The projects range from coast to coast, with the largest providing an additional $1.4 billion to help replace two vertical lift bridges over the Columbia River that carry Interstate 5 traffic between Portland, Oregon, and Vancouver, Washington. The bridges, which also received $600 million in December, are “the worst trucking bottleneck” in the region, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said.

Other projects receiving $500 million or more include the Sagamore Bridge in in Cape Cod, Massachusetts; an Interstate 10 bridge project in Mobile, Alabama; and the Interstate 83 South bridge in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, which Buttigieg planned to highlight Wednesday with a visit.

“These bridges affect whole regions and ultimately impact the entire U.S. economy,” Buttigieg said. “Their condition means they need major urgent investment to help keep people safe and to keep our supply chains running smoothly.”

The grants come from a $1.2 trillion infrastructure law signed by Biden in 2021 that directed $40 billion to bridges over five years — the largest dedicated bridge investment in decades. Biden has been touting the infrastructure law while campaigning for reelection against former President Donald Trump.

But even Wednesday’s large grants will make only a dent in what the American Road & Transportation Builders Association estimates to be $319 billion of needed bridge repairs across the U.S.

About 42,400 bridges are in poor condition nationwide, yet they carry about 167 million vehicles each day, according to the federal government. Four-fifths of those bridges have problems with the substructures that hold them up or the superstructures that support their load. And more than 15,800 of the poor bridges also were listed in poor shape a decade ago, according to an Associated Press analysis.

The nation’s poor bridges are on average 70 years old.

Bridges fulfill a vital role that often goes overlooked until their closure disrupts people’s commutes and delays commerce. That was tragically highlighted in March when a cargo ship crashed into a support column of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Maryland, causing the bridge to crumple into the water and killing six road crew workers. Maryland officials have said it could take four years and up to $1.9 billion to rebuild the bridge.

Some of the projects announced Wednesday include multiple bridges, such as a $251 million grant to improve 15 bridges around Providence, Rhode Island. That project is separate from one to replace the Interstate 195 Washington Bridge over the Seekonk River, which was suddenly closed to traffic late last year because of structural problems.

In Florida, Miami-Dade County will receive $101 million to replace 11 Venetian Causeway bridges that are nearly a century old.

Other bridge projects receiving funding include the Interstate 55 bridge over the Mississippi River connecting Arkansas and Tennessee; the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge in Wilmington, North Carolina; four bridges carrying Interstate 95 over Lake Marion in South Carolina; the U.S. 70 bridge over Lake Texoma in Oklahoma; two bridges carrying Interstate 25 over Nogal Canyon in New Mexico; the 18th Street bridge in Kansas City, Kansas; and the Market Street bridge over the Ohio River connecting Steubenville, Ohio, with East Steubenville, West Virginia.

Democrat Brian Munroe and Republican Joe Hogan were elected nearly two years ago to their seats in the suburbs north of Philadelphia, winning by margins of 515 and 76 votes, respectively, out of more than 30,000 ballots cast.

Their races this year are among a few dozen nationally that could determine party control in state capitols and, ultimately, who sets public policy on such contentious issues as abortion, guns and transgender rights. The contests are particularly important due to recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions that have weakened federal regulatory oversight and returned more power to states.

“State legislatures will determine the rights and freedoms we have and the direction our country takes. The stakes couldn’t be higher,” said Daniel Squadron, co-founder of The States Project, which recently announced a $70 million effort to aid Democratic legislative candidates in certain states.

All told, groups aligned with Democrats and Republicans are planning to pour a couple hundred million dollars into state legislative battles. Nearly 5,800 legislative seats in 44 states are up for election this year. The top targets include a half-dozen states where control of a chamber is in play — Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Most of those states also are presidential battlegrounds. In some cases, national political groups are trying to link legislative candidates to the fortunes of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. In others, they are trying to distinguish them from the top of the ticket.

Biden sought to rebound from a poor debate performance by campaigning in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. But his political problems have led some Democrats to suggest he should step aside and raised concern that down-ballot Democrats also could suffer if discouraged Democrats choose not to vote.

On Wednesday, Democratic legislative leaders from Arizona and Wisconsin said they hope the door-to-door efforts of their statehouse candidates can have a reverse coat-tails effect, boosting Democrats at the top of the ticket.

Democrats won a slim 102-101 majority in the Pennsylvania House two years ago. But Republicans expressed confidence they can retake the chamber this year, citing inflation, immigration and Biden’s troubles.

“If the election were held tomorrow, I’d feel great about it,” said Pennsylvania state Rep. Josh Kail, head of the campaign efforts for Pennsylvania House Republicans.

The Republican State Leadership Committee already has run ads in Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin pinning inflation on Biden and other Democrats while touting Republican legislative candidates.

Democrats are targeting Wisconsin after a new liberal majority of the state Supreme Court struck down the previous Republican-drawn districts that had entrenched the GOP in power. The new districts, backed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, improve Democrats’ chances.

The Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning a half-century of abortion rights showed both the influence of national politics in state elections and the importance of state legislatures. After the ruling, many Republican-led states banned or limited abortion while many Democratic-led states strengthened abortion protections.

The ruling gave Democrats a new campaign theme for the 2022 legislative elections, which were the first conducted under voting districts redrawn using 2020 census data. Democrats wrested control of legislative chambers away from Republicans in Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania.

