🗞️Data centers, immigrant doctors, abortion initiatives and more

Good afternoon. Here’s what you missed from the Stateline team last week.

Measures asking whether voters want to ban data centers are on ballots in dozens of localities. A Trump administration rule could make it harder to attract doctors from other countries to alleviate the physician shortage. The number of public defenders is shrinking, leaving some defendants locked up for long periods without representation.

We also have stories on Gen Z’s stance on abortion initiatives in two states, the money behind data centers and strategies that led to a historic homicide decline.

As always, thanks for reading.

In the course of a single election cycle, the backlash against data centers has grown from an issue at local planning commission and city council meetings to become a flashpoint in state and federal races across the country. Candidates who once touted data centers as an economic boon have backtracked, and voters in at least three dozen cities, counties and townships will consider ballot measures in November that could ban data centers in their communities. Analysts say the opposition to data centers has come from Republican and Democratic voters alike.

As the nation’s physician shortage worsens, some fear the Trump administration’s immigration policies will dissuade or prevent doctors who earned their medical degrees in foreign countries from practicing in the United States. Last August, the Trump administration issued a rule increasing the fee for employers hiring workers through the H-1B visa program to $100,000, up from between $2,000 and $5,000. It also has issued a travel ban on residents of 39 countries. And earlier this month, the U.S. State Department broadened its “online presence review” of applicants for H-1B and other visas to ensure that they do not “pose a threat to national security or public safety.”

In 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that under the Fourteenth Amendment, states must provide lawyers to criminal defendants who cannot afford one. But throughout Texas and many other states, the rosters of public defenders have been shrinking at an alarming rate, often leaving defendants in jail for days, weeks or months without access to an attorney. Many public defenders are leaving, while those that remain are forced to juggle enormous caseloads.

In Idaho and Missouri, where voters will decide the future of abortion access on Nov. 3, campaigns are trying to reach a generation dealing with rising living costs and skepticism toward politics. Both campaigns are hoping young voters turn out on Election Day, but they're competing against other issues for Generation Z's attention.

The sheer size of investment in data centers is drawing concern as it surpasses all other historical booms and crowds out other more job-creating ventures. Until now, no industry had driven the U.S. economy with such force since the railroad expansion of the late 1800s, when titans battled one another to lay the transcontinental tracks that would connect America from coast to coast.

By Amanda Watford

As candidates debate public safety ahead of the midterm elections, a new assessment of the nation’s historic homicide decline suggests there is no single explanation for the drop — and that some widely discussed enforcement strategies may have played little role.

A survey of nearly 50 crime scholars convened by the nonpartisan Council on Criminal Justice found the strongest support that the top contributing factors to the drop in homicide rates have been community violence intervention programs, the easing of pandemic-related disruptions, and focused deterrence strategies that pair law enforcement with social services.

The findings come amid a historic national decline in homicide. In 2025, the estimated U.S. murder and nonnegligent manslaughter rate fell 18.1% compared with 2024, which equates to about 4 killings per 100,000 people. It tied the lowest rate recorded since national estimates began. The FBI recorded the same rate in 1955 and 1956.