been able to do for their sister location in Memphis, Tennessee. That clinic provides birth control, wellness exams and midwifery services, but receives no state support.
“We’ve never had state support in all of our 52 years in Tennessee,” Pepper said.
State assistance
Other states with Democratic leadership and protective abortion laws are starting to approve more funding to support reproductive health care.
Maine Gov. Janet Mills signed a budget bill Friday that includes funding for lost Medicaid reimbursements and creates an ongoing $5 million annual appropriation for family planning services. Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson signed a law in late March establishing a new revenue source for abortion care by implementing a tax on health insurance companies that is expected to generate about $10 million in the first year and about $2 million in each subsequent year.
Jeyifo, of the Chicago Abortion Fund, said she hopes to see more of those efforts in other states with laws that are supportive of reproductive health care, including ones with Democratic leadership that could be doing more to expand clinic availability and rescind waiting periods, such as the 24-hour waiting requirement that still exists in Wisconsin before a patient can get an abortion.
“So many states in our region could be doing more just for their own residents, let alone people traveling,” Jeyifo said.
10:39 amEditor's note: This story has been updated to clarify that Chicago Abortion Fund's executive director said Illinois is a model for other states around the country.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
Illinois tracks cannabis sales by in-state versus out-of-state purchasers. A 2023 analysis from Wisconsin’s nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau found Illinois collected $36.1 million in tax revenue in 2022 from out-of-state residents who purchased cannabis in counties bordering Wisconsin.
About half of cannabis sales in 2022 at dispensaries in Illinois counties that border Wisconsin were to out-of-state residents, the analysis found.
Student transportation leaders and society at-large are being asked to rethink how they measure risk at the school bus stop, as a 50-state action plan emerging from a National School Bus Safety Summit late last year calls for a sharper focus on injuries and near-miss collisions caused by illegally passing motorists.
The summit, convened on Dec. 10 by BusPatrol along with the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) and Safe Kids Worldwide, brought together school transportation officials, federal regulators, safety advocates and law enforcement represenatives to examine how often motorists violate school bus stop arms — and what that behavior is really doing to children beyond the worst-case fatalities that make headlines.
BusPatrol operates what is widely regarded as the largest school bus stop-arm camera enforcement network in the U.S. A company official stressed that despite access to a unique trove of video and citation data, independent safety authorities and government agencies must lead on defining the problem and setting policy.
“It’s important that it’s not just the vendors raising the flag,” Justin Meyers, BusPatrol’s president and chief strategy officer, told School Transportation News. “Independent safety authorities and governments need to make these assessments and do this research. We’ll participate to the extent we’re legally allowed, but this can’t be seen as just a company trying to make money.”
From Fatalities to the Full Spectrum of Harm
The National Action Plan for School Bus Safety authored by GHSA and released Tuesday at an event in Washington, D.C., includes 69 recommendations that seek to move the discussion beyond counting deaths to understanding the broader spectrum of harm and what school district, community, legislative and public safety stakeholders can do about it.
The National Association for Pupil Transportation (NAPT) was among the organizations in attendance at Tuesday’s action plan unveiling. Executive Director and CEO Molly McGee-Hewitt spoke alongside GHSA Executive Director Jonathon Adkins and other dignitaries. NAPT told members in an email Wednesday it is “proud and pleased” to be a part of the national discussion on curbing illegal passing.
Of particular interest to student transporters, NAPT noted the recommendations include urging governors to include school bus safety into their Triennial Highway Safety plans, encouraging school districts to implement school bus stop-arm enforcement programs and training school bus drivers to identify unsafe motorist behaviors.
The action plan recommendations include more serious treatment of illegal passing offenses by judges, increased speed limit enforcement in school zones, implementation of walking school buses, and improving post-crash care.
For years, national conversations have centered on the relatively small number of children killed at the bus stop each year. Historically, more than 1,200 children have died in loading and unloading zones, Meyers noted. According to the annual National School Bus Loading and Unloading Survey, which originated in 1970, most of those fatalities were reported in the first decades of the study based on police reports of school bus incidents. But in the decades since, the annual numbers have fallen to a handful a year, though school buses can be just as responsible for fatalities as illegally passing motorists are, if not more so.
Still, Meyers said that focusing on fatalities alone obscures the scale of risk. He pointed to the estimate by the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services (NASDPTS) that 39 million illegal passes of school buses could occur annually. The national action plan noted that figure equates to each school bus in the U.S. being illegally passed once every three days.