This year’s reelection bids by Hogan and Munroe are among 15 Pennsylvania House races spotlighted by the national Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. Both of their Bucks County districts gave slightly more than half their votes to Biden four years ago and a larger margin to Democrats John Fetterman and Josh Shapiro in their 2022 races for U.S. Senate and governor.

“We believe we have a great opportunity not just to protect our majority in the suburbs, but to grow our majority,” Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Matt Bradford said.

Democrat Anna Payne, who is challenging Hogan, sees abortion rights, public safety and school funding as the key issues.

“To some extent, people are looking for common sense,” Payne said. “They don’t want anybody who’s too extreme on one side or too extreme on the other.”

Hogan, a former congressional aid, has burnished a moderate image in the General Assembly, working on childhood education and public transit, among other things.

“I’m willing to work with anybody to do what I think is the right thing,” Hogan said.

Rosemary Donahue, a 77-year-old retired nurse and registered Republican, said she has received mail from Hogan and will be evaluating his performance on such issues as fixing roads, supporting schools and women’s health rights. She regularly follows state and national politics.

“If you watch television, you can’t think of anything else, because you’re constantly being bombarded by the presidential election, advertisements and all,” Donahue said.

Arlene McBride, who recently became one of Munroe’s constituents, said she’ll be watching his race with Bucks County Recorder of Deeds Dan McPhillips to see who is more inclined to preserve the social safety net. She ranks women’s health, education and welcoming immigrants among her top issues.

“Do they care about others or are they strictly for business?” said McBride, 90, a registered Democrat. “It doesn’t seem that those who are strictly for big business really care about the less fortunate.”

Research has shown that many voters know little about their state legislative candidates, so “national politics will probably dominate the state legislative elections,” said Steven Rogers, a political scientist at Saint Louis University who focuses on state legislatures.

While Republicans seek to reverse their 2022 losses, Democrats are pushing to flip closely divided, GOP-led legislative chambers in Arizona and New Hampshire.

Immigration and inflation are especially hot issues in Arizona. And abortion rights supporters recently submitted petition signatures to get a constitutional amendment on the November ballot. That has raised the stakes in a state where voter registration is divided almost equally among Republicans, independents and Democrats.

“I’m expecting a lot of the national issues — the national dynamics — to really play into the legislative races in Arizona because of our battleground-state status,” said James Strickland a political scientist at Arizona State University.

Lieb reported from Jefferson City, Missouri.

Three months after a fatal school shooting, Iowa lawmakers this week passed legislation allowing trained teachers and staff to carry guns on school property.

Two states. Two tragedies. Two different approaches to improving public safety.

“We live in two different Americas, in essence,” said Daniel Webster, a health policy professor affiliated with the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions.

“We see terrible acts of gun violence; no one wants them, of course,” Webster said. “But we see this through different lenses.”

Legislatures in about 20 states already have passed measures this year to expand gun rights or restrict access to firearms. Dozens more proposals are pending. The divide continues a trend seen last year, when more than half the states enacted firearms legislation, with Democrats generally favoring more limits and Republicans more freedoms for gun owners.

LIMITS ON GUNS IN MAINE

Maine has a tradition of hunting and gun ownership. But after an Army reservist killed 18 people and wounded 13 others in Lewiston, Democratic Gov. Janet Mills called for a variety of new laws aimed at preventing dangerous people from possessing guns and strengthening mental health services.

Before adjourning its 2024 session early Thursday, lawmakers approved measures imposing a 72-hour waiting period for gun purchases, expanding background checks on private gun sales and criminalizing sales to certain prohibited people. They also passed a ban on devices that convert semi-automatic firearms into rapid-firing weapons like machine guns, and enhanced an existing law that allows judges to temporarily remove guns from people during a mental health crisis.

A gun safety coalition praised it as a significant step forward in response to constituents’ concerns after the Lewiston shooting. But Republican state Sen. Lisa Keim criticized colleagues for “using the tragedy to advance legislation” that had been unable to pass previously.

GUNS IN IOWA SCHOOLS

In Perry, Iowa, a school principal and sixth-grade student died and several others were wounded when a 17-year-old student opened fire in January.

A 2021 state law already allowed schools to authorize individuals to carry firearms, though some districts have not done so because of concerns about insurance coverage.

The legislation given final approval Monday by the Republican-led Legislature builds upon the prior law by allowing teachers and staff who undergo gun safety training to get a professional permit to carry guns in schools. If they do, they would be protected from criminal or civil liability for use of reasonable force.

The legislation also requires large school districts to station a police officer or private security guard at each high school, unless the school board votes not to do so. Most of those school districts already have security staff.

DIVERGING STATE LAWS

Republican-led legislatures in Kentucky, Nebraska, South Dakota, Tennessee and Utah also passed measures this year that would expand the ability of some people to bring guns into schools. A bill passed in Wyoming allots $480,000 to reimburse schools for the cost of training employees to carry guns on school property.

Louisiana and South Carolina, led by Republican lawmakers and governors, each enacted laws allowing people to carry concealed guns without a permit. The National Rifle Association, which supported the measures, said similar laws now exist in 29 states.

By contrast, the Democrat-led Delaware Legislature passed legislation requiring people wanting to buy a handgun to first be fingerprinted, undergo training and obtain a state permit.

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, signed a pair of new laws imposing restrictions. One sets a seven-day waiting period to purchase firearms — more than double the three-day period required by the federal government for a background check.

