Justice

January 18, 2019 - In his Jan. 15 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on President Trump's pick of William Barr for U.S. attorney general, NAACP President Derrick Johnson called on members to reject the nominee, saying he lacks "a record of strong commitment to civil rights in which communities of color could place their trust."

January 11, 2019 - In Florida, where a new constitutional amendment has restored voting rights to most ex-felons, organizers are planning a voter registration and engagement campaign to reach those with — and without — criminal convictions. Meanwhile, a lawsuit aims to expand voting rights to people with felony records in Kentucky.

December 6, 2018 - Last month voters in North Carolina put a top voting rights lawyer on the state Supreme Court. Just a few weeks later, the U.S. Senate defeated the judicial nomination of Thomas Farr, who some critics described as the go-to lawyer in North Carolina for defending voter suppression.

November 30, 2018 - People from outside of Mississippi might look at the latest Senate election results and decide to cut their losses. But those of us in the state have witnessed the changes that organizing has brought, and we know that a movement for liberation requires long-term commitment.

November 20, 2018 - The lame-duck North Carolina legislature convenes Nov. 27 to write a new voter ID law after the version it passed in 2013 was struck down for targeting black voters "with almost surgical precision." The same week, the U.S. Senate could vote to confirm to a federal judgeship a lawyer who helped draft the discriminatory law. 

November 13, 2018 - They ended racist Jim Crow-era policies in two states and raised the minimum wage in another. But elsewhere, Southern voters embraced racially discriminatory voter ID laws and took steps to restrict reproductive rights. The ballot measures that passed this year reflect a politically divided region.