Politics

December 23, 2016 - In a year when it was hard to keep up with the onslaught of political news, Facing South helped to make sense of important developments and to share insights about the region. Catch up on our best reporting of 2016 with a roundup of our top stories of the year.  

December 22, 2016 - The recent move by North Carolina's GOP-controlled legislature to strip powers from Democratic Gov.-elect Roy Cooper is an example of basic democratic norms being undermined in a radical way, authoritarianism expert Yascha Mounk of Harvard University told an NPR talk show this week.

December 20, 2016 - The president's long-anticipated announcement of a permanent ban on offshore oil and gas drilling in the Atlantic extends protections only as far as the Maryland-Virginia border. But environmental advocates say they will continue to fight against drilling anywhere along the Atlantic Coast.

December 16, 2016 - As North Carolina's special legislative session on disaster relief drew to a close this week, Republican legislative leaders announced a surprise special session that ended with the state's newly elected Democratic governor stripped of key powers and dozens of protesters arrested.

December 16, 2016 - Opponents of opening the Atlantic coast to oil and gas drilling are pressing President Obama to enact a permanent ban. We look at the legal framework for such an action, and how durable it would be under a Trump administration.

December 16, 2016 - Immigrant advocates in Southern states say they'll continue to fight deportations and hostile rhetoric under the new administration — just as they have done for years at the state and local level.

December 15, 2016 - A Louisiana environmental health advocate says that if President-elect Donald Trump's pick for secretary of state, Exxon Mobil chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson, does for the world what he's done for Louisiana, "God help us."