July 15, 2014 -
In a scathing ruling issued last month, a federal judge in Alabama said she could not "conclusively" determine that the Huntsville City School District wasn't still operating an unconstitutionally segregated system -- so she refused to approve a student assignment plan that had been proposed by the school board.
July 15, 2014 -
Eighty workers and activists gathered at Charleston's Avery Research Center on July 8 to celebrate recent union victories in South Carolina and to discuss their plans to "Organize the South." Thelma Frasier, who has helped lead the campaign to demand a $15 an hour minimum wage and a union for fast food workers, was among the featured panelists and reports on the event.
July 14, 2014 -
Republican Mayor Adam O'Neal of Belhaven, NC is walking to the nation's capital to make the case for Medicaid expansion following the closure of a hospital critical to the residents of his rural coastal community.
July 11, 2014 -
Clean-energy advocates are battling Duke Energy's plan to cut payments to homeowners with grid-tied solar panels for the excess power they sell back to the company. Meanwhile, a major investment bank says the falling price of solar panels and battery storage could encourage large numbers of U.S. homeowners and businesses to abandon utilities altogether and go off-grid.
July 10, 2014 -
The number of full-time reporters covering state politics for newspapers has declined significantly over the past decade, even as more critical policy decisions are falling to the states. Southern states have an especially dramatic imbalance between the number of reporters and the residents they serve.
July 8, 2014 -
The Virginia Supreme Court has ordered the American Tradition Institute to pay $250 to the University of Virginia and former professor Michael Mann for filing a lawsuit that sought his emails and other documents on the grounds that his climate research constituted academic fraud -- a charge repeatedly found to be without merit.
July 8, 2014 -
A new Census Bureau report finds a dramatic surge in the past decade in the number of Americans living in communities with concentrated poverty, with the greatest increase in North Carolina. Other states that experienced big jumps include Tennessee, Arkansas, Georgia and South Carolina.
