Good morning, it’s Thursday, August 1, 2024. What a long year July was. In today’s edition, Maryland enacts first-in-the-nation gift card law; Reynolds spearheads education savings push; Craig, Ayotte lead New Hampshire governor primaries:
Top Stories
CONSUMER PROTECTION: Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) has signed legislation requiring stores to encase gift cards in secure packaging. The law also requires merchants that sell gift cards online to register them with the Attorney General’s office. (CBS News)
Maryland has become the first state to pass legislation aimed at cracking down on gift card theft, which account for hundreds of millions in losses every year.
EDUCATION: Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) will lead the American Legislative Exchange Council’s Education Freedom Alliance, a group that backs educational savings accounts. Reynolds says the group aims to pass ESA programs in 25 states by next year; 12 states have already enacted school choice laws. (Iowa Capital Dispatch)
Iowa, at Reynolds’s behest, kicked off the latest wave of education savings programs back in January 2023.
ABORTION: The Utah Supreme Court will rule Thursday whether the state’s near-total abortion ban should remain blocked until a lower court hears arguments over its constitutionality. Utah lawmakers passed a “trigger” ban that would have taken effect after the Dobbs decision in 2022; a state district court put the law on hold. (Salt Lake Tribune)
MINIMUM WAGE: The Michigan Supreme Court ruled in favor of two 2018 ballot measures that raised the minimum wage. The court ruled the legislature acted inappropriately when it approved those ballot measures before voters got a chance to act, and then rewrote the measures to weaken their provisions. The ruling means Michigan’s minimum wage will rise from $10.33 to at least $12.33 by February 21, 2025. (Detroit News)
GUN POLITICS: A federal judge has struck down New Jersey’s ban on AR-15 rifles and upheld a prohibition on large-capacity magazines. A 1990 law bans “assault firearms,” but the judge limited his ruling specifically to the Colt AR-15. Both gun rights advocates and gun safety advocates promised to appeal. (New Jersey Monitor)
WILDFIRES: Parties involved in lawsuits over last year’s Lahaina wildfires on Maui are close to a $4 billion settlement, Hawaii Gov. Josh Green (D) said Wednesday. More than 600 lawsuits have been filed over the fires that killed 102 people and wiped out an historic town. (Associated Press)
ENERGY: Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R) signed three bills aimed at boosting energy production, including one measure that creates a state fund to assist with the development of renewable energy projects. Another of the bills would allow companies to store carbon dioxide in depleted oil and gas reservoirs. (Anchorage Daily News)
In Politics & Business
NEW HAMPSHIRE: A new Emerson College poll finds Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig (D) leading the Democratic primary over Executive Councilor Cinde Warmington (D), 33% to 21%. On the GOP side, former U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R) leads former state Senate President Chuck Morse (R) 41%-26%. (Emerson)
OHIO: Lt. Gov. Jon Husted (R) has banked $5 million ahead of his widely expected 2026 campaign for governor. Attorney General Dave Yost (R) has $1.5 million on hand, new campaign finance filings show. (Associated Press)
MORE: Citizens Not Politicians, the group backing a constitutional amendment requiring independent redistricting reform, raised $23 million in the first half of the year. Much of the money came from liberal big-donor groups including The Sixteen Thirty Fund, Article IV and the American Future Foundation. (Cleveland Plain Dealer) Gov. Mike DeWine (R) has come out against the proposed amendment. (Ohio Capital Journal)
MISSISSIPPI: Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann (R) and Auditor Shad White (R) used the Neshoba County Fair to trade jabs Wednesday, previewing a likely 2027 gubernatorial showdown. White accused Hosemann of killing anti-DEI legislation; Hosemann said he was surprised White wasn’t out on a book tour. (Mississippi Today)
COLORADO: An initiative to ban hunting and commercial trapping of mountain lions and wild cats has qualified for the November ballot, after backers turned in 60,000 more signatures than necessary. There are an estimated 3,800 to 4,400 mountain lions in the state today. (Denver Post)
By The Numbers
$1.2 billion: The amount of lost production suffered by America’s pork industry between 2016 and 2020 due to porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome, a persistent viral disease first identified in the late 1980s. (Cedar Rapids Gazette)
$1.2 billion: The amount Indiana’s Public Retirement System has divested from Chinese companies over the last year, after lawmakers passed a bill requiring divestment in 2023. The pension fund hit its goal four years ahead of schedule. (Indiana Capital Chronicle)
Off The Wall
A New York City man is in custody after he was arrested while trying to take or remove license plates from two Secret Service vehicles protecting security for Vice President Kamala Harris’s stepdaughter. The man likely didn’t know he was damaging government vehicles, officials said; he had previously posted on social media about cars parked in his Tribeca neighborhood. (NBC News)
Beachgoers at Misquamicut Beach in Rhode Island got a rude surprise this week when hundreds of thousands of dragonflies swarmed the area. Experts say the insects typically migrate en masse when their bog and swamp habitats dry up. (UPI)
Officials in West New York, N.J., honored U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez (D) in 2013 by renaming a public school in his honor. Now that Menendez has been convicted on federal bribery charges, the school will remove his name from its signs, Mayor Albio Sires confirmed Wednesday. (New Jersey Globe)
Awkward: Sires is the man who replaced Menendez in the U.S. House after Menendez was appointed to the Senate in 2006.
Quote of the Day
“If you are not serving constituents’ interests, they can throw you out, but if there is nobody to put in their place, you can’t throw the bum out.”
— John Marion, executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island. More than half the seats in Rhode Island’s Assembly will be uncontested this year after the number of candidates filing for office dropped substantially. (Boston Globe)