Another new law in New Mexico prohibits carrying firearms within 100 feet (30 meters) of polling places, with an exemption for concealed-carry permit holders. Voting site restrictions on guns now exist in about one-third of the states and Washington, D.C., according to the gun-violence prevention group Giffords.

BUCKING PARTY TRENDS

Not all new gun policies diverge along partisan lines.

Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin this year vetoed 30 gun-related bills passed by the Democratic-led General Assembly that he said would have trampled on constitutional rights. Yet Youngkin also signed some gun restrictions: One bans devices that convert semi-automatic handguns into automatic weapons. Another allows felony charges against parents who let a child have access to a firearm after being notified the child poses a threat of violence.

While signing several gun rights measures, Republican Gov. Mark Gordon of Wyoming also vetoed legislation that would have allowed people to carry concealed guns in public schools and government meetings. Gordon cited concerns the bill could have exceeded the separation of powers provision in the state constitution.

And in some cases, high-profile shootings have prompted lawmakers to avoid taking action on proposals they might otherwise have considered.

Missouri’s Republican-led House had been prepared to debate bills exempting guns and ammunition from sales taxes and allowing people with concealed-carry permits to bring guns onto public transportation. But after the deadly shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl celebration, House Majority Leader Jon Patterson said those bills would not be brought up this year.

___

Associated Press writers David Sharp in Augusta, Maine, and Hannah Fingerhut in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this report.

People in North Carolina may have a little more riding on this year’s NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, as they will be able to legally bet on the games through their smartphone apps and computers for the first time.

For the sixth straight year, the number of states allowing legal sports betting has expanded since the last rendition of March Madness. A total of 38 states and the District of Columbia now allow some form sports betting, including 30 states and the nation’s capital that allow online wagering.

That’s up from one state, Nevada, where people could legally wager on games during the 2018 college basketball tournaments, before the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for expansion.

The rules for sports betting vary by state. Some states prohibit bets on home-state college teams or the performance of specific players. Others allow bets not only on the outcome of any college games but also on a variety of other things, such as the number of points, rebounds and assists that a particular player will tally.

Here are some things to know about sports betting as the tourneys open, with the men’s games starting Tuesday and the women’s competition beginning Wednesday.

Fans have long filled out NCAA tournament brackets while wagering in office pools or against friends and family. But those casual bets have increasingly been supplemented with more formal gambling.

The total amount bet on all sports through legal wagering sites exceeded $121 billion in 2023, up 30% from the previous year, according to the American Gaming Association. After paying out winnings, sports betting operators reaped $11 billion in revenue, up from about $7.5 billion the previous year.

The American Gaming Association estimates $2.7 billion will be bet this year on the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments through legal sports books.

“March Madness is the biggest kind of individual event of the year for sports betting,” said David Forman, the American Gaming Association vice president of research.

The Super Bowl also draws big bets, but it’s only one game between two NFL teams. The NCAA Division 1 men’s and women’s basketball tournaments feature a total of 136 teams playing 134 games over three weeks.

Despite living where sports betting is legal, some fans still could be blocked from betting on their favorite teams and players.

Roughly a dozen states bar bets on college games involving home-state teams. Four additional states — Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont — generally prohibit bets involving their own college teams but make exceptions for tournaments.

Some states only allow bets on the outcome of college games, not how particular players will perform. Maryland and Ohio, for example, banned so-called proposition bets on college players, effective this month.

The NCAA has raised concerns that player-specific bets can lead to problems, including the harassment of college athletes and strain on their mental health. The organization also says such bets could entice players to wager on themselves or alter their play to affect stats-based bets.

Since the University of Connecticut won the men’s tournament last year, half a dozen states have launched or expanded sports betting.

Nebraska began taking sports bets at casinos last June, though it doesn’t allow mobile wagers. Kentucky launched sports betting in September to coincide with the start of the NFL season, and Maine began doing so in November.

After a court victory, the Seminole Tribe of Florida in December began taking online sports bets in addition to wagers at its casinos. Wagering has continued while a challenge is pending before the Florida Supreme Court. Opponents also have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the case.

In January, Vermont launched online sports betting.

North Carolina, which previously allowed sports betting only at three tribal casinos, began permitting online sports wagering statewide on March 11, a day before the start of the popular ACC men’s basketball tournament but a day after the women’s tournament ended.

Several states have a chance to join the sports betting trend.

In Missouri, where legislative attempts have repeatedly failed, the St. Louis Cardinals are leading a coalition of professional sports teams supporting an initiative petition that could place sports betting on the November ballot. Sports betting operators DraftKings and FanDuel have contributed a combined $3 million to the effort. Supporters say they are on track to exceed the required signatures by a May 5 deadline.

Lawmakers in Alabama and Georgia also are considering constitutional amendments authorizing sports betting. Georgia senators passed a measure last month, but it still needs a two-thirds vote from the House to appear on this year’s ballot.

Alabama’s House included sports betting in a wide-ranging gambling measure, but the state Senate stripped it out earlier this month. The House now must decide whether to accept that change or negotiate a final version to go to voters.

Legislation to legalize sports betting also is pending in Oklahoma and Minnesota. A Minnesota state Senate committee endorsed a revised version on Thursday that would raise the proposed tax rate.

Mississippi, which legalized casino sports betting in 2018, is considering an expansion to online betting. A bill passed the House last month and is now in the state Senate.

