Politics
July 15, 2020 -
Before he was elected to the U.S. Senate, Thom Tillis helped carry out the North Carolina Republican Party's strategy to restrict voting under the guise of preventing fraud. Now facing a tough re-election battle amid a pandemic, Tillis is under pressure to back two bills that would increase voters' access to absentee ballots.
July 14, 2020 -
Facing mounting costs and legal challenges, the Southern energy giants have canceled the $8 billion Atlantic Coast Pipeline planned to carry fracked gas from West Virginia to Virginia and North Carolina. The move came after intense opposition to the project from environmentalists, racial justice advocates, and local communities, and it will allow the companies to focus on meeting state renewable mandates.
July 9, 2020 -
States across the country require people with felony convictions to purchase their voting rights back if they ever want to cast a ballot again. It is a mechanism that felony disenfranchisement schemes increasingly rely upon, and it marks a return to the sordid tactics of Jim Crow.
June 30, 2020 -
As the general election approaches, states across the South are attempting to properly safeguard electoral processes. But recent primaries in Georgia and Kentucky reveal the challenges of holding elections without proper infrastructure in the midst of a pandemic.
June 26, 2020 -
When South Carolina's largest city ordered the removal of the statue of former U.S. Vice President turned secessionist John C. Calhoun, there were few if any Black workers on the crew. That points to contradictions that define our political moment.
June 19, 2020 -
Spurred by recent protests over police brutality, the North Carolina-based banking giant, which has a long history of racial discrimination, recently pledged to donate $1 billion over the next four years to address racial and economic inequality. But political spending by the company's employee PAC program is at odds with that goal.
June 18, 2020 -
Police funding across 47 of the South's largest cities has risen as a share of total expenditures in the past three decades, even as funding for other essential services has plateaued. With city councils planning their 2021 budgets, citizens are demanding a reallocation of those funds.
