July 19, 2019 -
This week the Democratic-controlled U.S. House passed the Raise the Wage Act to gradually increase the hourly minimum wage to $15. The proposal now awaits action in the Republican-controlled Senate, where the bill sits in a committee chaired by Tennessee's Lamar Alexander, who thinks there should be no minimum wage laws at all.
July 19, 2019 -
The Emmy-nominated docudrama "When They See Us" sparked a national conversation about wrongful convictions and how they disproportionately steal the freedom of Black and Brown people. However, most exonerations don't come about by chance meetings but by the hard work of nongovernmental innocence organizations and a growing number of conviction integrity units in prosecutors' offices.
July 18, 2019 -
A judge recently ruled that the North Carolina legislature lost its power to amend the state constitution after federal courts ruled that it was unconstitutionally gerrymandered by race. Now new evidence suggests that lawmakers misled judges to buy time to pass the amendments.
July 17, 2019 -
Religious organizations posing as licensed health facilities, so-called "crisis pregnancy centers" peddle misinformation to discourage people from seeking abortion. Yet some Southern states are funding these fraudulent clinics with taxpayer money — and now the North Carolina legislature wants to give them even more.
July 15, 2019 -
Across the South, voting rights advocates argue that judicial elections violate the Voting Rights Act by depriving communities of color of representation on state courts. Federal courts are hearing lawsuits in Arkansas and Alabama, where the state supreme courts are all white.
July 5, 2019 -
Some see what's happening to migrant children at the U.S. border as a human rights catastrophe. Some see it as a chance to turn a profit.
July 3, 2019 -
Amid the current assaults on voting rights by Republican-led statehouses in the South, some Democratic presidential candidates have traveled to Southern states to release proposals for election reforms that would create new standards for combating discriminatory practices and expand voting access nationwide.
