Politics

November 12, 2015 - Nonprofits, presidential candidates, and others are engaging in legally questionable political fundraising and spending as the government agencies that are supposed to enforce the law do nothing. Good-government groups are pressing for action.

November 10, 2015 - A North Carolina law that bans so-called "sanctuary city" ordinances uses language from a model bill crafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate interest advocacy group whose members include private prison companies that stand to profit from immigrant detention.

November 5, 2015 - A new study finds that candidates running for office nationwide are less diverse in terms of race and gender than the broader U.S. population. In the South, the situation is particularly dire for representation among women.

November 4, 2015 - From Kentucky to Virginia to Mississippi, the GOP's dominance in state-level races across the South continued in this week's elections. Meanwhile, Mississippi voters rejected a school-funding initiative, and an anti-discrimination measure lost big in Houston.

November 2, 2015 - The nation's largest electric utility is going after a nonprofit energy watchdog for installing a solar system on the roof of a North Carolina church and selling it clean power in violation of state laws granting utilities monopoly status.

October 30, 2015 - With the rising flood of campaign cash in state supreme court elections, incumbent judges of color are having a harder time winning re-election than white incumbents, a new study finds. How bad is the problem, and what's the solution?

October 28, 2015 - North Carolina-based Duke Energy, already the nation's largest electric utility, has announced plans to buy Piedmont Natural Gas for $4.9 billion in cash. The merger would expand Duke's natural gas operations — and boost its already outsized political might.