After two 5-year-old Indianapolis girls separately died from abuse in the last two years, Indiana Republican state Rep. Julie McGuire said lawmakers could not get basic answers from the state agency responsible for the safety of children.

Kinsleigh Welty had been known to the child welfare system before she was found, starving, in a closet in 2024, McGuire told Stateline. The girl died soon after. And Zara Arnold’s death last May raised questions on what state officials did about pleas from her mother to protect the child from her father, who had a documented history of violence.

McGuire said she called the Indiana Department of Child Services to ask what had happened, only to be told the agency could not share details because of state confidentiality law. So, McGuire sponsored a bill, which passed unanimously and became law in March, requiring the agency to promptly release to the public more information when child abuse or neglect results in a death or near fatality, including reports received about the abuse and what actions the department took.

The goal, she said, is to identify patterns that could prevent the next death.

“We have a billion dollars of taxpayer money for this agency, and we have no window into it as legislators who create the policies that DCS is supposed to enforce,” McGuire said. “The only way to fix things and to improve the system is to shine a light.”

Indiana is among several states that have enacted or considered laws this year to increase reporting and oversight of child neglect and abuse. Some of the new laws came after high-profile deaths or abuse cases, with lawmakers citing warning signs such as repeated visits from child services or complaints about unsafe family dynamics. The issue often draws support — even unanimously — across party lines.

Some of the new measures require the disclosure of more information to lawmakers and the public, to illuminate trends that might allow policymakers and social services workers to prevent future cases. Other measures require state agencies to initiate investigations faster or more thoroughly to stop harm.

Oklahoma enacted a law in May that requires school administrators who receive allegations of a student being abused by a school employee to report it to law enforcement within 24 hours. In April, Iowa enacted a law allowing courts to grant investigators access to children in alleged abuse cases even when parents refuse to cooperate. Lawmakers approved both measures without a single dissenting vote.

Also in April, Idaho enacted “Benji’s Law” to require the Department of Health and Welfare to investigate and verify any report alleging abuse and neglect by a caretaker of a high-risk newborn within 12 hours. The bill was named after an infant Benjamin, or “Benji,” who died in Nampa in December despite calls to the agency asking officials to check on him. Families had raised concerns about the baby’s parents, who had prior child abuse convictions and had their parental rights terminated for five other children, the Idaho Capital Sun reported.

AJ McWhorter, a spokesperson for the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, told Stateline that hotline staff will verify within the 12-hour timeframe whether a child under a year old is in a home with certain red flags. Those include whether a parent or guardian is on the central child abuse registry or the infant was a born with neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome.

McWhorter said the agency is confident it can meet the new requirements and will assess staffing needs as they emerge.

But Dr. Mical Raz, a professor of public health and policy at the University of Rochester, cautioned that while everybody wants to prevent child deaths, measures that encourage more and faster reporting and investigations don’t always have the desired effect.

“There’s really no evidence that more reporting and more investigations keeps families safe,” Raz said. “We should stop thinking about parents as the enemies to the children and start thinking about the family unit as a whole.”

Raz said one downside to pushing more reporting and investigations is the disproportionate oversurveillance of certain families, especially Black, brown and low-income families.

The National Coalition for Child Protection Reform notes that more than one-third of all children — and more than half of Black children — will experience an abuse or neglect investigation before adulthood. Critics say many of the conditions that prompt neglect investigations are simply manifestations of poverty.

High-profile cases 

Other states also have introduced or enacted child protection measures this year after high-profile deaths.

In Arizona, lawmakers passed a bipartisan bill, which became law in April, aimed at improving communication between the Department of Child Safety and tribal nations after the death of Emily Pike, a 14-year-old San Carlos Apache girl who disappeared from a group home and was later found dead. Her killing remains unsolved.

In Ohio, a bipartisan group of lawmakers in February introduced a bill to create Kei’Mani’s Law, which would require schools to appoint child protection liaisons.

The measure was named after 13-year-old Kei’Mani Latigue, who was found dead in an abandoned Toledo house after being reported missing in March 2025. Tiara Kasten, her mother, said in a statement advocating for the bill’s passage, “The hurt of losing my daughter, the person who saved my life before her life ever began, will never truly cease. But today, I am using my pain to propel us forward as a society.”

Authorities alleged Latigue had been sexually assaulted and mutilated. Her father has been charged with aggravated murder, rape, kidnapping and other counts.

In Louisiana, lawmakers introduced a bill this session that would expand and clarify how child abuse, neglect and child deaths are reported, after lawmakers said they were not notified about the starvation death of a 5-year-old.

In New Mexico, the state child welfare agency is under scrutiny and facing a lawsuit from the state’s attorney general, Democrat Raúl Torrez, over allegations it misused state confidentiality laws to hide systemic failures.

