texas

March 19, 2020 - The global coronavirus pandemic lays bare the existing problems in health care systems that were already stretched to the breaking point.

March 9, 2020 - Some Democratic voters in Texas waited as long as six hours to cast ballots on Super Tuesday. Observers blamed the delays on widespread poll closures, misallocation of voting machines, and one local GOP refusing a joint primary because it didn't want its voters to have to "wait in Democrat lines."

January 28, 2020 - With Southern states' monopoly electric utilities clinging to a business model that's worsening the climate crisis, polluting the environment, and costing consumers dearly, there's growing interest in opening markets to competition. While a ballot initiative to end Florida's electricity monopoly was recently rejected by the state Supreme Court, there are efforts underway to end Virginia's monopoly system and to study the question in the Carolinas.

December 6, 2019 - With reform blocked in Washington, voting rights advocates are shifting their attention to the states and are proposing far-reaching, pro-democracy agendas across the South. While the plans face an uphill battle, advocates see their efforts as a chance to be proactive after years of playing legal and political defense.

November 6, 2019 - In Texas, which has long debated changes to its system of partisan judicial elections, Republican leaders began pushing an appointment system just a few months after last year's Democratic sweep in Houston's judicial elections. One proposed bill would put an end to elected judges in urban counties.

October 17, 2019 - At a recent affordable housing summit in North Carolina, local officials discussed how to prevent displacement and gentrification despite being hamstrung by conservative state governments.

October 10, 2019 - Reed, who is African-American, was convicted in 1998 of raping and murdering a white woman based on DNA evidence — but he says they were having a secret affair, which the woman's cousin confirms. The case fits a pattern of questionable convictions of Black men for crimes against whites in Texas.