Georgia

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. 

June 18, 2019 - The man who gunned down his three Muslim neighbors in Chapel Hill in 2015 has pleaded guilty to their murders, but he couldn't be charged under North Carolina's hate crime law because it doesn't cover felonies. That's just one of many weaknesses in those state laws, which advocates are trying to strengthen.

June 12, 2019 - New evidence from the files of a dead North Carolina gerrymandering expert reveals the Trump administration pushed for the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 census to benefit the Republican Party. But the question could lead to an undercount, which would diminish the South's electoral power and cheat it of its fair share of federal funds. 

June 5, 2019 - The Republican-led Georgia ethics commission is investigating the campaign of 2018 Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and several groups that focused on mobilizing minority voters. The probe has sparked accusations that the GOP-led commission is inappropriately engaged in partisan politics — and that's neither a new concern for Georgia nor limited to the state.

June 4, 2019 - While the U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate among the developed nations, Southern states have the highest rates in the U.S. — and black women are at dramatically higher risk of complications than white women. A congresswoman from North Carolina is taking action to tackle the problem. 

April 26, 2019 - Voting rights advocates offered solutions for combating discriminatory election practices and increasing voting access in the state and around the country.

March 14, 2019 - For the amendment banning sex discrimination by the federal and state governments to be enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, one more state needs to ratify it. Most of the states that haven't ratified the ERA are in the South, but ratification bills were introduced in seven Southern states this year.