‘I could see me’

When North Carolina state Rep. Carla Cunningham, who is not affiliated with either party, read through the records about Dominique Moody — a 6-year-old who died in December 2025 after years of severe abuse and neglect — she viewed it through her experience as a nurse.

Cunningham told Stateline she found herself asking many questions she didn’t see answered in police or agency reports about Dominique’s death: Was Dominique verbal? Was she a special needs child? Were there signs that someone trained to recognize abuse or neglect should have caught earlier?

The case prompted Cunningham to introduce a bill bearing Dominique’s name that would create a child welfare case escalation team, expand training for social workers and require more review in high-risk cases with extensive Child Protective Services history.

Cunningham said the goal of the bill, which is currently in committee, is to help agencies and others involved with child welfare recognize “missed signs or patterns” that could prevent future deaths.

Dominique’s case has stayed with Cunningham personally, she said, because she too was raised by people other than her parents, moved from house to house and changed schools about 20 times before graduating.

“When this case came up, I didn’t sleep at night a couple of nights,” Cunningham said. “I could see me.”

A database called Lives Cut Short — a collaborative effort by the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute think tank and the University of North Carolina — compiled more than 4,000 incidents of children who have died from abuse or neglect between 2022 and 2026.Many of the cases, the researchers found, were not counted in state and local statistics.

The tool is public for families, journalists, policymakers and the public to understand patterns of these deaths across state lines. Naomi Schaefer Riley, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told Stateline she hopes lawmakers can find warning signs in the thousands of cases tracked in the database.

“People come to (this issue) in a very shocking kind of way,” Riley said, often after a particular child’s death affects their family, community or state. “But once the immediate grief settles, people begin asking harder questions like how can this be prevented?”

According to the database, only 11 states — Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Nevada, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin — post notifications about any child fatality, near fatality or other “egregious” incidents.

Cunningham said the point of her bill is not to shift blame to agencies such as the Division of Social Services — which she acknowledges is sifting through hundreds of mentally taxing cases regarding death and maltreatment — but about assisting these departments that have staffing challenges.

One of the more glaring red flags in Moody’s case, according to Cunningham, was that the Charlotte police department had gone to the apartment that Dominique was living in 59 times over four years.

“It’s not like we are pushing against the departments of DSS locally. We want to assist. We know the caseload,” she said. “We want to help any way that we can on the front, so we don’t have to be looking at numerous deaths.”

Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org. 

There were fewer homeless people in the United States on a single night in January 2025 than in January 2024, but homelessness increased in 28 states, according to the latest federal count.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development counted 745,652 homeless people in its latest “point-in-time” estimate, down 3% from the year before. The count was conducted before the Trump administration late last year announced a shift away from long-term housing in favor of funding transitional housing with work and addiction treatment requirements.

HUD said the decrease was driven largely by a 4% decline in the number of people in emergency shelter. The number of unsheltered homeless people fell by 3%.

In releasing the new numbers, the Trump administration noted that the overall homeless population has increased 27% since 2013 — proof, it said, that so-called housing first policies that many cities and states have pursued during that time have not been successful.

Among the states, North Carolina saw the largest percentage increase in its homeless population. Its homeless count jumped by 3,886 or 33%, largely because of Hurricane Helene, which displaced thousands of residents in the fall of 2024, prompting the addition of 4,000 emergency shelter beds.

Oregon (up 19%) and Maryland (up 17%) were the only other states that reported increases of more than 15%. Hawaii (down 41%) and Illinois (down 44%) saw the largest percentage decreases.

Nationwide, about 22 of every 10,000 people are homeless on a given night. The state with the highest percentage of homeless people is New York, where 73 out of every 10,000 people are homeless.

One of the big improvements from 2024 to 2025 was a decline in the number of unhoused families with children, which was down 11%.

Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.

Hearing backlash from residents, cities and counties across the country in recent weeks have blocked planned data centers amid concerns over rising electricity prices and environmental harms.

The local actions come as state lawmakers also are looking to limit or repeal the incentives for the centers, which are sprawling campuses of computer servers that store and transmit the data behind apps and websites.

Supporters of the pauses say cities need rules before projects arrive, especially to answer residential concerns about electricity use, energy costs and nuisance issues. Industry supporters argue data centers bring jobs and tax revenue and are an essential part of the nation’s digital infrastructure. They warn that communities that block data centers are sacrificing those benefits.

The Denver City Council this month unanimously approved a one-year moratorium on data centers, halting new zoning permits and site development plans while the city drafts rules for future projects. In April, Oklahoma City approved a similar moratorium that will be in effect until the end of this year, or until the city updates its zoning code. Tulsa, Oklahoma, also approved a temporary stop on new data center construction, though major projects already in the pipeline will be allowed to proceed.