Although sports betting remains illegal in a dozen states, some residents place bets by crossing state lines. In Missouri’s two largest cities, St. Louis and Kansas City, some people drive to the nearest commuter lots or highway exit ramps just across the border in Illinois or Kansas, respectively, to place legal bets through mobile apps.

Many other would-be bettors get thwarted by technology.

During the weekend of the Super Bowl, where the Kansas City Chiefs defeated the San Francisco 49ers, technology company GeoComply Solutions said it processed more than 431,000 location checks from about 40,500 mobile devices in Missouri that attempted to access other states’ legal sports betting sites. The location checks allowed those bets to be blocked.

During that weekend, GeoComply said it processed an additional 256,000 location checks for sports betting sites coming from 30,000 devices in Alabama, Georgia, Minnesota and Mississippi.

Within moments, they captured the culprit: a teenager, dressed in dark clothes and a ski mask but carrying no weapon.

The map and cameras “let the dispatcher keep things from becoming super-escalated,” said the school’s security director, Jim Blodgett. “The dispatcher could see that it looked like a student … just kind of goofing around in the building.”

Spurred by mass shootings, thousands of school districts have hired companies to produce detailed digital maps that can help police, firefighters and medical professionals respond more quickly in emergencies.

The Middleton-Cross Plains Area School District, where the teenage trespasser entered from a roof hatch, was an early adopter in Wisconsin, which has since provided mapping grants to about 200 districts.

More than 20 states have enacted or proposed digital school mapping measures in the past few years, according to an Associated Press analysis aided by the bill-tracking software Plural. Florida approved $14 million in grants last year. Michigan allotted $12.5 million. New Jersey allocated $12.3 million in federal pandemic relief funds to complete digital maps of every school in the state.

Critical Response Group, run by an Army special operations veteran, has been driving the trend. The New Jersey-based company’s CEO Mike Rodgers recently told lawmakers in Maryland how he used gridded digital maps during deployments and was surprised the school where his wife taught had nothing similar. So he mapped her school, then expanded — to 12,000 schools and counting, nationwide.

“When an emergency happens at a school or a place of worship, most likely it’s the first time those responders have ever gone there,” Rodgers told the AP. “They’re under a tremendous amount of stress and they’re working with people they’re not familiar with, which is exactly the same problem that the military is faced with overseas, and ultimately that’s why this technique was born.”

Many of the state laws and bills contain nearly identical wording championed by Rodgers’ company. They require verification by a walk-through of each campus and free compatibility with any software already used by local schools and public safety agencies. They must be overlaid with aerial imagery and gridded coordinates, “oriented true north” and “contain site-specific labeling” for rooms, doors, hallways, stairwells, utility locations, hazards, key boxes, trauma kits and automated external defibrillators.

The standards create “a competitive, fair environment” for all vendors, Rodgers said. But when New Jersey sought a mapping contractor, the Critical Response Group had “the only product that was available in the state that answered the legislative criteria,” State Police mapping coordinator Lt. Brendan Liston said.

The New Jersey law required “critical incident mapping data,” a phrase that Critical Response Group tried to trademark.

Critical Response Group has hired lobbyists in more than 20 states to advocate for specific standards, according to an AP review of state lobbying records. Competitors also have engaged lobbyists to wrangle over the precise wording. In some states, lawmakers have gone with a more generic label of “school mapping data.”

Four companies offering digital mapping among their services — Critical Response Group, Centegix, GeoComm and Navigate360 — have together spent more than $1.4 million on lobbyists in 15 states, according to an AP analysis. Their costs are unknown in some states where lobbyist payments aren’t publicly reported.

Delaware and Virginia also chose the Critical Response Group program. Iowa has contracted with GeoComm. Other states are leaving vendor decisions to local schools.

A U.S. Department of Justice review of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, noted police had only “a basic map” that didn’t show windows or doors connecting classrooms as they waited to confront the gunman.

The Texas Education Agency responded last year with new standards requiring an “accurate site layout” and door designations to be provided to 911 agencies. The Legislature reinforced this by requiring silent panic buttons and armed security officers as part of a more than $1 billion school safety initiative.

Creating each map can cost several thousand dollars, and costs can escalate as maps are linked to other security systems, such as wearable panic buttons. But integrations also add value.

“If it’s not integrated with a crisis response system that can be pushed electronically to the dispatch center and police, then it’s probably not going to mean anything to them in the first minutes,” said Jeremy Gulley, the school system superintendent of Jay County, Indiana, which uses a Centegix mapping and alert system.

Because of their detailed information, digital school maps are exempt from public disclosure under legislation in some states. That’s critical to school safety, said Chuck Wilson, chair of the Partner Alliance for Safer Schools, a nonprofit coalition of education groups, law enforcement and security businesses.

“If bad people had access to the drawings, that would be almost worse than not knowing” a school’s layout, Wilson said. He added, “We’ve got to be really, really mindful of protecting this information.”

Many schools have long provided floor plans to local emergency responders. But they haven’t always been digital. As with Uvalde, some plans have lacked important details or become outdated as schools are renovated and expanded.

Washington began digitally mapping every school in the state 20 years ago, after the deadly Columbine High School shooting in Colorado, and provided annual funding to the Washington Association of Sheriffs & Police Chiefs to operate the map repository.

But over time, schools quit updating the information and the maps grew stale. The state funding proved insufficient and legislators ended the program in 2021, just as more states launched similar initiatives.

Security consultant David Corr ran the program and wishes it could have continued, but he said that for emergency responders, “wrong information is even worse than lack of information.”

