Politics

April 7, 2022 - Republican lawmakers in Florida and Georgia passed legislation this year to establish “election police" to fight voter fraud, despite no evidence any widespread fraud has occurred. Voting rights advocates say the measures serve only to intimidate communities of color and further damage Americans' confidence in elections.

April 7, 2022 - To address the region's shockingly high rate of pregnancy-related deaths, a growing number of Southern states are expanding their Medicaid programs or launching Medicaid pilot initiatives to cover the services of doulas — nonclinical professionals who provide holistic support during all stages of pregnancy.   

March 24, 2022 - Despite the urgency of the climate crisis, electric utilities across the South — including Duke Energy, Florida Power & Light, and Dominion Energy — are working in concert with fossil fuel interests to promote policies that discourage consumers from installing rooftop solar systems. Will regulators let them get away with it?

March 23, 2022 - Arkansas and Florida are the only Southern states that still allow citizens to place questions on the ballot, but Republican lawmakers there want to erect new barriers to this form of direct democracy.

March 18, 2022 - More than a century after the first anti-lynching legislation was introduced in Congress by a Black member from North Carolina, lawmakers finally passed a bill that makes lynching a federal crime. Advocates hope that the new law will address the generational damage caused by racial violence and prevent modern-day lynchings from going unpunished.

March 16, 2022 - Satana Deberry was elected as the district attorney for Durham County, North Carolina, in 2018 after running on a progressive platform. She recently testified before a U.S. House Judiciary subcommittee to defend the movement to reform law enforcement, explaining how over-reliance on prosecution and incarceration makes communities less safe.

March 11, 2022 - Thousands of people gathered recently in Alabama for the 57th anniversary of the historic Selma to Montgomery March for voting rights, which was met with police violence as peaceful demonstrators tried to cross a bridge named for a Klan leader. This year's event took place as state legislatures across the South are passing bills to limit voting and protesting.