We investigate almost minimal actions of abelian groups and their crossed products. As an application, given multiplicatively independent integers p and q, we show that Furstenberg’s $\times p,\times q$ conjecture holds if and only if the canonical trace is the only faithful extreme tracial state on the $C^*$-algebra of the group $\mathbb {Z}[\frac {1}{pq}]\rtimes \mathbb {Z}^2$. We also compute the primitive ideal space and K-theory of $C^*(\mathbb {Z}[\frac {1}{pq}]\rtimes \mathbb {Z}^2)$.

We study the problem of extending a state on an abelian $C^{\ast }$-subalgebra to a tracial state on the ambient $C^{\ast }$-algebra. We propose an approach that is well suited to the case of regular inclusions, in which there is a large supply of normalizers of the subalgebra. Conditional expectations onto the subalgebra give natural extensions of a state to the ambient $C^{\ast }$-algebra; we prove that these extensions are tracial states if and only if certain invariance properties of both the state and conditional expectations are satisfied. In the example of a groupoid $C^{\ast }$-algebra, these invariance properties correspond to invariance of associated measures on the unit space under the action of bisections. Using our framework, we are able to completely describe the tracial state space of a Cuntz–Krieger graph algebra. Along the way we introduce certain operations called graph tightenings, which both streamline our description and provide connections to related finiteness questions in graph $C^{\ast }$-algebras. Our investigation has close connections with the so-called unique state extension property and its variants.