Politics

July 14, 2015 - As voting rights supporters rallied for the opening of the federal trial over North Carolina's restrictive election law, they got words of encouragement from David Goodman, brother of a civil rights volunteer murdered in Mississippi in 1964.

July 12, 2015 - A federal trial starts this week over a restrictive voting law North Carolina lawmakers passed two years ago after the Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. People from across North Carolina and beyond will gather outside the courthouse in Winston-Salem to pray, educate and march for voting rights at a moment organizers liken to the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches.

July 10, 2015 - Wealthy special interests are increasingly spending money to influence state judicial races, threatening the independence of judges and damaging public confidence in the integrity of the courts.

July 3, 2015 - Politics and economics helped spark the removal of Confederate flags across the South in the wake of the Charleston church shootings. But does that signal broader changes in the region's culture?

June 19, 2015 - A new study from the watchdog group Democracy North Carolina estimates that tens of thousands of would-be voters were prevented from casting ballots or having them count in last year's elections due to a restrictive voting law passed in 2013. The law is being challenged in federal court, with arguments set to begin next month.

June 10, 2015 - If the Supreme Court rules against Affordable Care Act subsidies this month in King v. Burwell, 6.4 million people could lose their health insurance tax credits — and the majority of them live in the South.

May 29, 2015 - This week the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals denied President Obama's request to lift an injunction on his executive action programs to provide temporary deportation relief to millions of undocumented immigrants. The decision could have short- and long-term political impacts in the South.