Inbound traffic stood still between Mexico and the United States as Customs and Border Protection shut down the Tijuana–San Ysidro border crossing Monday.

In last week’s midterm elections, three more red states voted to expand Medicaid, demonstrating that Americans are making their peace with meager healthcare.

When President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act in 2010, Republicans protested the cost and the retreat from free market principles. But as years passed and no viable alternatives appeared, more became willing to accept federal funding that will swell the ranks of Medicaid recipients.

Since new rules went into effect to make prisons safer for prisoners, reports of sexual assault behind bars have increased 180 percent, according to a recent report by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. The numbers point to increased reporting of prison rapes—a positive sign—but concerns remain about how corrections officials handle the growing number of abuse allegations.

Washington followed 19 other states to end capital punishment last week as the death penalty experiences a nationwide decline in use. The state Supreme Court unanimously struck down capital punishment last Thursday as unconstitutional, racially biased, and arbitrary.

Washington’s eight prisoners currently on death row will have their sentences commuted to life in prison with no parole, The Seattle Times reported.

The U.S. Senate passed a bipartisan opioid bill last week that authorizes new tools and $8.5 billion to combat the nationwide crisis of overdose and death fueled by synthetic drugs such as fentanyl.

Pushback to anti-panhandling laws is growing, even in places with comparatively scant homelessness, like Iowa. Thousands of cities have “no soliciting” laws, and last month the American Civil Liberties Union challenged three Iowa communities on the grounds that ordinances against panhandling infringed on homeless residents’ freedom of expression.

The Colorado Supreme Court last week upheld a law allowing state courts to resentence inmates who received life sentences without parole as juveniles.

A Colorado district attorney challenged the 2016 law, which created a distinction in resentencing for a handful of state prison inmates serving a life sentence for felony murder. The felony murder rule allows a defendant to be charged with first-degree murder for a killing that occurs during a dangerous felony, even if the killing was unintentional.