September 24, 2021 -
Earlier this year, Congress approved expanding the child tax credit and paying it out in advance as part of the American Rescue Plan economic stimulus bill. As Democrats discuss extending the credit, advocates argue that making it permanent would slash child poverty rates, which are especially high across the South.
September 24, 2021 -
It's been 10 years since Georgia executed Troy Davis despite questions about his guilt and calls for mercy from world leaders. One Southern state has outlawed capital punishment since then, but most states in the region still have death sentences on the books.
September 21, 2021 -
Chapel Hill has a reputation as a liberal town, but it's always been a racially unjust society — in large part because of the actions of the University of North Carolina, the nation's oldest public university. The same school that once denied clean water to its Black workers and their families now dumps toxic coal plant pollution on them.
September 17, 2021 -
Though a lawsuit seeking to restore the voting rights of North Carolinians on probation or parole suffered setbacks in recent court rulings, the broader movement to re-enfranchise people with felony convictions has made gains in Southern states in recent years.
September 16, 2021 -
With far-right activists planning to gather in Washington, D.C., and other cities on Sept. 18 to protest the arrests of those involved in the attempted Jan. 6 overthrow of the presidential election, we look at how the prosecutions of the violent domestic terrorists known as "accelerationists" are progressing.
September 13, 2021 -
The North Carolina NAACP is challenging the racially gerrymandered legislature's authority to put a voter ID question on the ballot, which voters passed in 2018. The state's highest court has postponed arguments while it decides whether two justices closely connected to the legislature must sit out the case.
September 10, 2021 -
Hurricane Ida's devastation of Louisiana's electric grid and the deadly power outages that resulted show the risk that highly centralized generation systems present in an era of increasingly destructive climate change-driven weather events. Yet Entergy — a Fortune 500 company that's the main power provider for the hard-hit southeastern part of the state, including New Orleans — has fought plans to move toward cleaner community-based generation. Will Ida mark a turning point?
