Sanders’ luxury travel: Sen. Bernie Sanders' "Fighting Oligarchy" tour has run up a nearly $608,000 tab on private jets and four-diamond hotels, The Center Square found.

Washington juvenile facility: A whistleblower warned the state's juvenile agency secretary of "major theft" last year, records obtained by The Center Square show.

Illinois diversity chair: The chair of Illinois' diversity commission left more than $7,500 in side pay off her 2024 filing, according to recently amended financial disclosures.

Prediction markets: North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein barred state employees from betting on Kalshi and Polymarket with inside government information.

Louisiana energy lawsuits: State senators passed a bill that shields energy companies from future climate lawsuits while leaving active cases alone.

Washington: A whistleblower personally warned Tana Senn, secretary of the Department of Children, Youth, and Families, of "major theft" at the state's Echo Glen juvenile facility last year, according to text messages obtained by The Center Square through a public records request. The State Auditor's Office and the state's social-services fraud division both told The Center Square they have not been informed of any theft at the agency, even as text messages show Senn met with the whistleblower in person several times.

Illinois: Nina Harris, who chairs Illinois' Commission on Equity and Inclusion, did not disclose more than $7,500 in 2024 side pay from her former employer until amending her filing this year, The Center Square found. The commission, created in 2022 to expand state contracts for minority-, women-, and disability-owned businesses, has seen the number of certified eligible businesses fall by about half from its peak while each commissioner draws roughly $150,000 a year.

North Carolina: Gov. Josh Stein signed an executive order this week barring state employees from using nonpublic government information to bet on prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket, where people wager on real-world events. The order arrived the same day Pew Research Center reported that combined trading on the two platforms rose from under $5 billion in September to about $24 billion in April, a nearly fivefold increase that has outpaced state-level rules in most of the country.

Energy: Louisiana's Senate passed House Bill 804 on Tuesday, a measure that would block future climate change lawsuits against energy companies while preserving dozens of active coastal-damage cases. The U.S. Supreme Court this month ruled 8-0 that one of the largest of those cases — a $745 million verdict against Chevron in Plaquemines Parish, worth more than $1.1 billion with interest — must move to federal court, but the underlying wetlands dispute is still active. The bill now returns to the Louisiana House for a concurrence vote, and other energy-producing states are watching how the carve-out between past and future liability holds up.

Education: Illinois and Wisconsin are both rewriting how they measure school performance, and critics in both states say the changes lower the bar instead of raising the schools. The Illinois State Board of Education will no longer reduce a school's rating for low attendance, a change adopted months after the board lowered academic proficiency benchmarks, even though one in four Illinois students was chronically absent last school year. In Wisconsin, where two-thirds of students cannot read or write at grade level, state Superintendent Jill Underly is advancing a "Portrait of a Graduate" initiative that critics, including former state superintendent candidate Brittany Kinser, say redefines success without a plan to close reading and math gaps.