I decided to write about at each & every one of the 32 states with supreme court elections this year.
Why? On abortion, redistricting, death penalty, & more, these institutions & their elections remain so critical.
So here's everything you need to know. NEW from me:
One January 2025 legal filing on behalf of a man stopped and searched by police in Harrisonburg, a rural city on the edge of Shenandoah National Park, describes how the state’s probation and parole department has provided monthly lists of people with waivers to the Harrisonburg Police Department. According to the legal filing, city police officers regularly make calls to the dispatcher to ask whether a particular person is on the list. The man, who was searched during his stop because his name was on the list, ultimately had his case dismissed after it was revealed that police were relying on an old list when they searched him. Aaron Cook, a Harrisonburg attorney and president of the Virginia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, told Bolts that prosecutors have used the waivers in every felony plea deal in the city for more than a decade. Some of his clients have had their waivers extended along with their probation because they were unable to pay court costs. “It was so ingrained that you had to sign it or you didn’t get your deal,” he said. “There’s a lot of issues with it.”
Virginia’s governor vetoed a bill that would’ve blocked prosecutors from forcing people to waive 4th Amend rights during plea deals
@laurengill.bsky.social reports how some VA police depts turn these waivers into a sort of dragnet for warrantless searches boltsmag.org/virginia-fou...
I want to look back on this piece tonight as a hysterical overreaction. Because that will mean the peoples and the cultures of Iran will have survived.
My latest for @boltsmag.org
PA Supreme Court Reins in Life Sentences for Felony Murder boltsmag.org/pennsylvania...
Trump has surged large federal deployments to LA and Chicago, the 2nd and 3rd largest cities in the nation, but, while there have been arrests and operations here, not to its largest and most heavily immigrant, NYC. For @boltsmag.org, I took stock of local leaders' thinking around how to prepare
As the number of people in detention climb, so have the deaths: The 33 fatalities in 2025 were the most in a single year on record since the Department of Homeland Security started operating in March 2003.
Reporting w/ Allison McCann and Emiliano Rodríguez Mega
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/29/u...
Yesterday New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill signed a trio of bills protecting the state's immigrants.
New Jersey is now the 10th state (and 4th in the past year) to pass legislation outlawing local law enforcement partnerships with ICE via the 287(g) program.
boltsmag.org/new-jersey-i...
NEW: Virginia lawmakers just passed a bill that'd forbid sheriffs and local police from contracting with ICE, if ICE doesn't say it'll follow state laws and agree to let its agents be prosecuted.
Everyone seems to agree that'd spell the end of ICE contracts in Virginia:
boltsmag.org/virginia-bil...
Miliama Suli, matriarch of the American Samoan community of Whittier, Alaska, died this weekend.
Through her last moments, even as she was sick and clearly soon to die, the state prosecuted Mili for alleged voting crimes. It’s a wild case and worth a few minutes of your time if you’re unfamiliar:
Houston’s mayor first said that city police don't cooperate with ICE. Then local reporting showed that they very much do. Now, he’s basically making it HPD policy to prolong detention and traffic stops when ICE requests it
www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston...
Remember, as Jared Polis argues that Tina Peters was punished too harshly, that this is how his Department of Corrections has treated everyday, non-famous prisoners: required labor for almost zero pay, and possible solitary confinement if you decline to work.
Read this by @brycecovert.bsky.social:
A Texas woman spent 22 years of her life behind bars for a terrible crime she didn’t commit, finally was released & exonerated, but b/c the wrongful conviction destroyed her legal status, she’s now set to be deported. www.texasmonthly.com/news-politic... @texasmonthly.bsky.social
I can’t stop thinking about Gustavo’s truck.
He was pulled over on a road in Minneapolis, shackled by federal agents, and almost shipped more than 1,300 miles away — to El Paso.
My hometown now echoes in every city seeing harsher immigration enforcement.
This story, from @natezuke.bsky.social, is absolutely wild. A trans woman who never changed her gender marker was issued a letter invalidating her license. At the DMV they cut up her license, which had an "M" marker.
www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-new...
Another reporter arrested by ICE. Estefany Rodríguez, a reporter for Nashville Noticias and Univision 42 Nashville, faced death threats in Colombia, came to the U.S. legally and had applied for asylum. Now she is being sent back. Nashville Banner got the story
nashvillebanner.com/2026/03/05/j...
our whole staff at Bolts worked together to tackle reader questions about local and state responses to the federal immigration dragnet. lots of info here: boltsmag.org/how-state-an...
anyway i don't know much about Givens beyond the scandals that have made headlines in recent years. was clearly not expecting this kind of blowout. very curious to see what happens next -- she faces the same crises Creuzot struggled with, from an overcrowded and deadly jail to state interference
Creuzot had a lot of backing, but Givens also had support from some notable figures in DFW like Christopher Scott, who was wrongfully convicted of murder in Dallas and has become an avid and impressive activist since his 2009 exoneration, more bg on him here innocenceproject.org/news/intervi...
The most pointed critique from Givens during the campaign was over this scandal involving missing evidence, w/ her arguing that Creuzot downplayed it, see this campaign video www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mbkz...
Givens and Creuzot have an interesting history — she oversaw a high-profile murder case years ago where questions about missing evidence eventually snowballed into a scandal over Dallas police wrongfully deleting terabytes of data www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/d...
Givens, who's basically now the next DA since she faces no GOP candidate in November, had some rocky years on the bench and is now appealing state sanctions over allegations that she let a court reporter impersonate her during virtual hearings and wrongfully detained someone after being recused
Creuzot, also a former judge, beat a GOP incumbent in 2018 w/ backing from reform groups bc he supported jail diversion and dropping petty charges related to homelessness or addiction—policies that drew intense backlash from GOP lawmakers who then passed new restrictions on local DAs
some bg
one stunning down-ballot result in TX last night that folks might’ve missed was the ouster of Dallas’ two-term DA, John Creuzot, by Amber Givens, an embattled former judge who previously clashed w/ the DA in her court www.keranews.org/elections-20...
Chris's conviction was overturned & he's been out of Angola since November, but the state is *still* trying to reinstate his guilty verdict & death sentence. The family of the girl he was accused of killing now believes deeply in his innocence & has filed a remarkable amicus brief:
The Massachusetts Department of Correction has been fighting me for months, trying to withhold data about its collaboration with ICE.
Yesterday, I won that fight, and obtained records showing that the state has transferred more than 2,000 people into ICE custody since 2009.
A quick thread:
new: highlands reit, a small chicago-based real estate firm, is renting an empty prison it owns in colorado to ice and private prison giant geo group.
highlands is part of a network of private contractors hoping to get a cut of the $45 billion allocated to warehouse immigrants through 2029.
Before Arkansas Gov. Sarah Sanders announced a megaprison a mile from his house, Colt Shelby hadn’t voted in 15 years.
Now he says he won't miss another election.
Ahead of Tuesday's special election, I took a look at how incarceration has become the race's biggest issue in a deeply red district.
NEW: Black voters in Mississippi are on the brink of a major victory — a federal judge ordered the state to redraw its state supreme court districts to ensure greater Black representation.
But GOP lawmakers are dragging their feet for now, looking toward SCOTUS & its Callais order to "save" them:
incarcerated survivors continue to organize for these reforms, see this recent story from @victorialaw.bsky.social on a resentencing bill that they're pushing this year in MA -- including by testifying about horrific abuse in public legislative hearings boltsmag.org/massachusett...
