Paul Blest

January 29, 2018 - With controversy still raging over memorials to the Confederacy, some state legislatures are taking steps to protect them — while some cities are finding creative ways to skirt those laws.

January 19, 2018 - Federal funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program, which covers nearly 3 million children in the South, isn't guaranteed for every state past Jan. 19. If Congress fails to find a fix, the results would be disastrous in a region consistently ranked low for children's health outcomes.

December 15, 2017 - Over half of the South's governor's offices, six of its U.S. Senate seats, and all of its U.S. House seats are up for grabs next year. We run down the races to keep an eye on.

December 14, 2017 - Daniel Boyd's graphic novel "Carbon" features a villain modeled on former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship, who just completed a prison stint for his role in the deadly 2010 Upper Big Branch Mine disaster in West Virginia. We talked with Boyd about Blankenship's political aspirations and his state's troubled relationship with coal.

November 29, 2017 - The North Carolina Commission of Inquiry on Torture will hold public hearings in Raleigh this week on the state's complicity in the Bush-era program, under a new president who wants to bring torture back.

November 21, 2017 - Striking farmworkers in Kentucky recently won a settlement over wage-theft claims, and now a farmworkers' union is suing North Carolina over a new law that curbs the group's organizing power.

November 17, 2017 - Democrats, liberal-leaning independents and a growing number of progressives lead two-thirds of the South's 30 largest cities, but their agenda is under attack from the region's conservative legislatures through preemption and other efforts to limit local control.