Politics

March 24, 2017 - Though death sentences and executions have decreased nationally in recent years, the South continues to execute people at a disproportionate rate — but the movement to end the death penalty is picking up momentum there.

March 24, 2017 - Groups representing some of the most embattled workers and marginalized communities in the South and nation have called a general strike for May 1 to send a message to the Trump administration and its corporate allies. It's the biggest effort of its kind in 70 years.

March 22, 2017 - Congress created the Appalachian Regional Commission and the Delta Regional Authority to promote economic development in two of the nation's most economically distressed regions, but President Trump has proposed ending the agencies' modest funding altogether.

March 17, 2017 - The GOP plan to scrap the Affordable Care Act includes a provision barring the nation's leading reproductive health services provider from taking Medicaid payments. That would take an especially heavy toll in the South, which already suffers the nation's highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases, unintended pregnancies and poverty.

March 16, 2017 - While the state has seen political battles over promoting renewable energy, voters across the partisan spectrum — including Trump supporters — agree that it should. They're also united in their objection to Duke Energy's coal ash cleanup plans and monopoly status and want to see the state's energy market opened to competition.

March 10, 2017 - President Trump is cheering Exxon Mobil's plans for a $20 billion expansion along the Gulf Coast. But what will that mean for the people who have to live with the pollution given Trump's other plans to gut the EPA and close its environmental justice office?

March 10, 2017 - Transgender women — and especially trans women of color — face disproportionate violence, with at least seven murders in the U.S. so far this year. Most of these occurred in the South, where state hate crime laws don't cover gender identity, and where lawmakers are stirring up transphobia with so-called "bathroom bills."