money in politics

June 30, 2023 - This year, a flood of anti-trans legislation has washed over states across the country, especially in the South. North Carolina has seen key legislation move rapidly this Pride month, including bills to ban gender-affirming health care for minors. In a state where corporations once wielded their influence to condemn anti-trans legislation and withheld their purse strings from North Carolina, how do businesses’ interests and policy agendas conflict when it comes to the latest attack on transgender youth? 

April 14, 2023 - After a shooter recently killed six people at an elementary school in Tennessee's capital city, mass protests demanded tougher gun laws, which are supported by most Americans. But the state's Republican-controlled legislature instead took action to lift restrictions on guns while refusing to debate new ones — and it's not alone in the region.

January 11, 2023 - Over 100 corporations said they'd reconsider their political giving after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, but most continued donating to members of Congress who voted against certifying President Biden's 2020 election. Among them are Fortune 500 firms with headquarters in the South, including AT&T, Delta Air Lines, and Walmart.

December 2, 2022 - Mega-donors have spent millions of dollars supporting election deniers for federal and state offices in the South, while Republican-controlled states have launched law enforcement units aimed at fueling the deniers' narrative. But all that spending so far hasn't translated into big wins for deniers in key positions.

November 4, 2022 - The same day President Biden delivered an address on looming threats to U.S. democracy, a local Republican Party information booth at an early voting site in North Carolina displayed a sign calling in coded language for his assassination — part of a pattern of increasingly violent words and actions from the American right.

September 15, 2022 - This November voters in Kentucky will weigh in on a proposed constitutional amendment that would deny any state right to an abortion, similar to the one that recently failed in Kansas. We look at the players and money behind Kentucky's anti-abortion ballot measure and the effort to defeat it.  

July 21, 2022 - North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) pushed for the new state budget to allocate millions of dollars to close hog farms, which are concentrated in environmental justice communities in the state's increasingly flood-prone east. But the Republican-controlled state legislature, where the industry is a powerful force, passed a budget without the funds — and Cooper signed it.