Smaller communities are taking similar steps.

In Illinois, both Bloomington and Normal earlier this month approved six-month moratoriums, and Morgan County took the same action in April. In Michigan, Huron County this week approved a three-year moratorium, joining roughly 20 other Michigan communities that have paused data center construction.

In Georgia, Camden County enacted a six-month moratorium earlier this month, becoming the first community on the state’s coast to do so. And a cluster of counties in North Carolina have hit pause, including Chatham County in February and Orange County (which includes Chapel Hill) in April.

But not all cities are souring on data centers: Cheyenne, Wyoming, this week opted not to proceed with a one-year moratorium after a lengthy public hearing.

A study released at the end of 2024 by researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated U.S. data centers used about 4.4% of U.S. electricity in 2023, with projected use rising to between 6.7% and 12% by 2028.

A March Gallup poll found that seven in 10 Americans would oppose the nearby construction of data centers for artificial intelligence (AI), higher than the 53% of respondents who said they would oppose living near a nuclear power plant.

Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org

Private equity firms own nearly 3 million apartment units, about 13% of the total apartments across the country, according to a new analysis from watchdog group Private Equity Stakeholder Project. 

And most have been fairly recent purchases. The companies acquired more than 1.7 million of those, or 57%, since 2018, and about 45% of them since 2021, the report found.

More than two-thirds of those units are located in just 10 states: Texas, Florida, California, Georgia, North Carolina, Colorado, New York, Arizona, Virginia and Washington.

Texas has the highest number of private equity-owned apartments, the analysis said, with more than 1,900 properties and nearly 580,000 units. 

Private equity firms own nearly 1 in 3 apartment units in Georgia and almost 1 in 4 in North Carolina, the report found. 

Private equity firms use pooled investments from funds, endowments and wealthy individuals to buy a controlling stake in a company, try to maximize its value — often by cutting costs — and then sell it at a profit.

The metropolitan areas of Atlanta; Austin, Texas; Charlotte, North Carolina; Dallas-Fort Worth; and Orlando, Florida, have private equity ownership shares above 30%. 

Many of the states with the highest private equity ownership also have seen some of the largest increases in “cost-burdened” renters, the report said, meaning they spend at least 30% of their income on rent and utilities. Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, Texas and Florida were among the six states with the biggest increases in such renters. 

Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org. 

Conversations with survivors of sexual abuse left Missouri state Sen. Tracy McCreery wondering what could have prevented the harm, leading her to sponsor a bill that would require clergy and religious workers to report suspected child abuse or neglect.

Her bill would have forced ministers to report even if they learned of abuse during confession or another religious rite. She urges people to view the issue through the lens of child safety and not against religion.

“Children are just very vulnerable and it’s up to us as adults to not allow them to be harmed,” the Democrat told Stateline. “There shouldn’t be an exception for adults that know about something and just don’t report it.”

Her bill failed to advance as the Missouri legislative session drew to a close. Other state lawmakers across the country also are grappling with the question of who should be required to report suspected child abuse or neglect, known as “mandated reporters.”

Some legislators are weighing whether clergy should be included — and whether they should be forced to reveal information from confessions. Other lawmakers are wrestling with whether sports coaches, talent agents, camp leaders and other professions with access to children should be mandated reporters.

The religious freedom question played out most recently in Washington state. A Washington law enacted last year requires clergy to report suspected child abuse and neglect, even when they receive the information through confidential communication during a religious rite, such as confession. Catholic bishops and then Orthodox churches sued, saying it violated their First Amendment right to religious freedom. The U.S. Justice Department joined the lawsuit on the bishops’ side.

Confession is considered a sacred rite in the Catholic faith. Penitents confess their sins to a priest, who is forbidden by church law from revealing anything said. The Washington law “puts Roman Catholic priests to an impossible choice: violate 2,000 years of Church teaching and incur automatic excommunication or refuse to comply with Washington law and be subject to imprisonment, fine, and civil liability,” the bishops’ suit said.

A federal judge blocked enforcement of that portion of the law, and the state eventually agreed to drop the obligation. Clergy remain mandated reporters, but state prosecutors do not enforce reporting requirements related to confession.

In New York, a pending bill would add any “clergy member or other minister of any religion” to the list of required reporters, similar to a Kansas bill that passed the state House but died in the Senate this session. Both bills would exempt information received through a confession.

South Dakota lawmakers also considered adding clergy to the state’s list of mandated reporters this year, with exemptions for confession, though that proposal failed in committee. Church opponents said requiring faith leaders to make “subjective” calls on whether difficult life circumstances or poverty amount to reportable abuse or neglect would interfere with the clergy-parishioner relationship, and run afoul of First Amendment protections, the South Dakota Searchlight reported.

