Justice
May 22, 2019 -
The Democrat-controlled N.C. Board of Elections has appointed a new executive director on a party-line vote. She'll be responsible for running two special congressional elections this year and implementing the state's new voter ID law, which is facing a lawsuit filed by voters who could be disenfranchised.
May 3, 2019 -
After voters approved a constitutional amendment restoring the franchise to people with felony convictions, Florida lawmakers are trying to make it harder for citizens to put amendments on the ballot. Legislators in Arkansas, the only other Southern state that allows citizen-initiated amendments, did likewise after voters passed a minimum-wage hike.
April 26, 2019 -
In a year of harsh anti-abortion bills, one introduced in Texas went furthest of all by allowing women who end a pregnancy to be put to death. The bill's sponsor — a quadruple divorcee whose first wife sought a restraining order against him — is a major recipient of contributions from a fracking services billionaire and religious sect leader who's become a leading funder of radical anti-abortion groups and candidates.
April 26, 2019 -
Voting rights advocates offered solutions for combating discriminatory election practices and increasing voting access in the state and around the country.
April 22, 2019 -
State regulators recently issued a new general permit for industrial hog farms, and it dashed the hopes of environmental advocates who say it represents a failure to address the unequal pollution burden borne by nonwhite communities. They're calling on the agency to take environmental justice into account in future permitting decisions.
April 12, 2019 -
Even as support for LGBTQ equality grows nationally, lawmakers in three Southern states are advancing legislation that would continue to discriminate.
April 10, 2019 -
Though better known these days for erecting statues to Confederate veterans during the Jim Crow era, the United Daughters of the Confederacy also promoted white supremacist Lost Cause propaganda through their campaigns to control history textbooks used in the South's public schools. That miseducation continues to haunt our politics today.