With fanfare, Evers then signed off on $500 million in public aid for the stadium’s renovation, adding to a remarkable run of such blockbuster deals. This year alone, about a dozen Major League Baseball and National Football League franchises took steps toward new or improved stadiums.

A new wave of sports facility construction is underway. One driven, in part, by a race to keep up with rivals and one that could collectively cost taxpayers billions of dollars despite skepticism from economists that stadiums boost local economies.

Though the Brewers primarily cited a need for repairs, many of the other new projects are much more than that. In some cases, sports teams are even seeking a new jolt of public funding for state-of-the-art stadiums while public entities are still paying off debt from the last round of renovations a couple of decades ago.

“These facilities are not physically obsolete. It’s not as if the concrete is falling down and people are in grave danger if they attend a game,” said Rob Baade, a retired economics professor at Lake Forest College in Illinois.

“Teams are clamoring for new stadiums because it’s in their economic interest to do so,” Baade said, adding, “The new stadium model is one that spills over the stadium walls.”

New or improved stadiums provide team owners with fresh revenue opportunities from luxury suites, dining, shopping and other developments, especially for those who control the nearby area.

For many, Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke is the model: His $5 billion football stadium opened in 2020 as the centerpiece of a sprawling development that will feature apartments, offices, retail stores, public parks and a theater.

The difference, however, is that Kroenke is privately financing the project, after uprooting the Rams from a publicly funded stadium in St. Louis that was still being paid off.

The Kansas City Royals in August unveiled two options for a new $1 billion baseball stadium as part of an overall $2 billion development. The Tampa Bay Rays followed suit in September, unveiling plans for a $1.3 billion baseball stadium as the centerpiece of a $6.5 billion development in St. Petersburg, Florida, that also features housing, retail stores, restaurants and bars and a Black history museum.

They joined the Jacksonville Jaguars, the Buffalo Bills and the Tennessee Titans, all of whom announced plans for or began construction on new billion-dollar football stadiums with luxury amenities.

Those projects all also came with public funding, including the $760 million in local bonds the Nashville City Council approved to go with $500 million in state bonds to pay for the Titans’ new $2.1 billion stadium. As part of the deal, the Titans agreed to pay off the remaining $30 million of public debt owed for their current stadium, which opened in 1999.

As the Baltimore Ravens announced a publicly funded $430 million renovation this month, the football team’s senior vice president for stadium operations said the facility is “already considered by many to be top-of-line.” But “we must remain cutting-edge and captivating,” Rich Tamayo said.

The trend extends beyond baseball and football.

On Dec. 12, Oklahoma City voters approved a 1-cent sales tax for a new Thunder basketball team arena costing at least $900 million. The next day, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced a proposed $2 billion development to lure basketball’s Washington Wizards and hockey’s Washington Capitals to a new arena surrounded by a performing arts center, hotels, convention center, housing and retail stores.

The emerging cycle of stadium construction has a “level of extravagance that has ratcheted up tremendously” and is projected to peak around 2030, said J.C. Bradbury, an economics professor at Kennesaw State University in Georgia who has been tracking the projects.

Underlying the pitch for new stadiums is an assumption that teams may head elsewhere if they don’t get what they want, a rare yet realistic possibility highlighted by MLB’s approval last month for the Oakland Athletics to relocate from California to Las Vegas.

The team’s new $1.5 billion baseball stadium in Nevada is being aided by $380 million in public funding. It will be built not far from the $2 billion football home of the Las Vegas Raiders, which opened in 2020 with $750 million of public funding from hotel room taxes.

The Raiders and A’s previously shared Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, which had been renovated at taxpayer expense in the 1990s to lure the Raiders back from Los Angeles. The remaining $13.5 million in public debt from that renovation is to be paid off by February 2025, by which time both teams could be gone.

Longtime A’s fan Ken Rettberg is frustrated by both the A’s impending departure and the lavish public aid benefitting wealthy team owners.

“It’s crazy … how they can get away with giving away taxpayer money. It’s completely absurd,” said Rettberg, a software engineer who lives near Oakland.

Wisconsin officials feared the Brewers also could leave, taking their tax dollars with them.

While approving public aid for the Brewers stadium on Dec. 5, Evers asserted that “losing this team would have had a ripple effect felt by families and communities across this state.” He said the team generates billions of dollars of annual economic impact and supports thousands of jobs.

Brewers principal owner Mark Attanasio said other cities inquired, but “we never considered going anywhere else.” Records show the Brewers spent $575,000 lobbying lawmakers from January through June.

American Family Field, home of the Brewers, opened in 2001 during the peak of the last round of nationwide stadium construction, as cities replaced multipurpose facilities with glitzier sport-specific structures. Public funding covered nearly three-quarters of the $392 million cost.

Wisconsin’s latest stadium deal includes nearly $674 million for renovations, including a total of about $500 million from the state, county and city.

Ultimately, not everyone supports efforts to renovate or replace stadiums, or the trend of asking taxpayers to bear the cost.

The Titans’ new stadium carries the nation’s largest public subsidy for a professional sports facility. But voters delivered a rebuke in September, electing a progressive councilman who voted against the subsidy to serve as mayor.

The Chicago Bears in February bought a former suburban horse racing track as a potential site for a new football stadium and surrounding development but have yet to go forward with the potentially controversial move from downtown. The Illinois Sports Facilities Authority still owes $589 million through 2032 on public bonds issued for a renovation of the Bears’ current stadium two decades ago.