“Forty million times a year someone illegally passes a school bus and creates a very dangerous environment for those kids,” Meyers said. “Most of the time, a child isn’t struck. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t harm.”
Summit participants in December explored a largely unquantified middle ground between fatal crashes and clean stops: Non-fatal injuries that may never be captured in formal crash databases, and near-miss events that inflict lasting psychological trauma on students who narrowly avoid being hit — or witness shocking roadway incidents from inside the bus.
BusPatrol has videos from school bus clients that show a student slip in the roadway as a vehicle brakes inches from their face, or an illegally passing tanker truck runs off the road, flips and rolls over, showering the scene in debris.
“Those kids will forever associate getting on and off the bus with the moment they thought they might be killed,” Meyers said, adding that adults attending the summit recounted traumatic incidents from their own childhoods that still affect them decades later.
The action plan urges policymakers and industry leaders to recognize that these experiences are safety outcomes in their own right, even if they do not result in a recorded fatality or “serious injury” in traditional datasets.
Defining and Documenting Near Misses
If injuries are hard to count, near misses are even harder. Yet they are central to understanding risk and trauma.
Current national estimates of illegal passing rely heavily on NASDPTS’ annual one-day survey. Approximately 1,000 school bus drivers in three dozen states manually tallied illegal passes in a single day last spring, and NASDPTS extrapolated results for a figure that indicates how many illegal passes could be happening nationwide across a 180-day school year. That approach has proven useful for counting violations, but not for categorizing the severity of risk.
Meyers suggested adding a category for near-misses, a working definition of which could include any incident where a child or caregiver approaching or leaving the bus has their path impeded by a vehicle that should have stopped, including situations where the person must stop short, hurry or run, or physically jump or move out of the way.
He acknowledged that some stakeholders might prefer a narrower definition that focuses solely on more dramatic, evasive actions.
“The real trauma tends to come from the more extreme events,” he said. “A 7-year-old pausing safely at the end of their driveway while a car rolls by at 20 miles an hour is one thing. A child who slips and falls as a car skids to a stop inches from them is another.”
Options already being used or explored include leveraging onboard cameras and integrated analytics to automatically flag incidents, where a vehicle passes during loading or unloading with a child in the roadway or at the curb, and encouraging school districts to develop internal reporting processes for near-miss incidents, whether or not police or medical responders are involved.
Still, any expansion of data collection will have to navigate the same privacy and policy constraints that currently limit broader data sharing.
Measuring Injuries: Who Owns Illegal Passing Data and Who Can Use It?
One of the central questions raised by the summit and the action plan is how to meaningfully track injuries linked to illegal passing at school bus stops.
Meyers said BusPatrol video cameras are installed on more than 40,000 buses nationwide, a number he added is growing by the month. The company estimates that about 10 percent of the national school bus fleet now operates with some form of stop-arm enforcement camera, including those provided by other vendors.
According to Meyers, 36 states currently have some form of law authorizing automated stop-arm enforcement, with more considering legislation. And several states are actively discussing enabling or expanding stop-arm enforcement authority.
Individual school districts and local agencies see their own violation and incident data. But BusPatrol and other vendors are in a unique position to perceive trends across jurisdictions. That does not mean they can simply publish a national injury and near-miss dataset.
“Each state and each community has their own rules and regulations around the data,” Meyers explained. “Some of it can be shared. In other places, it can’t. In New York, for example, there are significant limits on what can be shared and how.”
Privacy laws, public records rules, contract language and concerns around personally identifiable information all restrict the sharing and aggregation of footage and related records. The result, according to Meyers, is a patchwork.
The action plan effectively calls on federal and state authorities—including GHSA, the National Transportation Safety Board and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, to lead efforts that would: Clarify how stop-arm cameras and incident data may be used for research and safety analysis, not only enforcement; encourage or authorize states to allow carefully structured data-sharing between vendors, school districts and central repositories; and develop consistent definitions and reporting protocols for bus stop injuries and related outcomes.
Meyers said BusPatrol would welcome participating in such efforts but emphasized that vendors alone should not define the narrative. Instead, the focus should be on solving the problem.
“All we’re really asking is for people to take an extra 15 seconds and stop for the bus,” he said. “They’re big, they’re yellow, they have flashing lights and stop signs. They’re meant to be seen. If we all respect that, we can eliminate a tremendous amount of trauma, injury and death.”
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