Stateline

CINCINNATI — For four years, Kimberly Dudley has worked on the front line of the Affordable Care Act as a navigator, helping Ohioans solve the puzzle of buying private insurance on the federal HealthCare.gov marketplace. But the job is harder now, the answers scarcer. In one of its first acts, the second Trump administration cut annual funding for navigators by 90%, from $100 million to $10 million, arguing the program was wasteful.

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TOPEKA — Social workers nationwide directed furious complaints toward their national association, demanding accountability, transparency and an external review of finances in the wake of a structural realignment that jettisoned 14 state-level leaders. Four state chapter boards of directors resigned in protest and other state leaders wrote letters to the National Association of Social Workers board of directors after it announced the reorganization in November.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday night that aims to preempt states from enacting rules governing artificial intelligence, a major departure from the typical federalist structure of American government that Trump said was necessary because of the issue’s high stakes. In an early evening signing ceremony in the Oval Office, Trump said the order would position the United States to win a competition with China to dominate the burgeoning AI industry.

Attorneys for the states of Florida and Texas filed another lawsuit this week seeking to restrict access to a medication abortion drug and rescind the approval of its brand-name and generic versions dating back to 2000. It’s the latest in a series of actions taken by state Republican officials to limit how mifepristone, one of two drugs used to end a pregnancy before 10 weeks, can be dispensed.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture will begin next week to block nutrition assistance funding for states led by Democrats that have not provided data on fraud in the program, Secretary Brooke Rollins told President Donald Trump at a Cabinet meeting Tuesday. USDA sought data from states earlier this year related to their administration of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits, Rollins said Tuesday.

by Sarah Ladd, Stateline November 10, 2025 The United States Supreme Court has declined to revisit the 2015 landmark ruling that gave same-sex couples marriage equality, a failure for former Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis. Davis made national headlines in 2015 for refusing to issue marriage licenses to several same-sex couples based on her religious beliefs.

The U.S. Supreme Court temporarily blocked Friday night a lower court’s order that the Trump administration pay for a full month of food benefits, hours after some states began loading nutrition assistance funds on payment cards held by the 42 million Americans who use the program. In a two-page filing, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson accepted the government’s request to pause a Thursday order from Rhode Island Chief U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell while a lower appeals court hears the case.

This report has been updated. The U.S. Department of Agriculture told states Friday it was releasing full November funding for the nation’s major food assistance program that helps 42 million people afford groceries, complying with a federal court order issued Thursday.

WASHINGTON — All 50 states have applied for the $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program in Republicans’ “big, beautiful” law, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said Thursday. States had from Sept. 15 through Wednesday to apply for the program, which was authorized under the mega tax and spending cut package passed by Republicans and signed into law by President Donald Trump. The fund is intended to offset the budget impacts on rural areas due to sweeping Medicaid cuts.