Many economists contend public funding for stadiums isn’t worth it, because sports tend to divert discretionary spending away from other forms of entertainment rather than generate new income.

“When you ask economists should we fund sports stadiums, they can’t say ‘no’ fast enough,” Bradbury said. “Yet when you ask a politician, they can’t say ‘yes’ fast enough.”

Public opinion appears mixed.

A survey conducted last year for the Global Sport Institute at Arizona State University found professional sports teams were viewed as a necessary cultural component of communities by 60% of respondents. Yet fewer than half believed state and local governments should provide public funds for sports stadiums.

The proposal to build a new Royals stadium closer to downtown Kansas City spurred thousands of fans to join a Facebook site rallying to keep the current stadium. The hefty public financing forms part of their objection.

“We’ve got a perfectly good stadium sitting there that was recently renovated and we’re still paying on that,” said Royals fan Jim Meyer, an administrator of the website. He added, “There is no real reason to replace it.”

Though the session is not expected to result in any new firearms restrictions, it nonetheless highlights the widely divergent response among states to a spate of mass shootings across the U.S.

More than half the states have enacted substantive new laws this year regarding gun policies or school safety measures — most often tightening firearm restrictions in Democratic-led states and loosening them in Republican-led ones. Some states also have pumped money into efforts to secure schools or to train teachers and staff how to respond in shootings.

Republican Gov. Bill Lee has outlined an 18-prong agenda for Tennessee lawmakers to consider during their special session.

The proposal that has gotten the most public attention also appears among the least likely to pass. It would allow judges to order the temporary removal of guns from people determined to be a risk of killing themselves or others.

Laws allowing “extreme risk protection orders” already are in place 21 states and the District of Columbia, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. That includes Michigan and Minnesota, where new Democratic legislative majorities passed so-called “red flag” laws this year.

Lee has shied away from referring to his proposal as a “red flag” law, emphasizing that it would allow guns to be removed only upon clear and convincing evidence during a court proceeding — and not before the person’s court appearance.

The shooter that killed six people, including three students, at The Covenant School in Nashville had been under a doctor’s care for an emotional disorder, police said, but there were no legal steps to prevent the person from buying guns.

Tennessee’s special session agenda also includes legislation regarding mental health resources, school safety plans and tougher penalties for some crimes.

The number of states enacting firearms legislation has climbed steadily this year. The most recent action occurred in Delaware, where Democratic Gov. John Carney signed legislation Friday expanding restrictions on guns at election polling places and school property.

Less than a week earlier, fellow Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed a law making Illinois the eighth state to roll back legal protections for firearms manufacturers and distributors. The new law bans firearms advertising that officials determine produces a public safety threat or appeals to children, militants or others who might later use the weapons illegally.

Pritzker signed the bill alongside attendees of an annual conference hosted by the gun-control group Everytown for Gun Safety. The group said 2023 has been “a historic year for gun safety in the states.”

In addition to Illinois, Democratic-led legislatures in Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Michigan, Maryland, Minnesota, Vermont and Washington all passed multiple gun control provisions this year. Among other things, those laws have strengthened background checks, banned certain semi-automatic weapons and restricted so-called “ghost guns,” which lack serial numbers.

By contrast, some states have strengthened gun rights. One of the most recent laws got signed just weeks ago by Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy, of Alaska.

The new Alaska law bars state and local officials from restricting the sale or possession of guns and ammunition during disasters — a response to mandatory business closures during the coronavirus pandemic. The law will mean gun stores can’t be closed in emergencies unless all commerce is shut down. The National Rifle Association described it as “the first major pro-Second Amendment legislation” passed in Alaska in a decade.

Several Republican-led states also made it easier for people to carry concealed handguns. A Florida law allowing concealed guns without needing a permit took effect July 1. North Dakota expanded a similar law Aug. 1. And Nebraska will become the 26th state with such a law on Sept. 10.

Texas responded to last year’s deadly Uvalde school shooting with new laws this year that require armed security officers at every school and silent panic buttons in every classroom. The state also provided additional funding to improve the physical safety of schools.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that Americans have a right to carry firearms in public for self-defense. The ruling provided a new precedent for challenging state gun-control policies and sent some states scrambling to replace their former laws with newly reworded gun restrictions.

Most state gun laws get challenged in court, often triggering years of legal wrangling.

The most recent court ruling on guns came last week, when a federal appeals panel rejected a challenge to a 2022 New Jersey law allowing the state attorney general to bring “public nuisance” claims against gun manufacturers.

Connecticut provides another example of how the court battles can seem continuous. Earlier this month, a federal judge rejected a request to temporarily block a 2013 Connecticut law — passed after the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting — that added more than 100 firearms to the state’s assault weapons ban and prohibited ammunition magazines holding over 10 rounds.

But before that ruling came down, another lawsuit already had been filed against Connecticut’s latest gun restrictions, which were signed in June by Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont. The new law expands the assault weapons ban even further, stiffens penalties for large-capacity ammunition magazines and bans the open carrying of firearms, among other things. Gun-rights advocates sued the same day the law was signed.

The court’s 6-3 ruling Tuesday drove a stake through the most extreme version of the so-called independent state legislature theory, which holds that legislatures have absolute power in setting the rules of federal elections and cannot be second-guessed by state courts. That decision cheered voting rights groups.

