Two Rulebooks: While Washington Stalls, the States Rewrite Daily Life

The Fine Print: From a Receipt to a 165-Year-Old Clause

For a hundred and sixty-five years, Rhode Island's law books have quietly carried the state's 1861 ratification of the Corwin Amendment—a proposed amendment that would have made slavery permanent and beyond the reach of Congress. This week, a bill to repeal that ratification finally got its hearing. It set the tone for the whole week: state legislatures down in the fine print, the clauses and surcharges and exclusions most people never read until one of them lands on them. In the same seven days, Louisiana sent a ban on debit-card surcharges to Governor Jeff Landry's desk (Senate Bill 254, passed 36-0 in the Senate and 83-14 in the House), Illinois cleared the Menopause Equity and Care Act with 61 sponsors and moved a bill barring copays and prior authorization for seizure-detection devices, and California advanced the Digital Financial Asset Banking Act—a post-FTX rulebook for banks holding crypto—through three committee votes (9-0, 15-0, 15-0). New Jersey took up provisional licensing for foreign-trained doctors and a stalkerware crime; Pennsylvania weighed an Ebony Alert and a 3,000-megawatt grid-storage mandate; Ohio introduced the Take the Dough, We Gotta Know Act to put voucher schools under public-school accountability rules.

Welcome to The Tenth

You know the Sunday shows. Half the hour is a politician dodging the question, the other half, pundits guessing who wins the next election, and none of it ever leaves Washington. The Tenth is the opposite. Same Sunday morning slot, 20 minutes, non-partisan: the bills actually moving through America’s 50 statehouses and Congress, what they do, and what changes for the people who live under them. No panel. No side. Plain English, bill first. Powered by amendment.app [https://amendment.app/?utm_source=the-tenth&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=trailer&utm_content=show-notes].

Demolition and Construction: One Week, Two Job Sites

By four votes—216 to 212—the U.S. House voted to weaken the Clean Air Act for the first time in its 55-year history. The EPA scrapped the first federal limits on four PFAS “forever chemicals,” the Supreme Court narrowed the Voting Rights Act 6-3 in Louisiana v. Callais, and Congress again punted on the Section 702 surveillance program. In Washington this week, the work was demolition. In the state capitols, it was construction. Maryland Governor Wes Moore signed the Utility Relief Act (House Bill 1532), making Maryland the first state to require data centers to pay for the grid upgrades they drive. Georgia (Senate Bill 540) became the first state to require AI chatbots to disclose they aren’t human; Oklahoma (Senate Bill 504) became the 17th to fully ban child marriage. States built safety nets too: Colorado's mandatory lethality assessment for domestic-violence calls (House Bill 1009), Pennsylvania’s Greg Moyer’s Law on school AEDs (Senate Bill 375), and Ohio’s FIND Act for missing-person reports, which passed 96-0. And the bipartisan bills kept moving—Mississippi’s child-care tax credit cleared 122-0 in the House and 48-1 in the Senate. One country, two job sites: a teardown in Washington and a build-out in the laboratories of democracy. For the full text, status, and plain-English breakdown of any bill mentioned, head to amendment.app [https://amendment.app/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=the-tenth&utm_content=ep6-description].

The Boundary Line: Five States Fence In Personal Data

Maryland just became the first state in the country to ban surveillance pricing in food retail. House Bill 895 stops grocery stores and delivery apps from using algorithms or personal data to charge different shoppers different prices for the same gallon of milk—House 100-31, Senate 41-1, signed by Governor Wes Moore on April 28. It happened in the same week the Department of Homeland Security quietly shut down the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, the last independent watchdog over ICE. In the same seven days, New York’s Senate moved Senate Bill 1422 to let residents sue companies that scan their face or fingerprints without consent, Vermont passed House Bill 814 putting brain signals under the same legal protection as a fingerprint, Vermont also moved House Bill 211 creating a one-button portal to wipe every data broker’s file on you, Minnesota’s Tim Walz signed House File 1606 making Minnesota the first state to ban AI nudification apps (Senate 65-0), and New Jersey extended Daniel’s Law to victim advocates and forensic nurses. Connecticut’s Ned Lamont signed House Bill 5003 lifting workplace-assault pay for teachers and nurses to 100% of wages. Louisiana, New York, Alaska, Ohio, and Georgia moved healthcare bills filling federal vacuums. Tennessee passed House Bill 7002 unlocking mid-decade redistricting; South Carolina filed its own. Five different invasions, five different states, one shared answer: it’s your face, your file, your price, your brain, your image—and the courthouse is open. Follow every bill at amendment.app.

The Cartographers and the Coders: Two Maps Being Drawn at Once

Florida just redrew its congressional map four years ahead of the next census, flipping its delegation from 20-to-8 Republican to a projected 24-to-4—and three lawsuits were filed within hours of the bill's passage. Two days later, the Wall Street Journal reported the White House is pressuring Southern Republican leaders to redraw their maps mid-decade too. Within 48 hours, twenty-five South Carolina Republicans introduced a bill to do exactly that. In the same seven days, Connecticut passed the most comprehensive state AI law in the country (Senate Bill 5, 32-4 / 131-17), Iowa became the first state to put hard rules on AI chatbots talking to children (Senate File 2417, 48-0 / 95-0), New York moved to let residents sue companies that scan their faces without consent (Senate Bill 1422), and California advanced a bill to cut the license-plate-reader pipe to ICE (Senate Bill 1013). We also cover North Carolina's $319M Medicaid rescue (House Bill 696), Louisiana's pharmacy benefit manager reform (House Bill 1236), New Jersey's reproductive-care shield (Senate Bill 2260), Georgia's statewide tow database (Senate Bill 569, 45-5 / 160-0), the Senate's fifth war powers vote on Iran (47-50), and the EPA rescinding the 2009 endangerment finding. Two state-level projects, running at the same time. The cartographers are redrawing the maps. The coders are writing the rulebook. Follow every bill at amendment.app.