A pending Vermont bill, however, aims to end the mandatory reporting exception for confession.

McCreery rejects the idea that an adult should be able to confess to abuse in a religious setting without prompting a report, and thinks there are loopholes in reporting laws that undermine child safety.

“That really repulses me,” she said. “Why are we not thinking about our obligations to protect the child?”

But Chris Motz, senior counsel with First Liberty Institute, which pursues religious freedom cases, said the Washington litigation should serve as a lesson to other states considering similar bills.

“The lesson for state legislators is going to be that they have to respect long-standing religious rights, while balancing the important interests in safeguarding children,” he said. “We don’t have to always see things as sort of a winner take all, this or that. We can do a little bit with both hands.”

Carrying the legal burden

The bills sometimes define “clergy” widely, including not only ordained leaders such as priests and rabbis, but also those who serve as spiritual leaders of any religious community, church or sect.

Michael W. Halcomb, an ordained minister and assistant professor at Montreat College in North Carolina, told Stateline that if abusers know clergy must report anything disclosed in counseling or confession, they may never seek help at all.

“If reporting is mandated, abusers will likely never come forward for help or counseling,” Halcomb said. “That means the abuse stays completely hidden no matter what happens.”

Halcomb said many pastors are not equipped to determine where “spiritual guidance ends and a formal criminal confession begins,” which could complicate broad reporting mandates.

“Whoever has the ability to isolate a child, in other words, should have to carry the legal burden to report.”

But Vermont Democratic state Rep. Esme Cole introduced a bill seeking to repeal the state’s clergy-confidentiality exception. Cole said the bill is not aimed at one denomination or only at what is said in confession. She said it is also about abuse known about by church leaders that is never reported; she wants such leaders to be required to report as well.

The issue is personal, Cole told Stateline. A close friend, she said, is an adult survivor of physical and emotional abuse that happened in a church setting when he was about 10. The priest accused of the abuse, she said, never faced discipline and was instead moved elsewhere.

Cole calls it the “pass the trash” loophole.

“When there’s bad behavior, and by bad behavior I mean real abuse committed by a member of the diocese they move them to the next church over or two churches over,” Cole said. “If we want to stop that kind of movement in its tracks, it needs to be reported.”

Cole’s proposal comes against the backdrop of a long history of clergy abuse allegations in Vermont’s only Catholic diocese. After the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2024, another 118 people submitted confidential claims, after previously settling 67 lawsuits for about $34.5 million, VTDigger reported.

Who else should report?

Other states are debating whether to add coaches and other professionals with access to children to mandated-reporter lists.

If the goal is protecting children, Halcomb said, states should look beyond churches and impose reporting duties on “anyone with unsupervised authority over minors,” including club sports coaches, private tutors and camp volunteers.

This month, Connecticut passed legislation requiring paid municipal youth camp directors, assistant directors and staff members age 21 or older to serve as mandated reporters.

Although the South Dakota clergy bill failed, the legislature did approve a separate measure requiring any “coach of a school activity” to be a mandated reporter. Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden signed it into law in March.

California expanded its definition of mandated reporters to explicitly include certain school volunteers, governing board members and private school employees as of July 1, 2026, and requires annual mandated-reporter training. The state also enacted a law last year that added talent agents, talent managers and talent coaches who work with minors.

Beth Sanborn, a retired Pennsylvania police officer, now leads other school resource officers in mandated-reporter training sessions as a Montgomery County School Safety Coordinator. She asks them to imagine being pressed to describe to a stranger their last sexual encounter.

The question elicits nervous giggles from flustered adult officers, she said. She then asks them to think of a young child who has been sexually abused by a relative, and how the fear and shame can be overwhelming enough for them to not seek help.

“What if you’re an 11-year-old kid and what if it was nonconsensual? What if it was your uncle?” Sanborn said. “Do you really want to share that with a stranger? It became a shared responsibility for us who are trained to recognize these signs.”

In Pennsylvania, Sanborn said she saw a complete shift in mandated reporting after 2012, when the state enacted a law that requires school employees and contractors with direct contact with children to receive training on recognizing and reporting child abuse. The laws were enacted in the aftermath of the Jerry Sandusky scandal at Penn State.

Sandusky, a former assistant football coach, was convicted in 2012 of sexually abusing young boys. The scandal led to the dismissal of Joe Paterno, Penn State’s revered longtime football coach, who was criticized for not doing enough after learning of an allegation involving Sandusky as early as 1998.

Sanborn thinks some school officials, from teachers to officers, hesitate to report because of a common misconception they must prove abuse occurred. The point of mandated reporting, she said, is for adults to pass along a reasonable concern before a child is harmed.

“The school resource officer gets to see one facet of a kid’s behavior. The coach gets to see another. The guidance counselor sees another. The favorite teacher sees another.”

Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.