“We beat back the most serious legal threat our democracy has ever faced today,” said Kathay Feng of Common Cause, whose lawsuit challenging congressional districts drawn by North Carolina’s Republican-controlled legislature triggered the case.

But for some critics of the theory, the danger is not entirely past.

The court found that state courts still must act within “ordinary bounds” when reviewing laws governing federal elections. That gives another set of tools for those who lose election lawsuits in state courts to try to persuade federal judges to overturn those rulings.

“They’ve rejected a lot of the extreme stuff, but there is still a lot of room for ideological and partisan judging to come into play,” said Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California Los Angeles who filed an amicus brief in the case urging the court to reject the theory across the board.

Conservatives who had advocated for limits on the role of state courts in federal elections agreed with Hasen that the court didn’t settle the question of when, precisely, state courts need to stay out of federal elections. The issue may only get resolved in a last-minute challenge during the presidential election, they warned.

“Unfortunately, it’s going to be 2024 on the emergency docket,” said Jason Torchinsky, a Republican attorney who filed an amicus brief urging the court to adopt a more limited version of the theory.

The high court this week will decide whether to hear another case that touches on similar issues, an appeal by Ohio Republican lawmakers of a pair of state supreme court rulings directing them to draw fair congressional maps. The issue could come up in other cases where a state supreme court overturns congressional maps, such as in Wisconsin, where Democrats hope a new liberal majority on that state supreme court will reverse what they claim is a Republican gerrymander there.

The independent state legislature theory stems from the clause in the U.S. Constitution declaring that state legislatures shall set the “time, place and manner” of elections for the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. Advocates argue that shows the founders wanted to give legislatures ultimate power in federal elections.

The theory was alluded to by conservative Chief Justice William Rehnquist in the landmark 2000 case Bush v. Gore, where he noted that that clause suggested limits on whether the Florida Supreme Court could decide who would win the state’s presidential electors.

As Republicans have gained more power in state legislatures, the theory has become more popular on the right.

In 2020, the Trump campaign asked the Supreme Court to overturn a ruling by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court allowing the tallying of mail ballots received after Election Day in a case that many thought would pivot on the theory. But the high court simply ordered the late mail ballots to be segregated during the vote count and, when they were too few in number to change the outcome, did nothing further. Joe Biden won the state by a little over 80,000 votes.

In the most extreme case, some Trump legal advisors in late 2020 wanted to use the theory to let state legislatures replace electors won by Biden with Trump-voting ones. They argued that any changes to voting procedures that year were improper if legislatures didn’t sign off on them and that legislatures should have the power to declare the winner of presidential races.

North Carolina’s GOP-controlled legislature last year argued that the theory meant its state supreme court couldn’t overturn the map it drew that awarded a disproportionate share of the state’s 14 congressional districts to Republicans. But Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority in the case, known as Moore v. Harper, dismissed that argument as historically and legally inaccurate.

“When legislatures make laws,” Roberts wrote, “they are bound by the provisions of the very documents that give them life.”

Many democracy advocates contend this is the most important piece of the ruling and will foreclose most challenges of state court decisions in the future.

“We will see cases, but I think almost certainly – unless something really screwy happens – they’re going to lose a lot,” said Cameron Kistler, a legal counsel at the nonprofit group Protect Democracy. “I think the Supreme Court is going to want to draw a pretty firm line here, because the last thing they want is for every election law determination by every state official and every state court to present a federal issue.”

Neal Katyal, a former acting solicitor general who argued the case for voting rights groups at the Supreme Court, said the ruling is “a signal that this United States Supreme Court, with a solid six justices behind it, will resist attempts by state legislatures to mess with the integrity of the 2024 election.”

Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, who along with Justice Neil Gorsuch dissented on the case, warned that a signal is not enough. He bemoaned the majority’s refusal to spell out exactly when a state court would overreach, even if in most cases state courts will not.

“There are bound to be exceptions,” Thomas wrote. ”They will arise haphazardly, in the midst of quickly evolving, politically charged controversies, and the winners of federal elections may be decided by a federal court’s expedited judgment.”

Some election lawyers worried about just that possibility.

“It’s critical that the rules for elections are clear and specified in advance, including the rules that follow from judicial doctrine,” Rick Pildes, an NYU law professor, wrote on Tuesday. “We are going to see constant litigation around this issue in the 2024 elections until courts provide a more clear sense of the boundaries on state court decision-making.”

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Associated Press writer Julie Carr Smyth in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report.

Built in the 1950s and ’60s with a 20-year life expectancy, the four-lane highway is crumbling beneath its surface and clogged with traffic as it carries more than 30,000 vehicles a day on many of its rural stretches, requiring more frequent repaving. The cost to rebuild and widen it is estimated at $2 billion to $4 billion — as much as five times the projected yearly construction and maintenance budget of Missouri’s transportation department.

And there is no easy way to pay for it. The state fuel tax hasn’t risen in about 20 years, and voters defeated a 1-cent sales tax for transportation. Gov. Jay Nixon has since floated the idea of hiking the gasoline tax and reviving a previously failed plan to turn I-70’s reconstruction over to a private entity that could charge tolls estimated at up to $30 per car.

As legislatures convene across the country, lawmakers and governors are confronting similar realities in their own states: how to address an aging network of roads, highways and bridges during an era in which federal money for such projects has remained stagnant or declined.

Figures compiled by The Associated Press show the total amount of money available to states from the Federal Highway Trust Fund has declined 3.5 percent during the five-year period ending in 2013, the latest year for which numbers were available. During that span, the amount of inflation-adjusted federal highway money dropped in all states but Alaska and New York.

In response, states have tried to devise ways to fill the gap. Governors and lawmakers in several states are proposing new taxes, tolls and fees to repair a road system whose historical reliance on fuel taxes no longer provides enough money to cover its costs.

“You’re seeing states all across the country that are looking to do something, because they realize you can’t count on the federal government,” said Missouri state Rep. Dave Hinson, a Republican who supports the idea of raising the state sales tax for road improvements.

Framework for everyday life

Roads, highways and their bridges form the basic framework of everyday life in America. They provide the crucial underpinning of daily commutes, the trucking industry’s transfer of food, computers and other goods from seaports to suburban strip malls, and summertime trips to beach towns and mountain getaways. They also are generally an afterthought until they no longer are up to the task.

Governors, lawmakers, local elected officials and engineers across the country say that is where the country has arrived, with a decades-old highway infrastructure that is not receiving enough money to match its needs.

About 20 percent of the nation’s 900,000 miles of interstates and major roads are in need of resurfacing or reconstruction, according to federal data analyzed by the American Road & Transportation Builders Association. A quarter of its 600,000 bridges are in such poor condition that they are rated as structurally deficient or are considered to be functionally obsolete because they have narrow lanes or other features not designed for today’s traffic.

But the funding shortfall has led to rougher roads requiring more frequent, short-term repairs and jammed commuter routes that simply have more vehicle than the roads were designed to carry.

On Missouri’s I-70, the surface remains relatively smooth, but its weakening foundation means the state must pay to repave it more frequently. Whenever a lane closes, traffic backs up for miles.

On one fairly typical recent afternoon, the congestion forced Tom Crawford to drive his Dodge Durango about 10 miles under the speed limit. Behind him, two trucks with oversized loads were backing up traffic. In front of him was another long line of blinking red tail lights.

“We’ve got trucks and cars that are just bumper to bumper — people hitting their brakes,” Crawford, president and chief executive of the Missouri Trucking Association, said in a cellphone interview from the highway.

The increased congestion on I-70 often makes trips longer for truckers, he said, potentially raising their costs.

Calls for greater funding have been getting louder in state and local governments. This year, transportation funding increases could be on the agenda in as many as one-third of state legislatures. That comes after roughly one-fourth of the states increased transportation taxes or fees during the past two years.

The state proposals stand in stark contrast to the inaction in Congress, where a temporary funding patch is scheduled to expire in May and lawmakers have been at odds over a long-term highway plan. A federal fuel tax increase appears unlikely.

Earlier this month, President Barack Obama proposed a six-year, $478 billion program to pay for highway, transit and infrastructure upgrades, with funding roughly split between the current fuel taxes and a tax on the foreign profits of U.S. corporations. How much of that plan survives Congress, where majority Republicans seek to limit government spending and reduce taxes, will not be determined for months.

Obama’s 2009 stimulus act provided a brief spike in transportation funding. But the annual amount available to states from the Federal Highway Trust Fund has hovered around $40 billion since 2007 while the needs have continued to mount.

A $32 billion shortfall

Even though total state and federal road funding exceeded the general rate of inflation over the past decade, the pace has tapered off in recent years as the amount coming from the federal government declined. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials estimates that annual road and bridge spending by all levels of government is falling $32 billion short of what is needed.

The flat federal funding is having an impact because states rely on federal dollars for an average of about half their capital expenses for roads and bridges, according to the American Road & Transportation Builders Association. The rest is covered with state money, which comes predominantly from fuel taxes.

Gasoline tax revenue has grown little since 2007 — and actually declined on an inflation-adjusted basis, according to some analysts — as vehicles have become more fuel-efficient and people cut back on driving.

“The method that we use to fund transportation — the primary method, the motor fuels tax — is a model that doesn’t work anymore,” said David Ellis, the top infrastructure investment analyst at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.

To compensate, lawmakers in Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wyoming passed gasoline tax increases during the past two years. But about half the states have not raised their gasoline taxes in at least a decade, and the federal gas tax has remained at 18.4 cents a gallon since 1993.

Although some members of Congress have expressed a willingness to consider an increase, House and Senate Republican leaders have said there aren’t enough votes to pass a gas tax hike. Many states are now considering alternative ways of paying for roads.

Virginia recently scrapped its per-gallon gasoline tax in favor of a new tax on the wholesale price of gas and a higher tax on other retail sales. The state also has turned to public-private partnerships to build projects.

Among them are new express lanes that opened in December on Interstate 95 in northern Virginia, a $925 million project financed partly by private investors who have a long-term contract to collect tolls.

Lawmakers in Minnesota, Utah and Missouri also are expected to consider proposals this year that could levy a sales tax on fuel, allowing the states to reap more money when the price of gasoline rises. And Michigan voters will decide in May on a 1 percent general sales tax for transportation.

In his inaugural address last month, California Gov. Jerry Brown cited $59 billion of needed maintenance on roads and bridges in the nation’s most populous state. He said the state was falling “further and further behind” but did not offer specifics on how to address the deficit.

Most states are simply looking to maintain their current highway system rather than add to it, said Jim Tyman, director of policy and management at the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.

“A lot of those facilities are in need of really massive rehab, almost reconstruction from the ground up,” he said.